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mateasha · 3 years

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rendevous 18.6y

summary: chikage shows up at the front door of MANKAI after disappearing from the face of the Earth for 3 years. itaru is not happy. fandom: a3 pairing: chikage x itaru word count: 5516 tags: original characters for the sake of plot, friends to strangers to lovers, angst, fluff, flashbacks, mentions of death, bad attempts at action, bad attempts at comedy

chapter 1: realizations He should be happy for him. Chikage is okay. Chikage is alive, and didn’t… just go somewhere and do god knows what, (which, well, he already did, didn’t he.) but at least it isn’t anything bad, he’s safe and sound and maybe the troupe members will be overjoyed to hear how he’s been doing...

Out of respect, no one has ever taken their spots in their respective troupes.

He observes him even harder from the lounge area in the office, a good break, he thinks, as he grinds some gacha game with his husbando, a little tired from staring at the stupidly “gendered” pink UI with the characters flying across the screen.

He’s happy. He looks healthy— maybe skin even glowing brighter than ever.

And it’s good for him. It’s amazing to see how happy Chikage looked, “laughing” with his friends, almost heartwarming to see Chikage doing just fine. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s talented, strong, mentally adept, better than h—

He stops that train of thought immediately.

He was happy. So then Itaru should be happy. Even if he was that stupid, unromantic senpai that always was offstandish with just a bit unromantic caring for others when he felt like it.

At least, should be.

He watches as his coworkers walk around him, slinging their arms around each other in camaraderie, as one of them asks him out for drinks after picking up lunch. His smile is almost as wide as he remembers when he figured out Hisoka was alive. And innocent.

He watches Chikage and he doesn’t look back, walking into the elevator without him, because he works on this floor. It’s fine.

But it’s just so fucking funny, when all he wants is just another word, just a reason why he left without even asking Spring Troupe, or literally anyone else for help. He would even trade his life for Hisoka’s, even though he knows that wouldn’t make anyone happy. Well, maybe Chikage. He could go off into some sunset with him and run away from whatever responsibilities he wanted to not deal with. Like Itaru. Izumi. The others.

He wants to scream out so bad, just for him to come back, but he can’t, like that stupid horror novel that made him feel like shit and all existential for no reason. He feels like he can talk to him about everything, in a sense. Which would make sense, of course, if they were still close. Roommates. But he could only do that in a world where Hisoka is still alive.

—

Chikage knows he’s here.

Why?

Intuition.

Not really. He looks at him, but chooses not to “look”.

But when he sees his face, almost heartbroken, which is almost questionable. He wants to ignore him so bad. Just move on. Easier said than done, when every week you see him share out information with the company execs. A Chikage-senpai, no more.

He wants to move on so bad.

But everytime he goes to bed, he can’t stop thinking. He crosses another day off the calendar, it’s been three years, almost three and a half years.

He tears down his calendar. Who the fuck uses those anyways?

He tries to move on.

But of course, when you have something good, and it gets taken away, you want it back, right? You throw a tantrum like a little child at first, like a baby crying for their pacifier their mom took away from them. Then, you silence yourself, deny you ever wanted it in the first place. But you can’t stop wanting more, wanting it back. You yearn for it so hard that it hurts, almost twists your heart into a fucking pretzel, your stomach bubbling like the filter of the damn fish tank in your too-large-for-one-person office— thanks Boss, not complaining— but you can’t have it. You ignore it.

He knows he wouldn’t be able to deal with it again. It was all his fucking fault. He slams his hand on the desk again, before opening up his work computer.

His vision is hazy, like the only thing he can see is his hands, just a foot in front of him, trying to find his ground, but all that runs through his mind is, “it’s your fucking fault you idiot stupid you shouldve worked harder to protect everyone, cant even do that” it turns out harder than expected.

But it’s not his first time at the rodeo, of course. He picks up the stack of paperwork, straightening it all into a neat little tower of paper, before typing away with a nasty scowl on his face.

He can’t accept this.

—

It’s his anniversary.

Chikage is on “vacation”. If your definition of “vacation” is sitting in a fancy car in suburban Tokyo, near Veludo Way. He already regrets his decision. Closure, my ass, he thinks to himself as he drives his car.

He’d already picked up tickets to their show in a month. Itaru is the lead this time. He searched it up, but it seemed not to have anything that Spring Troupe would do. Minagi always changes it up.

Maybe visiting his grave today wasn’t the best idea, Chikage asks himself with a slight melancholy in his inside head voice which he wants to shut up— so he tells it to shut up with its own voice (which of course, would never work, because he’s telling himself to

shut up).

Chikage doesn’t know what to say. Do people speak out loud to their graves? No disrespect to them, but not for him.

In their head? He tries it, kneeling down a bit to the headstone, setting down a bag of marshmallows.

Hisoka. I don’t believe in God or reincarnation, or whatever religion. But I want to give the universe, no matter how little it cares, the benefit of the doubt. I hope you’re in nirvana, heaven, or reincarnated into some “cute” baby in whatever country, eating marshmallows. I never understood that. It’s not like I needed to. I guess. But wherever you are, I hope you’re up there. With August.

He shakes his head, like a dog shaking off water, except instead of water, it’s a somber liquid covering him, coating him in some syrupy hotness that feels like the embodiment of orange with speckles of blue.

He gets up and turns around to head back to his car.

“...Utsuki. It’s been quite a while.” He pulls up the cuffs of his outfit.

He’s not surprised to see him here. Arisugawa. He looks the same, the same haircut, the same outfit, same everything. He’s happy to see he’s been doing well.

“...I’m not surprised to see you here. You were his roommate, after all.”

“Yes, yes, indeed I was. Was is the word I want to put emphasis on.” It’s like he reminded himself of what happened. “Why? Why come back here after all this time?”

“I was just… reminded.” He straightens his back, as if it wasn’t straight in the first place, almost scoliosis levels of effort into “straightening” posture, as if to become more defensive.

“Are you going to interrogate me, at least? Inquire about the troupe? How well has it been faring?”

“... I don’t think I need to.” He’s reminded of the last time he went to watch a play. Around Christmas time— where he could take enough time off.

Minagi always does well. Sakuma is always just so passionate you can feel it through the character. Usui is always perfect, staring back at the Director in approval. Chigasaki… is…

He interrupts his own thoughts just to respond to Arisugawa, who’s been waiting for another word for 3 seconds at least. “I saw the play around Christmas. Well done. Very much so.”

“We are all aware Minagi-san always does an amazing job. Why, he is at the same level as me. But of course, I must come here and mourn every once in a while.” He walks past Chikage to look at Hisoka’s grave. “These marshmallows were his favorite brand, Chikage.”

“I know.”

A moment of silence ensues as Homare places a bouquet of anemone on the grave.

“Come back.”

“What?” Chikage is almost startled as he looks down at Homare, squatting at the grave.

“Come back.”

“You know I can’t.”

“You can, and you have always been able.”

“I can’t. Arisu. What am I meant to say to everyone? ‘Oh, I left for 3 years, haha big surprise now I’m back!’ They’re them. I’m me. They don’t need me.” Chikage laughs nervously. Nervously? He calms his nerves— at least tries to, conflicted on what to do, because it’s been a while since he’s been like this.

“It’s what Hisoka would have wanted. We all need breaks.” The mention of Hisoka alarms Chikage, and makes his voice venom tipped.

“Don’t even try to bring up that fucking sleepyhead.”

“My, your language. This place is sacred.” He doesn’t even seem phased by his biting tone or his venomous words, just continuing to talk to him as normal— at least normal to him. “But you must admit… he would want you to keep acting. He was very, practically fully aware that you enjoyed what you did immensely.”

“I don’t care. It was good to talk to you again. See you around.” He storms off before Homare calls out for him again.

“Just… take this.” He hands him a card, Chikage acquiescing halfheartedly, already thinking about throwing away that flimsy card. “Call the number if you ever yearn for us too much.”

Chikage doesn’t say anything back— at least doesn’t feel the need to.

—

“Itaru?” The rest of the Spring Troupe knocks at his door, mostly Sakuya’s voice piercing through the little symphony of voices piping up just in an effort to wake up Itaru. (If he’s asleep of course— sleeping now to save energy for ranking all night.) “We have pizza?” Masumi looks at the noticeable lack of pizza in their hands, which, knowing Itaru, would make him close that damn door again.

Tsuzuru knocks on the door again, Izumi coming by, looking at them with a puzzled look on her face. “...Can I ask what you guys are doing or is it private?”

“Itaru hasn’t come out of his room in like… a week.” Tsuzuru takes out his phone to check the phone date to see if he’s actually not come out of his room for a week. “Yeah. A week.”

“And why is that surprising? He’s probably ranking.” Izumi almost has a visible question mark hovering over her head, that would be drawn over her if they were in an anime. “Although he should be working on his role… he is the lead after all.”

“Yeah, but I know that he has no thanking to do for this week!” Citron looks almost frustrated, going to the door to bang on it before Sakuya holds him back, calming him down. “I wanna play with him…”

“Ranking.” Tsuzuru mumbles through the word, correcting him.

“Ranking!”

Izumi parts them into two to make her way to the door, knocking harder. “Chigasaki! Get out of the room before I break in!” No response. “...Itaru?” Izumi grabs a keychain from her pocket, with the master key. “I’m coming in.” She unlocks the door quickly, opening the door, being blasted with a rank scent— the scent of body odor (which isn’t surprising now that he’s alone) but when it’s festered and accumulated for a month. Which is terrible considering he’s only been in there for a week.

“...Yes?” Itaru sits up in his loft bed. “...Oh.” He gets down from the loft bed, his hair almost matted to his face, with oil stains and chip crumbs all over his t-shirt. “...Hi.”

“Itaru.”

“Director…?”

“Take a bath. Come back here. We are going to talk, because you haven’t let it get this bad in a while.”

“...Whatever you say.”

When Itaru takes a shower, he doesn’t feel refreshed— rather just a clean feeling taking him with the same unidentifiable emotion. Probably a mixture of disappointment, discontentment, and self-loathing; which isn’t a particularly new mixture but it’s almost defeating this time, for no damn reason. Well, he does know the reason, but he refuses to acknowledge the idea, even entertaining it. Calling in sick to work because he just didn’t feel like going isn’t going to last forever, especially when He is practically his boss. He doesn’t want to get fired of course. He did just lose another job, so getting fired now isn’t the best idea.

Itaru picks up his phone on his way out of the bath, and turns on his phone to check his waifus this time, at first checking out his Best Girl. Humans are complicated, he says to himself, as he taps though some loading messages and downloading messages. He thinks back to work before getting interrupted by Izumi, who’s staring at him from inside his dorm, picking up trash and stuffing them into her makeshift trash bag, which is really just a plastic bag from the convenience store. “Itaru, come in. It’s your dorm after all.” He walks in unwillingly, hit by the smell he produced himself. He even wonders how he can take it.

Izumi wants to talk, he knows that much, as he feels the type of anxiety coming on when he gets the message, “we need to talk”. He hasn’t gotten it that often, but he does definitely freeze up. He definitely isn’t that stupid to not get a hint. Maybe. Izumi starts speaking after a moment of silence.

“So… Can we talk about this? You’ve never let it get this bad… even you have standards.” She glares at the side of the room that’s basically caked in chip bags, surrounded by an anime summoning circle made of chip crumbs.

“Do I have to?”

“Listen… this can’t go on forever. Just… talk about it. My lips are sealed!” She “zips” her mouth shut and throws away the invisible key from her hands. Itaru knows she isn’t going to leave without an answer— which is just the type of person she is— determined for no good reason. He can’t understand why Izumi is still here, even “helping” him clean. Helping in quotation marks because Itaru’s splayed out on his couch, head hanging off an armrest.

He holds out his phone to tweet something on his streamer Twitter, like “sorry for not streaming i was sick” which is convincing, until he realizes Banri follows him. Fucking NEO. Whatever. He sends it anyway.

“Can you keep it down? I don’t know what emotion you’re gonna feel when I tell you whatever has gotten me so… down. But I know you’re gonna scream about it, which I don’t want to hear.” Itaru scrolls through his personal, looking at fanart of his main games staring at a couple to just appreciate the artistry. Talent.

“I told you. Lips are sealed!”

He adds a snarky tone to his voice. “Someone with their lips zipped together wouldn’t be able to talk.” Itaru smirks.

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“LOL. Do you seriously, most definitely, want to hear me out?”

“Yes. Obviously? I’m cleaning your room just to buy myself time so you don’t kick me out.”

“Good strat. Whatever.” He goes to the training section, sacrificing some of his cards in the name of evolving his best girl. “I got laid off, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“And I got a new job, remember?”

“Mmmhm.”

“So I got hired as an assistant to this high up exec, which is like… hell yeah. Level up from that old company.”

“Didn’t you just get hired? I don’t think being absent for a week is a good look for your Refreshing Handsome Man persona. Trademark.”

Itaru laughs.“I— Well… Yeah? But I just didn’t want to go because of a certain person.”

“Do we have to beat someone up?”

“No. But guess who it was.”

“... Was it someone from highschool?”

“It was Chikage-san.”

“...Chika—“ Izumi puts her own hand over her mouth to shut herself up because of the up and coming scream that is about to pierce the skies.

“You heard me right.”

“...Yeah, I definitely did.” Izumi almost has a solemn tone, a tacit agreement of how they should be feeling about this.

“I just… I don't think I’m ready to see him. Mentally preparing for what shitshow might go on. Seeing him drained all my LP in a split second. And this week is me recharging, and a little more. Like I need it to overflow this time, like when I claim daily login quests for them.”

“Makes sense. Well… nothing you can do about it, right?” Izumi sounds a bit defeated, tying up the trash she’s picked up in the convenience store plastic bag, taking out another one and cleaning up again. “Just… deal with it till you can find a new job. Or… you could bring him back here. I want to— need to talk to him.”

“Mmm. I don’t want to do it.” Itaru sounds even more defeated, like he was born with that stupid Archeops abiltity. 50% HP lost already, and he’s not ready to lose that other half. “But if it comes to that… Sure. I’ll try. Not very hard of course.”

“Yeah, yeah, Itaru. You keep doing that.” She picks up some more trash before Tsumugi looks through the door.

“Director-san?”

“Tsumugi?”

“Someone is at the door.”

“I’ll get it.” Tsumugi leaves quickly to his dorm. “Itaru. Finish cleaning. Get the broom and sweep that damn pile of chips. We can’t deal with another infestation. Sakyo is gonna get so mad at you and me, and we don’t want another wifi outage caused by him. Also… please remember the play. I know that we aren’t super close to opening night, but this one has to be one of our more intricate ones, okay? Study your role well.”

“Yeah, of course. I’ve been doing that in here too.” Itaru follows Izumi out of the room, heading to the lounge to grab the dustpan and broom lying in the corner of the kitchen. Itaru takes it, wondering how much money it would cost for Itaru to get a damn maid around here.

But he wouldn’t want anyone to see his room, of course, as he gets almost scared of someone walking in, and seeing his shelf of games, and his cute and sexy gamer setup. Not the right choice of words, but it’s cute and sexy to him. (He also doesn’t want anyone to wash his body pillow of his waifu, or see it, matter of fact. Plus, he’s worked to make it so comfortable he can sleep instantly with it.)

Itaru heads back to his dorm, the door still open, sweeping up the chips, and spraying some damn Febreeze in there. Hawaiian breeze, or some other tropical scent will do. He hears frantic footsteps from the lounge, Izumi holding onto the doorframe.

“Itaru!” She stands up straight. “Chikage… is here. At the dorms with us.”

“What?”

Chikage pops up behind her, with a small suitcase in hand. Less of popping up, but more of fully revealing himself behind her.

“Please don’t tell me he’s moving back in.”

—

Chikage is less than aware of the reasons he’s here, before regrouping himself and making some stupid mental list in his mind. Thanks, self-help/business book that his boss gave him. He leads up the events in his mind.

Chikage gets a call from the landlord of his apartment building.

The landlord tells him that the rooms are flooded because some guy on the upper floor took such a big shit that it flooded the entire apartment complex. How does one even do that?

He is distressed. He goes to book a hotel.

All the hotel rooms are booked again.

Chikage, understandably, gets angry. He drives back to pick up some non-wet stuff. He can sleep in a car for a night.

He starts it up, and it doesn’t start. His car is broken.

He kicks the tire in frustration, and the side metal plate just falls off. He sighs in the ultimate defeat.

He now has nowhere else to stay— hotels are all booked and reserved for the waves of plays about to be released. His hideout is not an option— he doesn’t have much of a bed in there, or actual facilities he needs. No wifi.

Chikage is reminded of the conversation he and Arisugawa had back at… there.

He comes back with a damn Uber.

He sits down at the couch, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose in more than frustration at what situation he’s gotten himself into, already regretting his decision.

Izumi runs back, opening the lounge door. “...Chikage-san!” She goes to the kitchen. “It’s… a pleasure to see you back here. It’s pretty late. Almost everyone has gone to sleep. Tea?”

“Sure. Lavender, thank you.” Chikage is fidgeting, which is super out of whatever character he plays, almost struggling to not have a tone when he says his next words. “I’d… hope no one else is awake.” He thinks back to Itaru, but forces the thought of him out. “How has it been?”

“Not the same without you and… yeah.” Izumi looks down at her own cup, the teabag soaking. “Why are you here anyways? You just… disappeared.”

Chikage swallows his pride for just a little bit longer. “My apartment is flooded. My stuff is fine but I can’t stay there for now. Every hotel is booked here. My car is broken because I’ve been forsaken. I can’t stay anywhere else. I need to stay here.”

“...Well… you’re always welcome here anyways. You’ll always be a part of us, even when you don’t think you are.” Izumi takes a sip of her now finished tea. “Well… I know this might be uncomfy but for now, our only open room is 103.” He gets flashbacks to the number, when he got assigned it the first time he came here. “I don’t want to put you in 205. Homare has been doing a lot of stuff in there ever since.” Izumi pauses. “...And I know how you might feel about it.”

“I see. Well… I’ll take what I can get, no?” He sighs. “Beggars can’t be choosers.” He takes a long sip of his lavender tea. Nothing has really changed, he observes, as he looks around slowly taking everything back in. The smell is even familiar, which might just be the smell of lavender tea, but he doesn’t really think so. But an air about it doesn’t have as much life as it used to— which he might attribute to the fact that it’s now 12:30 am, but he knows deep in his subconscious the real reason.

Izumi smiles wide. “Great. I’ll lead you there. Itaru is cleaning right now.”

—

Yes, it is awkward, Itaru confirms to himself— something he doesn’t even need to do when Chikage is literally just typing away at his computer, as Itaru fiddles with his phone up in the air, playing some new KniRoun thing. Great. Lancelot is idly whacking at some large dragon on his phone screen, while Chikage’s loud typing begins to fill up more and more of his headspace until Itaru finally gets over the air that’s as thick as butter. “Can you type… quieter? Please?”

Fuck. That is not how he meant to say it. “...sure.” Itaru is surprised, doing a little “Oh.” to himself. He expected more resistance, especially with his tone.

Chikage can almost feel Itaru’s eyes burn into the back of his skull, which would almost be fitting for him and those damn carnelian eyes. “If you want me to leave, I can leave. I understand you have to do that ranking thing, or whatever.”

“Don’t act like you care, Utsuki.” Itaru just keeps fumbling with his tone, always going a little too biting. Which he should probably stop, when he’s basically talking to his boss. Technically. Not really his boss, because he’s been appointed to Chikage. They’re supposed to be working together. But it’s not like Chikage has power in a setting that is now his. He’s in Itaru’s domain. “You never cared about my ranking in the first place.”

“Can we fucking not today? Be happy I’m even dealing with you.”

Itaru shuts up immediately. He isn’t going to do this today. Or ever. He turns on his side to try to ignore whatever that cabbage head is doing on his laptop. But he doesn’t. He looks at the laptop, already looking for hotels to stay at, and sending out emails, with some decryptor on the side. Itaru isn’t one for confrontation. He knows he’s less than welcome with Chikage’s presence— which he can’t understand.

But Itaru is already tired— be it from the event that just happened, or the fact that it’s 1 am. Which is baby hours for him. He goes to do some final things, use his stamina, the sorts, and lets his body drift away.

—

Itaru wakes up midday, as usual for a weekend, and for some reason, Chikage is still there, typing away. He climbs down from his loft bed, stretching a bit and going to turn his computer on.

It seems like a normal weekend to Itaru, except for the fact that he’s here now. For whatever reason.

“Have you been awake this entire time?”

“...What’s it matter to you?” Chikage doesn’t even look back or stutter in his typing.

“Nothing, I was just wondering. Jeez.” Itaru doesn’t even want to try to fight back with the man who could snap his neck in 0.5 seconds. He walks out into the atrium, heading to the kitchen to grab some food from Omi, who had probably covered some leftovers from breakfast in plastic wrap, and probably already getting lunch ready.

“Itaru. Good morning to you!” Omi speaks to Itaru from the counter, giving him a smile.

“Thanks.” He grabs the leftover breakfast for a nice brunch. Izumi comes through the door with some bags of groceries for the next week.

“Itaru! Let’s talk later, okay? Practice is soon. We don’t want you to be absent this time. As the lead, you have the most importance for the play, and we need you to—“

“I know. I’ve been studying this role, okay? I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.”

“And that’s why we should talk.” Izumi looks serious again, the look she gave him last night when cleaning his dumpster room. “It’s nothing serious. Just sit down here.”

“I have things to attend to, Director.” Itaru looks smug, and walks towards the door, plate in hand.

“I swear it’ll be quick!”

“Can’t we just do it in my room? Omi is here, and if it’s so serious, we should talk about it in a private place.”

“You’re gonna be distracted if we do it in your room. Just follow me to mine.”

“Ugh…” He walks over to Izumi, and follows her to her room, pulling out a chair for Itaru and she sits on her bed. “So…?”

“So… guess what…” Izumi’s voice is light, like she’s trying to break something to him slowly but surely.

“Don’t tell me. Is he going to be staying for a while?”

“...Damn.”

“You have to be kidding me, Izumi. Like I can’t believe you would do this to me. Rooming me with my boss.” He puts his back over the chair he’s sitting in, like a standard damsel in distress, woe is him. “Woe is me! All I know is pain and suffering.”

“You might be an actor but that was not an opening night performance.” Izumi laughs. “It might be for a while so bear with me. It’ll be until at least closing night.”

“... At least closing night?” Itaru is confused. “Why does he even need to stay in here?”

“Well… His apartment is flooded. Some guy took a fat shit in the toilet on the upper floors and now his apartment is flooded with toilet water. Hotels are booked for a while, Godza n’ all the other performances. People do book hotel rooms months in advance here.”

“Well, that’s tough. Why not put him with Homa—“ He stops and realizes what he’s going to say. “Oh.”

“Right.”

“Well, can’t he drive? Like… to a place with hotels?”

“Well, his car is broken. Listen, even if he did get it fixed, it’s the least we can do for him. He tried his best, Itaru. Everyone… grieves differently and it’s not in our place to judge him, no? Even if it was self-destructive…”

“Yeah, by hurting us? That’s his grief? Why’d you even let him stay? He doesn’t act, he wouldn’t do shit around here. Do you think he’ll come back? After three and a half years, no goodbye, just a complete disappearance? I don’t see how you can forgive some old cabbage head like that. He’s not even part of MANK—“

“Itaru, can you shut the fuck up? Like, actually.” Itaru immediately shuts up in almost prey-like fear. ”You of all people should know what it felt like when he left, and after everything that went down.” Izumi is absolutely fuming, like steam is coming out of her ears, getting up and turning away and looking at the bookshelf. “Do you know what it feels like? I worked so hard for this— to build this up from when it was failing to a place where we can stay and lean on each other and you… you of all people should know what the hell that feels like.”

“Izumi, I—“ He gets up, reaching out for a bit.

“I’m not finished.” Izumi is tearing up and getting more red by the second, like she’s going to burst. “How do you think I feel about all this? Chikage is back. It’s overwhelming, Itaru. It reminded me of Hisoka, and what would MANKAI be if he was still here but he isn’t. He’s not back. He won’t ever, and when we find an old member like Chikage, I will always accept him back in, even if he’s not committed to the acting gig. It’s almost like we’re completing ourselves again.”

“I understand that, but—“ Itaru can barely get a word in.

“He’s staying there. I don’t want any backtalk from you, Itaru. Have a good evening.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just go.” She sits back down, her back turned to Itaru as he walks out.

Itaru feels bad. I mean, who wouldn’t, but he didn’t expect Izumi to take it that hard. Itaru has every right to say that he doesn’t want him in his room, feeling no remorse for making Izumi almost cry from pure anger, walking slowly back to the room. Omi stares at him as he goes through the kitchen.

“...Food?”

“Nah. Not hungry, I want some chips.”

“Don’t overindulge. It’s almost dinner anyways.”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks Omi.”

He walks out of the kitchen and back to his room, still thinking about Izumi. Izumi is angry. Izumi is more than angry at him and it was because of him— which has never happened before and he is distraught.

He walks back into the room and no one is there. Bless. Today his room feels a bit more lonely, even though there’s more stuff in it, looking to his left to see the duffel bag of clothes with his desk underneath the loft bed already set up with tons of electronics. What is he even doing? He takes a look at Chikage’s stuff before he comes back.

Another laptop? A walkie-talkie… and the thing that catches his eye the most is a picture of MANKAI, and behind that, a picture of Hisoka and Chikage. Itaru remembers taking this photo, looking closer at it. Okay, now he really feels bad, he thinks as he looks at the photo more and more.

If he missed us that much then why didn’t he come back?

The door opens and he shuffles as fast as he can to the couch, posing in one of the most awkward positions.

“...H-hey, Utsuki-senpai.”

“Hm.”

He quickly walks past, suspiciously looking at Itaru as if he was a cat that pushed something off a desk while their owner was gone. Itaru quickly skitters to his desk, starting up his computer. The room feels a bit more lively with both of them in it, even if they’re both just trying to ignore each other, something within the room metamorphosing, like something is changing. He shakes the thought out of his head quickly before he slumps into his chair to get into the Gamer Position (trademarked by Itaru himself) and getting his software up.

Itaru needs to stream today. Not really— he didn’t announce anything, but he has to feed his fans some sort of content. He gets ready to film something, anything. He picks a random game and starts filming a bit, Chikage in the room completely tuning Itaru out and vice versa.

Chikage slowly drifts off to sleep for once, but this time, it’s a deep sleep. chapter 1 / chapter 2 / chapter 3 / chapter 4 / chapter 5 / chapter 6

#a3 #a3!#a3! chikage #a3! itaru #a3! chikaita #ckit #chikage utsuki #itaru chigasaki #a3 fanfiction #a3! fanfic

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sadoeuphemist · 4 years

Text

This one is dedicated to all the Brits out there.

So, there’s a man crawling through the arctic.

He was on a trip around the world, had been, for years. In his jacket, coiled up next to his breast, was a rattlesnake named Sammy, and as one last favour to a friend he was showing Sammy all there was to see in the big wide world. They’d been to every country. Dived beneath the sea, spelunked deep beneath the earth. And now, they were touring through the arctic. They’d witnessed dazzling white glaciers against a sea that shone a sapphire blue, they’d stood beneath the dancing of the Northern Lights, they’d trekked across the endless plains of snow in what seemed an eternal sunset, the world frozen in all the facets of its beauty.

And now they were alone, and stranded, and it was very cold, and it seemed like they were both going to die.

They’d gone off the beaten path, rented a specialized 4x4 and stocked up on supplies and driven off into the tundra on their own. They’d been going fine. The man, Jack, was real careful at the wheel, having learned from hard experience. Then, clean out of nowhere, a storm had kicked up, howling and sleeting snow across the windshield. Jack had slowed to a near-crawl, squinting to try and see anything through that wall of white, and then something massive had ploughed into the side of the truck.

The 4x4 had been flung end over end, Jack and Sammy and all their supplies rattling around inside, and the thing outside was shrieking malevolently, its howls mixing with the wind, something rending at the metal. Jack had clutched Sammy to his chest, from his cramped position managed to kick open the door, and clambered out into the raging snow. He’d crawled, on hands and knees, stumbled, looked behind him, scooted backwards on his butt, almost frozen in horror.

The thing that had attacked them hadn’t come out of the storm. It was the storm. They could barely make out the outline of the thing, all ice and shards and howls and loathing, a miserable grey creature maybe eight feet tall and pummelling at the overturned truck with two massive lumpy arms. Clouds of smoke or steam were billowing from the truck’s hood, and Jack could see flickers of flame rising from the metal - the gas tank, or maybe the portable stove they had been carrying. The creature seemed to love the flame, curling itself around it possessively, and through the smoke and snow Jack could see that flickering orange glow that sent an odd surge of pity through him, that tiny spot of warmth and light gasping and dying out and struggling futilely to survive.

Sammy spoke up, shivering from inside the parka so that his rattles sounded. “I - I think we should get going while it’s distracted.”

“R-right,” mumbled Jack, and stumbled to his feet and ran.

He ran like mad, feet flying over the permafrost, watching his breath fog up in front of his face in great clouds. When he finally stumbled, he looked behind him and the truck and the monster were nowhere to be seen. All around them stretched an undifferentiated expanse of white.

Jack felt his parka pockets. “Fuck. All the equipment - it’s back at the truck.” He looked up into the melancholy twilight and felt helpless laughter overtake him. It was all so familiar, this situation, except now he was even less equipped than before. “Shoulda seen it coming. Hahaha! Figures, right?”

“It’s not so bad,” Sammy said. “You still know the direction the truck’s in, right? All we need to do is -” Sammy shuddered in what seemed like a yawn. “Sorry. It’s just so cold out here. Hard to - hard to think ... “

“That’s right, you’re cold-blooded, aren’t you?” Jack tightened his arms over his parka, pressing Sammy closer to him. “It’ll be all right.” He took a breath, letting the hysteria ebb away. All they needed to do was circle back around, make sure that the whatever it was had left. They had a radio back at the truck, they could call for help, and...

He felt his blood run cold. There, on the horizon, he could see the first few flurries of snow drifting across an otherwise calm plain. In the perpetual dim twilight of the Arctic Circle he felt he could see it almost perfectly. It wasn’t a thing, so much as a silhouette, the shadow where a thing should have been. Eight feet of greyness, of misery, of numbing empty hopelessness that ate all warmth, all light. It shambled. It shrieked. And it was moving inerrantly towards them.

“Jack?” Sammy mumbled sleepily.

“We have to keep moving,” Jack said.

The thing hounded them, harried them across the snowy tundra. It was not fast, but it was implacable. Every time Jack tried to stop a moment to catch his breath, he would feel the tendrils of it nipping at the exposed flesh of his nose, trying to freeze the fluid in his eyes. And God, it was cold. He could feel the great clouds of his breath crystallizing on his eyelashes. His face was numb. His fingers. His toes. He felt like he was stumbling along on wooden feet. Inside his parka he was sweating, he felt like the inside of his coat was a sauna from his exertions, and then the sweat touched the cold air and froze, biting into him, until he might as well have been in an ice bath. With each step he watched, as if in slow motion, the fall of countless glittering shards of ice.

“I’m suh-s-s-sorry,” he gasped out, on his hands and knees now, all too aware of the coiled body next to his heart. His body had been altered, long ago, to be in perpetual perfect health, but even the perfect human form could not withstand the brutality of the elements, woefully underprepared, in a desperate chase for his life. He thought of the desert, of the old rattler who would never see their return, of the promise he had not been able to keep, of all the obligations and responsibilities and burdens tying people to one another, to their lives, of the endless chain of promises that would die here with them, remain forever unfulfilled. “I - I f-f-f-failed,” he said. “So s-s-sorry.” He could feel the tears freezing on his cheeks. “I j-just wish I - I c-c-could have - k-kept you suh-s-safe ...”

And then there were two pinpricks next to his heart, and Jack felt a sudden warmth flow through him, and he was on his feet again, the sensation returning in a rush to his numbed fingers and toes. “Sammy?” he said.

“I - A little natural antifreeze for your blood,” Sammy said weakly. Jack could feel him withdrawing his fangs, the miraculous venom administered. “Little - little trick dad taught me.”

“Oh, my God,” Jack gasped, cupping his arm around his chest. “Sammy, you - How did you - I didn’t know you could -”

“F-first one’s free, remember?” Sammy said.

Jack burst out into laughter. He felt warm now, a delicious warmth radiating out of him, the bite marks on his chest burning like hot coals. He brushed the ice crystals off his face, watched them melt on him like dew. “You clever little bastard! I had no idea! All this time you could -”

“Don’t - don’t get used to it,” Sammy cut in. “Not sure how long that’s going to last. Just enough to keep us going. A little while longer. It’s all I could - I could manage ...”

“Oh.” Jack surveyed their surroundings. The creature was nowhere to be seen. They had lost it, perhaps, or it had given up the chase as his body heat had been leached away by the cold. His newfound warmth suddenly felt reckless on him, like a delicious bit of prey wafting off its scent. Who knew what would come hunting. He had completely lost track of the location of their truck by now, and all the snowy landscape was unfamiliar. “So. We’re utterly lost, stranded out in the arctic, no supplies other than what I had in my pockets, and there’s this crazy snowbeast out there hunting for us. What now?”

He felt something smooth wriggle up against him, and then Sammy’s small scaly head peek out from his parka, eyes turned upward to the perpetual twilight of the sky. “We keep going where we were headed before, I guess,” he said in his small voice.

“We follow the stars.”

They trudged along, the supernatural heat of the venom still coursing through Jack’s veins. The magic seemed to have taken a lot out of Sammy, and despite Jack’s warmth he was still sluggish, and had little to offer. Jack navigated for the both of them. Already he could feel the numbness creeping back into his extremities, prodding into him, looking for the path of least resistance, and he furiously clenched his fingers into fists to try and keep the sensation in them. He tried to remember the desert, all those years ago, the wandering path he had taken, and looking up at the sky he felt that old hallucinatory atmosphere descend on him, walking the thin line between life and death, between abandonment and survival. He imagined a dark plinth, and in his mind imbued it with a spiritual magnetism. Compass north, leading him blindly through the dark.

“God loves children and drunkards and fools,” he said to himself, and in his mouth it came out as prayer.

He walked, the cold creeping in, his feet growing numb again. He had to beat the sensation back into his cheeks, slap his gloved fingers against his thigh just to feel a jolt of sensation. Up he hiked a snow bank to get a better view, and in the distance the sky seemed to be reflected in the ground. Jack squinted, trying to get a better view, and ahead he seemed to see ice, or not ice but crystal, jutting out blackly from the snow. He started running, half-running, stumbling. “Sammy!” he whispered, patting himself in the chest. “Sammy! Look! Do you see it?”

Sammy only gave a low moan and shifted weakly, and did not respond.

Jack kept running, almost tilting unbalanced through the snow, and the snow gave out from under him and he fell, rolling down the hill, the sky and the snow and the sky and the snow again, black - white - black - white, until the two seemed to meld together indistinguishably. He rolled to a stop and tried to get up, and could not tell up from down. He was so terribly cold again, or perhaps warm, and after a while he stopped trying to get up and just flopped down where the snow took him. It did not matter, he thought dreamily. The black caverns of ice were a hallucination. Or, if they were not, perhaps the snow and the cold were the hallucination. Perhaps he was still in that desert. Perhaps he had never left. Perhaps the last few years had been nothing but the hallucination of a man baking to death under the desert sun. He smiled at that with cracked lips. At least then he would be warm, so terribly, wonderfully warm....

And then the sky above him blazed, and even against his breast Sammy writhed to life, and Jack found himself staring into the burning eye of God.

He screamed, tried futilely to shield himself from the light. No, it was burning, burning! All around him the snow sizzled and melted away. And this was real heat as opposed to the warmth of Sammy’s venom, an awful flame that sparked the nerves in his fingers and toes to life and made them cry out in agony. It was the sun, forged like a blade, a burning sword, the edge of a wheel that rolled through the sky and cut through the day, and Jack found himself hauled to his feet.

“As always,” came a resounding voice. “God has provided.” And then, as if speaking straight to him, in a lower register, burnished with a false compassion: “You are fortunate in this. Your death shall serve a higher duty.”

The awful flame was lowered and quenched, and Jack blinked back the whiteness. No, the flame was gone, the licking tongues of heat were gone, and yet the radiance remained. He was staring at a winged thing, at eyes that stared back, at a face that was many faces, at wheels within wheels.

He was looking at an angel.

The angel ducked underneath, carried him under one arm (wing?) into the icy caverns, great black walls that watched him in reflection. “H - hey!” Jack gasped out, trying to regain his senses. The sudden burst of flame had seared but hardly thawed him, and all his nerves sang in the agony between extremes. “You - you’re an angel! And we - we came here because -” Because what? Because what?! He forced himself to think, brought the thought up from the bottom of a deep dark chasm. “The lever! We know about the lever!”

The angel barely responded, shifted in a small movement that might have been irritation. “You are not the first to know,” it said at last, eyes glancing down. “And if you came here knowingly, then God has provided. And you are a willing sacrifice in this.”

“S-sacrifice?” Jack made a spasmodic attempt at freedom in the angel’s grip. His limbs were all clumsy, puppeted wooden limbs, if wood could somehow feel agony. “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about! We - we came here to see! To see if there was anyone else!” A great rush of emotion overtook him. “You’re not alone! You don’t have to be alone!”

He felt the weight of the angel’s scorn. “You are delusional,” it said. “Your journey here has left you bereft of your senses.”

“No! No, I know about everything! We can help you! We can help!”

The black walls gleamed ichor-slick, hungry. The passages down the cavern seemed narrower and narrower, and an awful energy pulsed through them, as if they were descending into the bowels of some dark rapacious thing. “You know nothing,” the angel intoned. “You speak of ‘we’, and yet you have come alone.” It regarded him coldly with dozens of pairs of eyes. “Who is this ‘we’, hmm? Who is this companion you imagine with you? Do you imagine yourself wiser than me?” It laughed cruelly. “Do you imagine yourself spoken to by God?”

Jack tried to speak, and felt something near his heart uncoil, ease past the lump in his throat, and then Sammy’s head slithered out of his parka, tongue flickering to taste the air. “Oh, hey,” Sammy said, looking up at the angel.

The angel blinked with dozens of eyes. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” it said. “Nate had a kid?”

The angel - whose name was Uriel - took them to a little cavern off the side of one of the passages, where Jack told the whole story. About how he had met Nate the Snake and become bound to him, about how Nate had grown old and finally wanted to die, about how Sammy was to serve as his replacement, and how he was taking the kid on a tour of the world before Sammy would be bound to his duty forever. “So, Nate’s finally found a way out,” muttered Uriel, glancing over at the young snake. “He’d been so long at it, I wouldn’t have thought such a thing was possible.”

“So ... how did you know my father?” Sammy asked meekly. “He - he never mentioned you.”

“He didn’t, did he?” Uriel mused. “Of course not. How long’s it been? In the end, he’s only a snake, after all, crawling on his belly through the dust. It wears away at a soul, that sort of mortal existence, while I remain divine. No surprise he’s gone senile, barely able to remember a thing.”

Sammy hesitated, a dozen questions flickering on the tip of his tongue, and then he shrank back into his coils again, cowed by Uriel’s easy dismissiveness.

Jack looked over at him, concerned. Sammy had chimed in now and again in the telling of the story, but had otherwise stayed quiet. Jack clenched his fingers again. The sensation had gradually returned with a prickling discomfort - he was sure he could feel ice crystals slowly dissolving in his flesh - but his fingers showed no signs of frostbite, perhaps thanks to the power of Sammy’s venom. The cavern was much warmer than the outside, but it wasn’t quite warm - there was an uneasy chill set through it, just like the light. There was no visible source of light that he could see, but the ice walls themselves seemed to be painted with a grudging, just-barely adequate illumination.

“Hey!” Jack cut in. “You think you could -” He glanced down at the scabbard by the angel’s side. “That was a flaming sword you were waving around out there, right?” Uriel gave a curt nod. “Yeah, I get the reference. My little buddy here’s cold-blooded, so not exactly an inviting atmosphere in here. You think you could take that sword of yours out, maybe warm us up a bit?” And get a fire roaring, he thought to himself, anything to drive away the gloom.

Uriel shook his heads, a silent chorus of disapproval. “I’d rather not. The heat of the flame, if left exposed for too long - well, it tends to attract things in here. And I doubt you’d like what it calls down.”

“The - the whatever it was that attacked us,” Sammy said, nudging Jack in the side. “It was eating the fire!”

“Yeah! Big guy, eight feet tall, the feeling of that awful sapping deathly cold like you’re never going to be warm again?” Uriel nodded. Jack clutched his arms around himself instinctively and shivered. “What was that thing, anyway?”

Uriel shrugged, which with all those heads was a small upheaval. “It is The Cold. I know no other name for it.”

“But what is it?” Jack insisted. “Where’d it come from?”

“It is one of God’s creations, like all things,” Uriel replied. “Where does anything come from? It roams in these icy wastes, comes in drifts and drafts inside these caverns...” He waved a hand. “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t have the sort of animal heat it’s after. But taking out this flame for anything more than a few seconds, it’ll come loping along hungry and - trust me, it’s not worth it.”

“So what, that’s your answer?” Jack said. He wasn’t even that cold anymore, but Uriel’s nonchalance irritated him nonetheless. “God? God wills it? Why would God ever create something as horrible as that?”

“It may not have been horrible at the moment of its creation,” said Uriel. Distantly, his eyes rose up to gaze at the black ice. Or, not black itself, Jack realized, staring upwards, but reflecting something black in its core. “But sometimes things grow bitter in their abandonment. It is no danger to me. Nothing in the world can harm me. I vanquish it, drive it off. But it reforms itself, returns, lies in wait. Why take the trouble?” He snapped back to attention, eyes focusing like sunlight through a lens. “But back to your story. You said you had come to see me, that you knew about the lever.”

“Oh yeah, right,” mumbled Jack, fumbling in one of his pockets for the pictures he had taken. “We were traveling the world, right? And then in Greenland we came across this account by this woman, Elizabeth Hortense Bittle. An American explorer and theosophist.” He held his phone out to Uriel. Of course, it was useless for communication way up here, but he’d kept his phone with him as a recording of everything they’d experienced on their travels.

An old picture of Elizabeth Bittle looked out of the phone, a woman with quaint little gold-rimmed glasses and her hair pulled pack into a bun. Uriel regarded the glowing screen without curiosity. Jack swiped to the next picture, pictures they’d taken of the little leather-bound notebook in the museum, in her neat little script. “She’d collected a bunch of stories about a mystical lever that lay somewhere in the Arctic Circle.” He exchanged glances with Sammy. “A lever that could destroy the world.”

“I wasn’t sure about it,” Sammy said quietly. “Like, maybe she was just confused? I mean, I’d seen the world, I wanted to go back home and take up my duty already - “

“A worthy cause,” Uriel interjected quietly.

“- but Jack convinced me that if it did exist, if there was a second lever, then maybe we could - we could learn something, maybe there was another way, so that no one would have to be bound ...”

“It had to be a second lever,” Jack cut in, “because Elizabeth Bittle also wrote about ours!” He swiped to a different page of the notebook. “See? ‘... I have heard tell of a second lever, somewhere in the desert’! So she’d heard of ours, but unlike this one, she never got a clear idea of where it was supposed to be located. Rumours passed around by an esoteric Kabbalist sect.” He flicked through the various pages for a minute. “I’m not sure how she heard about ours to begin with, Nate made me swear that whole secrecy oath ... Although maybe the reason it was so comprehensive was that someone, years and years before, had let something slip ...?

“Anyway.” He shook his head. “Bittle gets really into the idea of these magical levers all across the world, right? She - You know the saying, Give me a lever and somewhere to stand, and I will move the world? She thought, why stop at one? In her notebooks she develops this whole mystical system where the world is moved by a series of levers - one for Good, one for Evil, one for Peace, one for War ... the whole world, balanced around a system of leverages. And if you could just pull the right lever, suddenly, the world makes sense! Everything’s perfected, just shifted ever so slightly in one direction! Everything falls right into place!”

He paused, looking up for a reaction, and was met only with the wall of Uriel’s impassive gaze. “And, uh, that’s all we know about it,” he finished lamely. “Bittle set out on an expedition, searching for this lever at the North Pole, but the expedition never returned. She was presumed dead ...” He petered off. “I, uh, I don’t suppose you ever met her?”

“Oh,” said Uriel. “I have.”

“Oh!” said Jack.

“But she was quite wrong,” Uriel said softly, and this time his voice seemed to reverberate around the cavern walls. Jack and Sammy glanced around. The blackness seemed to be trembling, keening. “There is no great system of levers scattered around the world. Only ours two. Only ever two.”

“Two?” said Jack. He blinked hard. The eerie atmosphere of the cave system was getting to him. He could look down at his fingers in front of him and then they would blur around the edges and then he wasn’t sure how well he had seen them at all. He had the sudden irrational sensation that there was not actually warmth in the cave, or light - it had just shaped itself to pacify him, lure him into a false sense of safety as he wandered deeper into the cold and into the dark.

“Wait a minute,” he said, trying to think. “We came from Eden. And if you’re the -” He nodded at the scabbard by Uriel’s side. “The angel guarding the entrance, Mister flaming sword. So how are there two of them.” He narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing all the way up here?”

“Ah, the garden,” Uriel sighed. “What a short-sighted, mortal way of imagining it, that old, dead Eden must be bound to a single spot on the surface of the world.” The eyes glinted with amusement. “What did you do, to find old Nate, crawling out in that desert? What did you do, to get here?”

“I ...” Jack looked down at hands that should’ve been blackened and rotting, lying dark in the grave. “I ...”

“Let paradise wither and die,” said Uriel. “The husk of the birthplace that you came from. Your heritage, denied. What’s left?”

“I … I died,” Jack said softly.

Uriel made a velvet sound in his many throats, like a purr.

“What’s going on?” Jack said. He felt unsteady. The ground seemed to be swaying under him, liquid, and the ice seemed to be calling out, vibrating at a frequency to raise gooseflesh on skin. He looked up at Uriel. “What’s going on here?”

“What happened to Miss Bittle?” Sammy said softly. “What did you do to her?”

“Two levers,” Uriel said, ignoring them both. “One at the beginning of Creation. And one at its End.”

He rose, wings spreading, countless countless eyes staring, shifting, tremoring like the ice, almost imperceptible vibrations shifting through the angel’s body like foreshocks, portending a great upheaval. His voice dropped to match the hum of the ice, the hungry keening call of it, and both Jack and Sammy shrank away. “You’ve told me all about your lever. Now, would you like to see mine?”

The path down to the lever was precarious, an ice-slick descent that Jack had to navigate inch by inch, his boots slanted sideways to better grip the ice, Sammy coiled around his neck. He kept glancing up at Uriel, who floated just ahead of them on his many wings, heedless of them. They inched down, down, lower down, into a pit that seemed to recede into the depths of the earth. High above, stalactites glinted like the knifepoints of stars. And at the bottom of the pit a long thin rod jutted out of the ground.

It was a gleaming black in contrast to Nate’s plain white, a slick jet black that seemed hungry, greedy, soaking in the light. On the plinth, instead of a tree there was carved a rune that neither Jack nor Sammy recognized, sloping, curving gutters cut into the stone that seemed to all flow to its centre, to the base of the lever itself.

“It’s like a labyrinth,” Sammy whispered. Jack slid down the last few feet, caught himself, finally stood again on level ground.

“The End of the World,” Uriel said, floating to move behind the angle of his lever. In the dim light it seemed to dance and twitch, seeming to lunge forward of its own account half an inch, and Jack started as if to grab it. “Oh, it does that,” Uriel said, smiling. “Nasty little thing. Almost has a mind of its own.”

“No ...” Jack muttered. The pit walls towered up above them. “No, this isn’t right ...”

“Why not?” said Uriel pleasantly. “Are you privy to the mind of God? Did you set the stars in their places in the heavens? Have you tamed Behemoth, put a hook through Leviathan’s lip? Hm? Hmmm? You think you know what it’s like, guarding your precious little lever! Oh boo-hoo, poor you, you’ve been so isolated and alone!” His mocking voice echoed. “No one but an endless stream of co-guardians to keep Old Nate company!” His voice sharpened into a scream. “You know what I’ve had to do?! Do you know what MY duty is?!”

The black lever gave a growl, its gears interlocking beneath the surface. It was the jutting angle of the hand of a clock.

“It’s moving on its own,” Jack said.

“Oh, yes,” Uriel said. “It wants to be pulled. Of course it does. End of the world, generations and generations overdue. Inches forward, ticking down inevitably towards the end of everything! Oh, I’ve tried! I’ve tried to hold it back! I’ve piled rocks, tried to bury it, tried to chain it back -”

“And by the next day, all of that would disappear,” Jack said.

“But of course, there’s only ever one thing that works,” said Uriel, his voice suddenly a deadly calm. “Only one thing that can convince God to stave off the end of the world just for a little while longer.”

“Sacrifice,” whispered Sammy. His eyes darted down to the runes, to the gutters etched into the stone. “Blood.”

Uriel moved aside, and in a corner of the chamber they saw bones, clothes, scraps of fur preserved by the cold, and atop the pile the glint of a pair of quaint little gold-rimmed glasses.

“Blood,” Uriel said.

“No, no, no -” Jack stammered, backing away. “This is crazy! You didn’t need to kill her! You could’ve - She could have helped you! Got you more animals! Fresh meat!”

“Oh, but you haven’t been listening,” Uriel said silkily. His hand came out to stroke the black sheen of the lever and it responded to his touch, like a slavering beast anticipating a meal. Its invisible gears whined. “We don’t work by the same rules! I’m not permitted confidants! You understand, don’t you? Don’t you!” His eyes honed in on Sammy, and then flickered briefly back to Jack. “Humans can’t save the world! They can only help destroy it!”

“I - I - My dad said something about this, maybe,” Sammy whimpered, anxiety growing in his lidless eyes. “About levers. I - I don’t know! I was just a little kid! He never expected me to be here!”

“And they are destroying it,” Uriel went on. “For centuries, for millennia, my duty was easy. Oh, yes, for millennia the lever called to me and cursed at me and whispered to me in the dark, oh yeessss, it told me it was the fulfilment of all things! But the game was plentiful, and the hunting was easy, and even in my small sphere of influence I could bring back plenty of sacrifices to sate its endless thirst for blood! But it has grown warmer! And the game has grown scarce! And in the bits and whispers I can scrounge up at this forsaken corner of the world I know the truth!”

The wings all fanned out, an inverted panopticon of eyes. His voice dropped to a hiss. “Humans have failed their role as stewards. For all the blood I have shed here, for all the countless, countless deaths. And yet they bring it on. And yet they are hastening it to an end.”

Jack took another step back, glancing back up the perilous slope, and beyond that the maze of twisting turning passages Uriel had led them down, jagged and black and hungry like knives.

“Oh, don’t try to run,” Uriel said calmly. “I’m an angel! I can fly! And whatever Nate might have done to you, you’re still only human. Human, at best.”

“Okay,” Jack said evenly, holding up his hands. He couldn’t take his eyes off the surface of the plinth, the black floor of an abattoir. “But it wasn’t Miss Bittle that did that. People that come all the way up to the North Pole, they’re the people that actually appreciate it, you know that! She just wanted to make the world a better place, in her own fantastical way! She didn’t deserve to die!”

“It’s not about deserves!” Uriel shrieked, and this time the cavern shrieked with him, the blackness of the lever reflected endlessly through it. “Haven’t I told you that?! It’s about the lever! It’s about holding back the end of an unworthy world for just one day longer!” All of a sudden the eyes were brimming with tears, like stars poised above the Earth. “What would you have me do? Let the lever be pulled? Let all of Creation die?”

The echoes of his outburst sank into the room and quietly died. In the awful ensuing silence, Sammy spoke.

“But we’re here now,” he offered, his voice trembling first and then growing more urgent as he talked. “That’s why we came! Because - because it doesn’t matter what rules you have, or who you’re allowed to trust! Because me and my dad and Jack here were a thousand miles away, just as alone, not being able to trust anyone else! And guess what? We found each other!”

“We can help you,” Jack said. “We can. Look, you don’t know what I’ve done for Nate. There’s the internet, there’s a whole world I can help you communicate with! And I can arrange for more animals, more sacrifices, anything. Whatever you want -”

“No,” said Uriel in a trembling voice. “No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I -“

“Not anymore!” Uriel screamed, and the black lever growled out its chorus. “I told you. It’s too late! The animals have all run off and died. The hunting’s been scarce for decades. The lever hasn’t been fed in months! Time’s up! Time’s up, and you were sent here by God. As providence. Because we’re here on the brink of the end of the world and I can’t wait for you to go out and stumblingly hunt, can’t wait for your arrangements, can’t wait for you to get everything in order! I can’t let you leave and wait until your return, can’t wait for another day to pass!”

The multiple eyes blinked like suns going out. “There must be a sacrifice, now, to keep the world going. It’s been too long. It’s much too late. If you want to save the world, one of you has to die.”

Jack felt a lump rise in his throat. He’d been counting on compassion, on breaking through Uriel’s isolation with the offer of their help, and now he felt themselves faced instead with a cold equation, as unfeeling as stone. “You can’t kill either of us,” he said, trying his best to keep his voice even. “Sammy needs to take his father’s place. If you kill him here - all you’ll be doing is trading one lever for another, leaving the white one without its guardian. And if you kill me, then it adds up to the same thing! Sammy will be stranded here! He can’t get back without me! The cold will get him!”

Uriel hesitated for a second, barely a movement of feathers, and then shook off Jack’s argument. “Then Nate will simply have to live a little longer. Sad for him, perhaps, but he understands the necessities of our work.”

“No!” Jack could hear the blood rushing in his ears, felt himself rushing on in a suicidal attempt. “I’m the Judge, you hear me? I’m the judge of humanity!” In the back of his mind he was aware of what a pitiful, futile threat this was – of course, Uriel could just kill him here, feed his blood to the black lever - but the adrenaline surging through his body would not let him back down. “You kill him here, and I swear to God I’ll go back to Eden and pull my lever! I’ll undo everything you’ve ever done! All your centuries of duty! I’ll kill us all, I swear it! You piece of shit!”

“Jack,” Sammy said gently, and that single word cut through his rage. Sammy was still draped around his neck, nosing next to his ear. “It’s okay. Let him take me. It amounts to the same thing.”

Jack looked at him in shock. “Sammy -!”

“You heard him,” said Sammy, his thin reedy voice gathering up inevitability as he talked, like a pebble starting an avalanche down a hill. “Someone needs to die. And it can’t be you, because someone - someone warm-blooded - needs to make their way back and tell my dad what happened.”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “No, no, there’s got to be a way –“

“And -” Sammy swallowed. “Listen to me, Jack. What do I have to live for, anyway? What’s waiting for me when I go back? An eternity of guarding a lever? To end up like my dad, waiting for you to come back with a sword so you can finally end his life?” Sammy’s eyes flicked up to Uriel. “To end up like him?”

“Sammy, no,” Jack insisted. “You’re young! You have … Look, your dad couldn’t even have imagined the internet, that laptop I built for him, and who knows what else the future has for you? That isn’t - it isn’t a life sentence! Or even if it is, at least you’ll be alive! To see what happens next!”

“Hollow words,” said Uriel, who had been watching in a sepulchral satisfaction. “The young one knows. He knows what fate awaits him.”

“You shut up!” Jack screamed, whirling around on Uriel. There were tears streaming from his eyes. “He’s a kid! He doesn’t know any better! He hasn’t - he hasn’t even seen the world yet! He doesn’t know anything!”

“Jack!” Sammy pleaded. “I have. You know I have. You’ve done everything for me. You’ve shown me the world, more of it than I could have ever imagined. And -”

“No. No no no no no no -”

“And you’ve known,” Sammy insisted. “All this while you’ve known. What would happen at the end of the trip.” He looked up at Jack with a childlike calm. “That you wouldn’t just be ending one life, but both of them.”

“No!” Jack said. “You -” He could feel the blood rushing through his brain, and in one last desperate gambit he turned to appeal to Uriel. “Listen, okay, the kid didn’t want to do this, I didn’t want to drag anyone else into this, but you want a sacrifice?” He bared his teeth. “I’ll get you a sacrifice. Get me up to the surface. We had a convoy traveling with us. They escorted us out here and we did the last leg on our own, to keep this place a secret. They’ll be searching for us. It’s been too long since last contact. You get us back up there, I’ll lure one of them in.”

“J-Jack?” Sammy said, looking over at him confused. “What ...?”

“I know!” Jack said, speaking over him quickly. “You’re scared of what comes next. You think you have to do this all on your own. You think this is the easy way out.” He looked back up to Uriel. “But you know it’s not that easy. We all have our duty to do. So c’mon!” His voice rose into a challenging crescendo. “Let’s do it!”

Uriel regarded him dubiously. “And why should I believe you? You never mentioned any companions before.” He gestured towards the hungry black surface of the lever. “Why should I not fulfil my duty, right here, right now?”

“Because,” Jack said. “Because we’re all already connected. Because Nate’s back in Eden, and he’s dying. Whether you believe it or not, he’s dying. He’s lived too long, and if neither of us go back to him then who knows what he’ll do, and what good’s killing a fucking kid to keep the world going if everything’s just going to go to hell a few weeks later?” He jutted his jaw out at Uriel, and saw the angel yield, by just an inch. “And if you kill me too then Nate’s all alone and lapses into despair and – and I don’t like to think what happens next! And if you leave me alive, I swear I’m going back, and I’m pulling that damn lever myself!”

He took a step forward, bringing both hands loudly down on his thighs. “We got our duty to do! We’re keeping the world from dying! And there’s a bunch of fresh meat up there ready for sacrifice, so let’s get up there and fucking do it!”

Sammy had shrank back, cowed into silence. Uriel was staring at him stunned. “But we -” Uriel started. All the eyes shifted in different directions. “No, no, you are delaying for time -”

“And you got time!” Jack shot back. “You listened to me tell that whole damn story! You’ve got - the end of the day, right? Till the end of the day, right? So let’s go up there, and give it a shot, and if no one comes you’ve still got us, right?” He prodded Uriel in the chest with a finger. “So let’s get up there, and you do your fucking job!”

Their march back through the maze of passageways was silent. Sammy hung limply on Jack’s shoulders, all the fight gone out of him. I didn’t mean it, Jack wanted to tell him, you don’t have your dad’s whole life resting on you, but Uriel floated behind them grimly, and the words didn’t seem to come. It was a relief to emerge into the open air again, to behold the dark of twilight instead of an unnatural ever-present light, to feel the gust of cold air on his cheeks instead of that warmthless warmth. They stood outside the entrance to the cavern, looking out at an unbroken landscape of snow. “I see nothing,” Uriel said.

“Yeah, well.” His breath came out in puffs. “You got to signal them. We left the flares back in the truck, I told you that.” He gave a nod to Uriel’s waist. “Use that goddamn sword of yours. Wave it around. They’ve gotta be searching for us by now. Get some attention.”

Uriel narrowed his eyes at him.

“What?” said Jack. “What’s the worst thing that could happen? You attract the - the whaddyacallit, The Cold? You said you could fight it off, if it came to that. Big deal! Let’s get some light and heat up here! It’s kind of what attracts living creatures, you know!”

Uriel let out a long sigh. “I don’t know how Nate put up with you,” he said, and unsheathed the sun.

Even through his bravado, Jack cringed away at the arc of the flame cutting through the cold and dark. The snow around Uriel hissed into steam. Jack felt the hairs on his skin singe. “Oh huuuumans,” Uriel crooned out, waving his sword through the air. “Humans that are no doubt out there. Come, come and save your friends!”

Jack found himself staring out into the dark, half expecting in the delirious heat of Uriel’s flame for a rescue party to materialize, walking towards them with open arms. Perhaps a minute passed, and then another, Uriel’s motions becoming more theatrical, more flamboyant, almost mocking their last vestige of hope.

And then, from the gathering flurries of snow, came was the ravenous starving howl.

“Well, who could have foreseen this would happen,” Uriel muttered grimly, turning to face the beast materializing out of the darkness. It did not have the slow implacable pace as before, but was almost bounding towards them now in its whirling eddies, like a wolf scenting a steak, maddened by the heat of the open flame. “I do hope you’re happy,” he started to say, “one of you really is going to have to be the sacrifice now -”

He looked back to see Jack already running away from the cavern at full speed.

“You little fool!” Uriel snarled, and swung his sword in a great circle over his head, and all at once a ring of flame sprouted out from the snow, the sudden rush of heat knocking Jack back on his bum. “You think you could escape me? ME? An angel of God?” Uriel screamed, and then cried out in a grunt of pain as with a lunge The Cold buried its icy talons into his side. “Ungrateful little shits!” He plunged the flaming sword down and The Cold opened up its gullet to devour it, and there was a great rush of steam, the sound of the ground shattering apart.

“B-back into the caves!” Sammy gasped.

“What?!” Jack roared, still shielding his eyes from the wall of flame.

“We’re surrounded by fire! There’s nowhere else! Maybe we can lose him in the caverns!”

Jack gave a quick nod and veered around back into the caverns. From behind them were the sounds of glaciers cleaving apart, the sizzling of the sun, hot and cold locked together in a deathless match. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I can’t believe you did that,” Sammy moaned. “We can’t - He knows these caves better than we do! What was I thinking?”

“It’s fine,” Jack said, with a confidence he didn’t feel. “He - Look, he needs to come in here after us, right? He needs to make the sacrifice in time. And we can - All we need to do is avoid him, lose him in the passages, stay out of his way -”

“Until what, Jack?” Sammy demanded. “Until it’s too late? Until it’s the end of the world?”

The black ice watched them hungrily as they descended deeper into the caves, pulsing against its confines, countless open black mouths trying to draw them in. “We -” Jack wiped sweat from his brow. “Look, we’ll think of something.”

“The lever,” Sammy said, and swallowed. “We have to go back to the lever. It always comes back to that.” He shook his head, contorting as if to twist himself into knots. “I don’t know what to do, Jack! I thought I was doing the right thing, offering myself up to Uriel to sacrifice. But - but this isn’t right! I feel like my dad told me something about, like he knew! If only he was here! But he’s not! I don’t know –” He burst out into a wail. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him!”

“Sammy.” Jack paused for a moment to catch his breath, still flushed from the heat and the exertion. “Listen, I know it’s scary, and I know it’s not fair, everything that’s expected of you, but -”

A sluice of cold air cut him off, a bladed tongue flickering across his cheek, and Jack looked up to see, walking as if hunched in the low passageways, a great grey ugly thing that was the absence of all light, the absence of all warmth, advancing upon them.

“What,” he breathed, and looked back the way they had come. Even from the entrance way, they could still hear echoing the sounds of battle, Uriel’s grunts, and flame hissing against ice.

“Oh my God,” said Jack. “There’s more than one of them.”

They were running again, The Cold behind them, the slanted passageways of the caverns narrowing in on them, herding them, black and glistening like a long dark throat. In the depths of the earth they felt a shift, the ticking of a great clock. Doom, it said. Doom, doom, doom.

“Jack. We have to,” Sammy moaned. “It’s the end of the world otherwise. The end of the world!”

Jack ran, his feet pounding against the ground. He could almost see the black lever, visible through the false light, calling to him, pulling at him. Magnetic north. And then another sudden draft of cold air, and there was the Cold seeping through the invisible crevasses in the ice, the one chasing him, or maybe yet another, re-forming in front of them as a great grey swirling cloud, raising its massive fists.

“Oh God,” muttered Jack, skidding to a halt. He could feel the lever pulling magnetic at his blood, yanking him closer in great cravings and throes. He wanted to laugh. They were trapped in a no-win situation, only trying to die, and now even that was impossible. “We can -” He looked helplessly behind him. “There’s got to be another way around -”

Sammy uncoiled from his neck and slithered down onto the ground, away from him. “Jack,” he said. “Lead it away.”

Jack gaped. “What?”

“Lead it away! It’ll go after you! You’re warm-blooded, and then I can get past!” Sammy was already wriggling himself into a small crack in the wall. “Jack! It’s the only way! Please!”

“No. No, no, no.” Already he was coming back to his senses, the awful Cold advancing on him. “What are you going to do? You can’t sacrifice yourself!”

“I’ll throw myself down. It’s high enough.” Jack stood frozen in shock, the Cold advancing on him, Sammy curled up almost comically in that little crack. All he had to do was stand here, he told himself. The Cold would fall upon him and devour him, eat up every last spot of warmth in his blood, and Sammy would be trapped in there until it left. Until it was too late to do anything. Until...

“Please!” Sammy begged. “Help me save you! I don’t want you to die!”

Jack came to life and ran.

He did not know where he was going. There were tears streaming down his face, and all the icy walls had turned against him, like teeth arrayed backwards in a gullet, trying to keep the food from coming back up. “C’mon!” he screamed behind him, his voice echoing hysterically through the empty chambers. “You big dumb thing! I’m right here! Keep up!” The Cold’s icy breath hissed down his spine and Jack ran, ran, ran, as if he could lead death itself far away from Sammy, lead it to the ends of the Earth, where no one might ever be hurt again. “Follow the leader!”

He ran, the path narrowing and narrowing until he was at a dead end, nowhere left to go. Jack sank to his knees, pressing his forehead against the ice. He could hear the Cold coming, and closed his eyes. “Sammy,” he said. “Sammy, I’m so sorry.”

The Cold first bit into his calf, shards of ice that froze his blood and nearly stopped his heart, and then he felt its awful weight on him spreading across his body almost intimate, like a lover, and he thought, if this is death then maybe Sammy was right, maybe there were worse things than this.

The sun, when it appeared, was no less terrifying from having experienced it twice before.

Uriel grunted as he shoved the flaming sword through the Cold’s chest, only lightly crisping Jack’s skin. Jack gasped and convulsed as Uriel fished the icy corpse off him, his limbs not obeying, and then then Uriel had hauled him into the air. I’m dead, Jack thought, This is Heaven, or Hell, and then he realized that it was the air in front of him that had coagulated into darkness, pulsed with the beat of a dying world.

“Where is the little snake?” Uriel was screaming at him, impatiently sheathing his sword. “You fool! We’re out of time! You understand that? We’re out of time!”

“I -” Jack tried to gesture jerkily to whatever remained of the Cold. “He told me to lead it away. So that he could - could get to the lever, could -” He broke off.

“Well, you had better hope this little plan succeeded,” Uriel snarled. “Otherwise, congratulations.” He looked up into the darkness. “You’re responsible for the end of the world.”

They stood in the lightless air, listening. The world ticked down, the vibrations of the lever running through the earth, counting towards zero. Jack felt himself shift in Uriel’s grip, one last great convulsion, the lever shifting in its axis -

And then nothing.

Jack slowly opened his eyes, seeing nothing but more darkness. He counted internally to ten, and then brought his hand up to his face and touched his left cheek, his upper lip, before finally touching the tip of his nose. “Hey,” he said. “I’m still alive.”

“Yes,” Uriel said in the darkness. “As am I.”

The sword came out again, and Jack winced and shielded his eyes, but it was dimmed this time, Uriel raising it like a torch. All around them was the ice - but only ice, slowly relaxing into water where Uriel’s sword pointed, rivulets running down and joining in their paths. Ice that caught the reflection of the flame, and was clear, showing no taint of black.

“He did it,” mumbled Jack, and then wanted to weep. He imagined Sammy, his little body sprawled out on that black altar. “He did it.”

“He did ... something,” Uriel cautiously said.

Jack clung to Uriel, the angel carrying him down the passageways, flaming sword raised to make a thousand candle flames warped through glass. Jack felt like they were walking through a church, candles lit in prayer as the wax ran and wept to make crooked cheerful shapes as all the candles bowed and guttered out. Uriel flew them into the central chamber, and far below they could see the dim outline of the plinth and its lever, unmoved. It was black, still, but all the malevolence of its blackness seemed to have gone out of it, and now it was soft as shadow.

“This is... How did this happen?” Uriel said. Jack looked up at him, uncomprehending. “It ... It ...”

And then, a small voice chimed out from the ground below them. “H-hey, could you - could you move that fire a little closer? S-some of us are c-cold-blooded, you know.”

“Oh my God!” cried Jack. “Sammy?”

Sammy was lying limply at the edge of the precipice, stirring to life as Uriel brought the flame closer. “Hey, guys,” he said, and stretched out at the warmth. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“But -” Uriel was gawking, countless eyes wide in disbelief. “What - what happened? What did you do?”

“Oh, that,” said Sammy, and glanced down at the lever. “Nothing.”

Uriel stared at him stunned.

Sammy raised his head in a smile. “Absolutely nothing. It was feeding on blood, obviously. And it hadn’t been fed in quite a while. Practically starving to death. So it was really throwing a tantrum, screaming out with all it had left to be fed. But it could only keep that up for so long, and if you just keep on not feeding it, well ...” He managed with a twist of his body what might pass as a shrug. “It’s done. It’s dead.”

“But -” Uriel stammered. “But all this time, all the sacrifices -”

“Yup,” said Sammy, nodding wearily. “It got into your head. I – I don’t blame you, having to live with a thing like this. It was blackmailing you the whole time, threatening to pull itself, threatening to take the choice out of your hands, when really…” He chuckled. “It’s a tool, you know? It could threaten, it could manipulate - but it would take someone else to use it.”

“Oh, Sammy!” Jack cried, and squeezed out of Uriel’s slack grip. The angel seemed completely at a loss, floating numbly in mid-air without a word. Jack bent over the snake and scooped him up. “I thought – oh God, I thought you were going to kill yourself.”

“Yeah,” murmured Sammy, coiling loosely around Jack’s wrist again. “I did too. It gets to the point where you ... where you think that’s maybe the only option. But I was right there, on the brink, the lever calling out to me, and all I could think about was you, and I ...” He smiled weakly. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Jack.”

“Yeah?” Jack said, wiping away a tear.

“Yeah,” said Sammy. He relaxed, laying his head against Jack’s arm. “You, me, and some wisdom from dear old dad. It took me a while, but I finally remembered his advice.” He raised his head, mimicking old Nate’s voice. “’You’ve got to lead a Cold, starve a lever.’”

#fiction #tw: suicide

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gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights · 4 years

Link

Rating: T

Chapter Summary: XY goes to patch things up, but he needs some advice first.

Word Count: 3401 | Chapter 4/5

Notes: Sorry the chapter count keeps getting longer. I decided to add an epilogue, but this is the last main chapter. For @luxyweek day 6, Serenade

XXX

Luka flopped back in his bed. Had he been too harsh on XY back at the hotel? It wasn’t like XY had stood him up. He’d never promised to come back to the Liberty.

But questions kept repeating like an irritatingly catchy melody. XY had always wanted to spend time with him before, even if it was just to annoy him. What changed? Had they gotten too close at Nino’s house that night? Had their accidental cuddling scared him off?

Maybe he really just read too much into things. It wasn’t like Luka had much experience understanding people, even with his guitar. Maybe XY didn’t have any music in heart. Luka could’ve just been seeing what he wanted to see.

He wanted to see good in XY. The only one he had to blame was himself, for believing the other boy might have actually cared about him.

I’m just a sucker for blue eyes, he thought, his fingers plucking a melancholy melody.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t have XY’s number—foolishly, he’d only given the other boy his own—and he wasn’t about to embarrass himself by going back to the hotel again.

For the first time in months, the music in his heart fell silent.

XXX

“Martini! Marmalade! Marinade! Mar—whatever your name is! Help a homie out, please!” XY called up at the bakery’s balcony. He was going out on a limb here, but for whatever reason, Luka had been obsessed with the younger girl. Maybe she could help him patch things back up.

“You’re not my homie, XY!” She leaned over the railing and shouted back down at the street. “And it’s midnight! What the heck are you doing here?”

“I need your help!” he said. Admitting it made him feel stupid, but what was he supposed to do? Show up to Luka’s boat empty handed? No, XY had promised he’d make the most cash money music ever, impress Luka so hard that he fell head over heels, and then whisk him off into the sunset.

But step one: make the music. His first song had been a bust, and Luka would know if XY ripped something off. He’d probably expect it. So XY had his smaller synth packed up in a bag over his back, ready to take some more inspiration from Marmalade as soon as he could.

“Go away!” she called.

“You can’t tell me what to—! Uh, I mean—please, it’s important!”

She sighed so loudly he could hear it from the ground. Then she stomped back inside.

His shoulders fell. Of course she wouldn’t help him after he’d stolen her designs, poked through her room, and forgotten her name. He turned to trudge back to the hotel, his backpack feeling heavier than ever.

The click of a door opening stopped him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh—oh! You—you’re gonna help me?”

“That depends”—Martini crossed her arms—“on what exactly you want help with.”

“Perspiration,” he answered quickly, and she glared. Oops. Was that the wrong word again?

“Is this some kind of prank? What, was ghosting Luka not enough for you?”

XY’s jaw dropped. “Ghosting—I did not ghost him!”

“Then why did Juleka tell me he’s been sulking for the last week? She says he won’t quit playing sad songs. And Wonderwall, for some reason. Anyway, she thinks it’s your fault, and even if I’m not in love with Luka, I am his friend. And you hurt him.”

She jabbed a finger at his chest, hitting his “XY” necklace. The chain clinked hollowly.

“I… he missed me? Really?” He’d joked with Luka about that when he came to the hotel today, but he didn’t think he meant it.

“I don’t know. It sounds like it.” She shook her head, her pigtails swishing around her neck. “I don’t know why, though. Anyway, what do you want? I was waiting on someone—er, I’m supposed to be in bed soon.”

“Ooooh, a late-night date?”

“XY.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He grimaced. Better not get even more on her bad side when he needed something from her. “Okay, here’s the deal. I told Lu I was gonna make him the most cash money music he’s ever heard. But… I suck.”

He sighed. There it was.

“I know he likes you,” he continued, “so I thought maybe you could give me some tips? Tell me what kind of vibes he’ll vibe with, that kind of stuff.”

Marinade blinked at him. “You’re…. trying to make Luka a song?”

“Yeah. I wasted a whole week on a track Dad said was trash, and now Lu’s mad and I don’t have anything to show for it.” His shoulders slumped.

“Wait, so you already made a song? That’s why you weren’t talking to Luka last week?”

“Duh. I couldn’t spoil the surprise. Not that it matters. Like I said, it’s garbage. Unsexy. Not vibin’ at all.”

“...Because your dad said so?” Her head tilted. Her voice was soft and gentle. That was probably one of the things Luka liked about her. It sounded nothing like XY’s own nasally voice. Maybe if he autotuned his vocals more…

“He knows what good music sounds like. That’s how he ended up with the number one and number two stars on his label.” Was XY back at number one again yet? After the Kiddy Session mess, he was probably down on sales. Stupid old Jacked Tone.

“Uh-huh. That’s how he ended up asking me to make Jagged’s album cover look like yours, and having you butcher Kitty Section’s style.”

“I didn’t butcher it.” Sure, it wasn’t his best rip-off job, but he’d only had a few days to pull it off. Dad had liked it more than his original song anyway.

“The point is, I don’t think your dad knows as much as he thinks he does.” Marmalade put a hand on his shoulder. “He might know what’s popular, but he doesn’t know how to match an artist with their own style. Jagged Stone is a rocker. I’m a designer. And you… what’s your style, XY? If you could do anything you wanted?”

He shrugged. “More of the same, I guess. The stuff my algorithm spits out. I mean, it sells, right?”

“Forget about that for a minute. What do you like to listen to?”

What did he like? Well…

“I do love some sick beats. And…” He looked away, a little embarrassed. “I did like the first song I made for Lu. But Dad said it’s garbage—”

“Your dad is the one who’s garbage,” Marinade growled, her fists clenching. “I think you could use a second opinion. Can I hear your song?”

His first instinct was to say no. Hadn’t he embarrassed himself enough? But it wasn’t like he really cared what she thought. She couldn’t insult him much worse than she already had.

“I guess.” He pulled out his phone and AirPods. It wouldn’t have the same effect as fancy headphones or Nino’s speakers, but then she could at least tell him it sucked and move on to giving him some real advice.

She stuck the AirPods in, and he hit play.

Surprise slammed over her face. She must be shocked that a number one (or number two, now) pop star would come up with something so stupid. Using her sewing machine noises? That pigeon man’s bird call? Really? No stars did that! He should’ve just stuck to the basic four chords, and left out lyrics like he usually did, and—

Oh no. The lyrics.

“Please don't tell Lu what I said,” he begged, hands clasped together over his phone.

She didn’t seem to be listening to him, though. She was—oh crap, she was tearing up. His song was so bad he’d made her cry!

He fumbled to hit pause, but Marinade’s hand closed over the screen first.

“You wrote this? For Luka?”

“He’s gonna hate it.” XY groaned. “I lied to him and made him hate me and I can’t even make one stupid song—”

“No, no, he’s not going to hate you! XY—you really like him, don’t you?”

“Pshaw, no.” He crossed his arms and turned up his nose. “Crushing on hot rockers is so ten minutes ago.”

Marinade blinked, then laughed. Of course she’d just make fun of him again. “If you say so. But if you change your mind, I think it would be worth telling him.”

“Whatever,” he mumbled halfheartedly. He’d probably ruined that chance today by lying to him. If he’d even had a chance in the first place.

“I’m serious! I can tell you put your heart into this song. Luka will see it, too.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You just wanna watch me crash and burn, don’t you?”

She shook her head, laughing again. Pretty shady, if you asked him. He should’ve asked Nino for help instead, but Marinade was the one Luka had liked.

“I don’t even know for sure if he likes dudes,” XY muttered, the toe of his sneaker scuffing the street.

“Don’t worry, he’s bi. I wouldn’t encourage you if you didn’t have a chance.”

His heart started doing the macarena. It was enough to get his hopes up again—except, he still only had the one garbage song.

“I need a new track. Something super sexy that’ll blow his boat out of the water!” He paced as he talked, hands flying through the air like over an invisible synth. “But ugh, I don’t have time! Lu already thinks I hate him ’cause I stopped coming over, but I can’t spoil the surprise. That wouldn’t be cash money at all.”

“XY, you don’t need to write a whole new song. I think yours is great just the way it is.”

His head snapped up, his hair bouncing from the force. “Wait, you do?”

“Uh-huh. Besides, if you keep waiting for the perfect moment, it’ll never come. Trust me.” She smiled sadly. “You’re better off being honest with your feelings if you can.”

His mouth opened, but before he could find any words, a crash rang out from the balcony above. He was pretty sure he heard a faint “owwww.”

Marinette glanced up and winced. “Well, would you look at the time! Thanks for stopping by good luck see ya!”

She darted back inside, leaving XY alone with the faint breeze trying to fight his hairspray.

“Huh. Guess it was a date after all.”

If he pulled this off, maybe he’d have a date by the end of the night, too.

XXX

THWUMP.

Luka bolted upright, instinctively reaching for the neck of his guitar before feeling silly. What was he going to do, beat off a burglar with his instrument? He’d probably just break it, which would be even worse than getting robbed.

“Lu!” A muffled voice shouted.

Oh no. Not a burglar. Luka knew who was going to be smushed against the window before he climbed out of bed and turned around. His heartsong sped up against his will.

He hadn’t been prepared to see XY so soon after their fight at his hotel room. Frankly, he hadn’t expected to see him at all. His hair was a mess, several clumps falling out of their meticulously-styled quiff. And he was still wearing Luka’s hoodie.

“Yo, don’t just stand there! Help a dude out!”

Luka was so startled that he didn’t even argue, just scrambled up the steps to the deck, his footfalls thump thump thumping in time with his heart’s pounding rhythm.

He came back. Why did he come back?

XY yelped as Luka hauled him onto the deck. Déjà vu pricked at him, but this time instead of sneering in disgust, XY fiddled with his backpack strap nervously.

“What are you doing here?” Luka asked, since XY was being surprisingly quiet. He didn’t bother tacking on the obvious “it’s almost one a.m.” since XY had already proven he had no concept of time.

“Uh… I’m here ‘cause… I wasn’t very cash money to you today.”

He frowned. “Yesterday, technically.”

“Whatever. Point is, I’m… sorry I lied to you.”

XY seemed to deflate, as if all his usual hot air finally left him. Maybe it was a side effect of his tousled hair making him look smaller, but in that moment he looked nothing like his usual sauntering self.

“It’s fine,” Luka mumbled. “It’s not like you promised to make your own music. I don’t know why I expected you to.”

“Huh? No, Lu—I did make my own music. That’s what I lied about. ’Cause Dad said it was trash and I was… I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you, y’know? I wasn’t even going to tell you, but Marinade gave me some advice, and… whatever.” He ran a hand through his hair, disheveling it further. “Just—let me play you this track, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

Luka blinked, trying to follow XY’s rapid-fire words. He didn’t have much time to process, though, before XY pulled his synth out of his backpack and unfolded it. How did that clunky thing fit in there?

Then XY flipped a switch and pressed down on the keys, and music exploded from the Liberty. Had he—had he hacked the boat’s sound system?

“What did you do to my boat!” he shouted over the electronic sounds, but XY didn’t seem to hear. He was too focused on hitting the keys of his synth and belting out the first verse.

“You’ve got my heart flyin’ higher than a pigeon

Take me out we’ll go out to a kitchen

Stitch stitch stitch my heart is tickin’

Sit by me bro, come on and listen.”

Was that—? It was. Mr. Ramier’s bird call backed the track, somehow programmed into the synth. He was pretty sure that whirring noise was meant to emulate a sewing machine, too, which would explain the stitch stitch stitch. The noises should’ve felt jarring, but they blended strangely well with the upbeat melody.

And XY’s singing voice… Luka had never heard it un-autotuned. It didn’t sound anything like he expected. The nasal tone was still there, but it was clearer somehow. Like his heart and his words finally aligned.

“Woah, woah, you’re slick as a viper

Woah, woah, I start to perspire

Yo, you can call me a liar

But oh, oh, he’s got me inspired!”

He hit a high note that resonated in Luka’s bones. And those lyrics… did Luka hear them right? He was pretty sure he’d used “perspire” and “inspire” correctly, which was almost as shocking as the fact that he’d written an original song at all.

“Traffic cross the street, touch my hand,

Lost in your eyes, can’t see land

Take my breath away when you hold my face

Chords takin’ me higher than outer space!”

The bass dropped with that last line before the chorus repeated. XY’s energy ran through him; he could feel the yearning in his voice.

This was it. His heartsong. And, if it wasn’t just Luka’s hopeful imagination...

“Head on your chest, oh this is real

Cash money can’t buy the way I feel

Hope your hoodie’s not the only thing I steal

Wanna wake up staring into eyes so teal.”

XY looked up, meeting Luka’s wide-eyed gaze with a longing one of his own. His fingers stumbled over the synth’s keys, but he coughed and finished the last chorus, his voice shaking only slightly.

“Woah, woah, you’re slick as a viper

Woah, woah, I start to perspire

Yo, You can call me a liar

But oh, oh, he’s got me inspired!

“Oh, oh, I’m walking a wire,

Oh, oh, you’ve set me on fire,

Yo, you can call me a liar,

But oh, OH, you’ve got me inspired!”

Oh… oh. Luka’s heart stuttered as XY panted, hitting one last loud chord. It echoed off into the night’s silence. Luka was sure XY would hear his heart pounding now.

“So, what do you think? Pretty cash money or what?” His grin stretched too wide.

Luka swallowed, trying not to show just how much the unorthodox music affected him. “You finally learned what inspiration means.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I guess I did.” He chuckled. “Does that mean you liked it?”

He tried to sound casual, but Luka still felt the trace of longing from him. Maybe even desperation. He’d bared his heartsong. No matter how nervous Luka might be to admit it, he had to be honest in return.

“Dude, that was amazing,” he said, stepping around the synth to rest a hand on XY’s shoulder. “Synths might not normally be my style, but I felt it. You were in the moment, putting your whole soul into it. What changed?”

“Huh?” He blinked, blue eyes wide. It was hard to resist the urge to sweep his loose strands of hair back under his headband.

“I mean, why didn’t you make music like this before? You couldn’t have learned how to do this all in a week. You never gave me a real answer before.” Luka had a guess, but even after the lyrics he’d heard, he didn’t want to assume too much. He made that mistake with Marinette already, and this time…

He didn’t want to lose XY again. He’d gotten used to his annoying presence. That was all.

(The beats hopping in his heart quickly battered down that denial.)

“Bro, really? Weren’t you listening?” XY frowned, almost looking hurt. “And people say I’m stupid.”

“Hey.”

XY there his hands in the air. “It’s you, bruh. You’re the voice I hear inside my head, the reason that I’m singing—”

“Wait, isn’t that the Camp Rock song?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to make a meaningful love confession!”

Luka choked, his face flushing. “Love confession? You’re—you’re serious.”

XY stared at him like he was stupid. “What, you think I’d waste my time writing a whole song for just anyone?”

“No, I just…” He had thought XY was joking, or just messing with him. But it had been real. Luka hadn’t read too much into things after all. “I don’t know about love, but I—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I… might have a crush on you, XY.”

The other boy beamed, and Luka regretfully admitted it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.

“Bro, I’ll take it!” XY threw his arms around his neck, and suddenly Luka had an armful of him. He smelled like hairspray and Doritos, and under that, something more subtle and hard to place.

Luka had the feeling he could get used to it.

XY suddenly pulled back, staring into Luka’s eyes again, but leaving his arms around his neck. “Wait, does this mean you’ll be my boyfriend? Do I get to kiss you? ’Cause I gotta admit you look like you could use some chapstick first—”

Luka pressed his lips to XY’s half to prove a point, half to shut him up, and half because he just wanted to. At the moment, his brain didn’t care that the math didn’t add up.

A quiet squeal startled him into pulling back. At first he thought it was XY’s, but he just looked stunned, his eyes half-lidded and a dumbstruck grin on his face.

“I’m gonna swoon now,” he said before swaying over.

Luka barely managed to catch him around his waist before he hit the deck. But if it wasn’t XY squealing, then—

“Rose!” He hissed, catching a flash of blonde hair ducking behind the speaker. Juleka blended in better with the dark, but the faint glow from her phone screen gave her away. “Jules! Are you—wait, are you recording us?”

Rose poked her head out, her fists balled up beside her cheeks. “We couldn’t help it! You two were just so cute!”

“I thought you’d want this for your wedding,” Juleka mumbled through a smirk.

XY sighed dreamily at that. “What do you think our wedding colors would be, Lu? Teal and purple?”

“I swear, if you don’t shut up I’ll drop you.”

“Aww, you just want me to fall for you agai—ACK!” XY thudded to the ground. “Ow… that wasn’t very cash money of you, babe.”

That was where Juleka’s video ended.

But for the new music playing in Luka’s heart, it was just the beginning.

#tali writes #luxy #luka #xy #fic tag #luxyweek2k20

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journal-of-an-outlaw · 5 years

Text

Price to be Paid - Chapter 12

Treasures, Big and Small (AO3 Link)

Words: 6,140

Warnings: THAT SLOW BURN IS PAYING OFF FOLKS

Arthur was right, the first location was just south of Flatneck Station a short ways.

The conversation was easy on the ride up and turned to the old days and how things used to be. How John joined years after Arthur did, which of the girls had the stickiest fingers and which one tried to rob Hosea but ended up staying for years.

Once Arthur had the free reign to be himself, he opened up to you about his past a bit more than on previous trips. You had heard stories of robberies gone wrong or saloon visits that took three days, but those had been in the company of others. The two of you hadn’t gone out alone since the day you collected debts and it was nice to just enjoy the day with ease.

He had even brought up Mary for a moment, before shutting down and clamming up for a good five minutes.

You approached the rock described in the map. It must have been two stories tall, with ledges all over making it easy to climb. Luckily it didn’t come to that, the map detailed a small opening that had to be explored in depth to find the first of three keys.

“I can squeeze in there, though it’ll be tight. Just hold a few things for me.” You handed Arthur your heavy coat and gun belt, which left you in a thin shirt and long skirt. The opening was dark which you didn’t like, but you shimmied into the cave after jumping to catch the ledge and pull yourself up with shaking arms.

Thankfully the cave opened into a larger area that let you breathe again. You called back that you were okay, and continued in. Intricate drawings covered the walls, images that spanned back hundreds of years. Retellings of bison hunts covered the wall to your left while the right was different patterns of the local flora, smudged and elusive after all this time. You ran your hand over a particularly pretty drawing, and imagined being the one to put it there originally.

A lock box sat on a rock at the back of the cave and you approached it, ready to find the first piece.

You pulled out your kit that would help you open it and began ticking away. Finally, you got in and grabbed the round metal piece resting on a red cloth. Alone it made no sense but maybe the other clues would add up to something worthwhile. You rolled it over in your hand, the weight substantial for such a small thing. Cogs and wheels covered the base, so you thought this must be the biggest piece and the base that others would attach to. Hopefully you and Arthur would be able to find all three pieces, your curiosity was incredibly peaked.

“Coming back! I got it.” While you wiggled back out, Arthur breathed a sigh of relief. You swung your legs over the small ledge and jumped down, handing the piece to Arthur while you brushed dust off your skirt.

“Look at this, I can’t figure out how this will all go together. Can you hold it this way?” He held still while you twisted the sides left and right, trying to imagine how it would look.

Arthur couldn’t take his eyes from your face while you worked, concentration pulling your eyebrows together and your mouth making a little pucker that caused his stomach to flip.

“Let’s get going, I want to see how this plays out.” You quickly moved to Eclipse while Arthur looked over the map, trying to find the second location.

“Here! Right next to Bard’s Crossing and the river. Ain’t too far from here.”

The ride was quick, but when you arrived you weren’t the only ones. A small group of ten people were temporarily camped out where you needed to head next and didn’t look too friendly. They had built a makeshift shelter and a guard patrolling the area.

“Should we just ask to get by…?” You asked innocently. Maybe they would understand.

Arthur stared with amusement on his face. “No, darlin’, I do not think we should just waltz on in there. Look, there’s a ridge up that way, maybe the map was saying we should go up there? We can sneak up there once it’s dark and see if the second piece is hiding in that cave, but I hate to ask you to go up that high if you don’t want.”

“I’m fine with heights, don’t worry. I know it’s silly but this treasure map is the most exciting thing I’ve done as an outlaw.”

You watched Arthur cover his smile with his hand and try not to laugh. “We gotta get you on a robbery, or something if this is the most exciting thing. Don’t count for much outlaw work.”

He suggested walking a ways away so the group couldn’t see the light from your fire while you waited for the sun to set. Nothing needed to be unpacked except fire starters and you sat on the ground against a tree, relaxing for a little while before you had to start climbing and finding a real life treasure.

“You gonna fall asleep on me?” Arthur asked while he made a cup of coffee.

“Just resting my eyes is all,” you mumbled quietly in reply. Your head bobbed against the wood and you tried to focus on staying awake.

Arthur sighed and reluctantly patted his lap. You stared confused, and he blushed slightly while saying, “Don’t put your head against that tree, you’ll wake up with a crick in your neck. You can…put your head on my knee, if you want. At least it’s softer."

The blue folds of your skirt bunched up as you scooted to sit next to him, and you smoothed them out before laying down and resting your head on his knee. While a bit awkward, he was right. He was much softer than any tree would be.

As you drifted off to sleep, Arthur made sure your breathing slowed to an even pace before moving. Your hair was long and wavy and loose, and shining in the midday sun. His hands brushed a flyaway piece off your cheek, curiosity finally getting the better of him. For months he had watched it bounce around or be tied up on top of your head and longed to run his fingers through to see if it matched the softness of your heart, and he was not disappointed. He moved a few more bits before finding a gentle rhythm of running his whole hand down your head over and over while you slept.

Truth be told he was buzzing inside with conflict and sheer happiness.

While his left hand blissfully ran through your hair, his right pulled out his journal and he started to sketch, the scene before him too compelling not to immortalize it. Drawings of you littered the pages of his journal. Sometimes it was nothing more than your eyes or your profile, but Arthur loved taking reminders of you with him like a secret he dared not breathe about.

Little moments he never had to share with anyone but himself.

A half hour after sunset, Arthur shook you gently.

“YN? You ready to get going?” You awoke from a dreamless sleep and rubbed your eyes, the chirping of evening birds bringing you back to the present.

“Hope you weren’t too uncomfortable, Arthur. I apparently needed that.”

He patted your shoulder and agreed he was fine, then headed back to the horses.

With the light from the sun all but gone you had to rely on his sense of direction to find the small camp again. The folk staying in the area had left. It hadn’t been a great place to defend and the two wagons full of people had dropped plenty of evidence behind of their stay. Rusty cans and indents in the dirt showed they had headed south, then followed the road until the trail was no longer visible. It was strange to stand in someone’s old home and reminded you of Horseshoe Overlook. You wondered what it looked like in the autumn, and if someone else had taken up residence in the place you once slept and called home. It left you feeling a little bit hollow and melancholy.

Standing at the bottom of the cliff, Arthur called you over.

“YN! Think you can jump that high?” He craned his head back to see up.

“Arthur that ledge is higher than you, so no, I do not think so. Might be able to jump down to it though, the top ain’t too far around if I hike up.”

You both agreed that you would walk and jump down in search of piece number two of the wild chase Sean had sent you on. It took nearly ten minutes to hike and you were out of breath by the time you arrived, but tried to hide it from Arthur who was still standing down below.

“This about right?” It was sure hard to see with the little light left, so you lit your lantern and leaned over the edge. Standing above the cave entrance, you sat down and moved as close as you dared to the edge. Your toes were a good foot above the ledge, and Arthur nodded.

There was a terrifying moment as you fell through the air before landing, but you stood up and turned to face the darkness with your lantern held up high.

This was different than the last cave. Filled with twists and turns, the sounds from the forest were quickly replaced with drips of water, and a strange fluttering that echoed and caused panic to strike through your bones. But you keep pressing on. Hopefully this cave was smaller than it felt. Eventually you reached a flat wall with three holes. One had a painted red X across the edges so you ignored that. One had a blue circle around it, and the other was untouched. You cursed out loud as you remembered Arthur had the map tucked neatly into his journal and you had no easy way to reach him, so any hints or clues lay back in the small clearing. You debated for a moment which option to choose, and finally settled on the painted blue circle. A sigh of relief passed your lips as you pulled out a lock box. The cold metal was at least familiar and you popped the lid with no trouble, grabbing the second piece from inside.

You turned to leave after placing the box back into the hole, but something made you turn back and face the third, untouched spot. Curiosity got the better of you and you hesitantly stuck your fingers in inch by inch to see what lay inside.

At first, there was nothing. Then, something spindly and wiry stroked the back of your hand, and you yanked it back to make sure whatever it was hadn’t stayed on. Panic pumped through your heart and you screamed, running back towards the entrance and away from whatever hell demons resided in that wall.

Arthur bolted up from his spot on the ground when he heard your voice rip from the cave, and was on his way towards it when you came bolting out and nearly toppled over the edge. You were shaking your right hand over and over, with your eyes wild and desperate to find an escape. The drop wasn’t too far, but more than you should have managed by sitting down and pushing yourself forward.

“What in the hell was that? Are you alright?” Your eyes were huge as you stared, still visibly shaken by whatever happened in the cave.

“I got it…but there was something else in there, too.”

“What was it, YN?” His voice cut the night air hard and deep, afraid someone had met you inside and intended to cause harm.

Checking to make sure the back of your hand was clean, you took a deep breath and tried to calm yourself. Your voice came out in a shaky breath and you shuttered at the memory.

“Spiders.”

You had never seen Arthur laugh harder.

At first he was bewildered, but that only lasted a few seconds before what you said really clicked into place and shocked him into a fit. He was doubled over, grabbing his knees for support. You watched him wipe tears from his eyes thinking bandits or the like were responsible for your terror. But no, just little bitty spiders.

“That funny to you, Mr. Morgan?” Your arms were crossed and you looked down with fake resentment.

“Oh, we’re back to that now are we,” he chuckled again, still not able to stand up straight. Laughter still rippled its way out as he repeated the scene in his mind.

“They were horrifying! Stop laughing. Ugh they crawled up my hands, they must have been everywhere. I nearly dropped the piece on the way out, and I could have died! Arthur, I said stop laughing.” You shoved him, unable to contain your own hysterics now too. The two of you enjoyed the moment, realizing that nothing was truly the matter. Eventually the laughter died away and you pulled out the second piece, motioning to Arthur to hand you the first.

A loud click rang out when the pieces finally went together. “Only one more!” The excitement overtook you and you danced a little with the key in front of you. Arthur laughed once more, then snapped open the map to have a look.

“Celebrating might have to wait until tomorrow, last place is a bit of a ride. Heartland Oil Fields, least half a day away and it’s already night.”

“Fine, fine. Where should we camp tonight then?”

Arthur rubbed his chin in contemplation. “Let’s get closer to the train tracks, then we can follow them up North and over to get to them oil fields.”

You agreed and mounted up on Eclipse. Zeus followed as you took the lead out of the area and headed back to the trail.

People were friendly here. Not that you passed many this late at night, but they all smiled, tipped their heads, and said hello while riding by. A rumor about the O’Driscolls being in the area wasn’t proving itself true that night as no trouble came across you on the road.

“Let’s head up here, turn left YN.” Another small clearing greeted you as a makeshift camp.

There was no fire set up this time as it was late, and Arthur was exhausted. He unrolled his sleeping mat and started snoring before you were even adjusted sitting on the ground. The short hour you had gotten earlier made you feel great, and sleep was the last thing on your mind.

The connected key pieces sat together in front of you, but you wanted to know more. The map was tucked away in Arthur’s journal, and you knew he would hate you for snooping but you only wanted the additional page.

“Arthur?”

His lack of response was all you needed to tip toe over to Zeus and rifle through his saddle bags to grab to book.

“Gottcha,” the journal fell open to the page holding the map, but something else caught your attention.

“Is that…?” The angle from which the art was drawn showed a face turned away, and long wavy hair like yours. Just like how you were laying in Arthur’s lap this afternoon.

“Oh my god…” you breathed while flipping back a few pages. Images of you were everywhere. Arthur could somehow capture your eyes, how happiness spread across your face, and even moments of intense concentration with his pencil drawings. And you loved it.

So everything Charles had said was true. Arthur did harbor feelings for you, and you finally had the proof that validated your own heart too. Holding the journal to your chest, you walked back to your spot on the ground next to your lantern, and slowly flipped through page after page. Reading his innermost thoughts was too invasive, so you only looked at the drawings to get to know this man better. He was so much more than the person you thought you knew, and all of it was contained on the pages before you.

A particular drawing caught your eye, and you ran a light finger down the cheek. Well, your cheek. Somehow you didn’t know the woman in these pictures, so much had changed with you over the past few months.

Arthur muttered something softly, and you panicked and sat on the journal to hide it out of sight. He was just sleep talking, and you let out a sigh of relief. Time to put what didn’t belong to you back, and go about like nothing happened.

As you fell asleep a warm ball of hope and happiness settled on your chest.

The next morning you arrived at the oil fields earlier than you had expected. Arthur wanted to get back to camp soon so he woke you just as the sun crossed the horizon. You had slept little the night before, thoughts of the man beside you keeping you awake.

“Want me to head inside this time? You look real tired, YN.” You nodded and stood above the ladder that descended into darkness. The pair of you had been contemplating where this damn map was leading and the only logical place left was the drop down. After your spider experience yesterday you were secretly relieved not to be leaving the sunlight anytime soon.

Leaning against the wooden legs of the oil rig, you watched the wind ripple across the plains ahead of you. Bursts of dry plants stuck out of the dirt, and small animals scattered around in packs. Every once in awhile a chill bit the exposed skin of your forearms and neck, making you shiver and pull on your sleeves. What was taking him so long.

“Arthur? You alright down there?” A thud and a string of curses was your reply. After checking that the horses were tied up well, you began down the ladder to join him.

“I got this, don’t need you coming to save me.” His voice was gruff and he hastily dropped his hand from the top of his head. From the short height of the cave it looked like he had stood up too fast when you called out and smacked the back of his head. The grumpy look on his face didn’t last long though as you neared to him.

“Is it down here? Been long enough I could have solved it and left for camp by now.”

Arthur took a deep breath and his shoulders bobbed. “I can’t find the damn box. Should be somewhere over to the left, but I looked and ain’t nothing there.”

You held the map closer to the lamp and chuckled when you realized he was holding it wrong. “Arthur. Turn it this way, so we should be looking right.” You pointed and he headed that way silently, the frustration etched into his face. He held the lamp up over your head, but there was little space for the two of you to fit.

“I’ll go, just keep that light up.” His arm held steady, and you found the box. The top didn’t open as easy this time, so you handed it back for Arthur to try. He studied it for a moment while you took the lantern and allowed him to try.

“Ain’t so hard, just gotta-” the top flew up and spooked you both. The final piece was inside, and he handed it to you for safekeeping until you could get back to the surface.

“Please, YN, get up that ladder so I can leave this blasted hole in the ground.” You giggled and started climbing upwards into the open air, and breathed a sigh of relief. You’ve always had a weird fear of small, dark spaces.

“Arthur…this one doesn’t fit. Look here, the other two clicked in so easy but I can’t find how to connect them all. Are we missing one other part?” You took the map out and compared the sections to what the whole should look like. “Something must have broken off…Damn.”

A round green orb was missing. In fact, it was the most important piece, the one you would look through while standing in the oil field to find the treasure stash. It had special markings on it that was supposed to reveal the spot after all three pieces crossed in front of it, connecting to create a web like structure in your hands.

“Maybe we can use something else?” You started looking around to see if anything was dropped, but no luck.

“This drawing makes it look like a marble.” Arthur pulled his satchel around and produced just what you were looking for. A green marble.

“Forgot I was playing with Jack last week and he hid these in my bag. Think this’ll work?” He placed the small shape into the socket, and it clicked into place. Excitement filled your chest as you held it up and looked through the finally assembled key.

“Oh, this is stunning! Whoever put this together must have been incredibly intelligent, look at how it plays off the rays of the sun and how the clouds are…should we wait until there’s a certain coverage?”

Arthur grunted in reply and took the object out of your hands. “Darlin’, we do any more waiting and I am gonna starve to death. Let’s find whatever treasure Sean had built up in his mind and head back to camp. I ain’t really in the mood for hunting.”

You took it back to locate the place you would be hiking up to. The hill was too steep for the horses so you two would be climbing up on foot, hopefully not taking long to locate something you had no clue was even still there. The green marble shone in the sunlight, and the circles of metal lined up when you stared at the peak of the rock. “Arthur! Up there, that’s where we gotta look. It matches the crazy designs on the back of the map.”

Once turned over, swirls and circles covered the back of the paper around a cut of rocks shaped like a face. The nose was broken, and in the crack was the red line indicating the location of the treasure.

It took nearly half an hour to climb up that damn rock. At first it seemed easy and you entered the task full of false confidence and expectations. But those were built on a weak foundation and fell apart as soon as you got more than a story off the ground. You were open and exposed, climbing the side of a mountain with a man who was clearly more comfortable with this kind of thing than you were, and he watched you sweat and curse every time your foot misstepped and you imagined yourself careening down to your death.

“I, I don’t know how much higher I can go, Mr. Morgan,” you panted up at him. He looked down surprised. “You alright down there, Ms. Moore?”

The rocks around you were suddenly slippery and your palms felt like the surface was too smooth to get a good grip on. “You continue on up, I am not going anywhere but down from here.” Arthur offered you a hand up but you swatted it away quickly, afraid to have your hands away from the stone for more time than necessary.

“Please, just hurry.”

He chuckled and climbed up the last bit. “Sure is a pretty view up here, YN!” Arthur rested his hands on his hips and drank in the view before him. You silently cursed whoever made that map and buried treasure up in the middle of a cliff. Albeit, they did pick a good place if they didn’t want anyone finding it.

“Shame. I found the box, I’ll bring it down to open though,” Arthur made quick work of climbing down to you and found you pale faced and pressed hard against the wall.

“I don’t think I can move. It’s terrifying.”

The next step down was luckily a ledge, and Arthur jumped down. “Here, if you need to jump I’ll catch you.” His hands were held up towards you and judging by the size of his arms he would have no problems if you actually jumped.

“Jesus Christ.” Your boot scooted closer to the edge. Right before you moved to him you saw how high you truly were, and felt a bit dizzy. Your legs gave out and you fell right into Arthur’s open arms.

He caught you easily, of course, and once you regained your balance you had no desire to release his jacket from your grip. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

He chuckled lightly. “C’mon, girl. You telling me a little cliff is going to do you in? You can do this, just focus for a moment. Look at me, focus.” Gently, he placed a hand on either side of your face and locked his eyes with yours. You concentrated on his chest rising and falling, breathing along in time to settle your nerves.

Once you felt better, you had no desire to pull back from how close you were standing with Arthur. His breath fell gently on your cheeks, and his eyes were such a pretty shade of blue when contrasted against the sky behind him. You smiled up at the outlaw, and his eyes crinkled around the edges in a gently response.

“You okay there?” It came out as a whisper, Arthur still not breaking your gaze.

You nodded, but still clutched him tight incase you had to look back down at the journey ahead. Arthur’s mouth was parted just slightly and was incredibly inviting, but you knew if you kissed him you definitely would never make it down this cliff. Finally you pulled back and began the descent to your waiting horses.

The last jump to the ground was short, and when you landed your skirt poofed around you. Arthur landed next to you and placed his hand on your back leading you towards Eclipse and Zeus who lifted their heads as you walked up.

“I’ve never been so happy to be back on the ground, thank you Arthur.”

He tipped his head, and reached into his bag. “Let’s find out what we won, eh?”

This time the box was easy. Wasn’t even locked, and after all you went through to get it you were thoroughly relieved. Just a plain, rusted lock box that opened easily.

“Woah…”

Three gold bars stared up at you from inside. Arthur’s eyebrows shot up higher than you’ve ever seen. “That is a lot of money. At least 500 each.” An awkward beat passed as you mentally debated what to do with the bars. Keep them? Split it?

“Here. You take one, I’ll take one, then the gang gets the third. I almost care that Sean gets one but he did nothing except try to lose this map instead of chase anything. I would be careful about cashing that in, YN, maybe hide it at camp for awhile.”

You gingerly lifted your gold bar out of the box. It was beautiful, but what it meant for you was even more so. If there was ever a time that you needed to run, you were set for a good while without having to do much. You stood up on your tip toes and laid a kiss on Arthur’s cheek while muttering a quiet thank you. A blush ran up his face and he mounted Zeus with a smile on his face.

“Now, please. Can we get back to camp?”

The pair of you arrived in the late afternoon to the sleepy homestead. Kieran was on guard duty and waved you both in while holding a shotgun. You could see Hosea leaning in and discussing something with Charles and Karen that looked serious, but they didn’t see as you walked towards the stew.

You scooped a bowl for Arthur first as he complained the whole ride back about how hungry he was, and he gratefully took it and found seating near the fire. The heat from the midday had worn off and you grabbed a shawl from your tent, wrapping it loosely around your shoulders. It was an old one of Abigail’s that she had given you as a gift.

“YN! Glad you’re back, I’ve got a plan I want you in on.”

Hosea called to you from the table and you walked over to the trio. Charles had a paper in front of him and Karen was keenly looking at the drawings.

‘How would you like to head out on a mission with us?” Karen smiled up and patted the seat next to her for you to sit.

“There’s going to be something called a Governor’s Ball in Rhodes this month at the town hall. Dancing, drinking, schmoozing with the highest of society that this shit hole has to offer. Should be an easy haul and an excuse to get all dressed up.” Hosea’s eyes were lit up while he talked, the full plan laying out easily in his mind.

“I heard about it from a stable boy in town jealous his employer is going, but he isn’t. Anyways, I’ll need you as a distraction point woman and for pickpocketing those lame bastards dry. I still need to run it by Dutch but would you be interested?”

“Of course!” You were ecstatic at being included in a real mission with the gang. It wasn’t a train robbery but hell, being able to produce some kind of contribution would be a win. “Those are some things I’d be good at. Used to go to hall dances all the time back home.”

Hosea nodded at you approvingly. “Good. Should be easy. Won’t need more than those of us here, too many and we attract a lot of attention. Charles will be manning the wagon, and we can pose as a little family of three, not that you and Karen bear much resemblance, but I’m sure these backwards farm folk won’t ask too many questions. I can spin a sob story on the spot that will make them leave us be.”

He chuckled, and Charles even managed a small smile at the thought of Hosea making those bastards sad.

“We’ll iron out the details soon. Just wanted to make sure it was something you were up for.”

An excitement hummed through your body at the thought of wearing a nice dress and heading to a dance, and getting to rob some fools on the way. It’s too bad it was a full week away.

“You sure you want to take these folk with you, Hosea?” Arthur had crossed the camp and was standing behind Hosea’s chair, his eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “Must be a few of us more suited for that.”

All four of you exchanged a look, then turned to Arthur. “What do you mean? We got some fine people-”

Arthur laughed and cut him off. “Oh, I know you’re fine folk. That ain’t the problem. Just don’t know if you all can be trusted to pull this off. Have to see what Dutch approves, won’t we?”

Charles scoffed and stood to leave. He and Arthur had always been close so this was an awkward conversation and a low blow. “Don’t know what’s in you today, Morgan. Leave it alone.”

Hosea rolled his plans up slowly, thinking his next move through. The man was calculating, but never cold in his actions towards Arthur who he considered a son.

“Would you like to be included, Arthur?” Hosea’s tone was condescending as if he were speaking to Jack, not a fully grown man.

“No, that ain’t -”

“Should I have run this by you before uttering a word to anyone else?”

Hosea stood tall, and what he lacked in height he made up for in his aura. He may not have been the most loved by Dutch, but he was his most trusted. And in this camp that held a lot of weight to it. Arthur shirked back and rubbed his neck.

“Hosea, I just meant the women.” You sucked in a breath as if you had been hit. He didn’t trust the two of you for a simple robbery mission?

“What in the hell does that mean, Mr. Morgan?” Karen was standing now, too. Her eyes were full of anger and she glared hard at Arthur, unafraid of him in the slightest. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, and suddenly it clicked.

“Karen, it isn’t you he’s worried about.” Your voice was quiet, but everyone turned to look as you finished. “It’s me. He’s afraid I’ll find a way to mess this up.”

You stood and placed your hands on the table. “Mr. Morgan, can I talk to you? In private?”

For the past two days, Arthur had been the only person you had been around. Maybe he got fed up with you and never said a word. Maybe he really didn’t trust you after all of these months. Or maybe he just didn’t think you could pull off a robbery. Either way the dice fell it made you boil with anger that he said something in front of the others who clearly thought you were up to the job.

Arthur followed you back behind one of the wagons. As soon as you were both out of sight of the others, he was met with the full force of anger that was harbored inside of you.

“What in the hell, Arthur, was that.”

The speech that passed your lips was pointed and cold. You were mad, and you wanted answers.

He at least had the audacity to look embarrassed while he spoke. “I don’t know, YN, I just don’t want anything bad to go down. I’ve seen what happens when folks are inexperienced.”

“You don’t know that I’ll mess it up, Arthur! It could be great, I thought you woulda trusted me by now. I go hunting, I pickpocket folks, hell, Sean and I even had that side of the road scheme for a few weeks!” You were exacerbated as you blew air through your lips and ran a hand through your hair.

“Why are you really so hard on this plan?”

A few moments passed as he thought. Finally he replied, “Because.”

You snorted. “Because! That ain’t no answer. Look at me, Arthur.” You moved closer to him to see his reaction, and his eyes locked onto yours as you continued. “I may not be the greatest outlaw, but I’m good. I’m gonna ask you once more now, why are you so set on me not going?”

“Jesus, YN. Because -”

In one movement, Arthur pressed you back against the wagon, his lips meeting your for the first time. Utter shock ran through you, but was quickly replaced with elation that started warm in your belly. His hands were in your hair and on your waist while you pulled him in closer by his shirt, and he eagerly responded.

The world swirled around you, but Arthur was the anchor in a storm you didn’t see coming.

His mouth moved against yours gently. It was a feeling you could live in forever, but Arthur eventually pulled back slowly. His face was still close, and you could see his dilated pupils and flush ridden cheeks.

“Hope I didn’t, uh, overstep anything there.” Arthur’s voice was thick and low.

“No, Arthur. Think I’ve been hoping you’d do that for awhile.”

He chuckled and twirled a lock of your hair around his finger. “Me too. And I wasn’t worried about you messing anything up, YN. I was worried you might get hurt if something goes wrong.”

“It ain’t even a high stakes mission, you fool. No trouble around.” You laughed and slapped his chest lightly, your high still buzzing through you. “I didn’t know you truly cared, Mr. Morgan.”

“‘Course I care, I’m just not too good at showing it.”

Before reluctantly separating, Arthur kissed you gently twice more as if he couldn’t get enough of what had been up until now had been simply a fantasy. As far as camp went there was little privacy and you were worried someone would come around the corner and see what was going on.

Arthur left first. But before he got too far, he turned back and called one last thing to you.

“You may not find any trouble on that run with Hosea, but dammit, woman, there’ll be trouble for sure if you call me Mr. Morgan again.”

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #price to be paid #the price to be paid #fanfic #fanfiction #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #writing #sean maguire #sean macguire #red dead fanfic #I LOVE WRITING THIS #I appreciate feedback #let me know what you think #:)#rdr2 fanfic

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alexa-crowe · 5 years

Text

How Do You Move On From Heartbreak?

Tina walked into the Parisian hotel room, looking around and taking it in. It was so different from her brownstone apartment in New York, yet it was roughly the same size. There was a bed tucked into one corner and a desk next to it, a lamp on its edge. A bedside table sat in between the bed and sliding glass doors that led to a small balcony; a small potted plant was situated in the corner between the glass doors and the door to the small bathroom.

Tina took off her dark coat and hung it on the coat rack. Looking through the glass doors to the balcony, she caught a glimpse of Paris. She walked over to the doors and opened them, stepping out into the cool September breeze.

She tried to take in her surroundings: a large public garden in the foreground and the River Seine in the background. The magnificent Parisian architecture that stretched for miles around her. The sunset staining the sky reds, pinks, and oranges. Yet her heart rejected it all, surrounded by a thick blanket of melancholy that might as well have turned the world black and white. Colors had no value. Tina had hardly smiled since she left New York. She walked back into the room and looked around, waiting for something interesting to magically appear for her to do.

She tentatively sat down at the desk and slowly opened up a drawer underneath filled with sheets of paper. She took one out, an idea forming in her mind. In another drawer, she found a pen and took one out. She paused, thinking of what she should write on this blank page full of possibilities.

She looked around the unfamiliar room for inspiration, refusing to write about what happened with N- him, even though writing down her feelings would probably help assuage the pain. She fingered her golden necklace absentmindedly, wishing her parents were still alive so they could shower her with hugs and kisses and tell her it would be okay, even if it wouldn't. She opened up the locket, revealing a photo of her mother and father on either side. Tina had her father's same brown hair and eyes although her hair was naturally curly. Not like Queenie's tightly wound curls, long ones that didn't bounce around. Queenie had their mother's golden curls and green eyes.

Dear Mother and Father,

Tina's pen etched the strange words onto the page. It still hurt, even after all these years, to know that they hadn't been at her Ilvermorny graduation, or around when she finished her Auror training. Her father wouldn't give her away when she got married, her mother would never get another card for Mothers' Day. They'll never be grandparents because they're dead. Most of all, they'll never see their family again, see who their daughters grew up to be.

I regret that you left Queenie and I so young. You'll never know what it's like to have grandchildren or see Queenie and I get married. I wish you were here. You would know what to say to get Queenie and I talking again, you always did.

She paused and studied the smiling faces of her parents. They would know how to move on from heartbreak. Because of course, they would. They knew everything. How to braid hair, how to kiss a boo-boo and make it all better, how to make the best strudel. At least they'd left the recipe for the strudel.

But they weren't here. All Tina could do was ask her questions and hope that, somehow, she would get an answer.

How do you move on from heartbreak? What if you fell in love with a strange man who showed you another side of the world you had never seen before? What if you were exchanging letters across the Atlantic ocean after he left for England? What if, in one of his letters, he wrote, "If I could, I would" and crossed it out and you desperately wanted to believe the rest of the sentence would have been "take a boat to New York just to see you again"? What if you are hopelessly in love with this man and find out that he is engaged to another woman? What if you thought he might be "the one"? What do you do then? How do you fix a broken life?

Tina swallowed and felt her throat constrict as tears collected in her eyes. She gripped the pen tighter in an attempt to ground herself in reality.

Mama. Papa. Why does everything I love have to be stripped away from me? First, you two and now him and Queenie. Why do I walk this lonely path? Am I really being true to myself? Is this really who I am meant to be? What did I do to deserve this?

She paused and took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears. Even after everything she'd done to get over Newt-him, all the crying, the screaming, the mistakes, the fights, the running, she just... thought that it would finally stop hurting. But it hadn't.

Throughout all of it, Tina'd had one objective: save Credence. Maybe she couldn't save herself, but she could save him.

What if I dreamed of a future between us? What if that dream has been replaced by a painful void in my heart? How do I move on from heartbreak?

Tina couldn't hold back the tears anymore. Her breathing was erratic and she shakily set down the pen, a tear hitting the paper. The hurt was, if anything, stronger. Maybe because she had come to terms with it, that she wasn't just going to wake up one morning and learn that it was all a dream. That he really didn't love her the same way she loved him.

She took refuge in the bed, slowly and deliberately covering herself with the blankets as if to shield herself from the pain she felt within. She couldn't stop it. She couldn't save herself from the pain, no matter how hard she tried. If only her parents were here to make her cocoa and wrap her in hugs.

For an upsettingly large number of nights in the past three months, she had cried herself to sleep. This night was no different. Quiet sobs wracked her body as she wished that she had never met the awkward wanderer from England last December.

Ever since their parents had died, it had always been Tina and Queenie, Queenie and Tina. And then, suddenly, their duo had become a foursome with Newt and Jacob. Those few days had felt so right, like finding a part of herself she hadn't known was missing. Like finding family. When Newt left and Jacob was obliviated it had felt like another blow to her soul. But she'd found solace in the fact that Newt would come back to give her his book. But he hadn't come back. He'd gone off and gotten engaged to another woman. Even when her parents died she hadn't felt as sad as she had when she'd found out. Although, how would she really know? She was pretty young when that happened.

Then it was Tina and Achilles. She had been happy. Ish. He'd been a good friend. But now? Now it was Tina. Tina and her pain. Tina and her broken heart. Tina, who cries herself to sleep because she fell in love with a man who tricked her into thinking he might actually love her back. But who could ever really fall in love with a girl like her?

Who? Who could love the girl who'd been obsessed with unicorns when she was too young to be able to spell it? Who could love the girl who had trouble being "normal"? The girl who didn't wear makeup or dresses to work because it was impractical? The girl who preferred to work alone so she could think clearly and act swiftly? Who never acted sexy because it made her feel uncomfortable? Who?

Outside the hotel was the City of Lights, the City of Love. Yet Tina wasn't feeling the light. She felt heavy, burdened by this private sadness she carried with her wherever she went. She wasn't feeling the love. She felt lonely and was desperately in need of one specific person to find her.

Luckily, that person would travel to the end of the universe and back to find Tina. This man would undoubtedly risk Azkaban for the woman he loves.

Actions speak louder than words. When you're feeling sad, the people who love you the most have a way of finding you, even if you're trying to hide. Sometimes they find a postcard you sent to your sister and decide to find you even though it could mean they go to jail, not to mention that they refused to do the exact same thing except to find an evil wizard instead of you. Sometimes the people who love you the most do stupid things and you have to save their ass. All in a day's work when your one of the only ones in your family who has any practice saving the day.

Tina may yet feel light and love. Maybe just not in Paris. Or maybe in Paris. Maybe she'll get to fall in love with "the one" twice. Maybe she'll remember why she fell for him in the first place.

You know, the Zouwu is just a big kitty. It loves that little toy stick thingy to pieces. But not as much as Newt loves Tina. Love is the strongest magic. Newt is a prickly porcupine on the outside but a cuddly Zouwu on the inside. And Tina loves that about him.

#fantastic beasts #queenie goldstein #newt scamander #reflection #achilles tolliver #tina goldstein #character study #wizarding world

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necropsittacus · 4 years

Note

for the ask thing, all the ones you have an interesting answer for

this is extremely long because I Love Oversharing so under a cut. thanks britta!!!

4: how do you take your coffee/tea?tea, black; i've tried putting extra spices in it but i think i'm not doing it right bc it gets grainy and weird? i don't drink coffee anymore for "hey maybe we should stop consuming this thing that makes us feel like we're actually about to die" reasons but when i did it was with a fuckton of cream5. are you self-conscious of your smile?yeah; less so since i actually brush my teeth semi routinely now, so they're less awful, but i still have a slight overbite and a residual habit of covering my mouth with my hand if i open it very much 8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?either weird vent fanfiction that i never end up finishing, drawing in my notebooks, or i try to make the overly dramatic/pretentious thoughts that pop into my head into poetry (which i never end up finishing, go figure).9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?used to, but it's like. even besides insecurity about my voice and the fear that i'll be Too Loud and bother someone. the same internal barrier that makes it hard to speak out loud, especially if i'm not directly prompted to, applies to singing10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?usually side, and in the fetal position. occasionally back though13: what’s something that made you smile today?saw a chickadee!14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?god i don't know that's like. that's the fucking dream, for the future, but i hadn't gotten as far as daydreaming about *decoration* or anything of that sort. at the moment i tend towards covering things in movie posters and little trinkets i accumulate and toys and that sort of thing. i know i couldn't do sharing a room with someone else long term, it'd get stressy, so at least two bedrooms (or a bedroom and a pull out couch in the living room, that'd work), a little kitchen. no minimalism, but i might like having primary responsibility for Housecleaning sorts of things for my loved ones, or keeping things reasonably neat. just. something that feels like a proper home. safe. 16: what’s your favorite pasta dish?i am extremely boring and usually just do fettuccine alfredo. that said, cheese ravioli and pesto products are also very good. i just don't like super complicated foods with ingredients i don't recognize, or red sauce. red sauce is Sensory Bad. 17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?i mean i've been dyeing mine black since i was like 17 to the point that people think that's the natural color and i just let them, and honestly i'm very happy with thatred looked good on me, and i definitely like the way a lot of those super bright unnatural purples, blues, etc look on other people but it doesn't feel like "yes this is Correct this is what i'm Supposed to Look Like, this is the color it was *supposed* to be all along" in the same way, it just feels like i'm dyeing it a weird color for fun18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up."mola mola isn't a slur, right?"20: what’s your favorite eye color?idk about "favorite" but dark brown eyes are really pretty22: are you a morning person?i tend to be more productive and (assuming at least like five or six hours of sleep) more cheerful in the morning, but getting out of bed is a horrible struggle bc executive dysfunction and anxiety23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?tbh i HATE having those days, i don't like being super busy Either but i get really like bored/restless/I Am Going to Rip My Skin Off to Have Something to Do Please Let Me Out of the House if i genuinely don't have anything scheduled for a day? so i usually *make* obligations for myself, writing projects or something like that, if i don't have anything externally enforced. and go to the library or a cafe or something bc i feel more alive if i don't stay in my room all day24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?yeah26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit?i mean i've only had them for like a year bc it turns out that wearing the same pair of shoes almost every day wears through them pretty fast, who would have thought? but black combat boots28: sunrise or sunset?sunset31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.they hurt but i p much only wear boots so i have to wear them all the time. also my feet are weird and fucked up and i don’t especially like looking at them. and then i forget to take them off to sleep so i just. wear them all the time except to shower. i like weird socks with like animal pictures or whatever but then i feel bad abt wearing them bc i wear out socks really fast for unclear reasons34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?ooh i had a lot!! most of them were sea mammals, a couple sharks i think? i had a couple rabbits when i was Really small but i don't remember them as clearlyi can't remember most of their names but they had whole like imagined stories and relationships to each other and shit, i definitely remember there was one stuffed orca that was almost as big as kindergartener me35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?oh absolutely!! i write mostly in pencil for ease of corrections and so it doesn't bleed through the paper, but i accumulate pens/weird ink colors/etc37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?see i *prefer* having my room be clean but it literally never is 39: what color do you wear the most?black. combination of "trying to be low effort goth" and that idk how to coordinate colors so all my outfits are either all black or like. black + one other color + possibly grey, bc i figure there's no way that could end up clashing horribly. also i only HAVE black pants anyway so like. 41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving?mm i know accident by christa wolf hit me pretty hard in some emotions, and that was recent44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?i'm not sure that's an emotion i have tbhwhen i'm happy there's this kind of anxious edge to it, not necessarily in a bad way, but "at peace" is. an odd concept for me. the closest i get is this sort of quiet not-exactly-negative melancholy if i'm not behind on anything and it's raining and everything's just sort of soft yknow? 47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?marinara sauce. i hate that shit. i'll eat it on pizza or if i literally have to in order to get a meal and i can't physically handle not having one, but that's about it. also tomatoes more generally! i like ketchup but that's it. why do yall insist on putting tomatoes on everything all the time i Don't Like Them50: what’s an odd thing you collect?i keep all the toys i get out of kinder eggs and stuff like that. also i just have hyperempathy about inanimate objects and animals (and basically no empathy for humans most of the time, weirdly enough) and it's frequently difficult for me to throw things away because "well i'll be hurting it!" so uh. i just accumulate objects. i still have my old toothbrush somewhere55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point?i straight up tried to kill myself to win an argument with mom once in high school. and i'm not talking like a mini fakeout attempt that wasn't supposed/expected to work, either, i did regret it but i was straight up prepared to die to get her to believe me 56: what are some things you find endearing in people?rambling/talking about your interests, emotional openness. if you like. send me things that reminded you of me/you thought i'd like, or initiate physical contact so i don't have to feel so weird/guilty about it, that's a very fast path to my affections. just being weird as shit. lots of little things, really. depends on the person a lot, though; either "person is Soft and Good and i feel like it's my responsibility to protect them" or "person is Kind of Scary/Edgy and i will attach myself to them and remain loyal no matter what and they appreciate it" are pretty consistent things, but those are a long way from the Only paths to my affection58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?awfully bold of you to assume i have a friend group and not just a disparate group of friends who mostly don't talk to each other. i AM semi consistently the weird vodka uncle though. 59: what’s your favorite myth?LOTS. that's not quite a fair question i can't pick one favoritethe volsunga saga does come to mind, though60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?i do!!! i thought i didn't because turns out the things they make you read in high school english are often Not Terribly Emotionally Resonant for me, funnily enough, but when i started reading russian poetry in college, and more mental illness focused stuff tbh, it was like Oh Shit This Is Really Cool. i really like vladimir mayakovsky!61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received?when i was really small i gave my dad a care bears coloring book for his birthday because for some reason i didn't process that other people didn't have exactly the same interests as me??62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?i drink either unsweetened green tea or monster energy drinks in the morning. depends how much of a disaster i'm being on that particular day. 63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?all my music is online or haphazardly downloaded to my phone so there's. not really any way to organize that if i wanted to tbh. i make a lot of character or ship playlists that i'd put more effort into organizing if i ever got around to showing them to other people, but Also anything that isn't too embarrassing to risk anyone else seeing just gets put in one folder. i DO organize my books, though. i usually *forget* to put them back where they're supposed to go, but there is a proper order (everything from one author or franchise together, stuff like star wars or tolkien is together and in in-universe chronological order, stuff like that), and i get upset if people fuck with it67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?nice. it's very calming, and also bright sunlight hurts my eyes fjgshtf68: what’s winter like where you live?not very different from fall most of the time. climate change is making it more midwest-y, which i'm not sure if i'm happy about or not (snow nice, but summer is also progressing in that direction, which is unfortunate). somewhere between the 30's and 50's (fahrenheit), mostly pretty grey, it rains sometimes. it's not cold enough that i need to have a real coat, usually sweater+leather jacket is enough. my hands always hurt, though70: have you ever used a ouija board?yeah i used to do it with my brother sometimes. nothing ever happened tho76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t?i need to write my paper proposal for nuclear lit and also draw some stuff for people that i've been putting off because my brain hates me and Catching Up On Everything I Should Have Been Doing a While Ago Is Scary77: pink or yellow lemonade?both? both is good78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?i have no real feelings on minions one way or the other but i have no interest in them and don't like seeing them all the time79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?someone i used to know was going to move away from their abusers and get a job and such, partly or mostly For Me, so we could run away and start things over together after i graduated. and then things blew up but. it was very sweet and sometimes i get emotional about the concept of that still 80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?three white, one blue. i didn't choose it, it came with the dorm room. my bedroom in my parents house has really dark blue walls, which i DID choose bc i wanted a dark color and my brother already had red ones and i wanted to distinguish myself from him. 82: are/were you good in school?mmm more or less, yes i'm terrible at certain kinds of projects and at getting stuff done without pretty much devastating my physical ability to function pushing myself at the last minute. that said, i'm very good at tests, good at papers, good at language learning and bullshit analysis. it's just like. PLEASE don't give me "fun creative projects!!!" or start with the "oh well tests aren't a good way of measuring learning, here's some other stuff that will be easier for you!" thing. i *like* tests. tests make sense and it's just sit down for an hour and you're done. it's the other stuff that's hard also i'm so used to my mother's ridiculous standards that it's like. yes i am good at school, in that my professors keep telling me i am Very Smart and things of that nature. but also i am terrible at taking care of myself while i have school because me being good at school is to some extent reliant on my brain's false insistence that Everybody Else Has Perfect Grades and Is Killing Themselves Slowly To Be The Best, so clearly we need to do that too! and any sacrifice is worth it! so eventually i just collapse84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?yeah definitely, at some point. there's other things that are more pressing to spend my limited amount of non-parent-controlled money on right now, but i know i want like. some manner of thing referencing my chronic turin turambar (self dx) status, probably his grave inscription or a sword (or both eventually!). probably also a bird of some sort85: do you read comics? what are your faves?see i'll happily read comics if there's a franchise i'm already interested in that has comics as part of it, but i'm not like a Comics Fan per se. i tend to find them kind of overwhelming because there's just So Much content and i don't know where to start and i usually get distracted before i finish. i did really enjoy mtmte and the tdc creation myths comics89: are you close to your parents?nope! i send my dad animal pictures, and vice versa, and that's about the extent of it when i'm not staying with them for breaks. mom's...Difficult(TM) and dad i get along with fine but i don't really know how to text him 92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?drowns. i want to be able to actually taste it.93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most?my hair is too short to really have Different Styles. i just keep it combed pretty neatly bc that's the only thing i know how to do afngjdsgf94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?my friend emma @autisticsansamaybe people i care less about had them more recently but tbh if we aren't friends i don't know when your birthday is without being told96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?i have literally never updated this laptop because it does not have space for an update. this isn't even my fault. i have deleted *every single thing on it that is not important to make it actually run* in order to have enough space to update, and it STILL doesn't. 100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?a few months ago i would have said 5 years into the past, because i Desperately missed aspects of how my life was at that part of high school--mostly having people i loved and who loved me, who wanted a future with me, and the certainty of that, that i wouldn't just be On My Own Forever post educational system--but now? future. high school fucking *sucked* in a lot of ways, and also i was a terrible person and i don't especially want to go back to that version of me. future is like...scary because yeah there is a decent possibility i'll just be pretty much totally alone and having to work a job i hate to keep up, but like. there is also a possibility that i'll have the things i wanted all along in a more stable context, yknow?

#suicide ment /#alcohol ment /#ask memes #long post #very long post ajhnfgsf im so sorry

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synchronysymphony · 5 years

Note

I miss the beach, so here's a prompt: Les Amis are having a sleepover at someone's house that is close to the sea. Enjolras wants to see the sunset so he "escapes" in silence while it's still dark outside. Grantaire has the same idea.

When Enjolras learned that Jehan’s family owned a beach house, he knew right away that he wanted to finagle an invitation to stay a weekend there. There’s something about the ocean that draws him, something about its wild, ferocious, unconventional beauty, passionate at times, calm at others, mysterious, dangerous, and bold. So he’d hinted and teased with all the subtlety at his command, and finally it had worked. Jehan had sat him down and asked him point-blank if he was trying to go there.

“My family doesn’t use it,” he’d said. “We can all go. It would be fun.”

And so all of them had piled into a few cars and driven down, and now they’re happily situated in the Prouvaire family estate. Enjolras had immediately checked his surroundings, wanting to assure his anxiety that he was safe, and having done so, is now perched on the couch next to Courfeyrac, sipping at the cocktail that Joly made for him, and half-listening to the ridiculous story that Bahorel is telling.

“And that’s when I noticed that he had a banana in his pocket,” he’s saying. “And I was hungry, so I told him to stop the fight so I could eat it.”

Enjolras allows his attention to drift, basking in contentment. He’s perfectly happy, he thinks, except for that strain of exquisite melancholy aching so sweetly in his heart. He wants to be alone, he realizes, away from the buzz and chatter, just him and the sunset and the sounds of the waves breaking on the shore.

He sets his cocktail on the table, and moves to get up. Courfeyrac pats him absentmindedly, even as he’s asking Bahorel how to throw a punch, and Eponine looks up and raises an eyebrow, but no one says anything, and he slips out of the living room and to the door. He puts his shoes on, grateful that he’d decided to wear flats today, opens the door, and escapes into the gloaming.

It’s only a few steps to get to the beach, and soon he’s situated on the soft sand, surrounded only by the mystical, velvety twilight and the gentle roaring of the sea. There’s still the faintest tapestry of rose and blue in the sky, though the sun has already set, and there’s salt in the air, and warmth on the sand. Enjolras thinks he might cry from the beauty of it all.

Now he wishes he’d brought his drink with him, because it’s almost too much, too awash in sublimity, and it hurts. He wishes he could numb it out a bit, allowing the burn of the alcohol to take away the ache. Still, though, this is probably better. He feels more alive this way, more present, and he knows that this is a memory that he’ll lock away into his treasure chest of moments, and when he looks at it later, he’ll be able to feel every detail.

There’s a movement behind him, and then a deep, rough voice is saying his name, and then, “Mind if I join you?”

Enjolras turns, and sees that Grantaire is standing behind him. The half-light seems to soften his features, making him seem more open, more vulnerable, and Enjolras can’t help but smile.

“Come sit.”

Grantaire lowers himself onto the sand, only a few inches away from Enjolras. It would be easy to scoot close to him and lean against him, or take his hand, maybe, but Enjolras keeps a polite and respectable distance, only indulging himself by turning to look at him and nod.

“It’s beautiful out here.”

The words aren’t enough. There probably aren’t words that would be enough, though, not to capture the subdued brilliance of the moment, and the sky and sea and sand and the charged closeness between them, urging them to reach out and touch. Grantaire seems to feel this, too, because he smiles softly, just a little upturn of the lips and a gentleness in the eyes.

“It is. I’m really enjoying the view.”

He’s looking straight at Enjolras as he says this, and Enjolras knows he shouldn’t read too much into it, but he can’t help but feel a warmth spread through him, settling into the bottom of his chest like a piece of the sun.

“I’m enjoying the view, too,” he says.

“Are you?”

“Yes. It’s so beautiful, Grantaire.”

Grantaire reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind Enjolras’s ear. His fingers brush against Enjolras’s cheek, and there’s a little frisson between them, or at least Enjolras thinks there is. He parts his lips to speak, but the words won’t come, and he ends up biting down on his lower lip instead. Grantaire watches this, eyes dark.

“Enjolras…”

“Grantaire?”

Grantaire trails his fingertips across Enjolras’s cheek, down to his lips, and he strokes across them with his thumb. His hands are rough, but his touch is sweeter and softer than the petals of a flower. Enjolras shivers.

“Grantaire,” he whispers again.

“Enjolras.” Grantaire sighs into the breeze. “Enjolras, can I kiss you?”

There’s only one answer to that. Enjolras closes the distance between them, and presses close, and then his mind blanks out entirely. He could be anywhere, or everywhere, maybe, and it wouldn’t matter, because all that exists in this moment is the two of them. Centuries could pass, civilizations could rise and fall, and Enjolras wouldn’t have any idea, because he’s kissing Grantaire, and that’s all that matters.

When they pull apart, Enjolras is half-afraid that Grantaire will get up and walk away, or maybe say something derisive about his kissing skills, or even tell him that he was just joking. But he doesn’t do any of this. He just rests their foreheads together, with a light shining in his eyes like the gleaming of the sea.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” says Enjolras, feeling inexplicably shy. Suddenly, too embarrassed to keep meeting Grantaire’s gaze, he buries his face in the crook of Grantaire’s neck, hiding. “I love you,” he says again, muffled.

Grantaire laughs kindly at him, and puts a hand on the back of his head to stroke his hair. “Do you want to go inside?”

Enjolras shakes his head. “Can we stay out here just a little while longer?”

“Of course.”

Enjolras finally gets the courage to sit up, and Grantaire puts an arm around him, and lets him lay his head on his shoulder, and the air wraps around them and carries their words to the sea and sky, and the last vestiges of pain melt away from Enjolras’s heart and all that’s left is a tender and lovely joy.

#ask #heart of a rose #les mis #sun and stars #enjoltaire #ff #long post #this was really fun to write!!!#thank you jean!!!!

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the-empires-weapon · 6 years

Text

False Confidence Pt. 4

The Odessan sunset really is beautiful. I’m lucky it looks so good today, and especially from the base. I’d led Vowrawn to one of the glass viewing domes where we could watch it; no machinery, no equipment, just a railing just a foot back from the glass so we could lean in and watch the sky bleed into oranges and reds. Vowrawn and I face out from the base and watch the sun sink behind the trees. Torian, bless him, stands back, and keeps guard.

My heart’s really hammering. It feels like there’s a knot in my throat, or tension speeding up my back. I try to push those feelings to the back of my mind, but they remain.

I’ll just have to speak past it.

“It really has been a long time,” Vowrawn says out of the blue as the sun dips behind the pines. “You’ve developed some confidence, Commander Eden. You wear it well.”

“I have to. This is my Alliance. I’m the one who has to lead - even if there are days where I wish I didn’t have to. Maybe you’ve felt the same?”

“I was born into this, born into greatness. I’ve never shied away.”

“Right. Not a surprise,” I finally sigh, openly, and speak my mind. “You know I didn’t bring you out here four a tourist’s look, right? You understand - there were things I couldn’t bring up in that meeting. Personal things.”

He nods from the corner of my eye. “I suspected as much. Ever demanding answers.” I stand a little taller, and grip the guard rail as tight as I can between my hands.

“Vowrawn, I killed Vitiate. You know that.”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. The word’s are simply out there, open, and now he knows that I’m aware. He knows I’ve woken up, somehow.

“You know Marr and I jumped into Wild Space to find the last remnants of Vitiate. Valkorion was his last hold, and when I struck him down, he died and became a ghost in my head. I expelled him just a few months ago - but not before showing me his last moments as Vitiate.”

He’s quiet for another moment. I give him the time to speak, and he finally takes it - but not without a sigh that sounds, almost, remorseful.

“I did insist that you would remember eventually.”

Then we’re on the same page - and he’s confirming my suspicions. “I don’t remember, is the thing. But I’m smart enough to piece together things. Valkorion I never trusted - but Marr, I do, and he confirmed my thoughts last I spoke with him. Wouldn’t tell me anything, of course, but it was enough to know that he knew.” I lean forward again with elbows braced on the railing. “The murder of the Emperor is a pretty big thing to hide - even from your own people. And it’s even harder to hide it from the killer themselves - which means the Dark Council was involved, and that includes you and Marr. And from there . . .” I shrug and raise a hand to gesture. “You wiped my memory? Or changed it? That’s a power somebody among the Dark Council would have. And you did it either for my protection, or the Empire’s, or something else. Either way, there’s a big difference between ‘a group of Jedi’ and ‘our pfaasking weapon’ killing the Emperor. And you knew that.”

“You’ve pieced together quite the story. And yet, you haven’t shared this with your beau?” he asks. He clarifies, rather quickly, “I would’ve thought she’d be the one following us for such a private meeting, not your Mandalorion.”

“He’s not my anything. My best friend, perhaps. But Lana - Lana doesn’t need to know. I’m sure you could feel the waves of her anxiety regardless. I don’t need to trouble her with this.”

“You’ve put distance between yourself and her. An odd entanglement in your coupling.”

“You’re trying to change the subject, Vowrawn. This isn’t about my Alliance or yours or our agreement. This is me, Eden Carter, asking you, Vowrawn. Not a Commander and a Darth. Old allies,” I say. I shut my eyes, and speak through a sudden well of tears rising in my nose. “I have to know. I . . . why didn’t I know? And why did you, and the Council, hide this from me?”

He doesn’t answer. I don’t expect him to answer so quickly, but I need him to say something, anything. I feel like I’m about to start drowning. My head’s hurting, my heart won’t stop thudding, and my hand is beginning to shake. It’s been so long since I had to deal with this alone; before, Valkorion had kept a hold on all of it, had managed to suffocate the worst of my anxiety. But now it’s back, and I haven’t had to deal with it for years. I breathe in through my nose, forcing myself to try and stay calm. I feel a hand on my shoulder, a familiar weight, and I try to focus on it. Try to relax.

He finally rasps out his answer.

“I . . . have never seen such a thing in my life. And neither had Marr.”

I turn to look at him, sharply. He hasn’t lifted his face. He’s looking down now, through the glass floor to the forest below. For once, I think he looks - melancholy? Scared?

“We hadn’t anticipated it. Not he, nor I, nor do I think the Emperor. You simply surprised us all - truly a weapon, in that moment, the Empire’s Weapon. But in that throne room, you slipped into something else. Something like . . . like a gorgeous, Force-damned monster. And Marr and I knew it couldn’t continue. So we wiped your mind - and we became your handlers.”

“Handlers?” I ask, shocked. Then, it hit me. I step away from him. “You . . . didn’t just ask me to do missions for you out of curiosity. You were- were watching me.”

“We couldn’t allow it to happen again.”

“Allow what? What did I do that caused an Emperor’s demise?”

“Eden, the Force is more than the Light and the Dark. It is a void,” he spits out, and he finally looks up to me, and I’m frightened by the emotion in his eyes. Anger. Frustration. Fear. “What Marr and I saw that day, I hope I never have to witness again. Do you understand? Even Dark Masters delve into the darkness of the Force’s void, but you stepped past that, do you understand? Our manipulations made you step deeper. And that is something we could not allow,” he relaxes, and looks back to the sunset, and his voice goes softer again, less intense than whatever the hell I’d just heard. “It’s your implants that have held you back for so long - or so I hope. That, and the guidance of Marr. He told me he has felt the void at that level, or so he claimed. It is what made him strong. And it was what allowed us to keep a leash on you.”

“A leash?” I asked. He doesn’t respond. I put a hand under my eyes, to my implant. “Then- what do you mean, my implants? I’ve never- there’s never been suppressors in my implants. Are you telling me there’s something else in them?”

“Not suppressors. But they do the things that a Force-user could use intuitively. Except, the implants compensate so you never have to sink deeper. They keep you on the surface of the waves. They keep you from having to search the void.”

“But yet I still- I still weaponize.”

“Just. Just enough that you were powerful enough for our intents. Just powerful enough that we could control you.”

I’m speechless. I can’t even think of what to respond with. My mind’s almost empty with the shock.

Does he mean . . .

They couldn’t control me.

They couldn’t control me, and I can’t even remember why.

I realize, with a start, that the hand hadn’t left my shoulder, even though I’ve stepped well away from Vowrawn. The other hand joins it, and pulling me to his side is Torian. He finally speaks.

“Eden became something you couldn’t control. So you wiped their memory of the incident, made up the Jedi conspiracy, and gave them tools that would keep them from having to become uncontrollable again.”

Vowrawn looks to Torian, now, and nods. “You’re smart, for a Mandalorian.”

“Mandalorians aren’t dumb.”

“I can see that.”

“How many others know.”

“The remainder of the Dark Council, or those who were a part of the Dark Council at the time of Vitiate’s defeat.”

“So who’s left?”

“Darth Mortis. The others have been usurped and killed, or else have fallen victim to old age.Even Mortis, now, lies on his death bed.”

So that was it. Vowrawn’s the last person who can tell me what happened to Vitiate. He’s the last person who knows what happened in that room, aside from Marr - and I know, at the very root of my skull, that he’s never going to tell me what happened. He will never tell me what became of me, or what I did. Not until I remembered for myself, or unless . . .

Unless I tore the information from his throat.

It hits me like a wild bantha, and I lower my face and shut my eyes as tears bud.

I can’t demand anything more from him. I’d have to torture him. And now, for the sake our Alliance, he’s our ally. Untouchable.

Checkmate.

“I’m sorry, Eden.”

I grit my teeth. “Forget it. You’ve won, Vowrawn. Now I understand why you were so eager to make an alliance with us after all. Because you knew if I had anything figured out, I’d be unable to touch you.”

“It’s far more than that, Eden. You truly are a beneficiary, and I stand by what you’ve done. You’re confident now, more than ever before. And you radiate strength. But this is one thing I must take to my grave.”

“And don’t you see that this confidence is a lie? Don’t you understand how much I’ve put aside just to hold this together?” I shrug Torian off and put a hand to my eyes. “Vowrawn, I know you won’t answer anything more, but at least tell me this: am I safe with myself? Can my Alliance even trust me?”

Nothing. Then: “Yes. You are safe, and well in control, from what I’ve seen today. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t hesitate to pull you from your seat of power myself.”

I look up at him and glare. “You would’ve done it over my cold, dead body.”

“I am well aware,” he says with a nod. He reaches out and finally rests both hands on my shoulders. “Understand this, Eden: you are powerful. The Empire forged you into a weapon, and that did not end with the death of Vitiate. You are in control, now, and well above where you began. And only you know where to go from here. Not just as a weapon. But as a leader.”

I shake my head, and look away. “I wish I could believe that.”

For the first time ever, he truly manages to shock me. He pulls me forward, and my whole body tightens as he sudden wraps his arms around me and- hugs me.

“Marr and I never ceased to put faith in you, Lord Eden. That was not blind faith - and you’ll understand in due time. Simply continue to remain. You will see.”

#false confidence #darth vowrawn #vowrawn #torian cadera #eden carter #the commander #the outlander #outlander #forged alliances #my writing #fanfiction #ANSWERSSSSS WHOO #so for those of you in the back: vowrawn was there when vitiate was killed #and he saw something that horrified even him #so the dark council took his word and helped put a ball and chain on eden #now they have the self-control or so he suspects #but something happened in that throne room that he won't repeat #so now it's up to eden #ALSO THIS WAS A GREAT TIME TO ESTABLISH MORE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP #eden wasn't nearly as friendly with darth dandy as they were with marr #but they had a decent relationship #which says a lot #there'll be maybe one more part after this?#i doubt more than that #so this is almost done #and then i have another story i'm very ready to start #because it's about ready #anyways yeah #my brain hurts #blain dablage

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theashemarie · 7 years

Text

Breaking Point (Sonic Forces Fic)

[sonuckles, written about a month ago so some of this is inaccurate given the comic but oh well]

[[Knuckles is trying to be a leader, even when he’s breaking into tiny pieces.]]

The world is falling down around them, Eggman’s face is everywhere, and they’re living underground. Silver’s there, that’s a thing they all just have to deal with, and Amy is itching to fight, barely listens when instructed to “no, wait, we have to wait...” Tails has sequestered himself into the small corner of the bunker he’s calling his lab but it’s really nothing more than a computer balanced on his knees and a hanging lamp with a bare bulb. He mutters to himself there, sometimes about science, sometimes about faith (which has to do with Sonic), sometimes about physics, sometimes about math, sometimes about linguistics; he distracts himself with hard facts because it’s better than the alternative.

And Knuckles? Well, Knuckles is trying to be a leader. The problem, of course, is that he’s not a leader. Sure, he’s hardheaded and good under pressure, but he’s also a loner and he’s... Well, he’s selfish and all he really wants is to shove Chaos back into the Master Emerald one molecule at a time if he has to and get back to the Island. Sure, he wants to help his friends, but if he has to pick between his friends and keeping the Emerald safe and Chaos contained, he has to go with the Emerald if only because Chaos is real threat here, so. So, there’s that.

(There’s also the tiny part of him that’s fractured off and spun into space, but that part’s been missing for a while so he can pretty much ignore it. They all have parts like that, small, Sonic-shaped parts that stab and twist just like the real thing, except these stabs and twists cause internal bleeding that won’t stop no matter what. And that— That’s hard to ignore but they do it.)

The sunsets these days gouge yellow and orange out of the gray, smoggy sky, and it all seems a little fake. There’s a film when they’re above ground, an artifice that Knuckles can’t see through, and it turns the buildings into hulking shapes that loom, trees into reaching, grabbing creatures, and people into crusts, like corn husks, freshly picked, withered under the hot summer sun. It’s hard to go up, but they have to. They have to keep fighting, even if they’re slowly losing, because if they won’t, who will? Eggman can’t win, not after everything. Not after—

“I’m picking something up on the scanner,” one of Tails’s gearheads says. It’s dusk and the sky is on fire. Whether it’s the sunset or something more sinister they can’t tell yet. Smoke clogs lungs, but they’re used to it, and Knuckles has stinging eyes but he refuses to cry. He’s done that already, months ago, when he felt that piece dislodge and shatter, and he won’t again. He’s moved on; he’s coping.

“What is it?” Knuckles asks, gruff, hands on hips, feet spread, a power stance. Tails taught him when they realized no one was taking him seriously.

“Not sure.” That’s Tails, peering at the gearhead’s tablet. “It’s heading right for us.”

“How fast?” Knuckles surveys the terrain. They’re in an open area, what used to be a forest but was obliterated long ago, so there’s nowhere to hide. They’re not completely defenseless though. They have a few of Tails’s shields left, and if he has to, Knuckles can burrow them a hole in a few seconds.

“Fast,” Tails whispers, and his voice sounds cracked, like an ice shelf under too much pressure, too much heat. Knuckles turns and then aborts the move when he sees Tails’s face, stained with confusion, elation, shock, awe. “It’s so fast, Knuckles.”

Knuckles doesn’t get a chance to hope, because there’s a concussive boom, a blur of color, and a kick of dust. A gritty storm of brown that spins around them like a cyclone.

Everything goes quiet. Everyone turns to stone. The color, the boom, it all snaps into focus.

The only thing Knuckles hears is Tails, “Sonic!” and then the sound of a pair of fox feet, running toward a familiar, blue shape.

It’s not that Sonic and Knuckles were together, officially. They flirted a lot, Knuckles spent the night in Sonic’s room a few times, but it was all behind closed doors. In public, they made sure to keep feet between them at all times because they weren’t ready for everyone else to know. It was theirs, for a while, just the two of them, something to nurture and cradle between them at night. Tails probably knew, but no one else did, and it was like a globe of spun glass—perfect from every angle, fragile, but perfect.

When Sonic went missing, that glass slipped from Knuckles’s fingers and shattered.

It was natural for him to assume Sonic’s position as leader, both because they were more similar than either was willing to admit and because there was this heaviness in the way Knuckles approached the world, something they needed when Sonic’s airiness was missing. They would hunker down with the person who knew Sonic, not as well as Tails, but who knew him well enough.

In Knuckles’s mind, it was the least he could do, considering how broken he was. If he could pretend to be Sonic, maybe he wouldn’t be gone completely, could live on from within Knuckles somehow.

It worked, but only barely.

Okay, so Knuckles is fond of Sonic, as loathe as he is to admit it in public, but when he sees him, standing there, fur mangled, quills misshapen and uncut, hugging Tails with the desperation of an isolated, lost man, he almost hates him. Yeah, there’s relief, and his chest lightens, almost as if there had been a hand strangling him this whole time, but there’s also anger and irritation.

Because how dare Sonic do this to them.

Tails is crying, loud sobs that rattle from deep in his chest. They’re so big they seem like they can’t possibly belong to him, but they do, and it shakes Knuckles up even more. Sonic has his head buried in the fur on Tails’s head, fingers grasping at Tails’s shoulders, and Knuckles can see him shaking from here.

And here’s the problem, the problem that Knuckles won’t ever admit: he’s emotional, but it’s always the fiery emotions that he reacts to first because the blue, milkier ones don’t feel as good and they last longer. Anger, for all its danger, at least comes and goes with a quick snap. Sadness, grief, melancholy—those stick around like angry ticks.

Sonic looks up and makes eye contact. No one moves. Then, he grins, lopsided, relieved, Tails still crying in his arms but he looks so damn happy to see Knuckles and—

Knuckles could punch him.

Knuckles punches him. It’s not his finest move, but Sonic approaches with arms held open and he (Knuckles) rears back and wallops him (Sonic) so hard he spins around a few times before he goes down. Everyone else (Tails, Amy, Espio, Vector, Charmy, Silver, Blaze) gasps, but Knuckles’s world is narrowed to Sonic. Sonic as he groans, as he gets onto his hands and knees, as he holds a hand to his lip and it comes back a bit bloodied, a split lip, nothing more because Knuckles took it easy on him. Sonic as he sits back on his knees, smiles again, winces because the lip, and says, “I missed you too.”

And it’s that easy. The fire turns to clouds, puff, gone, replaced instead with an ache that he can’t quite explain. He feels himself falling to his own knees, right in front of Sonic, and he’s not crying but he’s close, so close. Sonic reaches for him and Knuckles falls further, would crawl into Sonic’s ribcage if he could because he’s sick of being alone. His whole life, alone and then finally a few blissful months of notalone and then alone again but aware of it, stronger for it, a leader.

Sonic’s crying, something so strange that it nearly shocks Knuckles out of his own sorrow, and he looks up to see him still smiling, tears drawing small pathways through his filthy fur. “I missed you too,” he repeats.

It’s one of the most earnest, honest things Sonic’s ever said. Knuckles cracks a smile and laughs, finally feels like they have a chance in this war.

And, just to make sure, he socks Sonic in the shoulder again. To prove a point.

#sonic foces #sonuckles #sonic the hedgehog #welcome to ashe's shipping hour #sonic #knuckles #tails #sth #ashe writes #ashe talks #ashe confidence: at max high #forces fic

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imtheswanqueen2010 · 7 years

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Golden Warmth

Summary: Inspired by Panic! At The Disco’s Far Too Young To Die

Dan and Phil have been friends, and peasants, for as longs as they can remember, only having each other to get through life and living in a country strictly governed by a cruel King. On one unfaithful night, Phil's life turns upside down, as everything he'd ever known changed suddenly, and he was forced to run away, but, luckily, he had Dan by his side. Now, with little to no money and having to make it as far away from the village they lived as possible, Phil is trying to understand his feelings and finally be happy, while being aware of the threat that "they" could come after him anytime.

Read it on ao3

Word Count: 16.5k

Warnings: Anxiety, anxiety attacks, physical violence, rape/non-con, suicidal thoughts, suicidal attempt, internalized homophobia and religious conflict

Author’s Notes: after quite some time writing this, it’s finished and i’m so proud!! thanks to my beta @spookysonofabitch and @phandom4ever for their art ALSO GO CHECK OUT THEIR OTHER WORKS THEY’RE PRETTY GOOD. it was fun participating in the pbb and maybe i’ll join it next year again, just hope i don’t make them suffer as much as i did again :))

Everything was golden and it all seemed so perfectly fake; how could such a beautiful life be possible? Well, at least, not for Phil.

All Phil had ever known were monochrome colors, a life full of melancholy, sad expressions, tiredness and never getting anything back for everything he’d ever given; except for the warm shade of brown of his best friend’s eyes. And he was lucky to see those eyes every day for seventeen years; Phil could never get tired of them. Actually, he could never get tired of Dan; the boy was like his personal salvation, making him hate that life a bit less.

“This may be one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever seen,” the boy lying right next to Phil said in a soft tone, a genuine smile on his face that quickly faded. “But even a day like this can’t be perfect.”

The sky was somehow a mix of orange and pink, but its reflection made everything golden. The crops looked as if they were worth a million pounds and so did the lake that lay in front of them. It was so hot and it looked like there might've been a bit of hope for both of them, the way the sun brightened up everyone else’s day was magnificent; a miracle, some may say. And did they need more days of pure happiness, where nothing was bad and everyone was just there, living.

Phil turned to face Dan and he stopped breathing for a moment, Dan looked like a sculpture lying in the sun’s golden light, each one of his features engraved impeccably. When did Dan even get like that?

“Nothing lasts forever, but days when the sky looks like this will always come around, no matter what, Danny,” Phil answered.

“That was beautifully cheesy.” Dan laughed and turned to Phil. “But stop calling me Danny!”

“You’ll have to stop me then, Danny.” Phil laughed, his tongue sticking out. That was a honest bit of happiness, if only they could have that all the time.

But it wasn’t possible to achieve such happiness where and how they lived. They could only pursue that, but, deep down, they knew that just wasn’t realistic. And their time there, lying in the sun and feeling the grass under their back was running out, they should get back soon, they didn’t want to meet the consequences of them staying there ‘till longer than the sunset.

“It’s getting late, we should head back,” Dan said. The boy got up quickly, Phil, however, didn’t want to move from there.

He was so comfortable there, lying as if time didn’t exist and he could appreciate everything that surrounded him. Now going back to the village and trying to survive wasn’t an option, Phil could easily give all of that up, he’d already accepted the fact that nothing would ever change in his life, that it would always be the same as ever; he’d find a wife, have a couple of kids and that would be it.

Then why couldn’t he just give up?

“Hey, Philly, stop daydreaming, let’s go,” Dan whispered softly, as if any word would cause Phil any harm, because, really, they would.

Dan helped Phil get to his feet and they started making their way home in utter silence, but it wasn’t that kind of awkward silence, because words weren’t necessary for Dan to comfort Phil when his friend was sad, which happened more often than not.

“Do you ever think about joining the rebellion?” Dan broke the silence.

Phil shuddered; he didn’t want to dwell on that in that moment. “Yeah, but I don’t think I would.” He looked at his friend and was met with a confused look. “Don’t get me wrong, I hate the monarchy too, but I don’t think I’d be the most suited person to join them, I can’t do anything.”

“Yes, you can, Phil. You’re smart, but you’re just too pure to join them, that’s the truth,” Dan commented and they both chuckled.

“What about you? Planning on joining them?” Sadness was so obvious in Phil’s tone; he thought about how he was be so easy to read.

“Probably. You see, we both know there’s not much for anyone who lives in the village, we’ll have the bad same lives as everyone, or even worse. And I don’t think there’s any sense in doing that, but you already know that.”

Phil did know about that. Dan was constantly talking about how he needed to do something important with his life, Dan needed to do something that said he was here and that he left his mark on the world. Phil didn’t think like that because he knew that was unrealistic, how could someone like them do such a thing? But his friend didn’t think life could make any sense without a meaning.

“And I think if I join the rebellion I’ll have a purpose in my life, something to fight and live for.” Dan paused and thought for a second. “Even if a die at some point, I’d be dying so that people can have a better life in the future, and that’s what matters right?”

Dan looked away and Phil didn’t answer, did he really need to though? Well, he didn’t even know how he could even respond to that.

“But you wouldn’t be there,” Dan said.

“You'd meet new people, Dan, you know that, right?”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t be you.” Dan gently elbowed Phil. “Who would listen to my deep thoughts at night? Or keep me company?”

“Fair point.” Phil chuckled.

They were getting closer to the village and the sky was almost pitch black, but they knew the path to there, after all, they had gone to that corn field since they found it ten years ago, so that wouldn’t be a issue.

“When does your mom get back?” Dan asked. That was a touchy subject, but he wanted to check on Phil.

“She said she'd get back next week, but she wasn't entirely sure.”

“I see,” Dan said, almost a whispering. “Have you ever wondered where she goes? Or have you at least tried to ask her?”

“C’mon, Dan, of course I have, but she never told me anything and always got mad when I questioned her.” Phil looked behind him, as if he was waiting for his mother to appear from behind a tree. “I remember this particular day, I think I was six and I tried to follow her to wherever she goes. I ended up walking in circles and then I was back home ‘cause she realized I was following her. I got lectured that day.”

Dan laughed briefly and fixed his fringe. “What do you think she does? Got any theories on that?”

“I’ve speculated lots of things before, but, honestly, as long as she is okay and makes some money, I don’t care about what she does.” That wasn’t exactly the truth, because Phil cared a lot about what she did for a living, but she had guaranteed him that she was not doing something wrong and that she was not getting hurt.

“Great.” Dan scoffed at Phil and the boy did nothing but stick his tongue out. “Um, have your heard of a girl from the village, Michelle?”

“I have, why?”

“Heard that she’s into you.” Dan’s tone sounded sort of strange, but Phil couldn’t quite read it, so he just ignored it.

“And?” Phil chuckled and he realized he was almost at home, oh no. “I’ve talked to her before, but she’s just… I don’t even know, I just don’t like her.”

“C’mon, she’s not that bad.”

“Are you trying to make me into her?” Phil amused Dan. They both laughed out loud and they were near Phil’s place. “So, this is it.”

“D'you think we meet again tomorrow?” Dan asked, but, this time, Phil sensed some kind of desperation in his voice.

“I don’t think so; I’ve got things to do, sorry.”

“Okay then, bye.”

Dan came closer and hugged Phil and time stopped for a couple of seconds. Phil wished he could just stay there forever, feeling all that warmth and affection that he always craved on every cold night, when he was all by himself in the dark. Dan was his favorite person, not that Phil knew lots of people, but, even if he did, Dan would still have been the only person he would ever need.

Phil watched as Dan made his way to his house, his silhouette fading in with the darkness around them; there were no lamps around the village and only the light from candles inside the houses lit the street. When his friend was already gone, and probably home already, Phil knew that he was all by himself now, and the time had come, a look in the mirror confirmed that: he looked worse than he’d ever been; his dark fringe was all messy and the bags under his eyes were so deep, as if he hadn’t slept for ages, which was true, he was so exhausted but he couldn’t bring himself to sleep.

The dark-haired boy felt drained, physically and emotionally drained, how could he keep on living like that? Was that even living? His thoughts were interrupted as soon as he walked into his room and saw the noose hanging on the ceiling and a chair opposite it. He hadn’t killed himself last night, but how long would Phil last? Maybe a day, or a week, months or years perhaps, but, right now, he couldn’t take it anymore.

Phil stood on the chair and put his neck around the noose. He just needed to jump and everything would be over. Nothing would bother him and he wouldn't feel any emotion ever again. Phil could do it and it was the right thing, right? It would be quick and then it would all be over. His right foot was hanging in the air now, yeah, he was going to do it.

What about all the questions he would never know the answer to? That didn’t matter. And all the little things he would never be able to interact with again? That also didn’t matter. Phil stepped a bit forward and the noose was getting tighter around his neck.

But then he made a silly mistake: he thought about his mother and Dan, the only ones who could ever love him. What would happen to them after Phil died? What would be the consequences of him taking his life? Was it worth to take his own life just to see two other people he loved taking theirs? And, even if they lived after Phil’s death, nothing would ever be the same and it would be his fault. Just the thought of his mother or Dan finding him, dead and hanging in the air, sent chills up his spine.

“’For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’,” Phil mumbled as he took his neck off the noose and sit on the chair, feeling numb and staring at the noose. “Pointless devotion.”

He spent some time sitting there, minutes, or maybe even an hour, staring at that thing that could’ve been the death of him, and wishing that some kind of miracle would happen and turn things around. But Phil was nothing but a simple peasant, who was doomed to a live an annoyingly bad and normal life. So he did the only thing he knew exactly how to do: he went to bed and, for the first time in weeks, but with dry tears in his eyes, Phil slept.

The sun was bright up in the sky, illuminating everything and waking up everyone. Unfortunately, that single night of sleep wasn’t enough to make Phil feel refreshed and he needed more sleep, or, at least, a day in bed doing nothing at all; but he had things to do, important things, and he couldn’t let down one of the people that was one of the reasons he didn’t kill himself last night.

When Phil finally mustered his courage to get out of bed, he knew he’d lost the opportunity to start his day early and then he’d be able to get home sooner, and now he felt like an even bigger fail for doing that. There’s really no hope for me, thought Phil, though things might just keep getting worse. He was also aware that there were people living in worse conditions than him, which made him feel even worse.

He started his day eating way less than yesterday; Phil didn’t want to eat anyway, but he still needed to eat to maintain his body, otherwise he would collapse soon after finishing doing everything he was going to do. Then he made his way to the crops behind his house, and, thankfully, the crops were ripe, even though that meant he’d have to spend hours harvesting them, but that would make some money, maybe even more than enough.

Finally, after almost four hours, he was done harvesting and now he had to go to the village center, where everyone sold their goods and usually met up for an event, and, as no one could never get near the palace, they’d also usually announce something in the center, where all peasants could do no harm to the nobility or the royal family. Phil gathered all fruits and vegetables and started walking towards the center, it was only a ten-minute walk from his house to there, but he already felt worn out so he was slightly slowing his pace.

The center wasn’t a beautiful place, but it was the most organized place in the village, of course. It was basically a big circle, and it worked almost like a fair, there were people who sold things and people who bought things; the richest people in the village used to live nearby. There were some royal guards just to make sure no one would ever try starting a revolution right there or something, or, at least, that’s what they were supposed to do, but they always wound up picking on someone or maybe even beating them up just for fun. Phil tried to avoid them, but it was impossible: he had to go through them to get to the center.

“Look up; I need to see who you are,” Nathaniel, one of the guards, said. Phil looked at him and his hands began to shake, but he had to try and stay calm, sell the things, and go home. Easy. “Thought you were dead, Lester. It’s been ages since you’ve last come here.” Nathaniel smirked as he talked to Phil, and the boy flinched. And the guard was right; when Phil’s mom was around he would do anything, sometimes even overwork himself, to escape going there and seeing some specific guards.

Nathaniel was tall, even taller than Phil, he had a dark skin, a beautiful shade that looked like the sky late at night and his hair was black and very curly. Nathaniel, as well as all the other guards, was a handsome man, and he seemed so polite and righteous, but he was everything but that. Although everyone knew what the guards did to some specific people, they would never say a thing out loud, too afraid of what could happen to them.

“Yeah.” That was all Phil was able to say.

“Go on then.” Phil stepped forward but then Nathaniel grabbed his arm. “Will we have some fun later? We’ll let you decide what you want,” He whispered.

Phil quickly unleashed himself from the guard and ran to a corner far away from the guards. He leaned against the wall and tried to control his breathing, but he didn’t accomplish that. The dark-haired boy felt the tears in the corners of his eyes and just completely sat on the ground, sobbing all alone. What was it that got him like that? And why did he have to break down all the time? Phil was just so weak and could barely keep it together.

After a while, Phil was able to convince himself that it was okay, he was okay and he just had one thing to do; so he grabbed his bag, which contained all the fruits and vegetables, and walked towards a table.

“Hey, Will,” Phil said, trying his best to sound like he hadn’t just cried, but it was inevitable. He was sure the look on his face couldn’t hide his red nose and puffy eyes.

Will was a nice old chap, a simple merchandiser and he paid very well, or perhaps he just liked Phil. The boy had known William since he was little, back when he’d come to the center with his mother once in a while, but then, after a certain day, it began and Phil stopped going there. Will was like a grandfather for Phil, sometimes he’d go to the Lester’s house and just hang out with Phil, teaching him things and playing games with him, as if the dark-haired boy was the only kind of family he’d ever had.

“How’ve you been, kid?” Will answered. He looked at Phil and his expression changed quickly. “To avoid seeing them again when you go back home, go through the woods, behind Ransom’s house. It’ll take longer, but you will be fine, okay, sea boy?”

It was impossible for Phil to not smile at the nickname. Will started calling Phil “sea boy” when the old man told Phil about the ocean, all the animals and plants that inhabited it and how beautiful it looked when the sun reflected on it on summer. Then, Phil just got even more curious about the ocean and always wanted William to take him and his mother to the beach. He was so interested in the sea that he found the corn field with Dan, where there was a lake that the two boys loved.

“Here you go,” Will handed Phil the money. “Now, be careful and get home safe.”

“Alright, thanks for everything.” Phil smiled.

Phil counted the money and thankfully, it was more than enough, actually, even more than more than enough; he’d have to thank Will for that later, but now he was focused on getting back home and then just lying in bed contemplating his lack of strength and will to live. The boy walked over to Ransom’s house, which was located almost on the end of the village and belonged to a man who hadn’t left his house in years, some people said that he’d died, but no one never confirmed it; and then he found a path behind the probably dead man’s house. It looked like no one had gone through there in years, the grass was very tall and Phil couldn’t see much far ahead because the path curved and then all he saw were trees, but he began to walk anyway.

He knew he would get home late and even more tired than he already was, which was bad, but then he’d have basically nothing to do on the next day and would be able to spend the whole day in bed, or maybe hang out with Dan and forget, for some hours, that he had to exist and be a functional member of society, instead of just a boy joking around and having fun with his friend. If only I could spend the rest of my life with Dan, Phil thought, no, no, no; that’s weird and not possible. Then Phil remembered another problem: if he didn’t off himself, where would he find someone to be with him? Could he do that? He could ask Michelle to hang out with him another time and give her a chance, but would he be happy by her side? Well, that was a question for another time because right now the dark-haired boy just wanted to go to bed; and, thankfully, he was almost home.

It was such a tiring day, but the sky looked so beautiful that it made Phil smile, and he wished he could see what’s it like up there, maybe travel to the stars; and, if they were right, he could ask Him why, just a simple “why”. But, for now, he was grateful to know that even if there wasn’t a reason to everything, nature would always remain as the most fascinating aspect about living on Earth. The sea, the sky, the plants, the animals, human beings; all part of nature, all stunning in their own way. Perhaps not everything had to have a meaning, just like his life.

The key to his house fell of Phil’s pocket and he collected it quickly, while sighing, and wanting to lay down anywhere, even in the street, he wouldn’t mind it. But there he was: standing in front of his home, still alive, breathing and somehow, kind of sane. Today he wouldn’t need the noose, not now when it was permanently wrapped around his neck, making him feel sick and half-dead. Phil unlocked the door and, at the sight of black hair, he was taken back. She was sitting on the floor, looking like a mess and sobbing out loud. The dark- haired tripped and almost fell down, but she caught him.

“Philip! I thought you were dea—” She held his shoulder tightly, but then pulled him into a hug. “I looked for you all over the village and when I saw that noose in your room I just—I—I assumed you had—”

She couldn’t even speak, and Phil began to cry as well, if only his mother knew what happened last night and why he didn’t do it. But Mrs. Lester looked so hysterical, she seemed like she wanted to say something important and had to do it quickly. The woman interrupted her crying and controlled her breathing, and then she looked at Phil and the boy saw bravery in her eyes; he knew that same look from before, every time his mother came back home after days of being away, she had that same look.

Phil thought she was going to argue with him and lecture him, but she pulled him into a hug and began to cry again, although that wasn’t the same honest crying he heard before. In a quick movement, she pulled his head to her shoulder and began to whisper in his ear.

“Now, child, I need you to listen to me and pay attention to what I’m gonna tell you, it’s very important.” Phil could feel how tense she was. “I’ve planned something revolutionary and I’m about to do something extremely dangerous. I need you to go, run far, far away from here; and then live. But, if they ever find you, be careful and do what you think it’s the right thing; I’ll always be proud of you, no matter what, okay?” Mrs. Lester really wasn’t crying, but her voice broke a little at the end.

“Mom, I—” Phil pulled away from her, but then she pulled him back into that hug.

“I’m not finished.” The boy didn’t need to look at her to know that she had that stern look on her face. “When I pull away, I’ll hand you some money and you’ll go away; find a path that no one knows and go through there, no one can know about this; now you understand why I’m whispering.

“I’ll probably never see you again, Philly, and I’m so, so sorry, but you need to know that I’m doing this for you, and for the future. I hope you can understand and forgive me one day, I never wanted things to turn out like this, but it’s necessary. I love you, my boy.”

She pulled away, handed Phil some money and began to caress Phil’s cheek. The dark-haired boy was crying, but his mother wasn’t, Mrs. Lester wouldn’t breakdown now that her son was about to go away forever. If that was it, the last moment they’d share together, she wanted Phil to remember her as a strong woman, who did everything for her son, which was true. And, even if he never discovered all the reasons for her behavior and why she was doing what she was doing, Mrs. Lester would be okay with that, because if Phil finding out about his life meant that bad things could eventually happen to him, her boy could be “blind” forever.

“I know you want out,” she spoke very softly, but every word cut deeply into Phil’s heart, he wouldn’t forget a thing about their last moment. “But I also know you want someone else more than you want out, so go for it, Phil; achieve happiness. What would be the point of me doing anything if you weren’t going to end up happy?”

Phil didn’t quite understand what she meant, but, deep inside, he knew and was happy that his mother approved and was supportive of it, but it just wasn’t possible, right? It couldn’t happen and there was no way it could ever work. But he longed for it, and, even though it wasn’t going to fix every problem he had in his life, it would mean his happiness, which was more than he deserved, but exactly what would give him have a meaning; a reason to wake up every day think that he wouldn’t go anywhere because of that special one.

“I think I should get going,” Phil said, his voice sounding so low he wasn’t even sure she’d heard him.

“It’s about time.” Mrs. Lester nodded and let go of him, but only after wiping away his last tear.

The boy turned to the door and went out, but this time, it was forever. He was never going to see that village, his house or his mom again, but that hadn’t settled in his mind yet. But, now, he had something more important to worry about: where would he go? No one could find him and he had to go as far away as he could go. Phil quickly remembered the way to the corn field, and how no one besides Dan and him knew about it and how it could lead to anywhere, really, he lived in the countryside, so the village boy could end up going to a big city.

And through his secret path he went, trying not to freak out, otherwise he wouldn’t even make it too far.

But, thankfully, it didn’t take long to get there, seeing as now Phil was running in the corn field; adrenaline forcing him to go further and further and making him feel more alive than he’d ever feel; Phil felt every heartbeat, every tired muscle of his body aching, but he had to run. Did he even have another choice? And, also the boy didn’t want to let his mother down; it would actually make him feel worse emotionally than he already felt. Phil couldn’t quite focus on his surroundings and it was so dark that the boy nearly fell three times, he couldn’t distinguish anything out there, and he just kept running anyway.

As he ran, the dark-haired boy noticed a silhouette floating on the lake, which scared him, obviously, after all, who could be there, knowing that only Dan and Phil knew about that place, on the lake, at night, after the village curfew? It could be anyone, and his mom warned him about “them”, so, reasonably, he should keep running; ignore whoever was there and keep moving, or he’d have to deal with whatever were the consequences of checking who that was.

But Phil’s curiosity overcame his fear.

The boy walked over to the body and he realized they weren’t floating, in fact, they were drowning. And Phil, being the good person he was, wanted to help, regardless of who that person was; after all, they might also help him, and did he need someone’s guidance right now.

Now, he wasn’t the strongest person, but maybe Phil could pull them out of the lake, and they were on the water, so the body was supposed to be lighter. It would be easy and wouldn’t take too long, or maybe Phil wasn’t thinking straight and that was the worst thing he could do at that moment. But when did he ever think straight? The boy didn’t even think he was straight, for God’s sake.

There was no light nearby and Phil didn’t quite know where he could and couldn’t step, and any misstep would cause him to probably drown as well, which was something he couldn’t afford. So he peered over the person to check how tall they were and try to calculate how far he would have to pull them, but then he noticed their body, their curly hair, and he recognized their outfit: Phil gave Dan that shirt a few years ago, the most special and the only gift Phil had ever given someone.

The dark-haired boy stopped breathing for a moment. That couldn’t be Dan because then, if that was really Dan, Phil would…

Phil was officially freaking out, that was Dan. His mind kept going “it’s Dan, it’s Dan, it’s Dan, it’s Dan, help him! You have to get him out of there, otherwise he’ll… ”, but the boy was paralyzed, he didn’t want to believe, he didn’t want that to be real; Dan couldn’t die, he was the only thing Phil could hold on to, right now more than ever; and that was the truth. The sound of Dan coughing made the dark-haired boy come to his senses and realized there was still a chance to save his friend before he choked to death.

He rushed to Dan and tried to pull him, but it didn’t work, instead of being lighter, the boy drowning felt so heavy; so Phil decided to try again, but this time he’d pull even harder. Phil was willing to rip his arms in half if it meant he would save Dan.

This time Phil realized there was something pulling Dan down, the other boy had his foot wrapped around something that kept him underwater, and he wouldn’t get out of there if he wasn’t released from whatever was trapping him. The dark-haired boy didn’t even think, he just acted and jumped into the water; despite of how dark it was, how cold the water was, and how tired and weary he felt. Phil traced down the side of Dan’s body until he reached his foot, but he needed to breathe. He went up and then down into the water again.

It felt surreal, being underwater. Life was just so easy when there wasn’t any noise around, when everything could end as fast as it had begun. Maybe joining Dan wouldn’t be a bad idea.

No, it was a bad idea and he couldn’t let his friend die. There was so much at stake; he wasn’t going to do it. Instead, he dipped and untied the rope around Dan’s foot, which was pretty tight around it, freed him and finally emerged with Dan, and, thankfully, he was still breathing, somehow.

“What on Earth were you doing Dan?!” Phil said under his breath.

“Oh, I was just trying to become a fish,” Dan answered, breathless, if Phil didn’t know Dan for such a long time, he wouldn’t be able to make out any word Dan said. “For fuck’s sake, Phil, what did it even look like? I was trying to kill myself, obviously.” At that point, Dan was basically clinging onto Phil, as the dark-haired boy had his arms hanging around Dan’s shoulder, which had his arm around Phil’s waist. “But what the hell are you doing here?”

Phil tensed and Dan stopped walking. Could he know about what Phil’s mother told him? Should Phil even tell Dan about it? Was that even a good time to tell him? Probably not, Phil thought, and decided to change the subject. “Are you okay? What happened? Why were you drowning yourself, but, like, on purpose?”

Dan rolled his eyes, but then his face changed and he looked away from Phil. “I—I—I don’t know how to explain it, Phil… I can’t put it into words, I—” He paused and tried to control his breathing, but it didn’t work and he was almost hyperventilating. “I don’t feel real and there’s no meaning in my life, there's nothing. So why waste years and years wondering and questioning, knowing I’ll never find an answer and feel empty forever, if I can just put an end to it all? Feeling insane—”

Dan was crying and Phil just felt his heart compressing, emotional pain almost turning into physical pain. And the worse part of that was the he didn’t even know exactly how to process that; no thoughts, no sentences, no words, he couldn’t explain the pain, he just felt it, and that was the worst part.

Phil tried to hug Dan, but the boy backed off and finally faced Phil, but he just looked incredulous, as he’d described. “You haven’t answered me.”

“Sorry?”

“What are you doing here?

Phil tensed. Couldn’t they talk about that later? Did they really have to do that now, after everything that they’d been through on that day? “Oh, nothing. Just wondering around, you know.”

“You’ve always been a terrible liar. And you’re all tense now that I questioned you.” Dan had a point and he was not going to change his mind, the boy wanted answers. “Why are you here, late at night, and just happened to find me?”

“I was following you.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“How’d you know?”

“Not only was I checking to see if there was someone behind me, but I’ve also been here for a long time, and no one came to help. I know you would’ve helped as soon as you saw me.”

Phil sighed, there was no way he could convince Dan otherwise. But he didn’t want to put Dan in danger, more endangered than he already was, and, to be quite honest, his mind was in overdrive, so Phil would try to make him go away. “Go home, Dan. Stay safe and don’t do anything that might hurt you.”

“Oh, yeah, right, as if. You saw me nearly drowning and you think I’m just gonna go home and keep living like nothing happened?” Dan shouted and scoffed. He pulled away from Phil, pulled the other’s hand to his and started walking. “I’m going with you to wherever you’re headed.”

“No! Dan, please!” Phil stopped and was facing Dan, his hands holding the boy’s shoulders. “You can’t go with me; I don’t even know where I’m going. I don’t even know what I’m gonna do or if I’m gonna survive…” Phil really should’ve thought about lots of things before he just rushed out of his house, but now was not the time to think.

“Okay, but I know for sure that if you don’t let me go with you I’m going back to that goddamn lake and fucking kill myself.” Dan shouted, sounding high pitched at the end. “It almost seems like you don’t even care about me, Phil.”

“Listen to me, Dan.” Phil placed his hands on Dan’s cheeks and looked him in the eyes. “I do care about you, seriously; I care so much about you that I didn’t off my—” He wouldn’t tell Dan. Maybe if things were different, he would tell him, or, perhaps, that night wouldn’t have even happened. “So do that for me, go home for me, live another day for me; don’t give up for me. I’ll be back tomorrow, don’t worry. You’ve still got—”

“I can’t, Phil! Don’t you understand?! I can’t do that, even if it’s for you.” Even though the boy was enraged, he didn’t move an inch. “And don’t you dare lie straight to my face like that, I know you’re not coming back!”

“Okay, you’re coming with me then,” Phil said, finally giving in to Dan; after all, he couldn’t let the boy all alone after he’d witnessed.

They started walking towards north, where Phil thought whoever “they” were wouldn’t be able to find them, and, if they ever did, the boys would be nearing the frontier of what one day was “Scotland”. Phil was walking too fast and Dan just couldn’t keep up, but he was anxious that someone would just come out of nowhere and they would be the people his mother warned him about. The two of them walked in silence, but they kept looking at each other, clearly worried about how the other was doing; considering that both of them actually had no idea of what happened to one another.

“Will you tell me what’s going on now?” Dan asked. “And, please, slow down, this is too much exercise for me. It’s not like we’re running away from something, or is it?”

“Um, a—Actually, yes, it is.” Phil hesitated. “We’re running from ‘them’. And, no, I don’t know who they are, or what do I have to do from now on, but I thought that it’d be better if we went to the north, for now.”

“Wait, are you really running away from some people, with no plan, like this?” Dan stopped Phil, who was getting really annoyed at that point.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Man, I should’ve really killed myself,” Dan mumbled.

“Hey, don’t say that!” Phil tried not to imagine if he got to the lake too late and Dan was already dead, but that thought alone was enough to make him shiver. “Also, you were the one who wanted to come with me, I told you to go home and stay safe, I never wanted you to get involved in any of this.”

“Phil!” Dan cried. “This is reckless! And you’re not telling me the full story, so you better tell me everything right now or I’ll drag you back to that village with me.”

Phil looked at both sides, just to make sure there was no one other than them there, and told Dan about what happened previously.

“But do you believe her?” Dan asked.

“Of course I do, she’s my mom, Dan.” Phil was astonished. “Also, how couldn’t I believe her after everything she’s done for me?”

“I don’t know, but that sounds like some crazy made-up story. Are you sure she hasn’t lost it?”

“Dan!”

“Sorry, it’s just that… That’s unbelievable, you know.”

“Yeah, but we can’t just go back now; both of us can’t, you know that.”

“C’mon, we can totally go back there and pretend that we’re still obnoxiously happy instead of this,” Dan responded, and turned sad at that exact moment. “Believe it or not, I’d rather keep running away from that place forever, never knowing where to stop, than going back.”

Phil was about to say something when he tripped over his feet and nearly fell with his face flat on the ground, but somehow Dan was quick and caught Phil by the hand.

“You OK there? You’ve been tripping over your own feet your whole life, I swear to God!” Dan chuckled. “If you keep tripping over everything one day I might not be there to catch you.”

“Good thing I won’t let you go anywhere but my side,” Phil said in a rush. “I mean, someone’s gotta be there to save me, yeah?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Dan intertwined their fingers, which made Phil’s heart suddenly do that flippy-over thing, but he ignored it, and they kept going north; two boys walking to somewhere, without any plan, carrying heavy pasts on their backs, and trying to hold on to last trace of hope for a better life, maybe. A life where they weren’t alone, or, at the very least, one where they had a meaning.

The months flew by, seasons changed, and Dan and Phil made their way up north. Somehow they were able to get there, but they thought they weren’t going to make it because they didn’t have much money to spend, they were on their own for basically the first time in their lives, and they hadn’t had much experiences, so it was all new. As expected, they faced some casualties, like someone stealing some money from them, all the nights they had to sleep on the ground because there wasn’t a campsite, having to eat even less food than they usually ate because they were running short of money. But, in the end, they made it; they settled in a village northwest, almost at the frontier. It was little, there weren’t many people living there, but, luckily, they were able to get jobs and even buy a house for themselves. Of course, it took them a lot of time to achieve all of that and get to the north, and they were still struggling.

But Phil knew that things had gotten better when he left the house feeling sort of free, a new sensation he had never felt before, and it felt so good; or when he caught Dan smiling for no reason, seeming more chilled and, perhaps, happier. The two of them worked at different places, at different hours, and were almost constantly working, but they always found some time to be together, they needed each other’s presence, it was reassuring, for some reason. They’d go to different places around the village and spent all their time alone, which they both would usually spend recharging, actually together. Dan and Phil were closer than they’d ever been, and that felt great.

In one of those nights they found a place that wasn’t too far away from the village, but it was distant enough so that they’d could find some peace, like the corn field they found years ago in the old village; they kept their tradition. They were both tired, but going there for maybe an hour or less was worth it because it was just so special to them. The two boys were lying side by side on the top of some hill, looking at the sky.

“Who’ve thought that eight years later we’d still be doing this?” Phil asked.

“Wow, Phil, that’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard.” Dan chuckled.

“It’s supposed to be cheesy!” Phil said as they both laughed.

They fell into comfortable silence for a while and Phil was already lost in thoughts. He felt confused, something seemed kind of off, or maybe it was just him being weird again.

“I still can’t believe that we made it,” Dan whispered and scooted a bit closer Phil.

Phil didn’t say anything, after all, they did make it, but he felt like something was missing; it just wasn’t enough. But what was missing? When would he feel whole? When would he feel like that life was enough? The boy had escaped from the place he dreaded, he had a steady job, a house, and was living with his best friend, someone who knew him better than himself. And now maybe there wasn’t enough air in the world because Phil felt like he was suffocating, he felt trapped and he needed to go away from there. He was freaking out and sure that anyone who had a quick glance at him would know that.

“Phil?” Dan said, he hadn’t looked at Phil yet. But then, when he turned to the boy lying next to him, Phil was silent, but he was shaking so much. “Are you okay? What happened? I—”

“Get me out of here, please,” Phil struggled, but managed to say.

Dan swiftly pulled Phil by the hand and they went to their house. They walked in silence, but Dan was constantly looking at Phil, searching for a sign of what was happening. Phil, on the other hand, was trying to avoid Dan’s stares at all costs, he just wanted to fade away; but he had to calm down, he didn’t want to make Dan worried, that was unnecessary, and he was too polite to say anything about his state. It took only ten minutes to get home, but for the dark-haired boy, it felt like an eternity.

“Here, sit,” Dan said, “I’ll get you some water.”

And Phil was left alone for two minutes while Dan went to the kitchen. He had to calm down, breathe and move on before Dan got back, but it was hard, it all came flooding back and he was so afraid; Phil hadn’t forgotten about what his mother told him about “them” and he lived thinking that they’d eventually come someday and all this happiness, this limited slice of heaven, would end. What scared him the most perhaps was what could happen to Dan, after all, he was doing so well and that made him feel so good; Phil couldn’t let anyone take that smile off Dan’s face. When the boy realized, his friend was back with a cup of water.

“Phil, talk to me, what happened?” Dan asked.

“I’m okay, don’t worry,” Phil answered. “I just felt a bit light-headed for a moment, but it’s fine now.”

Phil smiled weakly and he knew that Dan wasn’t convinced, but he saw the tension on Dan’s shoulders drop along with a sigh and that was enough for him.

“Sorry, I was just so worried about you,” Dan said, sitting next to Phil on their couch. “But is everything really fine now?”

“Yes, Dan, and I’m sorry I worried you.” Phil gave Dan’s shoulder a little squeeze. “But were you that worried about losing me? That’s adorable,” Phil teased.

“You know what? I’m never worrying about you ever again.” Dan elbowed Phil and they both started laughing.

“Well, if I had died you could’ve sold me for some money.”

“C’mon, you’re cute I could’ve made lots of money by selling you,” Dan said and immediately regretted it. “Wait, no, that’s not what I meant, I—”

“Then I’d make even more money if you died,” Phil said and winked. He got up and left the room: a playful smile on his face and a different feeling, something new, bright, colorful, and, honestly, terrifying.

A few days after Phil’s panic attack and Dan’s not-so-subtle slip, there was a change in the atmosphere, something was definitely different between them, and Phil was enjoying that; he even thought that he’d finally get what he always wanted. He actually didn’t quite know what that meant, that sudden slight difference in the way Dan would talk to him, because Dan expressed himself better with words, and the change in his own behaviour towards Dan, seeing as Phil usually expressed his feelings with gestures rather than words, because words were meaningless and people could fake them, but you couldn’t fake an act of love; he knew that. Phil learned that from his mother’s sacrifices.

But, for some weird reason, Phil didn’t think Dan was faking anything, or maybe he just wanted it all to be true.

That was always on the back of his mind, but tonight he had a chance to forget about that for a while, all of the people who lived in the village were gathered at the biggest house there to get to know and bond with each other. The hostess was a nice woman and everyone that lived among them seemed nice, so Dan and Phil decide to go to a “social event” for a change, at least this one time, Phil had insisted. The house was almost not big enough for everyone and there were about forty five people, which made both of them feel a little bit anxious, but they knew they were going to be fine having each other by their sides.

“Hey, so I know that we came here to meet everyone and be sociable, but can we just grab some food and sit in the corner?” Dan asked and Phil just chuckled and nodded, that was so Dan.

So he decided to go along with Dan’s new plan for the night and went to grab some drinks and something to eat. He saw people meeting each other in a corner and then some people listening to one guy playing the guitar while the other sang a nice song in the other end of the room. No one seemed to be paying attention to Phil, which made him relax a bit. He turned around and saw Dan sat down on a sofa staring at him, and, when he noticed Phil was looking at him, Dan chuckled and looked down and Phil forgot how to breathe for a moment. He started walking towards Dan, but then suddenly a girl came out of nowhere, even though he was sure there was no one near him, but he must’ve been distracted. They almost bumped into each other and Phil lost his balance.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, let me hold that for you,” the girl said and grabbed one of the plates Phil was holding. “Are you okay?” She placed a hand on Phil’s shoulder to stabilize him.

“Yeah, I guess,” Phil said. “But you don’t have to apologize, I should be paying more attention, I didn’t even saw you.” She handed Phil the plate. “And thank you for getting this.”

“No problem, but um—I actually wanted to talk to you, I’m Valorie.”

“I’m Phil.” He held out a hand to greet her, but she gave him a peck on the cheek, and Phil just stood there awkwardly.

“Sorry! We greet people like that where I’m from, it’s a habit I’m trying to kill.”

“No, that’s okay.” Phil chuckled, trying to make things less embarrassing, but he was sure it didn’t work, even though the girl didn’t look sorry at all.

“So,” Valorie started talking again, and she somehow made every word sound so exciting; she radiated energy. “I know that you’re quite new in the village so, you know, if you need help with something, or just want to talk sometime, you can stop by anytime! I live in that little yellow house near the lake, it’s impossible to miss it.”

“Um, yeah, okay, alright.” He made some effort to keep it cool, and seem relaxed, but Phil just wanted to get as far away from here, he wasn’t good at this social thing. “Thanks, Valorie.”

“You can call me Val.” Val winked and then went away.

Phil just stood there for a few second trying to process what had happened. Did she flirt with him or was he reading too much into that conversation? Either way, she seemed nice and he was glad he met someone, after all, that was why he decided to come to this event in the first place, but that still left a sour little taste in his mouth, something about interaction didn’t feel right. Phil decided to ignore whatever that feeling was, he could overthink later, right now there was just one person on his mind, and that was becoming quite a habit, one that scared him, but it was also comforting in its own way, exactly like the one who crossed his mind.

His eyes scanned the room for Dan and found the boy in the same place, but he didn’t have the same look on his face anymore, he had a different glow about him, something rather dark, which confused Phil. He knew Dan didn’t like this kind of things, he thought this was just an act, it didn’t actually mean anything and it was just something made up for appearance, but people were having fun, and the boy said he would too, but only if Phil was there with him; keeping him company, making him laugh and feel secure, the two of them on their little bubble, as it always had been.

But something had changed and Phil knew Dan wouldn’t be able to enjoy this night anymore.

Dan noticed Phil’s stare and walked over to him. “Can we go home? I don’t really feel like staying here anymore.”

“Okay. Let’s at least say goodbye to the hostess and—”

“You can do that, I’ll wait outside.” Dan spun and left, but he also left Phil there, who felt like he had missed something. Seeing Dan like that just made it all worse.

Phil said goodbye to the hostess, Valorie, and even to some people he was briefly introduced to, then went outside to find Dan. He was leaning against the wall, perhaps looking at the moon, but probably lost in his own thoughts, as Phil could almost see the engines twisting on Dan’s mind. He found himself trying to interpret each and every one of Dan’s features: the way his dark hair was curled, and how Phil always thought it would look even better if it was black like his; the way black suited him, and how Phil liked teasing Dan about just wearing black, even though he secretly loved that; the way his figure looked like it was perfectly sculpt, and how Phil couldn’t take his eyes away from each and every inch of Dan; and last, but also probably the thing he loved the most, the warm shade of brown of his eyes, and how Phil thought they always reminded him of home.

It was funny how home was directly connected to Dan, maybe it was all because of him. Phil could try and make some sense out of that, but then Dan finally realized he was standing there and offered Phil something that appeared a “sad smile”. Reason immediately slipped out of Phil’s hands, being replaced by something he couldn’t yet comprehend.

“Let’s go, I can’t stand all this socialization around me anymore,” Dan said and that sounded so shallow.

They walked in complete silence, but this had been strange, it wasn’t the usual comfortable silence, or the occasional glances exchanged between them, or the inside jokes they would make to make each other laugh and forget they were outside and doing sort of an exercise, like walking. Phil knew Dan was tense, he could almost feel the suspense in the air; he didn’t like whatever the hell that meant. But, unfortunately, the dark-haired boy couldn’t bring himself to ask Dan what was that all about. Phil was overthinking everything he’d done in the past 24 hours.

When Dan and Phil got home, Dan went straight to his bedroom and Phil followed him, then finally spoke up:

“Dan,” Phil said softly. He leaned against the door frame and watched as his friend laid on the floor without facing him. “What happened? Talk to me, please.”

Dan just replied with a groan.

“C’mon, Dan, I just want to help. I hate seeing you like this.”

Dan just silently sighed.

“If you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s okay; but let’s do something together so you can distract yourself. We could even bake something, you know it’d be fun!” Phil said, trying to make it sound exciting so Dan would at least face him.

Again, it did not work. So Phil just stood there, waiting for a response he knew would never come, but while he did that, he was trying to find a reason to Dan’s sudden behavior, even though he usually wasn’t reasonable while overthinking.

“Is it me? Did I do something?” Phil asked, his voice dropping. This time, Dan flinched. “Well, I’m sorry for whatever it was I did then. I—I’ll be outside.” Phil didn’t bother hiding the annoyance in his voice.

Even though it was kind of childish, he slammed the door and went out of the room. Phil wasn’t even actually mad at Dan, if anything, he felt hurt. He had gone and messed up something once again, but this felt even worse than anytime he had ever messed up, probably because this was about Dan. The boy still didn’t know what that meant, now everything was about Dan, or maybe everything had always been about Dan, he didn’t know that as well; but he felt like he should know what his feelings towards Dan were. Phil never liked labels though, and, thanks to the monarchy that ruled over them, people used to label him and everything around them, causing both of the boys to hate labelling anything.

So should he actually name whatever was his relationship and feelings about Dan?

Footsteps grew closer and Phil never really got the answer to that question. He turned around to see Dan standing behind him, and before Phil could even ask Dan anything, Dan began to talk:

“You wanna know what you did? Okay. You fucking saved me and you keep saving me every day. And I’m not even talking about the day you pulled me from the lake.” Dan was gesturing and talking so fast that Phil was trying his hardest to keep up. “You, Phil Lester, are the reason I kept waking up every day since when we lived at that damned village ‘till this day! We live in a terrible world that I’ve never had any intention of staying too long, but then I’d see you and everything would go away. I’d make you laugh and I wouldn’t hate myself as much as I do. I’d look at your eyes and I’d just get lost in them; I literally could go swimming in them.” Dan chuckled and a single tear rolled down his cheek. Phil was just standing there, partly shocked, but he held a tender smile on his face. He tried to say anything, but Dan went on:

“And you’re so beautiful, you know that? People are always looking at you, but little do they know the amazing personality you have, you’re basically an angel. An angel who steals my cereal, but still.” They both giggled. “You’re my best friend and my favorite person, and, believe me, I’ve spent quite some time denying my feelings but I’ve been meaning to tell you all of this since that day in the corn field, but then I hadn’t been feeling good all day and, out of nowhere, that girl was talking to you and did you even realize the way she was looking at you? And then I thought she was flirting with you and I got jealous, which just made things even worse and I started thinking and I just wanted to shut down and go away from that place and, even though I hadn’t even talked to anyone, I felt so exhausted, but you already know that; I’m such an introvert, but that’s okay.” Phil nodded and Dan now had multiple tears falling down his face. “I just— Do I sound too soppy? I don’t know, but I just wanted you to know that you’re so amazing, Phil. You saved me, emotionally and physically and, to be completely honest, it’s always been you and it’s always been me falling for you and I don’t want that to ever change.”

Phil couldn’t find any words to express what he felt, he’d never be able to put into words everything about how much Dan meant to him; so he just grabbed Dan’s face and pulled him closer, locking their lips for the very first time. Dan was taken by surprise, but he leaned in anyway. It felt like they should’ve done this before, because they both felt passion, desire and longing. The moment was so wrong, but perhaps there wouldn’t have been a better time. They pulled apart and Phil had his hands around Dan's neck while the other held Phil’s waist.

“Guess you’re stuck with me now,” Dan said and the two boys shared a laugh.

“I still can get rid of you, don’t forget that.”

“Yeah, but then whose cereal will you steal, Lester?”

“I’d have to start buying mine; so I think I’ll keep you for now.” Phil decided.

Dan and Phil kissed again and Phil felt whole for once, as if the never-ending void that lived in him wasn’t that much of a void now. And just by looking at Dan he felt warm, like he belonged with the other one. The dark-haired boy couldn’t actually see himself with someone other than Dan, and now that was okay, because Phil knew he felt the same. Did something other than Dan really matter at that time? He was taught that the only men he could ever be devoted to were Jesus and God, which Phil thought was a pointless devotion, but when he was about to end his life he was thinking about Dan and his mom. Now he knew better, Phil could see how stupid he’d been; true love was the only kind of devotion he’d ever practice.

The next day Phil woke up feeling warmth, but this time it was different, there was someone next to him. For the first time in a long time, he smiled. Having Dan so close next to him was great and now he could get used to that, waking up every day with the only one who could make him happy, someone who brought color to his life: the most beautiful shade of brown, he could stare into those eyes all day long. Phil was dwelling so much on what happened last night, after all, it was basically a dream that had finally come true, that he didn’t noticed Dan was awake and now was facing him, or, at least, trying to, seeing as he was drifting between sleep and consciousness.

“Ugh,” Dan simply said, sighing. His curly hair was all messy and falling down his face, but Phil swore he’d never been so adorable.

“Good morning to you too.” Phil laughed. He fixed Dan’s fringe and placed his hands on Dan’s cheeks, caressing them.

“Why are you all happy right now? You’re usually a beast when you haven’t had your coffee.”

“After everything that we’ve been through and last night, don’t you think I deserve to be happy now?”

Dan smiled softly and leaned in for a kiss.

“I know, and I’m happy too, which, yeah, I know, is a surprise.” They laughed and kissed once again. “I’m happy for us, but you better go and make us breakfast before I start thinking and fall into another existential crisis.”

Phil chuckled and made them breakfast; and as he felt that today was a special day, he made them pancakes, something they hardly ate because the ingredients were often expensive where they lived. Dan and Phil had breakfast in bed together and it ended up being a three-hour breakfast, but it was the best one they’d ever had. They both felt bliss, finally everything was in its right place, and that was sealed with a kiss, or many kisses, in fact. The sun peeked through the window and illuminated Dan, which made his eyes brighter, almost golden. Seeing his eyes in that way took Phil’s breath away for an instant.

“Dan, you know we have get up at some point, right? We’ve got things to do,” Phil said. He didn’t want to leave the bed though; he’d never experienced such comfort and he wasn’t ready to leave, not yet.

“No, we don’t. I know you don’t have to work today, and neither do I,” Dan replied. “We don’t have to act like functioning humans today.”

“Actually, we do. There are some foods on sale today that we should go out and buy.”

“But is it actually worth it? We’ll have to get up, dress up and go out just to buy more food?”

“Are you really refusing food? I thought it was the most important person in your life.”

Dan laughed out loud; for some reason, he loved when Phil quoted things he’d said in the past. “That’s true, but Phil—” Dan whined.

“I can go on my own, don’t worry, it won’t take long.”

“Alright, I’m coming with you.”

“But I just said that—”

“Don’t say anything or I might change my mind.”

“Okay, just don’t take too long to get dressed.”

“Did I sleep with you to be bullied for things I can’t change about myself?” Phil laughed at Dan, sticking his tongue out and Dan just shoved him; He frowned, but it didn’t quite work because he was trying not to laugh at himself. “I have to change my outfit at least three times before going out, you know that! Do you have any idea of what I go through when clothes are different shades of black and don’t match?”

“Wow, that’s a tough one. But take your time then, goth model.”

“Shut up, rat,” Dan said playfully and smiled in a way that he only did when he was around Phil.

After half an hour, and Dan changing his outfit five times, they went out. Something seemed wrong, like as if something was out of place, and the fact that it was strangely sunny just contributed to that. There were more people outside than usual, and Phil knew for a fact that it wasn’t just because there was food on sale. He could hear someone shouting somewhere near them, but he couldn’t make out any words. For some weird reason, that was making him anxious, and, and, as they got close to a crowd, he just wanted to disappear because Phil felt like all eyes were on him.

“Hey, are you okay?” Dan asked.

“Yeah, it’s just… Does this seem strange? I mean..” Phil was going to answer, but then he saw it: a flying object, people sometimes called it a helicopter, but it was a royal one. What were they doing there? “Wait, isn’t that a royal army unit?

“Well, yeah, it is, but what are they doing here? They’ve never come here before, I didn’t even think they knew about this village,” Dan replied calmly, but then he just looked very concerned after a moment. “Did they find out about us? Phil, what if they've come for us? What will they do? But they weren’t here before and I don’t think anyone would or could tell them, even though—”

“Philip Lester! If anyone knows Philip Lester, please, indicate us where he’s currently at, or bring him here!” someone shouted behind them.

Dan and Phil turned around to the voice, which happened to belong to a royal guard, and both of them paled instantly, why were they looking for him? What had Phil done? And Dan was right: it was impossible that someone saw them and told the kingdom about it. Phil felt so accused of something he didn’t even know what was about and the pressure was making him feel sick, he felt like everything was closing in on him. He clinged on to Dan’s hand, and he was sure he was smashing it, but he almost didn’t feel it, as if it was a hallucination, fake.

“We’ll give a hundred pounds to whoever finds or bring us Philip Lester first!” the guard shouted.

Phil wanted to run, get as far away from there as possible, but he just couldn’t, he felt as if he was paralyzed, frozen. It felt like everything was about to happen again, but he didn’t want to run away anymore. The boy finally had everything he’d ever wanted, he’d barely experienced happiness and they were going to take it away from him, or, at least, that’s how Phil’s mind was processing everything. He couldn’t lose everything they’d worked so hard to put together, he couldn’t lose their home; he was sure he had finally found his place in the world, and he couldn’t lose. But above all of that, he couldn’t lose Dan.

He almost lost Dan some months ago, and now this? It must’ve been God’s way of punishing him.

Dan grabbed his arm and began to pull him through the crowd, but somebody stopped them before they could distance themselves from everyone. A man pulled Phil close to him and screamed, getting everyone’s attention.

“I found him! Phil Lester! Here!” the old man screamed. Phil didn’t even know him and he was trying release himself from the man’s grip, but he was too strong and able to keep Phil in place.

“Thank you, sir,” the guard answered. The unknown old man pushed Phil towards the guard, who handed the man some money.

“Now, what are all of you looking at? Go back to your miserable lives!” another guard screamed before helping the first one grab Phil.

Both of the guards were strong, even though one of them was shorter than Phil, so he was trapped. He tried to break free from them, but it wasn’t working, and another guard came into the scene. He was somehow able to take a quick glance around and then realized there were more guards than he’d seen, and perhaps there were actually more of them than the usual, or necessary. As if all of that wasn’t weird enough.

Phil was now being dragged by three guards to the vehicle. He screamed and begged people for help, but no one moved an inch. Everyone just watched, all of them seeming to afraid to do anything, and some of them looked like they felt for him, but he knew, deep down, no one could save him now; the monarchy had control over the guards, and every single person on their country knew better than to against something the monarchy owned. And, still, the rebellion was a thing, even though they’d been quiet lately.

All of those people were making Phil more unstable, he could feel his whole body shaking and he just wanted to disappear, fade away, if possible. But he couldn’t find Dan anywhere, and that was his biggest worry at the moment. His eyes searched through the crowd, but Phil couldn’t locate the boy anywhere, and he should’ve found him already, Dan was way taller than most people, but that familiar face was nowhere to be found.

“Stop fighting, stop resisting, or we’ll make this way worse for you now and when we get there,” one of the guards whispered in Phil’s ear.

He had no choice but to obey, and so he did.

But they did still shove Phil into that “helicopter” thing.

Looking through the window, the last thing Phil saw was someone tall with a perfect figure he knew all too well being absorbed by the sea of people, and then he met Dan’s eyes, but they weren’t that warm shade of brown he could stare at all day, no, they were cold and Dan seemed so far away, out of reach. Phil watched his… What did Dan even mean to him? Probably too much to put into words and he really didn’t feel like labeling their relationship; so Phil watched his Dan blend in with all of the others and their little village.

There were two guards escorting him: the tallest one was a woman, she had light brown hair that matched her eyes, and looked like she could and would kill Phil at any given chance, and the other one, the shorter one, was a man, he was bald and looked like he could be in his late thirties already, but still looked very intimidating. Phil wanted to try anything to escape, go back to Dan; he actually wanted to crack the door so he could just fall out, he didn’t even care if they were flying or how high the chances of him ending up dead were, he had to go back. But Phil knew that, if he did manage to escape while still breathing, their punishment would be way worse than anything they’d done by that point. And he just couldn’t do it, both death and Dan would have to wait a little longer.

Therefore Phil just stared down at the land below him, maybe admiring, or just really trying to communicate with every living thing down there about how hopeless he felt. After what might’ve been an hour or so, everything was blurry and he couldn’t tell if it was because that thing was pretty fast or his eyes tearing up.

Suddenly the vehicle stopped and Phil found himself in the palace. Confusion drowned him, along with despair. His time came to an end, he’d done nothing wrong, right? He thought he made sure no one saw Dan and him. But maybe Phil was wrong and they were going to kill him. The guards sitting in front of him were completely quiet, they hadn’t said a word during the whole time.

“What are we doing here?” Phil asked. They didn’t answer, just got out of the “helicopter”.

The guards opened the door and gestured for Phil to get out. The man and the woman led him the way and he thought he was going to freak out right there, his mind was running with all sorts of thoughts, and they all involved Dan. And, even if that wasn’t the case, he couldn’t bring himself to calm down, everything kept adding up, but nothing made sense! Perhaps the weirdest thing about this was that the guardsmen didn’t ever bother bringing a royal vehicle for their prisoner, after all, Phil now felt like a prisoner, which was probably correct, because they’d often bring people to the castle as prisoners for plenty of reasons; but that kind of vehicle was only meant for the King.

If they didn’t kill Phil, he was sure his own body was going to do it anyway because he was out of control. And then he saw it: among the guards protecting the castle was Nathaniel, one of the guards that tormented Phil back in the village. The boy instantly froze as the curly-haired guard smirked when he caught Phil staring at him, he also nudged some other guards that used to pick on Phil, who just wanted to hide and cry somewhere else far away from there.

Maybe if someone did want to kill him it’d be better than having to go through whatever all of those guards would make him do.

“Keep moving,” the woman said, loud and clear, but she dragged Phil into the castle anyway.

The castle looked magnificent from the outside, so, as expected, it looked ever better from the inside. The massive walls were extremely decorated with paintings of former kings and queens and pretty places, a big red and black rug was extended until the staircase, lots of plants where placed everywhere and the enormous red curtains covered the windows and fell to the floor, just like the back of princesses’ dresses. Phil noticed that almost everything was golden or had some kind of golden detail, which made him sick; for some reason, that felt so wrong, he felt so wrong and intimidated just by being there. That woman kept dragging him, and her grip on his arm was really hurting, he’d have a bruise later. They went upstairs, where everything was equally golden, and she locked him in a room, leaving him all alone, and there was no way he could get out of there. That was probably the biggest room, the King’s room, and that Phil could tell. But the King was nowhere to be seen, which was really weird.

Something definitely was off and that was making him even more anxious. The King was, indeed, getting ready to kill him, that was it. They were going to take him to court and do it like they always did in the stories his mom once told him: they were going to hang him in front of bad people and then move on with their lives, while the person’s loved ones would go insane trying to find out about what had happened. Even though the room was huge, Phil felt like all the walls were closing in on him; everything felt wrong, he felt as if he would combust if he made contact with anything in that room and he couldn’t stop the tears. He kneeled down, shut his eyes and brought his hands to his ears, but there was no sound, it was completely silent. He was so weak, he’d let everyone down, and by everyone he meant his mother and Dan; also, speaking of Dan, what would happen to him? What if they caught him too? Phil wouldn’t be able to do anything and then—

And then someone opened the immense doors, making quite a noise that made Phil flinch. He opened his eyes just to see two people, an old asian couple, a man and a woman, looking down on him.

“Are you alright?” the man asked in a soft tone, revealing he had a french accent.

“Sorry?” Phil answered unsure, still shocked that the man bothered being nice to him.

“What happened, love? Did they treat you badly?” It was the woman speaking now. She kneeled down in front of him and took his hands in hers.

“Yeah.” Phil’s mouth was dry and he was so embarrassed, he must’ve looked like a child.

“I can assure you that they will be punished for that,” she informed him, then stood up. “We have to take you to court now; is that okay with you or do you want to be alone for a few minutes?”

Delaying his death in order to be alone for a few minutes, or ending it all quickly? Both options were terrible, but he couldn’t stand one of them, he wanted all the voices to stop for good. “I’d rather go right now, let’s get this over with.”

“Okay then. Follow us,” the man said and the three of them exited the room.

Going to the courtroom felt like an eternity, Phil just kept walking, following them and having in mind that that was it; there was no going back now, every step could be the last and he was a dead man walking. At least, he’d die a little better knowing that he’d saved Dan and made him happy, perhaps that was enough. And he was happy too, even though he was about to die, Phil knew he was happy. He could hear some voices and they were growing louder and he knew they were getting closer to it, a quick glance at the couple’s face confirmed that.

Now they were in front of another pair of immense doors. He just hoped Dan would continue to live his life and be happy.

Phil closed his eyes, held his breath and walked into the courtroom. When he opened his eyes, everything was exactly how he’d expect it: a room full of people, all of them whispering and looking down on him, and a spot in the middle where he was supposed to stand, right before the King’s throne; but, once again, the King wasn’t there. He couldn’t hide his curiosity and whispered to the woman next to him:

“Isn’t the King supposed to be the one to kill me?” Phil asked.

She didn’t say a word, just shook her head in a way that only him would’ve noticed. Phil just stood there, quiet and confused, after all, it didn’t make any sense. If he wasn’t going to die, what was he there for?

“Philip Michael Lester,” someone behind him started to talk. He turned around and the voice turned out to belong to a tall woman, who was just entering the courtroom. “Welcome back.” She smirked and he just expected her to pull a sword out of the nowhere and end his life.

“‘Welcome back’? I’ve never been here before,” Phil answered.

“You belong here, Philip.” She walked towards him, never dropping her gaze, and stood right in front of him. “You’re the King’s only child, and we’re all glad we finally found you. We’ve been looking for you for quite a while now, you know?”

Phil jumped at those news. He wasn’t the King’s son, he was just a poor Norhern boy, nothing more than that. What did they want him for anyway? Why were they looking for him? Were they ‘them’, the people his mother warned him about? It was too much to suddenly take in. Phil opened his mouth to ask a million questions, but the woman started to talk first:

“We’re aware that you may be confused, but we need you take what’s yours for right; you have to become a King, our King.”

“Wait, no. That can’t be right.” Phil turned around and just stared at the ground, startled. “And, even if I really am the King’s son, why should I become the King right now? Where is he?”

“The King is dead. Your Majesty was killed a few months ago by terrorists and since then we’ve been looking for you.” Phil was trying to speak again, but she shut him down before he could even start. “The only reason we’ve never looked for you before is because the King kept all of the records about his life hidden, so we never even knew about your existence.”

“What about my mom?” Phil was able to ask.

“What about your mom?”

“We were poor and she wasn’t a Princess or something like that, she’s never even set foot to this place! How am I suddenly the heir to throne?”

“Your mother dated the King, your father, when they were teenagers. You’re right, she was poor and she wasn’t a princess, but he brought her to the castle and gave her everything she needed. According to the information we have, she was pregnant and he used to hit her, so she ran away to protect you,” the woman explained.

Everything was adding up, it made sense, but he just couldn’t believe it, Phil didn’t want to believe any of that was really true. And his mom might’ve killed the King, who apparently was his own father, and that was the “revolutionary” thing she was talking about some months ago. She might as well have been already dead by then. She told him about all of this, how was that ever supposed to be good for him? A few hours ago he was with Dan and, even though they had to sort out all kinds of problems in their lives and their relationship, he had it all; for a brief period of time, Phil Lester had all he’d ever wanted.

Phil obviously wasn’t religious, but if any kind of god wanted to free him from that despair, he would take it. It all went back to that devotion concept he had, not only was it pointless, but it was also draining.

“Now, we’ve got work to do, Lester.” she broke the silence. “Sorry, Your Majesty .”

By the time they were finished checking all documents and making him sign all sorts of papers, Phil was exhausted, physically and emotionally. Maybe the worst part of it had to be him having to actually sit in the throne, it felt so inappropriate, he’d never asked for all of that, that “royal” life. It was over the top, a completely golden throne, decorated with more golden adornments. And all of that gold was making him sick, it looked twisted, but the worst part was that everything was golden, it didn’t matter where he looked at, it was golden.

Phil was led back to the King’s room, now his room. He couldn’t even believe that belonged to him now, he didn’t need a giant room, servants, a big castle, a throne, or a crown, he didn’t want it, but he had no choice. The room had a balcony that had a beautiful view, nothing but a pretty landscape, but Phil didn’t bother going over there, he feared he’d jump from the balcony and hit the ground, making that landscape his deathbed, throwing his body from up there as if it was as light as a feather, but, deep down, he knew his heart was so heavy it’d pull him to ground in a second.

Loads of footsteps flooded the hall where his room was located, Phil supposed it was the guards, doing their now designed work to “protect” the King from anything that could be considered a threat to the monarchy, which consisted of Phil. He wasn’t worried about having people guarding his door while he slept, it did sound a bit creepy, but he could deal with that, but, then, when someone unlocked his door and came in the room, Phil was indeed worried.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” Phil said, trying his best to sound tough and make the person go away.

“Well, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here, Lester.” Phil quickly recognized the voice, the one he’d never forget; it was Nathaniel. “Mind if I stay the night? I’m sure you don’t.”

“I actually do, Nathaniel. I’m gonna tell them you’re here and—” Phil stopped mid-sentence when Nathaniel grabbed his waist and, using his other hand, shut Phil up.

“You won’t call them over unless you want three guys inside you, instead of only me; it’s up to you.” Nathaniel’s lips brushed Phil’s ear and it felt like someone had set fire to it, it was dirty. “And you’re not gonna tell anyone about this, it’d make no difference, and they’d accuse you of lying, being paranoid, or something like that. Yes, you are the King, but down there there’s a room full of people that don’t want you on that golden throne and would use anything against you to kick you out of here.”

As if this day couldn’t get worse, now he knew he was completely alone in the castle, no one would defend or save Phil. They didn’t even want him as a King, so there was no point in fighting for anything. Even if he did manage to escape from that place or that moment, they’d kill him.

Nathaniel pushed Phil into the bed and trapped the King using his whole body. Phil remained still under his grip, sudden numbness washing over him for a split second, before everything felt like it was so much and he couldn’t bear, couldn’t push through it.

Death seemed so much better than anything Nathaniel was going to do to him.

“Now, why don’t you turn around and swing those hips for me?” Nathaniel whispered in Phil’s ear.

But the now King stood still, he didn’t even breath; he was afraid, not brave. Phil felt the tears pricking his eyes and Nathaniel smiled creepily. And, even though he was paralyzed, the guard held his arm tightly.

“Are you ever going to turn around or do I have to do that myself, huh, rat?”

Phil opened his mouth to answer, but then he heard the nickname and was immediately reminded of Dan, and that was his breaking point. Although Dan usually called Phil “rat” as a term of endearment, that nickname had just been said with so much disgust, making it all even worse. But where was Dan? Would he come for Phil? Was Dan thinking of him? And, above all of that, was Dan okay? He feared for Dan because he knew what the boy was capable of. Phil was so caught up in his own thoughts that merely felt Nathaniel violently turning him around so that he faced the mattress. Phil’s body might’ve been there, but his mind surely wasn’t.

The King was furiously woken up by six or seven guys, including Nathaniel. He hadn’t even opened his eyes and they were already all over him, beating him, hurting him. Phil didn’t bother opening his eyes anyways, seeing their faces always made the whole experience worse, so he just tried to focus on something else, and all the memories from last night came back.

Someone hit his stomach, leaving him out of breath for a second. Last night, Nathaniel choked him until he almost fainted.

Another person slapped him twice, or maybe that was caused by two people. Last night, Nathaniel had already left marks of his hand all over Phil’s body.

They banged his head against the wooden headboard, which damaged his jaw the most, making Phil spit blood and a teeth. Last night, Nathaniel banged him against the wall, pressing Phil’s body so hard against it that he was almost sure he’d be able to walk through the wall after some time.

Last night, Nathaniel hit him with his belt until he was bleeding. Phil now opened his eyes for the first time this morning and met Nathaniel’s face, seconds before he hit Phil in the back of the head with his gun, knocking him out.

For once, darkness felt like bliss.

Phil woke up for the second time that day, but this time he was greeted by more familiar and friendly faces: the couple that took him to court yesterday. They looked surprised and intrigued, but Phil could tell they felt for him. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how bad he must’ve looked, the whole experience alone felt like hell, something sempiternal, as if it’d never end, he’d just have to keep suffering eternally. The King tried to sit, but his whole body was hurting, every inch, from top to bottom, and he realized he was going to be less functioning than usually.

“Don’t even move, just sit still, Your Majesty, we’ll get some help,” the man said and exited the room.

The woman sat beside him and ran her fingers through his hair, carefully, as if even his hair would break at the touch. The King realized he didn’t even know their names, but he was already fond of them; they were one of the very few people that had ever taken care of Phil, and that mattered more than anything.

He felt like screaming, trashing his room, thrashing every one of them, hitting his head so hard against the wall so maybe he’d learn something, and crying because it all felt like it was his fault. But Phil didn’t do any of those things. He could barely talk, he’d screamed a lot in the past twelve hours or so; he couldn’t get up, and his arms would hurt so much it wouldn’t be worth it, maybe he couldn’t even throw a cup so that it’d mess up the room, let alone beat up some people; his head already hurt like hell and all those voices in his head were torturing him; and the tears just wouldn’t come, no matter how hard he tried to cry.

“Is there anything that would make you feel better?” the woman asked. He could sense the worry in her voice, but she spoke so slowly, the words melting as she talked.

“Yes.” He could barely speak, but managed to say a word, just to regret doing so; firstly because of how it hurt and what it took him to say such a little word, and also because of the danger, oh, yes, the danger.

Phil couldn’t tell them to find Dan and bring him to Phil, no matter how much he wanted and needed Dan. They could do things to him too, maybe even worse, if those guards found out what he meant to Phil. He wanted to complicate Dan, but his priority was to keep the boy safe. So he shook his head in denial, hoping the woman wouldn’t ask any questions, but then he suddenly had an idea: Phil could send Dan a letter; it was an easy, harmless, and fast, way of letting Dan know he was okay and everything that was going on.

“Do you think I could send someone a letter?” Phil asked, almost sure he that she wouldn’t have heard or understood him if she wasn’t so close.

“Yes, we can provide you everything you need, but do you think you can write with that arm?” she asked.

“Probably not,” Phil answered.

“Well, unless you wanna send a handwritten letter, there’s another way to write a letter, and you won’t even have to move your arm,” she said.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Phil whispered unintentionally.

“You don’t have to, Your Majesty.” She stopped for a second. “You don’t deser—”

“Please, call me Phil.”

“You don’t deserve any of this, Phil, and this place is horrible. I can’t imagine how all of this, all at once, must be for you. I’m so sorry.” She stood up and walked to the door, but stopped before leaving the room. “But, tell you what, I believe there’s a place waiting for us after this, where everything’s golden and you’ll be happy, we’ll all be happy.” The woman went out, leaving Phil broken and all alone in that massive room.

She better be wrong, Phil thought. He couldn’t do this twice, going through all the suffering again, and living without Dan once again. Phil also couldn’t stand all the gold anymore, now he hated that color with a burning passion, the King blamed everything that had gone wrong in his life on it. Give me happiness; what I’ve always longed for, give me Dan back, Phil thought once again, hoping anyone besides him would somehow listen,or give me death, there’s nothing else left for me anyway.

By the night, the King had written the letter, using some sort of technology he didn’t know, but that was very useful considering his situation. He didn’t have to do anything but pressing some buttons on a bright screen, then one servant printed it and gave it to some guard, one Phil had never seen before, which was a relief, and she went out to find Dan and give him the letter, following the address Phil provided her.

While the guard was gone, the couple sent some people to take care of Phil, and, somehow, they did manage to make him a little better. His voice was better, he wasn’t as sore as he was in the morning, his wounds were clean and covered with bandages, which made him look like a mummy, and he could move around, kind of. They also dressed him nicely, gave him a white floral suit, with pink and golden details, and a long golden cape. He also had a crown now; but, seeing as they hadn’t had the time to make him his own crown, this was his father’s one, so it was too big and too heavy for him. Phil felt so wrong once again, but he couldn’t do anything to change that, he’d have to accept it.

Phil was looking in the mirror, trying to grow used to seeing him all dressed up like that, when the guard returned. She told him she delivered the letter, but she didn’t found Dan at the provided address, he was actually very far from the village they used to live, joined by a bunch of people, some of them with their faces covered. He asked her if he seemed okay and if she’d done anything to the other or him, she said Dan seemed almost numb, and completely changed when she mentioned, only to him, that it was letter from Phil, and that she’d just given him the letter and came back.

Now, watching the sky, and sat on his golden throne, Phil hoped Dan was okay and that he would find a way to send a letter as well, following the instructions Phil gave him. He tried getting lost in the stars, counting them over and over, but he could only picture Dan’s face in them, he couldn’t stop thinking about him. Was that fixation? Or maybe neurosis? He knew it wasn’t neither of those, but Phil didn’t want to admit what he felt for Dan when they weren’t going to be able to see each other in a long time, perhaps never again.

All of his thoughts were interrupted when someone suddenly started shouting and he heard rushed footsteps coming from upstairs. Phil was immediately startled, it could be one of the guards looking for him, and there was no one nearby, another prove that no one wanted to keep him safe, so he wouldn’t be the King, but he’d be useless and defenseless again. He dug his fingernails deep into the throne, hoping it’d serve as shield against anyone or anything that tried to get close to him. Then a familiar silhouette came running down the hall, towards him. The King would recognize him anywhere, at any time, and probably in another life, so he got up and started running to Dan.

They met right in the middle of the ballroom, where the throne, paintings, and all the golden futile expensive furniture were located, and just hug each other, it felt like time had stopped and nothing mattered anymore. Phil couldn’t and didn’t want to feel nothing but Dan, he wanted, and, somehow, he had to have him closer, as if that hug just wasn’t enough. Therefore, Phil kissed Dan, feeling like he’d just gotten back all the happiness he thought he’d lost.

“I never really thought that you’d come tonight; actually, I told you not to come, Dan!” Phil said. “But are you okay? How are you? You have to—”

“We’ve got to go, Phil, now!” Dan said in a rush. He was still his energetic self, but this was different, and scared Phil in every way possible. “I had no idea, I had no idea, I’m so sorry.” Dan was now shaking and looked like he was in the verge of bursting into tears. He hid his face in his hands.

“What are you talking about? Dan, please, calm down!”

“I didn’t know you were the King, so I joined the rebellion, and turns out they killed the King, the other one, and are coming to overthrow the monarchy,” Dan paused for a split second and looked right into Phil’s eyes. “They’re gonna kill you, Phil, we have to go right now, please, c’mon!”

Dan pulled Phil by the hand, but the King stopped. He couldn’t wait any longer, Phil had to say it out loud, this was his chance, and they’d enter a new chapter in their life, now that they were running away from all of this forever. He pulled Dan closer and started to say, very carefully, making each word sound how much he meant it, but that probably couldn’t happen when there were so many irrational and unexplainable feelings:

“Dan, I lo—” But Phil stopped mid-sentence when something hit him from behind.

It hurt so much, the King had never felt so much physical pain in his life before; even when he’d overworked himself, it never hurt like this. Time and space seemed to stop together and maybe he was falling, but he couldn’t tell, and, luckily, someone grabbed him. Phil stared into the warm shade of brown of Dan’s eyes, and he knew Dan was screaming something, but he couldn’t hear it. He was hit with an overwhelming feeling of tiredness and just wanted to close his eyes, rest a bit, but Dan’s grip on his body and on his face kept him awake, but not for long.

Phil rolled his eyes and looked at his surroundings.

Everything was golden and it all seemed so perfectly real; how could such a beautiful life be possible? Well, at least, not for Dan and Phil.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #phan au #phandom big bang 2017 #leleletizinha's fics #talent.txt

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