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sandinthemachine · 1 year

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Mortal Remains

König x f!reader

written for the request: "You know, if you wanted my attention, you didn't have to go to such extremes." With Either ghost or König? There's not enough fluff for my men.

I don't even know where to begin with this one. It's massive, the longest one I've ever written. I love it, and I hate it. It made me cry. I'm excited and terrified to see what everyone else thinks. I hope someone reading this feels at least one of those emotions while doing so (preferably not hate)

before I begin, thank you to @sprout-fics and @zwienzixes for being lovely beta readers, and a MASSIVE thank you to @itsagrimm for beta-reading, helping me work through ideas, giving me proper German translations, and all around being an amazing and supportive person. I would have given up on this without all the help.

Translations for the German will be at the bottom

Words: 12,450 (yeah...it's big just like him)

Warnings/tags: König is soft and pretends not to be, reader is afab but no pronouns used, canon-typical violence, piv sex, oral f!receiving, self-deprecation, lots of raw emotions, mental health is hard, fluffy ending

---

It started easy enough, as so many things do.

A week-long joint training exercise. Mixed teams, both 141 and KorTac. Something something bonding before the real mission. You hadn’t been listening.

You remember being excited to be teamed with Soap. At least you could get along with someone, you mused. You barely noticed the hooded figure, tall and sticking to the corners, merging with the lengthening shadows. What’s another ghost haunting your footsteps? Nothing special, that’s for sure.

The first four days fly by. Early morning patrols, always in pairs, tracking for signs of the other team. Finding nothing, you move to a different shelter, secure the area, sleep. Rinse, repeat.

The fifth day is different. There are ragged clouds cloaking the sun while the rest of the sky is completely clear. You’re not sure why you noticed that, but you did.

It was an early morning patrol, as usual, you and your partner sweeping around a centerpoint like you were analyzing a single massive clock. Northeast quadrant clear. Southeast clear. Southwest…a scuff in the dirt. You lean down, fingers tracing the air just above it, a black fleck catching your eye. You grasp it, finding it much larger than you originally expected and partially buried. You pull at the rubbery texture, curious. Distracted.

The ambush comes quietly. Perfectly so. The weight lands on your back with an abruptness that flattens your lungs, dropping you directly onto your hands. You might have twisted your wrist, but the pain of that is overshadowed by the thought of the immense beratement you’ll get from your NCO for failing so fast.

Yet the weight from your back is lifted as quietly as it arrived. You turn, rolling to your feet to find that it had been Gaz on top of you only a second ago. Now he dangles like a ragdoll in the air. The shadow holding him draws a knife, taps it against his throat. You're out.

Gaz sighs as he’s set on the ground, giving you a nod before marching off. You don’t return it, too busy staring at the man next to him.

You’d never noticed his eyes before. You’re used to Ghost’s eyes, dark and unyielding, cavernous black holes reaching into a skull long dead. Like he was born to wear the mask.

This man’s eyes couldn’t be more different. They’re pale, washed out, windows into a sky perpetually on the verge of snowfall, slumbering clouds cold and waiting.

They curve down at the corners, lending an air of melancholy to the only part of his face you can see. You wonder how he really feels behind that gaze.

You’re staring.

You clear your throat awkwardly, aiming to thank him before pausing. “I…I’m sorry, I never caught your callsign?”

The head dips down, draped fabric falling down his chest slightly. A nod. “We need to keep moving.”

And he’s walking past you.

Two days later, the training exercise finally comes to a head in a fierce brawl over the fake weapons cache. Knives and fists only.

The fight takes only a few minutes. Ghost on the opposite team notices your attempted ambush immediately, throwing his men after you. Your team is outnumbered, stuck in a hallway. But it doesn’t matter.

Ghost and the hooded man roll on the ground, tousling like a pair of tomcats, Ghost landing on top for just a second, raising his knife-

You’re there. Arm wrapped around his shoulders. Blade tapping against his throat. You’re out.

With that, the fight is over. Ghost moves with a grumble at the man under him. It might have been a threat. But the man doesn’t hear it. He’s too busy staring at you with grey-sky eyes wide. A child dressed as a dirty sheet-ghost. “I…I don’t know your-”

You thrust your hand out, yanking him to his feet. “We’d better head back.”

You feel him at your back throughout the debriefing. Rolling thunder clouds looming over your head, ready to burst at any second. Your tongue is between your teeth, lungs heaving. Soap whispers a joke in your ear, something about Ghost getting chewed out by the NCO. You can barely muster a smile.

You stay still as the meeting finally ends, waiting for everyone to filter out before you finally turn around.

As you turn, your shoulder knocks into hard muscle and you look up, craning your neck to take in the hooded face and the way his pupils are blown wide into dark pits. A gale you should take shelter from lest you be blown away. But for a moment all you do is stand there, watching your own pupils expand in the turbulent reflection.

Your teeth are carving marks into your tongue by now, and it takes you far too long to draw in a shaky breath and push past him. You have more training tomorrow. It’s sleep your body needs. Not…whatever this is.

He doesn’t say a word as you depart, but his eyes track your every move before the door shuts behind you.

Of course this is a night where you can’t sleep. Of course. You flip and roll, hearing your bed frame smack against the wall every time you shift until you get so annoyed you shove it further into your room and flop down on it again. It doesn’t do anything, of course. Just makes your insomnia a little quieter.

It’s nearly midnight by the time you throw your legs over the side in frustration, shivering at the frigid air before throwing on enough clothes to look decent and marching down towards the shared kitchen.

He’s there. Your luck is just perfect tonight. You take a step backwards, planning to flee back to the darkness of the hallway, but he’s already turning his head, shoulders jumping just slightly as you enter his view.

You crumple a little as he notices you, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. “Can’t sleep either, huh?” Your voice is rough as you walk over to the counter next to him, yanking an expired box of cereal from the back of it. Your arm brushes his as you pull it out.

You spare him a glance as you pry the old box open, snorting at his narrowed eyelids. You bet he’s scrunching his nose through that silly hood, too. You reach in, hearing a series of crunches as you rifle around. “Ah, there it is.” You pull out the clear bottle, shaking it triumphantly in his face. “This’ll knock you right out. 50/50 chance you get back up tomorrow.” You trail off, eyes traveling up and down him. “Well, maybe a bit better odds for you.” You chuckle half-heartedly, but it dies a second later.

You puff your lips out in a shaky breath, running your tongue along your teeth before giving him an awkward smile and raising the bottle to him. With that you leave.

As soon as you take a sip you spit it right back out with a blech. You’d forgotten how nasty the stuff is. You toss it into the trash can and flop back down with an irritated groan. How hard is it to fall asleep? It’s literally laying there doing no-

Your thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door, and upon swinging it open you find him, his looming shadow nearly blotting out the light from the hallway behind. It’s easy to forget how big he is when he’s not around. How strong he is. How…deadly.

But right now he’s leaning against your doorframe, hands tapping along his legs. “Have enough for two?”

You smirk a little at that, but as you step closer you feel the heat radiating from him, your shoulder blades clenching together as your mind begins to process something.

You’d sleep better for it. Perform better the next day. It would be good for you.

Your smirk deepens. “I have a better idea.”

As your hand tangles in his shirt you feel a tremble along his skin, but he doesn’t respond when you pull on him. “You’ve been drinking.”

“I haven’t had a drop. Shit’s disgusting.”

“Show me the bottle.”

Despite yourself, a smile tugs at the corner of your lips as you fish the full monstrosity out of the bin to show him. He nods but still doesn’t move, and you find yourself rushing to assure him as heat rushes up your neck. “If you actually just want to drink, we can. We don’t have to do anything-”

“No. That’s not it.” Finally he steps fully into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him before he stalks to you. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you hiss, moving to hold onto him again, your mind swirling with exhaustion and old memories that you just need out, right now, and he’s right there and he needs it too, you just know it as he swoops down to grab you and toss you on the bed, both of you a mess to rip your clothes off now that the facade has finally fallen.

After the fog clears you find yourself panting on your stomach with him above you, caging you in with his forearms. Each of his stuttering inhales brings his burning chest and stomach against your back. Before the heat can become unbearable he pulls away, breaths still heaving as he tucks himself back into his pants.

Your eyes widen in surprise when he makes his way to your bathroom and comes back, washcloth in hand, to softly clean you up. As he finishes he pauses, thumb brushing the edge of an old knife scar running up your hip. “My callsign,” he murmurs, fingers tracing its length. “It’s König.”

And with that, he leaves.

You were content for that to be the end of it. You’d each gotten what you needed, after all. And as you stretch languidly across your mattress the following morning, an unfamiliar relaxation settles along your tense muscles. Yes, you would be more than happy to leave it at this.

But as the next training drill ends you find yourself faced with your cold barrack and the prospect of another sleepless night. Before you even realize what you’re doing your legs are moving, ready to go to the kitchen and-

He’s right there, startling as you nearly open your door into his face. He takes a step back, but you’re already holding your hand out and his eyes are burning into you as he takes it and lets you pull him in, lets you shut the door behind you before he’s lifting you with laughable ease and carrying you to bed.

You’re already burrowing your face into your pillow by the time he comes back to clean you up. This time his palm runs over a puckered mass on your thigh, a nasty burn scar from failing to dive for cover fast enough. It still hurts sometimes, but the pain is good. Reminds you not to be so careless again.

As you drift off completely to the feel of his warm hand taking in the old wound, you fail to notice the way his head has turned up, eyes running over your face. He contemplates brushing a finger over your hairline, tucking the wild flyaways behind your ear. But no. That would be too…friendly. That’s not what this is.

So instead he spreads your blankets over your now sleeping form, and with one last lingering gaze, leaves you to sleep peacefully.

You’re not surprised when you wake up to the empty room. It was what you wanted, after all. You had gotten another restful night out of it, and he got what he wanted. It was a fair trade. A great trade, even.

And as the training drills continue and you feel how naturally your body flows, how efficiently it executes your will when you’re actually well-rested, you find yourself seeking his company out more and more. Soon the pair of you have built your own kind of routine, him coming to you the evening after each debriefing when the leftover sparks of adrenaline are refusing to die out in you both.

He always lays you down on your stomach, opening you up with his fingers as he patiently works you through your first orgasm before letting himself take you. He’s always slow at first, but he finds you restless and impatient, urging him to go faster and harder, to knock you out for the night, to knock everything out of your mind that you never want to think about again.

You try to look back once only for your face to meet his hand. With gentle but firm fingers, he turns your head away.

Afterwards he’s even more delicate, wordlessly cleaning you up with a touch light enough to leave a butterfly unharmed. Although he rarely meets your eyes, his gaze and fingers take in your body, each time finding a new scar for his fingers to brush over like a chaste kiss.

You’re asleep by the time he leaves, and you like it that way. The two of you can crash against each other like blizzards raging and howling until you finally break into clear skies. And afterwards, you’re soldiers again. Well-rested, sure. But soldiers all the same. No hard feelings, either. You know he understands.

Soon you two find yourselves assigned to the same training team more and more. It’s natural, an unspoken communication flowing between you, and your superiors see it in the skyrocketing success rates. They pointedly ignore the way your stares burn holes into each other, keeping their eyes fixed on powerpoints and mission statistics. Not their business, they tell themselves. What matters is that you two do your jobs.

And then finally it’s time for the mission, a deployment in the middle of a remote and mountainous forest with terrible radio signal.

Like your first training, it starts easy enough. You’re divided into two teams on two separate mountains, and it’s just your luck that they put you on the team with no one you’re close to. Not even König. Maybe the higher-ups were finally sick of you two.

But you’re an adult. You handle it. You swallow the unease that comes with the teams not being able to contact each other. It’s simply too risky, and the signals are shoddy at best anyway. Base will come in for extraction if the other team succeeds.

With practiced ease you push yourself through two weeks of empty trails and summer-camp camaraderie as the talkative ones share jokes around the empty fireplace and the quiet ones listen from the shadows and chuckle their approval.

Week 3, everything goes to shit.

You should’ve known. You really should’ve known. The weather out here can change in an instant, clouds materializing from a clear sky’s empty expanse like an angry god throwing his rage down from above. You should’ve known the people here would be the same.

Before any of you knew the safehouse was surrounded, they were already through the doors.

You remember waking up to the creak of the old door with a groan, not ready to start your watch yet. The man on watch had been short and wiry, and you marveled at how shadows warp themselves against the light, twisting and turning to make one man look like another, tall and burly and carrying a-

CRASH!

The windows burst inwards in a crescendo of sparks and you’re scrambling backwards, reaching for your

BANG!

Dust from the roof is falling on your head, in your eyes and you’re blinking at the haze, the sting, your hands feeling the solid weight of your weapon and yanking it against you, and you’re stumbling backwards towards the

BANG!

and you’re stumbling forwards towards the

BANG!

And you’re on your knees crawling crawling

BANG! BANG BANG BANG!

crawling away from everything and your eardrums are hot iron seething in your skull and your eyes are being scratched by cats and there’s something warm on your face now and there’s something heavy thunking to the floor just next to you and everything is all dark, all the shadows are choking you and-

-grey. Not black. Not the black of the inside. Grey. A doorway. A hole in the wall. You’re on your knees, your hands are on the wall, you’re pushing yourself up, you’re running, and there are patters behind you and gurgling sounds and the volleys of automatic weaponry but your vision is finally starting to clear, you can see the treeline and all you need is to get there.

A roar surges behind you, and you spin into the sun. Heat slams into your body and you’re flung, a leaf in the wind, hard onto your back as yellows and reds surge in front of you or maybe it was behind you and now you’re a deer, eyeballs bulging out of your head and rolling in your skull as you run from a forest fire, angry and starving, only this fire has legs and they’re longer than yours and it’s following you, you just know it, you can’t hear it but you know.

You’re not a human anymore, you’re barely even an animal, you’re not thinking, you’re a scramble of limbs and an impulse. Run.

You try. You try so hard but there’s nothing carrying you, your legs don’t feel connected to each other anymore and they’re not even your legs you look down and they’re still there but you can’t…feel them?

Tilting. Tilting. Tilting.

Light. Burning light.

Fade to black.

No, wait. Not you. You’re still here. Your legs are wavy and jelly but still there.

You fling an arm out and feel something solid. Cold. Rough. Bark.

You made it to the trees.

There’s no time to celebrate. Behind you lights are still flaring, and with each passing second more bodies are falling to the ground, leaking out into the snow. You have to move.

The second safehouse is to the north. It’s your only way out, you know that. The rest of your team would be there.

Should be there.

Better be there.

Don’t think about it, don’t think. Just move.

The battle is fading behind you now and your blood is beginning to cool, settling heavy in your veins like the thick jam your mother used to make on warm summer mornings just as the sun’s rays flowed through your windows.

It would be nice to be there right now. Warm. Content. Full. Your stomach growls in agreement at the thought. You have some ration bars in your pocket, but you know it hasn’t been long enough to have one. You need to spread them out, make sure they can last.

Your stomach groans again, and you shake your head. To divert your attention, you take stock of the rest of your body.

You’re scraped and bruised, your head vibrating like…oh, what is it like? Like…your phone after you get added to a group chat you wanted nothing to do with. Hehe. You can barely remember the days when your problems were as simple as that.

You're letting yourself get too distracted. Anyways, as you were saying. You’re a bit battered and scraped up, alright. But no broken bones. No visible deadly wounds. And you still have your gun clamped to your chest with shaky arms. That’s all you need, really. Making it to the safehouse will be a breeze.

You’re halfway down the mountain as twilight begins to lighten to dawn, and there’s still no sign of anyone chasing you. It’s a bit warmer down here, and as you flex your fingers and toes you feel the sharp pins and needles radiate through them and force a smile. It’s good, you tell yourself. Means they’re all still there. You might just be in the clear now.

Then the sky darkens again, and it begins to rain.

Within a few minutes you can’t see your hand in front of your face in the downpour and you're forced to hide out. You find a fallen evergreen and burrow through its thick boughs, needles pricking your face and poking in your mouth with a sharp scent that settles behind your eyeballs as you force your way through, certain it will block out the worst of the rain. It doesn’t.

It’s past noon by the time the deluge finally lets up, and as you step out, cursing your shelter for all its faults, the slick earth shifts abruptly under you. With a cry, you are yanked off of your feet into a roll down the slope. You fling out your arms, grasping for anything solid, but the world is a mass of dirt and grey-brown snow-slush and you can’t stop yourself until your hip jams into a tree-stump. Hard.

You hiss, twisting your face upwards off the ground. Bad idea. The mud-slush runs down into your nose and you splutter, spasming and hacking up half the mountain. You move to wipe your eyes on your arm but only rub more dirt in them, gritting your teeth and hissing through them at the sting.

You push yourself onto your hands and knees with a whimper, gingerly feeling around your hip. Not broken. Just another bruise. What’s one more bruise? It’ll be fine.

You’ll be fine.

Your ankle is twisted. You’ve wrapped it as best as you can, but every time you put weight on it, you imagine a great big serpent with needles for scales is slithering under your skin, wrapping itself tight around the bones and squeezing.

Even worse, it's getting dark again. Fucking FUCK.

You should get yourself a thesaurus for Christmas. Fuck really doesn’t have much weight to it when you say it every other sentence.

Whatever. You’re fucking screwed.

Your clothes are soaked, you’re painted in dirt and runny snow and as soon as it gets dark temperatures are going to drop fast enough to freeze you right in place like a stupid fucking statue. Fuck this, fuck this so hard what do I do what do I do.

You bury your face into your hands, heels pressing hard into your eyes. It doesn’t matter that your hands have mud mittens anymore because your face is solid mud and you’ve had dark spots in your eyesight for hours and maybe if you rub them really hard this will all be a shitty dream your shitty brain made up and then you can wake up in your shitty cot with your blanket that’s too thin and it will be so fucking lumpy and uncomfortable and perfect. It would be perfect. Maybe König would be there.

What?

You’re breaking down and going to die in a few hours and you’re thinking of him? Some dude you fuck? What the hell is wrong with you?

He was really warm, though. And he was always so gentle afterwards. For hands that kill with such brutal precision, his fingers felt too delicate to be his when they ran along your body, mapping every scar and dimple like he was trying to memorize you. Like he was terrified that tomorrow he might wake up blind and never be able to see you again, so he needed to be able to recognize you by touch alone.

You didn’t even know what his face looked like, but you could get lost in those eyes, you think. You've learned that the skin above them stretches when he’s surprised, and the skin under them scrunches up when he laughs, so you think it must scrunch like that when he smiles, too. You’ve even seen the way his lids drift down to hide the way his eyes roll back when he’s bored.

What do they look like when he’s excited? When he’s angry? Sad?

You wonder what it would be like to look him in the eyes while you both fell apart. Would he look away and screw them shut? Would they water a little, as yours so often did?

Would he stay the night if you asked? Would he hold you? Would he…

No. This isn’t happening. No way in hell. You are not dying thinking of a random man you’ve barely spoken two words to. It’s ridiculous. It’s pathetic. You’re better than this.

You will not go out like this.

You yank yourself to a tree whose limbs burst forth in sprays of dark needles, your shoulders screaming at you as you pull yourself up on the branches, feeling like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. It’s pitiful. You swing your good leg up, grinding your teeth so hard your jaw pops as you pull yourself up to a thick fork and begin pulling down limbs above you, cutting through the ones around you, tying and weaving and undoing and redoing.

It is dark by the time you’ve finished, a thick nest of evergreen boughs settled under you and woven walls crushing you in. You have to curl into a tight ball to fit into it, but you can no longer feel the breezes from outside. You’ve stripped your clothes off and spread them along the walls as best you can, hoping they can dry just a little.

You thank the mud for clogging your nose. You don’t even want to imagine what you and your clothes must smell like by now.

Maybe by the time you meet up with the others you’ll smell so bad you’ll make one of the rookies vomit. Ghost did that last mission, and you and Soap nearly burst a lung as the poor guy emptied his guts over and over again.

You chuckle at that and try your best to fall asleep.

By the time you make it down the mountain the next day, your knees are knocking against each other with every step and your weapon is plastered with muddy slush that has frozen and melted and frozen all over again. The valley is even worse than the slope, with runoff from the rain congregating in a swampy mess that has you sinking up to your calves in some places. Lifting a leg in this feels like pulling yourself out of concrete, so you get really good at sliding each foot forward without raising it upwards at all.

You think the pressure from the mud is helping with the pain. You barely feel it when you move now.

Your jaw is clenched so hard you chip one of your molars.

You’re halfway through the valley when one of them finds you.

It’s funny how it happens. How you both stand in the mud staring at each other. How you both instinctively know who the other is through the curtain of earth camouflaging you both, yet each stand stock-still as statues anyway.

A second passes.

Two.

Three.

In an instant your guns are to your shoulders, fingers rushing to crush the-

Nothing happens. You squeeze. Squeeze again. The man shakes his gun and yells in frustration, the mud and ice having rendered your weapons unfireable.

But not unusable. The man’s head whips back to you with a growl and he lunges forward, his foot sinking into a deep patch and jerking him down face first. He throws himself up again, splatting forward another pace.

You slide backward, forcing yourself to slow down, to keep your feet under you as you move gut-wrenchingly slowly, searching for solid ground. He’s flailing and flinging himself towards you but the mud is slowing him down, and there’s a rocky patch right behind you. You’re going to make it.

He reaches you before you reach the edge, raising his gun and throwing his body behind a downwards blow. Yours is already coming up to deflect, but the blow sends you backwards, landing on your back with a splash. He’s on top of you, a hand shoving your face down as mud flows around it.

You thrash and wiggle, a scream cut off as your mouth fills with liquid dirt. Your hand is whirling all around and it catches something and you yank.

He howls as you pull his ear, sending him off-balance just enough to raise your head for a choking gasp before your palm is on his face, shoving him sideways. He rolls away from you, struggling to his feet as you’re on your hands and knees and your gun is in the mud but so is his. He tries to reach for it but he’s stuck, and in that precious heartbeat of time your legs are back under you, feet planted deep and wide.

He whirls towards you as you stand, throwing a punch at your torso that you know you can’t dodge, you can’t even move, so you throw your fist sideways, twisting, forcing all your strength into shoving from your rear leg so that when you catch his knuckles on your forearm they are savagely wrenched sideways with your momentum. His pinkie pops outwards with a crunch, and he falls back with a choked sob.

You grab your gun off the ground, throwing your whole body into a swing at his head, shattering through his palm as he tries to block it. You both fall sideways with the momentum but you find your feet faster, gripping the weapon through the slime coating it as you bring the stock straight down into his skull.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Your grip slides, dirt scraping more of your skin off with each blow, but he’s not moving. You stumble backwards drunkenly, falling onto your forearms again and army-crawling, gun held tightly in each hand, all the way to the edge. You flop on your back then, one eye on the body, and heave great breaths, coughing again and again until your body has enough and you curl inwards, choking out mud and throwing up even more. You try to even your breathing, try to filter the adrenaline out of your system so you don’t crash. In, out. In, out. In out in out inoutinoutinoutinoutin-FUCCCCCKK. You shake your head violently, over and over.

You take one last look at the body, only seeing it because you know where to look. A mud-covered shoulder pokes out of the ground, the rest already lost.

You can’t balance on your feet anymore, so you crawl away.

You don’t even bother to make a shelter that night. You crawl under a rotting log, ripping your last ration bar from your pocket and devouring it, licking the crumbs from your stained and tainted fingers. You curl up and fall asleep just like that, bones chattering and muscles spasming.

Helicopter blades wake you up in the morning. You’re on your feet, falling and jumping and running and falling, flailing your arms because you know those blades, that’s your team and they’re here for you and you’re finally free, you did it you did it you’re so proud of yourself you can’t wait to have a warm bath and then maybe even afterwards you can see-

The helicopter passes over you and disappears around the mountain.

You stare at it, deathly still. It’s just sweeping the area, making sure it’s safe to land.

But the wingbeats have already faded into the distance, replaced by a vast and engulfing silence. Time stretches out before you, and you’re still staring at the mountain.

Your stomach breaks the silence with a gurgle.

You flop down, shoving your face into the ground, and scream.

You press the button on your radio, cracking the caked mud. It clicks, and you hear nothing. Not even static. You click it again. And again, this time just to hear the sound. Rapidly you click it again and again and again.

You start laughing, your abs clenching and strangling your organs as you guffaw, thrashing around like a headless chicken, and thinking about yourself as a headless chicken makes you laugh even louder. Everything is just so funny, none of this is real, you’re on the Truman Show, you’re the biggest comedy in the world. It’s even funny that your laughter only comes out in squeaky wheezes. It’s all just a big joke. Haha. You can’t wait to tell someone.

You fall asleep just like that, grinning up at the sky with dirt in your teeth.

You wake up, stare into the sun, and go back to sleep.

You feel lighter.

Is this what it feels like to leave your body?

It’s not as bad as you thought.

You wonder if König will remember you.

The ground beneath you is moving, sliding under you and scraping along you.

There's no ground underneath you at all now, and something is pressing, and you feel your legs dangling and swinging all around you, the world spinning a jig and you the unwilling passenger. You think you might tell it to stop, but it doesn't listen to you.

You're yanked back into consciousness by a thundering vibration setting every bone against itself. You jolt upwards, feeling heavy pressure on your shoulders as your eyes roll back into your head. The world is black. Black and blue and blurred. Through the haze you begin to make out a white visage and two black voids that pierce through you.

This must be hell. You don’t want to be awake for your judgement.

Your consciousness drifts away again, blocking out the rumbling flight of the helicopter, completely oblivious to the warm bodies pressed in around you, speaking rapidly through their headsets.

Any more? Sweep around again.

There's nothing else here.

Ok. Let's bring these ones back, then.

You are still asleep as your body is carried into a hospital room, completely unresponsive as the nurses strip and bathe you with clinical precision. You don’t wake until hours later, seeing only a single nurse checking your vitals and bandages. Each hand and foot has been carefully wrapped, the angry red battlefield of blisters and exposed flesh meticulously covered in pristine, unblemished white. The nurse offers a smile as you fight through the haze, imagining you are underwater and slowly floating to the surface, watching the sun jiggle and warp through the abyss above you. Just bad blisters, the nurse is telling you. Very lucky. Very lucky. You think you might nod back. She’s right, of course. You’re alive, aren’t you?

Ghost comes by as you’re released the next day. They’ve rewrapped your hands in a bandage that gives you a little more flexibility, and he finds you sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into the white fabric.

The mattress shifts as he settles beside you. He doesn’t say a word, but his eyes are trained on you. Black voids in a mask of white.

“You left me,” you finally whisper, eyes still on your hands.

“What?”

You look at him, trying to see something in the face to get mad at, but his eyes are just a little wider than before. Confused, maybe.

“The helicopter…” you begin, voice scratchy, and clear your throat. “The helicopter flew right over me.”

“That wasn’t our helicopter.”

“It was heading back from the safehouse.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Oh,” you huff, sinking into yourself. “I…”

You stop as he clears his throat, shoulders expanding in a loud breath. “It’s alright. You were knocked out pretty good by the time our boys found you. Happens to the best of us.”

You nod, swallowing again, and wish someone else was here to comfort you, literally anyone but Ghost. “Is…uh…is…umm…is Soap ok?”

Ghost grunts. “Johnny took one to the arm, but he’ll pull through. I was just going to visit him now.”

You push yourself to your feet, proud that you only sway a bit. “Can I-”

“No,” Ghost cuts you off. “You’ll have time to visit him later. For now you need to go and rest. That’s an order,” he cuts you off as you open your mouth to protest. Your jaw shuts. Call it obedience, call it cowardice, but you find you just don’t have it in you to argue the point. You promise yourself you’ll see Soap in the morning. Well, later in the morning, seeing as it’s somehow 0100 hours already.

When Ghost leaves you slump, any need for straight posture gone with the departure of your superior officer. Trying to keep your breathing even, you will your legs to carry your body down the medical corridor. Just a little longer, you promise them, then you’ll get the break you deserve. But your body has had enough of your unfulfilled promises, and you find yourself forced to sink onto one of the shitty metal chairs littering the hallway. Just a little rest, and then I’ll go back to my quarters.

You wake to the familiar sounds of agony. Before your body has the chance to disagree, instinct has you on your feet again, hands grabbing at the thin air where your sidearm should be. My holster, my holster, where the hell is-

Your eyes land on the white-washed walls. Too clean. Too smooth. And your hands aren’t moving like they should, strangled by white fabric. It finally sinks in that you’re far from the battlefield, far from any fight.

The sounds continue, drawing your eye to one of the many nondescript doors lining the corridor. Someone having a nightmare, probably. Or reacting badly to a procedure, maybe. Either way, a problem best left for the nurses with their iron wills and their tranquilizers. You have enough bruises already. Best not add a black eye to the list.

A pitiful whimper sounds through the door, one that has your heart twisting like a towel being wrung out, sending all the blood to your throat and stomach.

Fuck it. What’s one more bruise?

Your fingers curl the handle down, and you shrink in on yourself as the door swings open on its own with a creak. You catch it and hastily shut it behind you, trying not to make any more noise.

The room is small enough that even the military-issue cot feels too big for it. The room is made even smaller by the man lying in the cot, arms dangling off the sides as he thrashes, his feet hanging off the end. You can see the crumpled blanket on the floor and automatically avert your eyes. The hood is still on, but below it he’s wearing an undershirt and boxers, and you realize this is the most of him you’ve ever seen.

You press yourself to the wall as he spasms again, a leg kicking out and narrowly missing you, causing you to notice the thick white bandage wrapped around his thigh, and the dark line slowly being painted along it.

Hesitantly you flick the lights on, wincing at the burn that rushes through your eyeballs, but he doesn’t even react to it. You have no idea how to wake him up without breaking a bone, so you press your back to the wall, slowly skirting along the edge of the room and staying as far out of his reach as you can, praying to whatever old ghosts are listening that he doesn’t wake up and go straight into murder mode. Or, you know, default alert soldier setting. This is a stupid idea.

As you approach his head you lean over as far as you can, stretching one arm out until the socket pops in protest. You poke his shoulder and leap back.

Nothing.

You take a step closer and lean in again.

You’re immediately interrupted by the door swinging open with a much-louder creak. You and the nurse both pause and stare at each other for a moment, startled, and you sheepishly move to straighten and pull your arm back.

With viper-like speed an arm shoots out to grab your wrist, capturing it in a deadly grip and you yelp, whirling back to the man in the bed and raising your opposite arm.

You freeze when you see his eyes, so wide they’re more white than color. He’s stock-still, fixated on you like a mouse caught in a cat’s gaze. Paralyzed by fear, praying. Shaking.

His hand is…shaking. “Hey, hey,” you coax, hesitantly pulling your arm back in so you can place it over his fingers. “It’s just me, big guy. You’re safe.”

His chest heaves outwards, and you feel his hand relax a little before his head snaps towards the nurse as she takes a step closer, cradling something small and cylindrical in her hands. “It’s alright,” she speaks directly to you. “I can take it from here.”

König releases the breath he’s held, shoving himself backwards on the bed with a shake of his head, prompting the nurse to click her tongue at him before raising the needle. You realize it’s a lot bigger than you first thought. “You’ll be fine,” she’s assuring him. “It will hurt a lot less once it’s done.”

König’s head turns very slowly, back up to you, and for a second you’re confused at his gaze, wondering why he thinks you have enough knowledge to give him any medical advice. Then you notice the way his eyes seem just a little too shiny in the light, the way his other hand is clenching and unclenching around the bedsheet.

You’ve always known him as the perfect soldier, quick and to the point, pin-prick precise, a dancing whirlwind of death. More monster than man. You know him as the one who laughs with every good kill, mocking the reaper of death with a smile. Look at how slow you are. I got here first. He’s the one who dances on the precipice of fate and spits over the edge.

Even sprawled out like this, sweaty and trembling, you are well aware of every flex of his muscles, of the strength he holds back in his grip. Yet as you look into the eyes of the storm you find that for the first time you see no hint of the giddy killing machine looking back at you. The eyes staring back at you from this big soldier’s body are those of a fragile little kid. And he’s terrified.

You gulp, your tongue catching on the back of your throat. “Yeah…yeah, it’ll be ok. I’ll be right here.”

Finally he relaxes, slumping back into the bed, and the nurse takes the opportunity to give him the shot. You feel his flinch in a wave of pressure radiating up your wrist and forearm, but his gaze doesn’t move. He keeps looking into your eyes until his own begin to droop and he sinks even further into the mattress.

Before his hand drops from your wrist you catch it, the skin under your bandages protesting at the sudden flexion. You choose to ignore it, settling down on the floor next to his bed as your own eyes begin to follow his. Even as your head falls into your knees and your body finally gives itself completely over to darkness, you refuse to let go.

You’re woken by something warm trailing along your hairline. You jerk, smacking the back of your head into the wall with an irritated grunt. König’s arm hovers in the air just in front of your face, and you turn to see him pressed to the edge of the bed, looking a little guilty. “Sorry,” he murmurs.

You should be, startling me like that, you want to say. But when you open your mouth, what comes out instead is “No, it’s ok, I just…I wasn’t expecting it.”

König gulps audibly, and the cot creaks as he pulls his hand back, shifting his body even closer. “You stayed.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Never,” he hisses, and you find yourself staring into his eyes again, only this time they’ve taken on their old torrential intensity.

Now it’s yours that are as wide as a child’s. You gulp, feeling the muscles of your jaw flex and unflex. “Ok,” you finally murmur. “I’ll stay.”

And you do. For two more nights König stays in the infirmary, weathering the steady rounds of nurses and bandage changes with a steely resolve even as his fists flex and twist into the sheets. You stay with him all the while, but he doesn’t reach for your hand again, not after noticing your own bandages.

The second night you sleep in the cot next to him at his insistence. You’re hurt too, he reasons. You need a real bed to rest in. He scoots himself to the back edge to give you room, and when you wake up he hasn’t moved.

After the third night you wake to his hand resting on your arm. It’s a small gesture. Innocent even. Yet still you find yourself contemplating it, barely saying a word as the nurses come to remove his bandages. You grind your jaw as you take in the puckered line of stitches running from his knee up to the edge of his boxers, looking away politely as the nurses help him into a pair of sweatpants.

You don’t even say anything when you let him lean on your shoulders, using your own aching body as a sacrificial lamb to transport him back to his barrack. Once you get him into bed you hover in the doorway, taking in the shadows of the walls, twisting your wrists back and forth, a habit you picked up to alleviate the pain from flexing your fingers. They’re in even thinner bandages now, but you’d rather be safe than sorry.

Maybe there’s nothing to say. You found him in a vulnerable situation where he needed a lifeline. It could have been anyone, he was barely lucid. Now he surely wanted to forget all of that vulnerability and go back to a time where he hadn’t needed help from anyone. Not even you. Especially not you. He was a soldier, after all. Fondness wasn’t in the job description.

Best not to say anything then. Just…leave and get this over with. Just like that. Yeah…easy. Really easy.

Your move to shut the door behind you is halted by him calling your name. Your real name. You didn’t even know he knew your name.

He calls it again, quieter this time, and you lean back in the door, eyes drifting across his room to him. He’s still sitting on the bed where you left him, only now he’s hunched over to rest a forearm on his good thigh. “Come back here,” he breathes, voice cracking, and it hits you right in your stomach, settling there like a wounded bird, flapping and screeching at you to stay away, you’re already in too deep, you don’t know how this will end.

But it’s too late. You’re walking forward, the door swinging shut behind you. Locked. You’re already reaching out for the hand he offers, only for him to reach past the bandages and grab your wrist. You pause at that, staring into the hazy depths of his eyes, pupils bursting for you again. Slowly, inch by excruciating inch, he straightens again, face coming closer to yours as another hand snakes around your neck to help guide you down to straddle his good thigh, moving your forearms to rest on each of his shoulders.

The bird in your stomach has moved to your chest, and you’re positive he can feel your heavy breathing even through his mask with how close you are. His eyes look down to your lips, and you wonder if he is going to lift his hood up and kiss you, your cheeks flushing in anticipation as he leans forward.

Only instead he rests his forehead against yours, eyes drifting closed. You feel your arms drift upwards with his inhale. “Stay with me,” he exhales. “One more night.”

You nod against his forehead, wrapping your arms around his neck and finally letting your own eyes close. Your breathing is slowed down now, and you find yourself enjoying the warmth you feel radiating from everywhere you touch him. One of his hands has spread against your thigh, while the other still rests along your neck, thumb tracing up and down your jaw. You know you could fall asleep just like this.

König, however, has other ideas. As you slump even further to him, both of his hands drift to your hips. You notice the movement, sighing at the pleasant sensation of his hands running over your body. You don’t notice the intention until he takes a deep breath, and in one smooth motion he has stood and twisted to lay you down on the bed, climbing on top of you. You gasp, feeling your heart stutter all over again, blood rushing to your core as you feel the fabric of his hood rub up your neck. His nose, you think.

Fuck, you want him. You want him just like this and any other way he’s willing to give, but you can’t, you shouldn’t, and you know you have to at least try to protest. You bite back a whimper as a hand drags up your inner thigh. “König, your leg.”

“I don’t care,” he growls. “Say my name again.”

You groan in protest and he pulls back, tilting your face up to his. “Is this not what you want?” He feels the way your jaw flexes and pulls away.

“Wait. No. I want this. You. I want you. Just…please be careful.”

He hears the last part, but he’s past giving a damn about his own body now. His hand is already undoing your belt and he’s leaning back to ease your pants and underwear off your legs, lazily tossing them to the side.

A harsh word escapes his throat as he looks down at you, but you don’t catch it through the blood rushing in your ears. “Close your eyes,” he orders, and unthinkingly you do, another growling swear reaching your ears. “So obedient for me.”

You hear the shuffling of fabric and feel a hand wrap around one of your knees, lifting it up for a warm tongue to swirl along the inside of it, for wet lips to place a sloppy kiss just above where his tongue had just been. His lips slide up again, and this time he sucks on the skin just slightly, and you feel your leg tremble as a tiny moan escapes you, but he’s already moving further up and this time sucking harder, and then further and harder and further and harder until he’s against your inner thigh and his teeth are sinking into you and you yelp his name, whining in frustration as he pulls back.

“No,” you pant, “don’t stop. Please.”

You feel a chuckle rumble in his throat and his nose presses into the bottom of your slit. You jolt, squeezing your eyes tighter as it slides up through you before pressing into your sensitive spot, and he inhales.

“Fuck,” you cry, tangling your hands in the sheets only to choke on a sound of pain.

König pulls back immediately and you shake your head at him, a sob on the edge of your quivering lips.

“Easy. Watch your hands.”

You grit your teeth and nod, relaxing your fingers and turning your palms up.

“Good,” he purrs as his hands hook under the backs of your knees, easily throwing your legs over his shoulders. As he settles back down you feel the muscles in his back flexing against your calves and moan before his mouth is even on you.

He hums contentedly at the sound, running his tongue along the length of you before swirling it around your clit. His lips pucker against it and he sucks, pulling away with a soft pop that has you clenching your legs around him. He moves in again, lazily altering between sucking and tracing his tongue just around your bud, feeling the way you flex against him, hearing the way you react to each movement, and committing all of it to memory before shifting his head so he can dip his tongue inside you. He groans at the taste, the vibration of it radiating up under your ribs and down through your legs. You’re quiet now, feeling how close you are settling heavy over you, drowning you in deliciously sweet honey.

He feels the shaking of your legs around him and returns to your clit as he slowly works a finger into you, curling it upwards to stroke at the spongy part inside of you.

You break quietly, choking on his name as the pleasure strangles your muscles and sets them briefly aflame, fresh sensations flowing through you as he continues to touch you just so, only pulling away when you sink into the mattress and your legs slip from his shoulders.

You hear the bed frame creak as he pulls back, running a hand up your thigh before the shifting sound of fabric hits your ears, and you feel the mattress sink down in different places as he shifts.

“Open your eyes.”

You do as he says, your disappointment at seeing the sniper’s hood obscuring his face immediately squashed by the realization that the rest of him is completely naked.

You’re seeing him for the first time.

Fucking hell, what a sight.

Your eyes rest on the delicious curve of his cock first, marveling at the pink tip and the thick veins running along it. You had felt his size on plenty of occasions, but seeing it for the first time is a new beast entirely, one that has you biting your lip and wiggling your hips like a teenager all over again.

But soon your eyes are taken in by the strong curves of muscle outlining his hips, and your eyes are traveling upwards to the delicious bulges of his chest, your own heaving at the sight. You find yourself wanting to trace the outline of each hill and valley of muscle that flows along his shoulders, down his arms, to the hands, wanting to run your tongue along the veins like raised rivers spreading down his forearm and across the back of each hand.

You wonder what his back looks like. You wonder how the muscles of his neck shift as he moves, what the outline of his jaw is shaped like. You are greedy and want to take everything he has, and at the same time you are desperate for anything he can give you. You’re a peasant kneeling at the feet of your king, ready to lick the crumbs he throws you off the floor.

His head tilts playfully, breaking you out of your reverie. “You like what you see?”

Your chuckle catches in your chest, only a tiny puff of air leaving your mouth. “Yes.”

His eyes scrunch a little, and you imagine he is grinning as he leans over, balancing himself above you. He moves back a bit, hand adjusting your hips as he positions himself. He looks back up at you, and you nod eagerly, your hands reaching up to grab his shoulders. He clicks his tongue, glancing at them, and with a groan you put your hands above your head. He moves one of his own to grasp your wrists, keeping them pinned as he sinks onto his forearms.

You feel the head of his cock running up and down your folds, and instinctively bend your back to give him a better angle, earning an approving hum that makes you even wetter. But as he braces himself and begins to drive into you, a strangled sound smashes through his gritted teeth.

Oh no. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t answer, only pressing his face into your neck, inhaling heavily as you feel his entire body stiffening against you. “It’s…it’s fine,” he hisses, his hand strangling your wrists. “Just …” he heaves another breath. “Ah... Ich… I…need a…moment.”

You sigh, wiggling a hand out of his grip to push his chin up. He lets you move his face back, and even in the dim light you can see the way the skin around his eyes has gone even paler than normal. “Get off,” you murmur.

He slumps, twisting his face out of your grip and keeping his eyes on the wall. He stays like that for a second before giving a swift nod and pulling out, maneuvering backwards on the bed and moving to get off.

“Wait!” you burst out, and he freezes. “That’s not what I meant.”

After another moment he looks at you in bewilderment, so you sit up and shift to the side, patting the bed next to you. Awkwardly, he crawls to it, nearly dragging his bad leg, stiffening again when you place your wrists on his shoulders. “Let me?”

After a second of staring into your eyes, he nods again, allowing you to push on him, laying him on his back before you straddle him and finally take your shirt off. You see his chest rise with a shuddering breath and before you really think about it you’re leaning down to lick a stripe up his sternum. Seeing his pecs jerk upwards on either side of your tongue emboldens you and you shift your head, running your tongue back down to circle over one of his nipples before you suck.

Immediately the muscles flex again and he pushes up into you. “Like that,” he snarls, loud and vibrating through your skull. You’re aching down there again, but you’re not done yet. You release him with a squelch, watching the patch of saliva glisten before moving to give the other nipple the same treatment, your heart leaping at the sounds falling from his mouth as he quivers under you.

“König,” you croon. “Touch me.”

He whimpers as you flick your tongue over the sensitive bud. “Where?”

“Anywhere. Grab my hair, squeeze my tits, just put your hands on me.”

You groan as he obeys, long fingers tangling tightly in your hair as his other hand spreads along your ribcage, thumb sliding over your breast. You sigh, leaning down to bite into his pec, moaning as his grip on you tightens. You kiss the mark left by your teeth before leaning back. His hands move to cup both of your breasts as you raise yourself up and sink down onto his cock. You’re too excited and you go too fast, and a sharp pinch of pain seizes at your entrance. You gasp, instinctively leaning forward to brace yourself on your palms, but his hands move to your waist, catching you before you hurt them any further.

“I have you,” he whispers, voice scratchy, and despite the pain you clench at the sound of what you do to him. He chokes on his next words, a groan coming out instead. “Do you need to get off?”

“No!” You whisper-yell back so quickly that he laughs, and despite everything you laugh with him. He runs his hands up and down your sides, feeling you start to relax a little, but not enough yet. “Tell me what you need,” he murmurs.

“It’s fine.” You close your eyes and try to focus on your breathing. “Just need…a moment.”

“Hypocrite.”

You shoot your eyes open to glare at him, only to see his chest shake with another chuckle at your scrunched-up angry face. “Your leg is sliced open, it’s not the same,” you scoff.

His eyes glimmer with the start of a witty retort before one of his hands freezes over your bottom rib, drawing his lovely gaze away from yours. His thumb is circling around a tiny hairline of a scar, bone-white and soft. You’ve already forgotten how you got it.

“This one,” he murmurs. “It is new.”

“How…how did you notice?”

“It wasn’t there last time.” His tone was quiet and matter-of-fact, like the answer was obvious, and it takes you back to every time his hands ran over you as you drifted into sleep. How long did he stay there after you fell asleep? How long did it take him to commit you to memory so well that a patch of skin even you had forgotten was instantly recognized as something new?

Your body has always been a means to an end, a vehicle carrying you rather than a full part of you. Batter it, toss it around, whatever you need to do to get the job done. And when your body protests, you treat it like any other tool you can beat into submission. Like your first battered old car that revved to life with a well-placed kick.

But now all you can think of is his hands running over you with thorough determination, acknowledging each new mark with a gentle reverence that was more than you deserved. Getting to know you in the only way he knew how.

For the first time in a long time, you’re reminded to see this body as something more than a bruised vessel you’re obligated to carry around. He reminds you to see it as something more.

Fuck, you think you might love him.

“König?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

His head tilts a little, his hand still running along your rib, and your cheeks flush.

Before he can reply, you gulp a little. “I…I think I’m ready.”

He hums again, his hands moving back to rest on your hips. You stay still for another moment, looking into his eyes. You don’t think you can memorize his body, not like he has yours. But you have memorized his eyes, have burned them into your mind so clearly you saw them even as you were trapped on that damned mountain. Thinking about him.

And now you think he might've been thinking about you, too.

You feel him twitch inside of you, pulling you out of your thoughts. Taking a deep breath, you raise yourself up slowly, feeling his hands tighten and take some of your weight, following your lead as you sink into him again, this time with a sigh that echoes his own. Slowly, hesitantly, you raise yourself up and down, feeling how easily he stretches you, how easily he could break you.

But he never has. The only pain you’ve gotten from him was caused by your own impatience. As you keep going, finding an angle that has him dragging across your most sensitive parts and making you even wetter, you become confident that there’s no chance of pain, allowing yourself to speed up.

His hands are steady as ever, guiding you up and down, but beneath you his shoulders and chest begin to squirm and heave. His eyes wander all around, and his breaths are scattered and staccato.

And his sounds. You’d never known a man to be so loud, and now you know you’ve been missing out all these years. Every grunt, every groan, every moan and whimper goes straight through your core, winding you up faster and faster. As you get closer his sounds shift, and you realize he’s started to stutter out words.

His eyes are hazy and unfocused but you can still tell they’re trained on you, and you urge your body to calm down for just a minute longer, just long enough to hear what he’s saying.

You can’t make out any of the words, but his hands are even tighter on you now and the way his voice shifts from growling to whimpering settles into a melodic language that has you crying out for him anyway.

Beneath your trembling body, he keeps going. “Never..told you …du bist wie ein Traum,” another whimper leaves his lips. “Ich kann nicht glauben, dass du wirklich hier bist.” He gasps as you clench tighter around him. “Du bist…du…Du bist viel zu gut für mich…Dein Lächeln und …und…” His eyes are watering and you slow down only for his hands to dig into you, urging you to speed up again. “Ich weiß nicht wie ich dich loslassen soll aber du verdienst so viel mehr als …”

His mind is lapsing again, his determined confession faltering into a fervent prayer sent to the only god he’s ever believed in, to you - moving over him and taking everything he is giving you, making him wish he had more, so much more than the desert-dry heart of a killer whose hands can only ever pull things apart. His thumb is over the scar on your rib again and his blurry vision is taking in the white of the bandage wrapped around your hands and it has him wishing his own hands could build something instead of destroy it just so he could put you back together again. You’re coming apart around him, crying his name, and he’s thinking of flinging his body in front of you, taking every bullet and blade meant for you, because his body is all he has to give and he knows how to sacrifice it, he knows he’ll gladly lay it at your altar, bloody and broken, if it could only mean making sure he’d never be surprised by a new scar again. Maybe you’d even remember him a little when he was gone.

He’s trying to tell you all of that, the messy syllables punching through his throat. “Niemals, niemals, nie,…” but before he can finish he’s failing already, falling apart under you and screaming your name and emptying everything he has into you.

It’s not enough.

You’re laying on top of him now and he tries his best to be gentle but his entire body is shaking as he rolls you off and staggers to his bathroom, slamming the door behind him and sinking against it.

He shatters in a whole-body-wracking sob.

You’re never going to look at him again.

He tucks his legs in, squeezing his knees into his chest, squeezing even harder as a burn radiates out from the stitches, trying to rein in his ragged breathing in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, he can save this and cover up the fact that he’s crying.

It was just meant to be casual sex. He wasn’t supposed to start caring. That’s not what you wanted. It’s not fair to you. It’s not your fault he let himself get emotional. And now he’s ruined the only thing you two did have, he wanted to make you feel better and now he’s made you so uncomfortable and…and…

He slams his forehead into his knees and sobs again.

He’s pathetic. Pathetic to think this could be something more. Pathetic to think he could have something more.

Everything hurts.

That’s what he signed up for, isn’t it?

That’s what he deserves.

A knock on the door has his head jerking back up, hands clutching his knees hard enough the knuckles just might pop through the skin. “Go away!”

“No.” Your tone is flat as he hears a thunk against the other side of the door, imagining you leaning against it and sliding down, mirroring him perfectly. “Not until you talk to me.”

“No.”

You sigh. “That's how it’s gonna be? Well, in that case, to quote a man I…admire very much, I can make you talk.” You drop your voice, trying and failing to mimic his battle growl.

He snorts despite himself.

You take that as a cue to continue. “For one, I’m not leaving until you do. You’ll be stuck with my annoying-ass voice forever.”

“I like your voice.”

“Oh…umm…thank you. In that case I’ll…I’ll steal all your knives and I’ll draw a kangaroo on your door and-”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he growls.

“Guess you’ll never know if you keep that door closed. And that’s not all, I’ll…I’ll steal those cheap chocolates we get every supply drop. Don’t deny it, I know everyone joked it was Ghost but I saw you take them all. You love those.” You smile, laughing a little. “On the other hand, I’ll fly to Austria right now if that’s what it takes to get some chocolate you’d really like. I’d even get you some of those waffle things you were telling Soap about that one time I caught you both raiding the snack cabinets. Well, I’d probably eat some of those. But I promise to save most of them for you. Just…please talk to me. I’ll…I’ll…” you’re cut off by your own squeak as the door opens and you fall backwards.

His hands are already there to catch you, and once you sit back up he stays there, half-crouched and awkward, eyes anywhere but your own.

Slowly, you open your arms, watching his head turn back to you.

In an instant he’s lunged into you, burrowing his face into your neck with an awkward grunt as he stretches his bad leg out to the side. You try to change to a comfier position for him but the man is like a brick wall.

It’s nice.

So you let yourself stay there, wrapping around him as he wraps around you on the hard floor. It’s a softness unknown to you both, two soldiers carved razor-sharp from solid steel. But as you let yourself sink into him, you find yourself liking the strange tranquility of this moment, the way two bodies made for war can still drape over each other and feel peace instead. Against all better judgement, against any scrap of common sense you have left, you find yourself yearning for a few less battles if it can mean more of this. You let your eyes close, imagining it for just a little while.

After a while, he pulls back, moving to lean against the wall and pulling you so you can balance on his uninjured thigh. You let your head loll onto his shoulder, face turned into the hood. His chin rests on your temple.

“Are you cold?”

He grunts noncommittally, eyes half-closed. “Are you?”

“Nooo,” you mumble, burrowing into his neck. He shifts, maneuvering you off his lap, only to grunt when he tries to push on his leg.

“I got it.” You push yourself up, moving to the bed to retrieve one of the blankets there, carefully wrapping it around both of your torsos when you settle back onto his lap. Your legs stick out, but you don’t really care.

After a while you feel his heartbeat begin to pick up again and adjust yourself to look up at him. His eyes drift to you before he sighs. “Do you…still want me to talk?”

You nod.

“Alright then. I will talk. I do not think it is what you want to hear.”

You bite your lip and try to keep your breathing steady as he continues.

“Back in the med bay. No. Before that.” He shakes his head emphatically. “When we were assigned to two different groups…No…Scheiße, I…”

You run a shaky hand up and down his chest. “It’s okay. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

His fingers dig into you for a fraction of a second, so quick you think you might have imagined it before his entire body is deflating, his head settling back against the wall. “They ambushed us. You weren’t there but…they hit us on patrol, hit us and ran before we could counter. I did not even see who hit me, I just look up one moment and down the next and the snow is all red and…” His voice drops to barely a whisper “Das war meines.” He trails off completely, a finger tracing circles on your shoulder. “I've been wounded before. I've accepted death before. This time...before I...while I was…” he exhales another irritated sigh. “I was on the ground and…wie sag ich das…ich hab versucht etwas zu tun, mich zu bewegen aber alles was ich tun konnte...I was thinking of you.”

He freezes, turning his head away and dropping his hands from you. But instead of moving away, you kiss a patch of skin just outside the hood, watching the muscle under it jump. “Is that all you want to tell me?”

He shakes his head.

“Do you think you can keep going?”

His head turns back to you briefly before he tilts it up to stare at the ceiling. “When I was in the med bay. Well, I…it went like this. I wake up and you are there and I think, König this is it, now you are finally dead. And then I feel the pain and I see the nurse and you were moving away and I couldn't…du warst da und dann warst du fast nicht mehr da und ich konnte nicht atmen. Ich…” he shakes his head back and forth, back and forth. “Ich konnte nicht ohne dich. Ich…needed you to stay.” His head jerks down again, eyes boring into yours with all the intensity of a tornado, arms wrapping around you once again. “I need you to stay.”

You nod, holding him tight, the weight of the words unspoken tangling in your chest and constricting your tongue. Stay. With me. He won't ask for more than tonight, not when neither of you can even risk asking for a tomorrow. Stay with me. For as long as you have. A day, maybe. A month. Maybe you'll get out of this mess someday and get years.

Stay with me for a lifetime. Whatever lifetime we get.

You nod, whispering a promise into his skin. Always. Your fingers drift down along his leg, tracing just outside the stitches, your eyes following the line of gooseprickles that rise in their wake.

You feel more than you hear your name being whispered into your hair, and as you look up fingers wrap around your wrist, guiding it up over his hip, his ribs, his chest. Sliding around the edge of the hood, pushing it up, up, up. Until the fabric slides off. You gaze in awe, watching his jaw flex as his lips part to form a word whose sound hides in the back of his throat. Always. You look back into his eyes before surging forward, hugging him tight, tight enough to strangle, you think, but he’s already wrapping himself around you with equal fervor.

“You know,” you murmur, breath ruffling his hair, “if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

He huffs a laugh, the air catching in his lungs with a choking sound. His grip tightens.

When you wake you find you’ve been moved to the bed, but his face is still buried in your neck, unmoving despite the soft light filtering in your window. You smile a little, watching the early-morning sky, perfectly clear and pale blue.

It matches his eyes.

---

German Translations

du bist wie ein Traum: You are like a dream

Ich kann nicht glauben, dass du wirklich hier bist: I can’t believe you are here

Du bist viel zu gut für mich: You are too good to me

Dein Lächeln und…: You smile and…

Ich weiß nicht wie ich dich loslassen soll aber du verdienst so viel mehr als: I don't know how I am supposed to let go of you (eventually) but you (clearly) deserve so much more than me

Niemals, niemals, nie: never again, never again, never

Scheiße: shit

Das war meines: it was mine

wie sag ich das: how do I say this

ich hab versucht etwas zu tun, mich zu bewegen aber alles was ich tun konnte: I tried doing something, moving, but all I could do

du warst da und dann warst du fast nicht mehr da und ich konnte nicht atmen. Ich…: you were there and then you nearly weren’t there and I could not breathe. I…

Ich konnte nicht ohne dich. Ich…: I couldn’t without you. I…

#könig #könig call of duty #cod #cod mwii #könig x reader

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katelynnwrites · 5 months

Text

When You Know (You Know) | Felicitas Rauch

warnings: some pain, insecurities and a tad of angst

word count: 1964

summary: your girlfriend needs you after wolfsburg’s loss, even if she doesn’t know it yet

a/n: requested, original idea here

Feli knows that she is an optimistic person. She’s always been one.

But she is finding it difficult to see anything positive in this. Her club’s exit from the Champions’ League is startling and nothing short of humiliating.

As far as she can remember, this is the first time that Wolfsburg has been eliminated before they even reached the group stages.

Losing again, so soon after that devastating blow is too much.

Felicitas hates that she was a part of it. She can’t help but feel responsible, wondering if there was a way she could have prevented it. She knows she could have played better, defended better against both Paris FC and Bayern Munich.

Last season they made it to the final and this season they won’t even get to play in the European competition.

At the rate her club is going in the league, they won’t be doing well either. Certainly not finishing in first place.

The defender doesn’t know how to reconcile that knowledge with the high hopes and expectations she had started the season with.

In the back of her mind, an anything but quiet voice asks over and over again if she could have made a difference. She is well aware that she has not been at the top of her game recently and that adds to her guilt.

Those thoughts keep her company for the whole trip back home, from Munich back to Wolfsburg.

Several hours of being tormented by her own mind has her at her breaking point and Feli has nothing left to give by the time she reaches the door of her apartment.

She unlocks it and the first thing she notices is that her apartment, while dark, doesn’t feel as empty as it should.

The German woman flicks on the light and jumps when something warm touches her leg.

She is barely able to stop herself from screaming and her heart pounds in her chest.

A familiar bark pulls her out of it and Feli opens her tightly squeezed eyes with a sigh of relief.

‘Oh thank god it’s just you.’ She exhales, bending down to pet her dog.

Cinnamon licks her hand eagerly and Feli relaxes marginally, more than she has since Linda Dallmann scored Bayern’s first goal.

The brunette is so exhausted that it takes a moment for it to occur to her that Cinny shouldn’t even be there.

When it does, Feli straightens up in alarm immediately.

‘Hey.’ You greet, leaning against the frame of your girlfriend’s bedroom door.

The brunette blinks once, twice and then a third time before she is crossing the room as rapidly as she can, practically throwing herself into your arms.

She gasps, clinging tightly on to your shirt.

‘I’m here. I got you.’ You murmur, slipping one of your hands under her hoodie to rub her back while the other supports her.

You know that your girl’s love language is physical touch and you want nothing more to comfort her. Especially right now when she is clearly hurting.

Felicitas sobs, salty tears bleeding into the fabric of your top.

‘How can I help? What do you need from me?’ You offer.

As a fellow professional athlete, you know that’s the best thing you can do for her right now.

Words like ‘I’m sorry.’ or ‘You’ll do better next season.’ don’t help.

Not when the pain and disappointment is so raw and overwhelming.

‘Just hold me. Please just hold me and don’t let go.’ She chokes out.

‘Of course liebling. I won’t let go till you’re ready.’ You promise.

Feli cries harder at that, her slim frame trembling with the force of it.

Gently, you guide her over to her bed and settle yourself beside her. You spoon her close, tucking her head under your chin and wrapping your arms around her waist.

The sheets are still warm, from when you had been sleeping in them earlier, before Cinny’s barks had woken you up.

You guess you should have told your girlfriend that you were coming over but really you hadn’t planned to.

You’d just known that she would need you and yet be too worried of being too much to ask.

As soon as the full time whistle for her game was blown, you had switched off your television and hurriedly packed an overnight bag before making the drive from Frankfurt to Wolfsburg.

Feli doesn’t dare to ask you for many things, constantly feeling like it would make you get tired of her more quickly.

That couldn’t be further from the truth and you have been trying to work on it with her but the fullback’s insecurities are deeply rooted and aren’t so easily overcome.

Gently, you stroke Feli’s hair and press slow kisses against her back.

Your girlfriend whimpers and you hold her a little tighter.

‘Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.’ You promise.

The Wolfsburg defender stifles her sobs, breathing out a barely audible, ‘Really?’

‘Really. I swear.’

Felicitas finally relaxes and you keep running your fingers through the strands of her hair.

Eventually her heartbroken sobs slow and her breathing evens out.

It’s only then that you allow yourself to fall asleep, making sure that you are still holding Feli tightly as you do so.

******

Hours later and your girlfriend still hasn’t stirred. It’s a testament to how exhausted she is that she only begins to wake when the sun is high in the sky.

Felicitas mumbles something indistinctly, pushing her face into the side of your neck.

Her legs are tangled with yours and you put away your phone as soon as you feel her moving around.

The brunette’s eyelashes flutter and then she finally opens her pretty eyes.

‘Good morning.’

‘Morning.’ Feli mumbles, her voice hoarse from lack of use and her extensive crying last night.

‘I love you.’ You quietly say.

Your girlfriend gives you a tiny smile, softly replying, ‘I love you too.’

The Wolfsburg defender stares at you for a moment before she wraps her arms around her own stomach, turning in your grasp so that her back is facing you.

You hate the distance she is attempting to put between you.

‘Thank you but you didn’t have to come. Or fetch Cinny from her dog sitter. I would have been okay.’

Your girlfriend’s voice trembles but she steadfastly keeps staring at the wall.

‘Felicitas…’

‘Really. You don’t need to trouble yourself with me.’

Her flat words hit you like a punch to the stomach. You knew she would be thinking something along these lines but it still hurts. It physically pains you to hear those sentences out loud.

You take a few minutes, trying to come up with the right words to say. It’s not easy and eventually you decide on being blunt.

‘Feli? Do you love me?’

The German woman flinches and turns back around to face you immediately, ‘What? What kind of a question is that? Did I do something to make you doubt me? Because I do. I love you. I love you.’

Her red and swollen eyes search yours rapidly and she draws your arms away from her waist so that her hands can lightly wrap around your wrists.

‘I told you I love you earlier. Don’t you believe me?’

Felicitas seems desperate and you feel bad for the shock you’ve sprung on her.

‘I believe you. I know you love me. Incredibly so if you ask me.’ You whisper.

Your girl lets out an audible breath of relief, her hands cradling your face for a long moment before she drops them.

‘Then why liebling?’ She asks tentatively.

‘Because if it were me in pain? Would you have come? Even if I hadn’t asked?’ You answer, reaching for her hands and intertwining her long fingers with yours.

‘Of course.’ The brunette promises in an instant.

She’s still not sure what you are getting at but you hope that your next few sentences help her understand.

‘Would you have thought of me as a bother?’

The fullback blinks in surprise, ‘Definitely not. I would want to be there for you. Liebling, I’ll do anything for you.’

There’s a moment before her own words sink in.

Her mouth forms an ‘o’ shape and she flushes, looking away from you.

Gently, you elaborate, ‘That is exactly it. Feli I want to be here for you. You are the woman I am completely in love with, my everything. Caring for you comes as naturally as breathing to me. It isn’t possible for you to trouble me, especially if you are hurting.’

Your girlfriend’s breathing is so shallow that you wonder if she is even breathing at all.

Giving her the time to process, you lift her hand up to your lips and press tiny affectionate kisses onto each of her fingertips.

Felicitas watches you, shivering slightly every time your lips touch her because of the tingles that ensue.

You give her the warmest of feelings inside and she knows you are right.

‘Let me in.’ You prompt tenderly and the brunette slowly nods.

‘I can’t promise you that I instinctively will but I’ll try my best.’

‘That’s good enough for me, liebling.’

You give her a smile before closing your eyes and carefully drawing her close so that your forehead rests against hers.

‘You got me. You never let go.’ Feli mumbles, somewhat in awe and disbelief.

Her fingers run briefly over your arms which have gone back to encircling her waist.

‘I won’t. I told you I’m not letting go till you tell me to.’ You answer simply.

The defender presses her lips onto yours in response.

‘Love you. Thank you for being here.’ She murmurs.

You open your eyes again, leaning back fractionally just so you can take her in.

Your girlfriend still looks tired but not as shattered as she was last night.

‘Always. I love you too Felicitas, we can talk whenever you’re ready.’

‘I’d like that. Let me just have a few more minutes of cuddles first though? It’s helping me feel better and I have missed you so.’

‘Whatever you need.’ You promise wholeheartedly, your heart easing as you see your girlfriend smile.

Then a thought occurs to you, one that you’re sure will make Feli’s smile wider if you share it with her.

So you do, your mouth curving upwards into a grin as you say, ‘Did you know that I had to show Cinny’s dog sitter a photo of us kissing just so I could pick her up?’

‘What?’ The German woman chuckles loudly, her eyebrow rising in question.

‘She doesn’t know me and I didn’t tell you I was coming so she definitely wasn’t expecting me. I think she was worried that I was trying to dognap Cinnamon.’

Your girlfriend laughs, the sound causing the entire room to brighten.

‘You could have just called me to call her.’ Felicitas says, in between her giggles.

‘I know but I wanted to surprise you.’

‘Well you nearly gave me a heart attack. You know how I am.’ She accuses lightheartedly, giving you a little poke in the ribs.

‘Sorry.’ You apologise with a smile, getting what Feli is referring to.

The brunette is far too easy to scare and it provides her teammates and yourself an endless amount of entertainment.

‘It’s okay. I’m so happy you are here and you’re welcome to surprise me whenever you like. Just please, at least leave a light on next time okay?’

‘Okay.’ You agree and then Feli is pressing herself impossibly closer to you, the usual sparkle in her eyes returning as the weight on her heart and mind lifts.

She knows now, knows that you love her and nothing she could want or do will ever be trouble to you.

German Translation:

liebling - love

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juvenillia · 6 months

Text

Rammstein [headcanon for König]

a/n: @actuallyhiswife had a post about a Rammstein song fitting König and as a German metalhead who follows this band for a very long time I’m eager to share some of my culture with you guys. Tbh most of those songs are for a quite possessive and masochistic version of König, but tbh I can see that and I can’t wait to write some stalker!masochist!König inspired fics by those songs. I also attached a spotify link for every song.

tw/cw: suggestive content, mentions of cannibalism, smut, sex, piv, noncon, dubcon, possessiveness , power play, masochism, degradation, toxicity, manipulation, pain and more

If you want to know anything more about the specific songs or anything, just comment or message me.🩶

》 Masterpost 《

Ich tu’ dir weh

This song is about the pleasure of pain mixed with degradation and manipulation. A line translates into: “Your body is already distorted, but it doesn’t matter because everything is permitted that pleases. I’m gonna hurt you.” And, how a person (reader) is obsessed and dependent from another (König) and this person literally doesn’t care about it. Another line translates into: “You’re completely devoted to me; You love me because I don’t love you. You gonna bleed for my salvation.”

Bück’ dich

This song is literally about submission and degradation. One line literally says: “I don’t care about the face, just bend over.”

Pussy

I have to add this one for obvious reasons. It’s just a song about having sex. I don’t think I need to really explain it, but I want to translate one of my favorite lines from that song that would fit König way too good. The line says: “Pretty Misses, do you desire more? Let’s have a blitzkrieg with my meaty rifle.”

Giftig

This song is literally about a toxic and dangerous relationship. A relationship that you can’t cut loose. So you rather destroy yourself with it than leave them. A line for example translates into: “The poison flows slowly into my blood, I start to see white lights and yes, somehow I do like it. There is simply no remedy.”

Link 2 3 4

Originally this song was a statement to deny the accusations of the Band being part of the right scene in Germany. But the marching beat (added as irony back then) is something I just find fitting. A line translates into: “They want my heart on the right spot, but then I look below, it beats left there”

Rein Raus

This song is just about having sex and fitting a very huge dick into a tight cunt. Yeah, I don’t need to explain that further. A line to translate: “You moan, I predict you: An elephant into a bottleneck.”

Mein Teil

This is literal song about cannibalism. (Was inspired by the criminal case by the cannibal of Rothenburg.) Won’t go into any further details because the song speaks for itself. A line to translate: “Today I will meet a gentleman; he likes me so much he could eat me up. Soft parts and even hard ones are on the menu”

Waidmanns Heil

A song that totally holds hunter/prey vibes. It's about the thrill during a hunt. About the ecstasy the hunter feels while chasing his prey, and about the power balance/play. A transalate of the very first lines: "I've been in heat for days, so I'm going to hunt myself a doe and I'll sit there until morning, that I can give it a chest hit."

Du hast

It's, as I believe, one of the most known songs outside of Germany because of the simplicity of its text. But we have a big double meaning here, because "Du has(s)t mich" can be translated into "you have me" or into "you hate me". It explores the detriments of marriage, and the developing separation and resentment drawn from a long-term relationship.

Bonus:

Bismarck by Sabaton – Sorry but I won’t argue about it, he does love that one! So I just needed to put it onto the list. If you don't know Sabaton, they make really cool power metal inspired by actual historical war victories, heroes and soldiers.

#cod mw x reader #könig x reader #könig mw2 #bd/sm masochist #cod x reader #rammstein #cod headcanons #könig headcanons #rammstein songs #konig x reader #dark smut

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luminiscented · 1 year

Text

Ninjago x Fem! Master of nature! reader

---------------------------------------------------

Summary: you are the elemental master of nature <3, you are not related to Bolobo and he does not exist for the sake of this

Type: headcanons

Warnings: pure cloud made fluff <3333

Note: istfg everytime i write something i lose the time im mostly using 🫡 THIS SHIT DOESN'T HAPPEN IN GERMAN OR BULGARIAN WHAT IS GOING ON W ME!?!?!!!!!11

LLOYD

♡ Ever since he came to live with the ninja on the bounty you were immediate best friends <33 You are just so freeing and fun to be around!!

♡ He had a silly little crush on you as a kid,, he is plain head over heels as a grown up now though,,,,,,,,

♡ While the others just pushed him to train more and more until he was mentally exhausted, you would take him on little meditation forest picnics to clear his head and have fun after you're done with the (serious) meditations

♡Lloyd is amazed by your ability to always show him a part of a familiar place that is absolutely new and virgin to him,,

♡he loves how you find the beauty in every little being,, seeing you so in touch with your element gives him more motivation to explore his own and improve everyday

♡ you two would be rolling around in the grass and catching frogs and he would be the happiest he has been in weeks <3

♡ you are this boy's heaven and he thinks you are literally amazing,,

♡ you dislike forcefully growing your plants out so you play the guitar and sing to them to help them grow,,, he really likes singing along with you <3

♡Lloyd is a sucker for greek mythology and he loves pointing the similarities between you and the gods that rule over the wildlife. You adore listening to him ramble about it and its so interesting to you,,,,,,,

♡ Lloyd takes notice of how you're just as wild as the forest - gentle, beautiful, but still mystic and untamed,, he is in love

♡ He caught you catching a fish for an injured mama bear with your bare teeth. Just like that. UH-

Kai

♡ At first when you and the ninja begin to train under Wu together, Kai is so jealous of you,, you make the mastering of an element look so easy, while he was struggling so much,, of course he wouldn't let you notice, pfft yeah and give you an ego boost-

♡He is actually scared of embarrassing himself in front of you, since you look really nice and he wants you to think he is cool,,,,,,,,,,,

♡ Kai is about to lose his lunch when he sees someone cutting one of your limbs off during a battle,, he almost faints from worry while you just shrug it off and start growing a new one while the others take care of the villain and the half conscious Kai.

♡ When he comes to his senses, you're almost done shaping your new fingers into their original shape and he is blown away

♡ HOW THE HELL@@@????@

♡He is so impressed!! Kai actually realizes your body works just like a plant and is very curious on what else you can do, but doesn't want to annoy you so he keeps his questions to himself and sensei Wu

♡ Kai is proudly showing you off at dinner time that night!! He tells everyone how you were so brave and amazing and how your power is incredible!!!!!!!! He is also impressed with your pain tolerance

♡ At one point he notices your weakness to the cold and he is gladly there to warm you up he is dying on the inside he is so flustered

♡ Kai only buys you chocolates and never flowers, because he thinks you would be mad that he gives you your dead babies??????? Once he switched the chocolates with poppies in a pot (with a ribbon on!!) and it was adorable,,

♡ he is scared of bugs and when he makes you mad you put beetles in his hair

♡ you love sleeping in his room since it is so warm and toasty,, you bring your water bottle along every time and he finds it adorable, because you act just like a plant <33

♡He loves it when you change your hands into different objects/weapons,, you started chasing a screaming jay with your gigant axe hand and he kept hyping you up,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Zane

♡ you're weird, he's weird - soulmates1!!!

♡ Zane is absolutely in love with your connection with nature and wants to see the world through your eyes,,

♡ sometimes he gets a little insecure about how you can love him - a nindroid, knowing what you see, feel, your deep connection with life, but you are quick to comfort him that he is a living being that deserves just as much love as anything else that breathes the same air and walks the same earth as you all <33

♡ Zane spends a lot of time trying to understand how using your elemental power can come so easy to you and not the rest of them, but when he starts to join you in your free time more frequently he starts to understand - you just have fun with it. You let every new ability come to you naturally and you practice it little by little until you perfect it. You completely understand your power and do not pressure it. While Wu, purposely or not, guides you all to use your powers to fight, you use yours to create, to give, to help, to observe and to drown yourself in every sensation that no one else really can - your unique ability to understand every living being,,

♡ The titanium ninja is able to see the beauty that comes with your mastery and you both start learning from each other.

♡ You are in love,,

♡ Zane is quick to notice how your habits resemble ones of a plant and takes great care that you feel okay with the urban life of himself and his brothers <3 the most gentle boy ever,, reminds you of a daisy,,,,,

♡ The ice ninja is surprised to find out that you can survive on water and sunlight for long periods of time. Of course you never refuse to enjoy Zane's five star meals, but when food is scarce, you prefer your 5 liters of water and two hour long sunbaths,,

♡ HE IS VERY CAREFUL THAT YOU DON'T GET COLD,, Zane knows the cold is extremely harmful to you and you're more sensitive to it than his brothers so he gets really worried sometimes and tells you to get a coat in the 30 degrees Celsius summer weather,,,

Morro

♡ Morro sees you as so powerful,,, and very stunning <33

♡ When he first gets redeemed, he is struggling to make contact with the ninja and the butterflies in his stomach whenever he sees you approaching are not helping!!!1!

♡ At first you are very shy around him, because you find him very cool,, one day you come to him and quietly ask if he could use his wind to bring some rain clouds, because of the hot and dry weather and that is your first conversation,,,,,,, you are so shy,, he is in love

♡ You thank him for his help and invite him to spend some time with you outside

♡ PLEASE TIE HIS HAIR UP AND PUT SOME FLOWERS IN IT HE WILL ACT LIKE HE HATES IT, BUT HE IS ACTUALLY IN LOVE WITH IT,,,,,,,

♡ You make these meetings very regular and you enjoy each other's company so much <3

♡ Morro is very surprised to find out that you are aware/can hear what is happening around every compound plant - flowers, trees, etc.

♡ This ablity of yours is mostly very fun to use,, you regularly get a listen to some drama, heartfelt conversations, people complaining about their day and many others. You sometimes can't help it, but burst out laughing on the dinner table, because of a funny conversation that you could hear,,,,,,

♡ Morro loves hearing about them, but mostly loves listening to your laughter <333 He loves it when you are laying close to each other and you tell him about the people that share their love - a man writing a poem for his wife, a boy confessing his love to his crush, an old lonely lady wondering if she'll meet her dead lover in the afterlife,,,, it makes you both very emotional and you love sharing those with him because you both find them beautiful,,,,, it also helps you two to keep your relationship healthy and always know what is actually important <3

♡ Most of the time you are able to tone down almost completely all the noise, but some times it gets unbearable and overstimulating to the point you're breaking down,,, </3

♡ Morro is always there for you, holding you in his arms and keeping you away from any noises you could avoid. There is not much he is able to do to help and it breaks his heart </3 he gets so worried,, he goes to sensei Wu for advice.

♡ When it goes away you would be SPOILED,,,, mans is not letting you out of his sight for atleast the end of the day,,, <33333 HE LOVES YOU AND CARES ABOUT YOU SM !!!

Nya

♡ Water and plants?? Girlfriends.

♡ Nya absolutely adores you,,,,, she is just so in love,,,

♡ You help her understand her element more and she helps you with it so much,,,,,,

♡ You help her study different species and different cures for poison and she is always able to find a new spot for you two to explore

♡ She is absolutely in love when you put red flowers in her hair,, ITS HER FAVORITE COLOR!!!

♡ In her early training she wasn't really able to control much - only moving and creating water and she was so sad every time there was a flood somewhere, seeing your sad face,,, when you notice her looking at the ground guilty you pepper your girlfriend with kisses and reassure her that she has absolutely no fault <33

♡ She is very curious when you experiment with your powers!!!!!

♡ You could clearly see that Nya was needing an extra pair of hands when working on her Samurai X armor and she was very surprised to see 3 faceless girls made from lianas and vines coming up to her

♡ you appeared behind the 3 semi-sentient beings and told her that the 4 of you would help her out so it doesn't take as much time <33

♡ Nya is amazed, but she is mostly surprised that these 'plant copies' of you are able to understand and process information to a certain level,,, HOW!?!?

♡ You end up finishing the work on her armor in an hour and from then on she spends the entire day asking you questions about them!!!!!!! She is very interested in this!!!

♡ You explain to Nya the entire process which took around 4 months to perfect - starting from a little flower, then a tall fig, morphing and changing the forms to make your 'copies' look more soft and human,,, when you quietly mention you wanted to impress her she is RED!! YOU TAUGHT YOURSELF ALL OF THIS FOR HER???? dying on the inside,, system overload,,,,,,,,,,, <333333

Cole

♡ Everyone is jealous of how well you two work together as a team, especially when you fight!!

♡Your elements combine with great harmony so do your personalities <33

♡Cole adores your little forest dates and especially when you two talk about bugs and beetles <33 HE LOVES BEETLES!!!!1!11

♡ Since Cole is kind of the muscle of the team he ends up with little bruises and cuts littered all over his body after every battle and is delightfully surprised to find out that you can not only regenerate super fast, but you can also heal others with your herbs within minutes!!

♡ The way to Cole's heart is through his stomach so its definitely a win-win!! He is absolutely shocked the first time the bruises disappear within minutes and when he figures out you can heal with your food he is absolutely stunned,,, he is very curious and asks about your recipes and if you could help him be as good as you,,,,,,,

♡ You would all be coming home and the first thing to do is stuff your boyfriend's mouth with your lavender biscuits,,,,

♡ Zane may be in charge of the cooking, but you're in charge of the desserts <33

♡ Cole was in tears one time when you made him his mom's broth when he was sad,,,,,,

♡ When you're feeling overwhelmed he tries to recreate your treats with your healing herbs to cheer you up,,,, they are very ugly and lumpy, but they are tasty and made with a lot of love, so you two cuddle and eat sweets all night until you feel better <33

♡ He finds your love for wild animals very adorable,,,, a bear tried to attack the boys, but you just went up and hugged it as if it wasn't just trying to kill you all,,,,,,, YOU STARTED DANCING A WATZ WITH IT AFTERWARDS HOW ARE YOU SO PURE??!1!

Jay

♡ its a weird combination - nature and lightning, but you two make it sound so natural!! <3

♡ Jay is the ray of sunshine to your flower <33 His parents absolutely adore you and you love them a lot too!

♡ He is very impressed by all of your abilities! He is very vocal for his amazement and praises you all the time <33

♡ As a person who got sick every other week as a kid he is very jealous by your immunity to all bacterial, fungal and almost all virus infections. YOU NEVER HAD A SINGLE DAY OFF FROM SCHOOL AS A KID WHAT,,,,,

♡ He is a sucker for fruits and he loves it when you grow him fresh blueberries on the spot,,,,

♡ He sees you eating flowers out of the blue outside and when you tell him they are actually edible he is hesitant, but tries one for you,,, now he can't stop,, HE IS OBSESSED,,

♡ Your powers are somewhat connected to your feelings so it is not rare for you to accidentally grow something when someone gets a reaction out of you,,, JAY LOVES THAT,,,,,,, it shows how you are an actual person with feelings and he finds it so precious,,

♡ When he gets you all flustered, flowers start popping on top of your head,, he really succeeded if you got some blue ones among the others,,,,

♡ Sometimes cactuses pop out of nowhere when you get annoyed or angry

♡ All flowers in the room bloom when you're feeling happy and new ones come to life when you laugh <333

♡ Your power is so beautiful,,, he is ready for marriage,,

♡ Jay is very scared of your semi-sentient carnivorous plants,,, they don't like him very much </3

♡ You can literally make a whole army of those, but you just teach them how to dance<33 you are so pure,,,,

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xmortuarykittyx · 6 months

Text

Ever Locked

Part 5: Now You Know From What

Part 4: Good Night, Bunny

pairing: Older!Leon Kennedy x Ex!Coroner’s Assistant Reader

warnings: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, talks of eating out, build up to enjoying trauma and being stalked

extra: i’m so so so so so sorry for the wait! it’s been insane and this job is killing me. I really can’t wait to find another. I’m still livid i lost my original chapter 5 :( I promise i’m gonna be back to writing, at least one chapter a week since i’m working 10 hour shifts a day for 5 days a week.

"So...", green eyes stare back at me as the hands of the waitress move from my vision. "So?", the warmth of the coffee cup is nice against my hands, the rain and near negative degrees having frozen my fingers as i stretch them against the warm cup. "Don't pull that shit on me.", the deadpan delivery nearly had me snort out coffee as her emerald eyes squint. I had no plans of telling Marina anything, nothing about the man from the bar. Nothing about the years before I came to Seattle. "He really unnerved me is all, asking about me and saying we dated. I never saw him before-", the sharp laughter from her voice in reply to my words had me jump, the liquid bit back at my bottom lip, causing me to wince.

"Don't believe me? Ask Ryan.", I nearly rolled my eyes at my best friend. Her lack of trust was not for no reason, but she just needed to drop it. I didn't want to bring her into the world of Leon Kennedy and the undead, it was hard enough having seen it first hand.

She'd just say it was insane sounding or that i must be lying once more. There seems no real way to get out of this but tell her but i truly did not want to. If it were up to me, Ryan wouldn't even know. With relationship came time to come clean, telling him in detail how my ex treated me and the night that lead up to my old ex treated me and the night that lead up to my old home being burnt to a crisp in a bombing.

"I will not, he'll lie to cover your ass. You're that kind of couple.", her tone was not friendly, her accent heavily German, as she took a bite of her eggs. Her eyes narrowing into mine, i could tell just in that look that she was over having to be left out of a good part of my life. She asked to get breakfast out, How could I say no? "You don't trust me and that's starting to upset me.", she continued, cutting another piece of the white fluffy eggs. "It's not that, Marina." the sigh that left my lips heavy and present within our conversation. "You're wonderful and so, so generous. You started hanging with me since day one at White Wolf, I could never not trust you.", the words came out so quick before i could process them. Yet, here i sat, lying to her face. How could she handle the horror that came? Anyway... it's not like Leon is that stupid to try something so many years later, right?

Blackness swirling across my vision, fingers digging into the hallows of my eyes. "I just need to quit attracting all the weirdos and psychos.", a dull bit of laughter fell from my lips, into the tense air that swam around us. "Hey, at least you've never been on a Dateline episode.", she shrugged, if only she knew how close I truly was to having my photo slapped across tv screens across the country, all the "she lit up the room when she walked in" bullshit. "Yeah, you're right.", the words felt a bit more... distanced than before, it seemed the normality crept away after seeing the blue eyes of an angel of pain.

The sound of my phone buzzing brought me back to reality, carving out a piece of waffle, the phone near my grasp as i reach for it. "Anyway, what time do you-", the number that flashes across the screen attached to the message was unfamiliar, the slightly blurry letters mumbling out a 'Bunny... i know you're angry with me, but give me a chance. I was only protecting you and now you know from what.', i felt like the back of my throat was kissed with acid, the hand holding the fork tightening as my brows pinched together. "Hey- earth to weirdo-", Marina's voice came back into recognition. Her laughter cut off as she realized my look of confusion hadn't changed. "You good? What happened?", her fingers wrapping around the glass of her cup, bringing it to her lips as she sucked from the straw.

"Someone texted the wrong number is all.", my eyes lingered on the glass she held before i looked up at her. "That's common right?", she nodded, "Why do you look like you saw a ghost?", did i really look that upset? My fingers gripping the Razr tighter, "They just said some weird shit.", my hand waved her off as i looked back down at the waffle before me, soaked in with syrup and butter. "You need to relax, honestly. You're so strung up over that guy from the bar and it's ridiculous. If you're being honest then he's just some fucking creep who doesn't want to keep it in his pants.", she shrugged, "simple as that.", and how i wished her words weren't more then a hopeful thought. "You're right, you're right.", i concurred, the waffle being stabbed by my fork before shoving the sickly sweet bite between my lips. The sticky, thick heavy taste of syrup carving its way between my taste buds. I could feel a drip, dribbling from the corner of my lips as my phone goes off once more.

'If you'd gone out with me, I'd love to taste that drop of syrup. You should be more careful, Bunny. Don't wanna stain that pretty black shirt, it's so pretty from the back.', my eyes now widened, feeling my pupils bug out from my head as i snap my head around, searching for the brown scruff or the blue eyes. "Hey- you're acting hella weird, girl.", Marina gave me a 'the fuck is wrong with you?' look. My eyes didn't stop searching for the man himself as I knew he had to be here, somewhere. He was a bold bastard, he knew how much this was bothering me as i got another text. 'Aw, searching so hard for me... i'm not easy to catch, Bun.', the sound of a motorcycle revving up caught my ears, snapping my eyes through the window to see a black leather jacket with white pin stripes. Mother fucker- that's him. That's the same jacket he had at the bar. That fucker was watching me.

I had half a mind to hop up and chase down his ass but that would accomplish nothing more than give him more of an opening to my life. He slipped the black helmet over his now brownish hair, fingers clicking through buckle in place as he revved up once more, taking out of the diner parking lot and heading back deeper into town. "Hottie on a bike- you have a boyfriend, miss thing.", Marina joked as i tried to crack a smile for her. "Yeah... just interested in the bike is all.", my words weren't the strongest but i giggled to give her more of a confident answer. The waffle now half eaten as i ran my fork over the pooled up brown amber liquid. "The bike?", her scoff was humor filled. "Yeah, sure and i'm interested in seeing anything as long as it's under a hot man.", she laughed as her explicit meaning was caught. My eyes rolled back as far as they could before i leaned over the table once more. "Shit up and eat your eggs before they get cold from all your talking.", i pointed my fork towards her plate as she poked my fork with hers. "You do the same, been on that waffle for 30 minutes now.", this is why we were best friends, her attitude rivaled mine but in the best way possible.

——————

"You're sure it's him.", I didn't see Ryan much at work, usually just at home or at a restaurant for his breaks. "Yes, i'm sure.", my arms crossed tightly under my chest, his eyes flickering to my tits before back up at me. "You said his name was... Leon...", he snapped his fingers, left hand on his hip as he tried to recall the creeps name. "Leon Scott Kennedy.", my eye narrowed, it seemed everyone had a great 'let's piss her off all day' meeting yesterday. "Right, you still got the test and the number?", he reached out for my phone, his large fingers brushing mine as i passed off the flip phone to him. "Yeah, just- hurry up and get back to me about the restraining order.", my hand fell to my hip. "I don't know if he's going to try anything but just knowing that he was watching me at Benny's.", a shiver ran up my spine at the thought. What if he came into our home? What if he had been watching for longer than i thought before?

"I promise, my love-", his lips pressed to the crown of my head, "-you're my priority at the moment.", he squeezed on my bicep, opening the flip phone and reading the message. His hand gripping the phone in a grip so hard i thought he’d snap the device before he handed it back to me. His hands pulling up his slacks before he wiped at his nose, eyes on the floor before he looked up at me. "You tell me as soon as you get another message. I don't care where you are or if he's watching. Call me and tell me.", he pointed at the phone in my hand. I knew his jealousy had a mean steak but this seemed to tip him off harder than before as he ran his fingers through his hair.

"He like that when you were together?", it was rude, his tone asking and demanding an answer rather than the sweet one usually used to not push her. "No... he was shy back then and a little unexperienced.", i'm not sure why i answered but i did, just to make him feel better. My words seemed to have the opposite reaction of deescalation to escalating the entire thing- before i knew it, my back was pressed to the top of his desk, papers and cups falling over the other side of the mahogany desk. "He didn't know how to treat a pussy as good as yours.", his words came quick as he snatched the joggers off my legs, the wet patch across my underwear definitely not from seeing Leon on that bike from earlier. Something has to be wrong with me... to get so turned on from my psycho ex stalking me.

"Pussy's so wet f' me.", his lips pressed a kiss onto the soaked gusset of the pink underwear. "So soaking wet, don't even gotta ease you up, bed you could take my cock right now.", has i know jealousy was the one thing to break the man- i would've told him more about the men at work. His tongue danced across the gusset, drawing small photos as he teased. "Ry-", my lips bit between my lips. "Be quiet, slut.", he scoffed, his fingers ripping the pink fabric before his pointer and middle fingers tucked the material into the parting of my lips. "Dont need all my coworkers hearing your whore mouth. They'll try to get in this pussy too, you'd like that wouldn't you? Pussy so full of cocks, that's why you didn't tell me about your ex, right? You wanted all day to come to me and tell me he was watching you. Bet he likes to watch you shower too, see you fingers that cunt-", he breathed onto my wet slit, causing a shiver to crawl up my spine.

I know that i shouldn't be turned on by thinking about Leon Kennedy, especially after all the shit and trauma he put me through, but some trauma's manifest themselves on weird ways- mine being i am always turned on by the things he did. That's why i stayed those days... maybe he's not the only fucked up one. Maybe he fucked me up, made me some stupid, small girl. Made me conform to what he gave me... in that little of time, he conditioned me to his type of affection and god- did i love and hate it.

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iftheshoef1tz · 6 months

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Ahoy! For Halloween, I thought I’d give you all a teaser for my latest project. 😈

Eris Vanserra is a young doctor in West Germany in 1968. After learning his mother has been keeping the old ways behind the back of his deeply religious, deeply abusive father, Eris decides the easiest, most direct way to vengeance is by summoning a demon. This scene takes place in Grunewald, a forest in West Berlin, where Eris summons said demon. This will be, of course, Azris, so y’all know who the demon is.

Special thanks to @queercontrarian who helped me develop this idea by suggesting it take place during the ‘68 riots in West Germany in the first place and who is also indispensable as a translator. This is unedited and unbetaed and will likely change its form before i actually post this thing. Enjoy!!

A break in the trees reveals the lit-up summit of Teufelsberg. He can’t quite see the three dome radio towers, but he knows they’re there. He’d seen them up close only once, when he’d gone skiing three years ago. It had made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, to be so close to the machinations of the American secret intelligence apparatus.

Now, though, there isn’t any snow, only the wet squelching of fallen, rotting leaves beneath his bike tires.

It had been easy enough to find his mother’s book, in the end – it had been in the kitchen next to the cookbooks. A smart hiding place, one Beron would never think to look for something important.

Decoding it had taken somewhat longer. It was handwritten in shaky cursive, sometimes in what seemed to be Middle German, and Eris had risked eye strain trying to tell the writer’s vowels apart. But there, hidden among recipes for poultices and medicines for pain or fertility, is a three line recipe, as it were.

The cold October air whips Eris’s hair into his face as he mouths the words to himself: ich beschwöre euch, Dämon. Gebt mir eine wahre und getreue Antwort, sodass ich an mein ersehntes Ziel gelange. Ich beschwöre euch.

It’s not the original Middle German, of course; Eris is on the other side of the Luther’s ninety-nine theses and he trusts his pronunciation of modern German much more than the other. It had occurred to him that the translation might affect which demon answered his call, but in the end, he had decided it didn’t matter. This was all a fool’s errand, regardless.

He laughs once at himself. It clouds around his mouth before being blown away by the wind. Rain is in the air, and he needs to get this idiocy out of his system before then.

It’s the kind of rebellion he has never had the time or energy for, and he feels as though he’s tilting at windmills. If he were a braver man, he’d simply murder his father himself.

Eventually, he feels he’s reached deep enough in the forest, and he slips off his bicycle. He hesitates before simply resting it against a nearby tree. Yes, it’s technically visible from the path, but it’s nearly eleven at night in the middle of a bloody forest. No one is around to steal it.

Leaves and branches crunch beneath his feet like rusty, crackling laughter, and he feels foolish again. He can turn around now, be back in his apartment by midnight, and not have his landlady be any the wiser.

But something pulls him deeper into the loamy dark, his torch beam hardly piercing the darkness around him.

Eventually, it is only Eris and his stupid quest in the dark of Grunewald, and he draws to a halt. It takes only a moment to kick away leaves and clear a small section of grass, and he slides a glass jar from his backpack.

The recipe had called for chalk or dirt, and he uses dirt he’d collected from the farm to draw a circle in the cleared space. It’s wobbly, and he swipes at his mouth in irritation. The motion leaves dirt on Eris’s face; he can feel it but doesn’t care.

Next is another small jar, with two slender sticks of incense. He’d stolen them from Nesta last week and figures the scent of cedar would be least offensive to a demon. It’s incredible how much effort he’s put into something so stupid. Perhaps, he thinks with a wry twist of his lips as he eases into sitting position, he should start considering that he’s doing this after all.

The circle is barely visible in the torchlight, and the lit end of the stick of incense also seems to disappear into the clutching dark. He is alone here in the dark woods.

Eris shuts his eyes against the sudden lurch of fear and inhales once through his nose. He exhales, then repeats. On the third breath, he murmurs, “I invoke thee, demon.”

The silence thickens around him.

“Give me a true and faithful answer,” he continues, his gloved hands clenching in his lap. “So that I may accomplish my desired end.”

The wind breaks the silence suddenly, moaning through the trees. The sound of it through the leaves sounds like a snake’s hiss, sharp and violent. Eris is alone and cold here, and no one will notice he is missing if something goes wrong.

“I invoke thee,” Eris forces himself to finish, barely above a whisper.

A faint shudder rolls through the earth, or maybe it’s just Eris himself, and he squeezes his eyes tighter shut. Would it be better or worse to open his eyes and find that his words have brought him nothing but embarrassment?

After a moment, the wind dies down, and Eris cracks his eyes open.

He is alone. The incense is no longer burning, its embers quenched by the hissing wind.

“‘I invoke thee,’” he snarls to himself and rushing to his feet. He kicks through the wobbly line of the dirt invoking circle, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Bullshit.”

[…]

He turns to look behind him, his fear from earlier returning. It’s thick along the back of his tongue as he watches two perfectly round lights bob up the road towards him. He pauses, one foot sliding in the mud just off the road, as the tremulous lights steady and the rumble of a car engine reaches him.

Thank God, he thinks acidly. What a day it would be if demons weren’t real but aliens were.

The rumble grows closer, and Eris sticks out a thumb, slick and shining in the car’s headlights. It slows as it reaches Eris before finally stopping in front of him. The driver is revealed bit by bit as he rolls the window down – dark hair flopped carelessly across his forehead, piercing hazel eyes underlined by heavy bags.

“You lost?” the man says. His German is accented in a way Eris can’t quite place.

“My bike was stolen,” Eris says, not bothering to hide his shiver. “Could I trouble you - ”

“Get in.”

Eris blinks in surprise at the quick acceptance, but the man is leaning back in his seat as if he picks up strangers in the dark woods every day.

He slips into the car, winding the window shut as fast as possible. The storm spits a last few drops into his face, and he collapses back into his seat. The inside of the car is too warm, the heat turned up nearly to the maximum. The engine purrs beneath Eris’s feet when the man takes off, and Eris watches the man’s hand resting on the gear shift.

The skin looks waxy, and Eris recognizes them for the burn scars they are. He has the strange impulse to touch them, to make sure they are real in a way nothing else has felt tonight.

“What were you doing out here so late at night?”

Something in Eris rebels at the patronizing tone, but he quashes any visible reaction beyond pushing his sodden hair from his face. When he looks over, the man’s hazel eyes are so dark as to seem black.

Blandly, he replies, “Biking.”

The man laughs, just one short burst. “Of course.”

“Thank you for the lift,” Eris says. He arranges himself in a way he knows makes him appear smaller, more delicate. It angles him more fully towards the man and shows off the curve of his hip. Some men like that, Eris knows, especially when they don’t like to like men. “I was dreading walking home in the dark by myself.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” He smooths a hand down the front of his sweater.

The man waves a dismissive hand at Eris, encompassing his whole body. It somehow manages to make Eris feel brutally naked, and he curls into himself with no coquetry in the motion. “Don’t do that thing you did just then. Make yourself so – ”

“I - ” The word falls pathetically from Eris’s mouth as more half-formed excuses pile up on his tongue. Maybe the man is a policeman or part of the secret service, and Eris has just broadcast his willingness to spread his legs for another man. God, maybe he’s an American.

Eris waits, breath trapped in his throat. But the man never finishes his sentence, and his hand falls to the gear shift again. The engine rumbles beneath them, knocking Eris’s thoughts into one another.

Beron will kill him if he’s arrested for this. He might kill his mother, too, for breeding such a deviant. It doesn’t even occur to him to be afraid that this man might kill him for the offer, which, despite it’s immediacy, lacks any real teeth.

“I think I can walk from here.” Eris is proud his voice doesn’t tremble; his hands are steady, too.

In response, the man purses his lips. He doesn’t pull over, though, and Eris thinks he might vomit. At least if his body turns up at some point in the future, no one will know he was with a man before this. The thought makes a hysterical laugh well up in his throat, competing with his excuses trapped there.

He wishes, suddenly, pathetically, for Nesta.

“Do you know anyplace quiet we could go to?”

The man’s voice is almost covered by the engine, and Eris has to swallow once, twice, before he says, putting a little of Beron’s sternness in his voice, “I’m not taking you home with me.”

At this, the man turns his head towards Eris. They pass under the first street lamp of the main road, and Eris narrowly bites back a gasp.

Eyes black as coal with no white showing, the demon says, “I think you and I have some things to talk about.”

#azris #eris vanserra #acotar #azriel #fanfiction #whntdws is…such a bad abbreviation #i’ll fix it in post ig #HAPPY HALLOWEEN (MONSTER)FUCKERS

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somaticmilk · 1 month

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Behold.. REN MILK FIC PT 2

Here’s the first part if you wanna make it weird ->

Just a FYI - I didn’t remember where I left off before I’m too ashamed to have continuity so SHUT UP AND TAKE IT.

(also originally it was implied that Ren was like drugged with Sildenafil or smth like that at one point but ig I forgot-)

Fic under cut - Soma was not responsible for any of this - I am ashamed - ALSO DONT HAVE A MILK KINK.

Ren woke up with an intense feeling of heat and a growing pain in his crotch. As he looks around, he remembers he is still tied up and completely naked. He noticed his captor was standing on the other side of the barn. Strade watched in awe as his cute little cow was slowly giving up, he went hard just by the idea of his sanity breaking.

"Morgen meine süße Buttermilch, you ready for today?" Strade’s words were like lukewarm beer laced with honey.. Gross.. - Ren cringed at the idea of submitting to his captor like this, even if someone were to find him, how would they take him seriously in this shape? Tied up, cock cage, and covered in dirt - No shit someone would mistake him as livestock.

Strade approached Ren and placed a large metal bit in his mouth. It was cold against his tongue and restricted the airflow from his mouth. Before he knew it the door of his pen was opened and he was being dragged to a different section of the barn. Despite the burning embarrassment of crawling on all fours, the sun on his skin felt nice. His stomach reathed and his joints were still stiff from the stall. With every step he took, he could feel little rocks and pebbles lodged between his fingers and toes, his face burning red with each passing minute.

Ren had never been more humiliated in his life. From being forced to act like a cow, all the verbal teasing, and being forced into a cramped inhumanization stall, it was all too much.

- - - -

Once they made it to the milking parlor Ren knew his fate was sealed. The beastkin saw a mirror behind where Strade was standing before and below it was a large metal machine. Strade then removed the chastity cage and gave a brisk hit to his half-hard cock to make sure no dirt on it.

(clean milk guys - clean milk ^3^)

The German then placed a foreign object onto his dick. Ren looked at Strade, who nodded after seeing the realization in Ren's eyes. Now waiting in anticipation, he could probably cum without any sensation, the drugs Strade put him on were strong. At this point, Ren just wanted friction, something, anything.. Strade placed a large, girthy dildo on the machine and set it up. But before turning it on, he turned to Ren's ass.

Ren tried his best to hide his face as if it would take him away from his humiliating situation. He almost believed it until he felt hands grabbing at his backside. Not only did the fondling reignite the fire in his rear, but also the fire in his face. Strade began to place his fingers in, stretching him out with a sloppy and heavy hand. He continued doing this, adding up to 3 fingers until he was satisfied.

“You have such a nice ass, Buttermilch” Strade teased as he continued to grope at the Beastkin’s flesh. “It's so round, soft, and perky!”

“S-Shut up!” Ren yelled back, making a pathetic attempt to intimate him. This only caused Strade to lightly swat at his ass, making Ren yelp. “That’s not the sound cows make, Schatz” he scolded. “Mmmf owfff!!” Even with the gag on, Strade knew that Ren had just told him to fuck off.

Without warning the German farmer then picked up Ren and strapped him down into the machine. The device already attached to his dick finally made sense to him now, it was a pump. Lifting his tail and hooking his throbbing cock into the milking unit, Strade walked to the other side of the parlor and removed his boxers. He then sat down and smiled.

"Aufgeregt, meine Liebe?” Ren felt a spray of lube on his cock and in his ass. In an instant, the dildo began thrusting in and out. It was painful at first. Too painful. The milker began to slide up and down, twisting and turning.

The sensation was a lot at first. There was a lot of friction between his anus and the large dildo as it slid in and out, due to the lack of lube and the sheer size of the thing. Ren didn't know how deep the dildo was but it had to be at least 8 inches. The howl Ren let out was inhuman as he was instantly stretched out and stuffed. The pump jerking him off got even rougher and faster, the feeling of hot pleasure building in his stomach ready to burst.

Ren was practically screaming while his asshole was getting completely ruined. Ren shook his head vehemently, his cock twitching in the pump. Meanwhile, Strade was jacking off to his display.

He picked up a remote and pressed a button. The pump started to engulf and pull away at the tip. His cock was enveloped in a warm comfort that made him feel like a knot tied in his stomach.

His moans were stifled but loud as the speed of the intake of the pump slowly increased and the dildo slammed harder into Ren’s prostate. Although he clenched his jaw around the bit to try and hide them, soft moans came out of Ren’s mouth, exciting Strade all the more.

Ren’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he was simultaneously filled to the brim and brought to orgasm. He came into the pump and he began to pant, cum spilling out and taken through a tube.

Ren’s vision blurred, his heart beating through his ears before feeling a wet squirt of liquid inside of him. He then realized that the two were connected and his cum was inside of him and being used as lube.

This sudden realization made him fucking nauseous. His vision spotted and he could feel himself gag, although, his boner didn’t give in just yet. Not even within a minute Ren was close again and came into the milker. The seed yet again absorbed and sent into his ass.

Ren shrieked and bawled with an exhibit of extreme pain and shame on his face. Ren had hot tears running down his red cheeks, and his lip quivered slightly. Strade then walked toward the exit of the parlor door before taking a final glance at his cow.

"You look wonderful, Mein Liebling," he said as Strade grabbed the remote and turned everything onto the highest settings. There was a security camera at the ceiling so he knew that his new piece of livestock wouldn’t do anything too feral but he couldn't just keep this showcase all to himself.

The vibrations became more frequent and intense. The pump was taking his cock up and down at an extremely fast pace. It twisted around his sensitive head which began to hurt. He was sent into a state of intense pleasure and overstimulation. He couldn't handle this for longer. The machine never stopped though. The constant abuse made his ass sting like fire. He was cumming less and less each time which meant less and less lubricant.

A while later, Strade entered the parlor again. He instantly turned everything off before walking to Ren and taking the bit off. "How was it?" he asked as he began unbuckling his arms and legs off of the machine.

Ren took a deep breath and ignored the question. While taking off the pump part of the milker, Strade accidentally grazed Ren’s dick. His tip was red, swollen, and extremely irritated. Ren let out a long, exhausted whimper…

I BE LIKE DUHH DUHHHHH - WHY YOU SOO FINEE

Lmk if you want more idk - #talkingfromtheheart

Soma milk fic pt three ??? 😰😰😰🫶🫶

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sombrashe · 1 year

Text

first kisses and flashbacks

this is a repost because my original blog was deleted

relationship(s) König x Horangi

content angst, flashbacks being triggered, fluff

"König?"

Horangi's voice is quiet as she shakes the mountain of a man in front of him.

"König, please wake up."

His Vibrato dropped to a whine. The sleeping man seemed to take notice and awoke with his eyes wide.

"König, it's me... it's Horangi."

He's soft with him, his nails rubbing circles into the man's bicep.

"Wie spät ist es?"

He takes a moment, trying to remember the German he was taught.

"null zwei null null."

König's hand wraps itself around his own, the cool of his flesh heated by the other man's. He fought back the rising heat to his cheeks.

"I'm sorry to wake you... you're the only one I can trust right now."

König sits up, his accent thick with sleep, "Nightmare? Why come to me?"

His hand is wrapped in comfortable heat.

"I can't go to anyone else; I don't dream about them."

König pauses at his revelation.

"You dream about me?"

Horangi shakes his head.

"You bring me comfort. That is how I know to trust you."

"Sit down."

Horangi does as he's told, the man clicking on his lamp, illuminating his features. The light caught on his hooked nose, the bump casting shadows as he moved. His gaze drifts lower, and he passes over the part of his lip that was once missing.

"Take my hands."

His gaze drifts to the palms offered to him, defenseless as they raise their fragile flesh to him. Breathing, he clasps his hands against the other man's. His heart hammers as reality shifts away into a nightmare, fear invading his every sense as König takes notice. Typically König would remove himself and gently talk Horangi down to bring him back to the present.

"Hey... Hong-jin, look at me. I need you to realize you're having a flashback. Listen to me."

Horangi's eyes were unfocused, and König struggled with what to say. His grip on König's hands forces him to keep his spot in front of the terrified man.

"Hong-jin, do you see my lips moving? Focus on my lips. Hear me breathing. Come on."

Horangi's breathing deepens as his eyes focus and start to brighten once more.

"Can you see me? See where you are?"

He nods, exhaustion crashing over his body like a tidal wave.

"I could feel blood, smell it on your hands."

König flinches, and despite it, Horangi continues, "I saw you... you were dead again."

He feels his fingertips start to tingle, the pain of Horangi's grip settling deep into his joints.

"I'm not dead. Remember? You were the one who saved me? Got me back to the medic."

He nods again, the only action he seems to be able to make in the disorienting present.

"I saved you... got you back to the medic. Yes, yes. I remember that."

His face started to flush, and König sighed in relief at the pink hue covering the man before his cheeks.

"Good, now. My hands."

Horangi looked down and slowly lifted his deadlocked fingers, one by one, until they were pulled away from König's now bruised flesh. His skin was light, and he watched as blood pooled under its delicate nature to form dark bruises on the spot.

"I'm sorry, König. I didn't even realize."

His voice was soft. He was always shit at keeping a poker face, so he allowed it to drop only in the safety of the taller man. He refused to cry in front of anyone but himself in the mirror. He found it much too embarrassing to do it in front of his teammates. He didn't know if it was the exhaustion, the sudden intrusion of his flashback, the way he felt secure in König's presence, or a combination of all three, but tears seemed to wet the expanse of his cheeks.

"I'm sorry, I should go. This must be weird for you."

König seems confused at the outburst of emotions from the normally stoic man.

"Don't go. You can sleep in here. I don't mind."

He pauses halfway up before straightening himself.

"Are you sure? I wouldn't wish to intrude. I understand if you're trying to be nice."

König stands and towers over the Horangi, his warm hands finding purchase on his cheeks. His eyes widen as his natural pink flush deepens over his nose and settles into his cheeks.

"You won't be intruding, I promise. It would be nice to have someone else in here for once. It might help ease the nightmares."

His smile is bright, and Horangi leans closer. He doesn't know why; he's never had feelings for anyone. His fear from before and rigorous schedule after keeping him occupied. He notices as König leans down to a better height, his back hunched, and Horangi's newfound courage washes over him like sunlight on a sunflower.

"König, can I kiss you?"

He hated the whine in his voice, but there was no other way to prove just how needy he was.

"Ja."

Horangi leans in fully, their lips connecting, and he feels something explode in his chest. His arms are wrapped around the taller man's neck, his fingers finding purchase in the soft brown hair at the nape. König's hands squeeze his cheek, his thumb feeling the ridged bumps of his exposed teeth.

He didn't pull away; instead, he deepened the kiss. König's tongue swiped over his teeth, and he greedily opened his mouth. Their tongues swiped over teeth and explored the pallet of each other's mouth. He couldn't get enough of König's sharp canines. The feeling of them roughly cutting into his tongue has him pressing himself against König. Finally, they pulled away; both men flushed pink as a small line of spit connected them. Panting König looked into his eyes. They were soft and lidded.

"That was my first kiss since middle school."

Horangi was soft as he licked his lips. König nodded in understanding, his hands leaving Horangi's cheeks.

"I think we should get you into bed. You look exhausted, Hong-jin."

Hong-jin smiles; he doesn't know when he smiled last.

"승인."

He doesn't need to, but he lets König place a gentle hand on his waist. The man guided him to the other side of the bed. He wants to relax into the touch. He wants to rest his head on the other man's chest and fall asleep to the sound of his heart.

He watches with bated breath as König leans down to shift the blankets around. He crawls into the cooler side of the bed, the feeling helping calm the heat overtaking his body. He's surprised when König wraps him in the blankets, and he feels like a child again. Blinking up at him, he can't hide the dumbfounded look that overtakes his face.

"You're putting me to bed?"

He watches as König becomes sheepish, his fingers finding purchase against the scar left from his cleft lip surgery.

"Sorry, I've never shared a bed with someone before. I don't know what is customary."

Horangi nods and takes the warm man's hand, "I haven't either, and you're exhausted too. You need to lay down and go to sleep before sunrise."

König yawns loudly and, with a stretch. It makes Horangi feel safe. He feels the dip in the bed as his opposite settles. He takes a moment to think of how to word his next question, he doesn't want to come off strong, but he also doesn't want to waste the moment.

"König, you can say no, but will you hold me?"

He doesn't have to wait for an answer. König's large arms gather him onto his chest. His ear is against König's chest, and his heart slows as his eyes drift lower.

"Light, 오빠."

König blinks a few times before reaching over, his fingers finding purchase against the metal string and engulfing the room in black. Horangi finally falls asleep, the first real sleep he's gotten since he was a child.

#call of duty #call of duty mw2 #cod mw2 #korangi #konig x horangi #horangi x könig #konig mw2 #kim horangi hong jin #operator writes

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useless-catalanfacts · 4 months

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Hello! Another tumblr user I follow has posed a challenge: memorize one poem per month in 2024. I would like to include at least one poem in Catalan in my journey. Could you recommend any good poems or poets for this?

Hello! We have many very talented poets. My favourite poet is Salvador Espriu, other good ones are Miquel Martí i Pol, Vicent Andrés Estellés, Jacint Verdaguer, Maria-Mercè Marçal, Pere Quart, Josep Carner, Ausiàs March, Joan Maragall, Montserrat Abelló, J.V. Foix, Gabriel Ferrater, Joana Raspall, Joan Alcover, Enric Casasses, among others.

I'll add 7 of my favourite short/short-ish poems (+translation to English) under the cut. Poetry is very personal and these are just the ones that I really like, but I'll be happy if anyone else wants to add more of their favourite Catalan poems.

1. Enyore un temps que no és vingut encara (I Miss a Time That's Not Yet Come) by Vicent Andrés Estellés.

Enyore un temps que no és vingut encara com un passat d’accelerada lluita, de combatius balcons i d’estendards, irat de punys, pacífic de corbelles, nou de cançons, parelles satisfetes, el menjador obert de bat a bat i el sol entrant fins al darrer racó. Em moriré, però l’enyore ja, aquest moment, aquest ram, aquest dia, que m’ha de fer aixecar de la fossa veient passar la multitud contenta.

Translation:

I miss a time that has not arrived yet like a past of accelerated fight, of combative balconies and standards, angry of fists, peaceful of sickles, new of songs, satisfied couples, the living room wide open and the sun entering until the last corner. I will die, but I miss it already, this moment, this bouquet, this day, that shall make me get up from the grave watching the happy crowd pass by.

2. Assaig del càntic en el temple (Attempted Canticle in the Temple) by Salvador Espriu.

Oh, que cansat estic de la meva covarda, vella, tan salvatge terra, i com m’agradaria d’allunyar-me’n, nord enllà, on diuen que la gent és neta i noble, culta, rica, lliure, desvetllada i feliç! Aleshores, a la congregació, els germans dirien desaprovant: «Com l’ocell que deixa el niu, així l’home que se’n va del seu indret», mentre jo, ja ben lluny, em riuria de la llei i de l’antiga saviesa d’aquest meu àrid poble. Però no he de seguir mai el meu somni i em quedaré aquí fins a la mort. Car sóc també molt covard i salvatge i estimo a més amb un desesperat dolor aquesta meva pobra, bruta, trista, dissortada pàtria.

Translation:

How tired I am of this my craven, ancient, savage fatherland; and how it would delight me to leave, going north, where they say that people are noble and clean, cultured, rich, free, awake/unsupervised and happy! Then, my brethren would tell the congregation, disapprovingly: "Leaving his native place, a man becomes like a bird leaving the nest", while I, in the distance, would laugh at the law and the ancient wisdom of this my arid people. But the dream will never be followed, I’ll stay here until my death. For I too am full of cowardice and savagery, and with a desperate pain I love this my poor, unclean, sad, unlucky fatherland.

3. Divisa (Motto) by Maria-Mercè Marçal. This one's short and easy!

A l’atzar agraeixo tres dons: haver nascut dona, de classe baixa i nació oprimida. I el tèrbol atzur de ser tres voltes rebel.

Translation:

I am grateful to fate for three gifts: to have been born a woman, from the working class and an oppressed nation. And the turbid azure of being three times a rebel.

4. Possible introducció a un epitalami (Possible Introduction to an Epithalamium) by Salvador Espriu

I posted this a while ago, find the text and translation in this post:

5. Plus Ultra ("Further" in Latin) by Jacint Verdaguer

Text and translation in this post:

6. Aquesta remor que se sent (This Murmur We Hear) by Miquel Martí i Pol.

Text and translation in this post:

7. Mester d'amor (Knowing How to Love) by Joan Salvat-Papasseit

Si en saps el pler no estalviïs el bes que el goig d'amar no comporta mesura. Deixa't besar, i tu besa després que és sempre als llavis que l'amor perdura. No besis, no, com l'esclau i el creient, mes com vianant a la font regalada. Deixa't besar -sacrifici fervent- com més roent més fidel la besada. ¿Què hauries fet si mories abans sense altre fruit que l'oreig en ta galta? Deixa't besar, i en el pit, a les mans, amant o amada -la copa ben alta. Quan besis, beu, curi el veire el temor: besa en el coll, la més bella contrada. Deixa't besar i si et quedava enyor besa de nou, que la vida és comptada.

Translation:

If you know its pleasure, don't skip the kiss for the joy of loving has no measure. Let yourself be kissed, and kiss after it for it's always on the lips that love lasts. Don't kiss, no, like the slave and the believer, but like the passer-by does with a delightful fountain. Let yourself be kissed -fervent sacrifice- the more burning, the more faithful is the kiss. ¿What would you have done if you died before without fruit other than the zephyr on your cheek? Let yourself be kissed, and on the chest, on the hands, male or female lover -the cup raised high. When you kiss, drink; may the glass cure the fear: kiss on the neck, the most beautiful place. Let yourself be kissed and if there's yearning left kiss again, for life is finite.

These are some I like. You can find more Catalan poems in this blog's tag #poesia.

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nothingkillsyoulikeyourmind105 · 9 months

Text

“Here With Me”

“Chapter One”

König x Fem! (?) Reader

Readers origin will be revealed later.

a/n credit to the artist for the gif. Name is label beneath the gif. The picture for this one. The artist @namedlunagoddess

-Part One-

TW-Slightly Angsty, Slow Burn (will contain Smut, fluff, later in the story)

Will update TW as we go through the story.

Comments are encouraged and please do let me know if I should continue.

Master List

Sneak Peek

The sounds of an explosion going off and throwing König back. The wind knocked out of him he looks around him seeing rubble and people getting up taking cover. He can’t move. He looks down at his left lower side he’s been impaled by a rebar. The more he moves the more pain shoots all over his body.

Enemy fire starts to progressively comes closer to his location. Some of his men run over trying to help him. He pushes the, away leaving him with his gun he accepts his fate. Everyone leaves him behind.

König POV

“This is it”

He mumbles a something in German sighing heavily lifting his gun cocking it back ready for whoever.

But someone comes running over to him wearing black outed goggles and all Black tactical gear and a dark olive green scarf. They eliminate whoever got close to them swiftly. The sounds of the battlefield is all he hears. Slowing fading in and out. The mysterious soldier pulls their glove off and places their hand on his side. He feels a cold and hot sensation wincing at first then he’s yelling in pain at the rebar is removed from his side. The stranger throws the rebar to the side and pulls him up.

“Can you walk! Nod yes or shake your head to give me answer!

They yell to him.

They switch their radio on and König can hear them speak on the radio.

“Cap I got him. It getting bad out here and I’m afraid your friend is fading in and out. I have to do it here and now or I have to find a place to patch him up. But he’s gonna be knocked out cold sir! Sir!”

They look at König with worry. Having him lean on them as they speak on the radio.

“Shite! Do it, we can afford to lose anyone!”

Captain Price gives the confirmation to save König life any means necessary.

“Yes sir!, Going dark Sir, see you soon!

Switching their radio off they carry König on their back he stumbles along dragging his boots as they walk to take cover in a partial demolished house.

“Alright Big Guy this is gonna hurt like hell, but I need you to lie still and focus on me.”

Taking their gloves off they start touching his wound and the feeling a burning sensation is felt. He tries to move but he is held down by them. The mysterious soldier is abnormal stronger then him. They over power him as he tries to get up but his punches are sluggish and weak.

“Eyes on me big guy don’t go to sleep stay with me. I’m here with you. Stay with me!”

Feeling his heartbeat start to beat slowly. The feeling of dread started to come over him. Feeling all of his emotions overwhelmed them.

“Fuck”

“Hey Big Guy Stay With Me!”

“I’ll Be Back”

Holding his hands they stand up and look away pulling their goggles up and walking out the demolished house. The sounds of men screaming are heard. The sound of a inhuman roar and growl is heard and all is silent.

König tries to get up but his body is too weak. He looks around for his gun to protect himself. The sounds of someone coming startles him.

The mysterious soldier runs with their goggles back they walk over to König side. Extended their ungloved hand they hover it over his wound. The sensation of burning is felt again. König whimpers in pain and tries to move but he’s too weak. He eventually passes out.

König POV

Opening my eyes I look around I’m in the infirmary at the base.

“How did I get back?”

“What happened?”

“Scheiße”

He looks down at his side where he was impaled he notices theirs no bandages. He’s just sore. He pulls his gown aside to assess his wound. But to his surprise theirs nothing there, as if nothing happened. But how did he get back and where is his wound. He looks around the room to see if any medical staff are around to explain or tell him how long he was out for. He is very concerned and confused at this point in time.

Before he could say anything Captain Price walks in with Ghost at his side. König sits up and watches Price and Ghost approach him.

“König”

His deep scratchy voice breaks the silence. His presence is laced with the smell of cigars. Ghosts presence is always one of intimidation and silence.

“Captain”

“What happened and how did I get back here? How long was I out for and was the mission a failure?”

Price looks over to Ghost. He inhales deeply and sighs before speaking. Give us a moment König this is a lot to process even for us. Price sits down and rubs his hands together before speaking.

“Well Laswell brought on a recruit last moment when all of you guys were deployed on the battlefield. Ghost and myself had to rescue Soap and Gaz they were all caught in a crossfire. And your team notified us that you weren’t gonna make it and Laswell deployed one of their soldiers to come out and save you on the field. They did just that and they managed to eliminate the target swiftly and successfully.

Everyone made it back safely and accounted for. And König it’s been 3 days you’ve been out sleeping and your wound was healed up by the same soldier who saved you.

With a huff Price stands up and looks at König with a smile he looks at König.

“You’ll be meeting your savior shortly”

With that Price leaves the room with Ghost.

“My savior”

A Few Hours Later

The nurse discharges König and he gathers his things and limps out of the infirmary walking to the briefing room where everyone is waiting. As he enters he is greeted by Soap and Gaz.

“König, Glad you made it out in one piece.”

Soap shakes his hand tightly and pats his back.

“Take easy there mate”

Gaz nods to König.

Everyone sits down at the table waiting for Price to finish up talking with Laswell on the phone in the back room.

“Gentlemen”

*he sighs and paces back and forth*

“Laswell informed me we have a new recruit joining us today. This isn’t our ordinary recruit gents. This is a special kind of request from Laswell.

“Whatever happens from this day forth. We are a Task Force 141 nothing will change that.”

“There’s a time and place where you draw the line, wherever you need it. At the end of the day someone has to make the enemy scared of the dark. We get dirty, and the world stays clean.”

“That’s the mission”

All the men in the room agree I’m unison.

The door opens and the same soldiers from the field that König remembered. They walk in still wearing their tactical gear. The sounds of them unclipping their helmet and the take their goggles off. The balaclava is pulled off and revealing a woman. She smiles to the guys.

“Hello, nice to meet you all”

She smiles to everyone and she noticed that everyone is sitting in silence. Price looks around the room. Holding back his laugh. He clears his throat.

“This is (y/n) (l/n) but they go by code name “Sparrow”

“She will be joining us.”

König watches her, memorizing every detail about her face and the way she speaks and smiles.

But the moment is ruined by Soap dropping a cheesy and rather cringy pick up lines.

“You might no bet the best looking’ wan in here but beauty only a light switch away!”

“English Johnny!”

Ghost interrupts Soap cringey pick up line.

“Oi Mate, Leave the poor girl alone you shite!

All the guys laugh at Soap pick up line and they all get up to leave the briefing but to also introduce themselves to (y/n).

“Don’t mind the Scot, I’m Kyle but call me Gaz love.”

Gaz extends his hand out to her and she shakes his hand smiling her eyes glow green.

“I’m Soap Bonnie lass.”

He fixes his Mohawk and shakes her hand with both hands smiling to her.

Ghost looks at her and he noticed her eyes changed colors to blue when she saw him staring at her.

“This is Ghost but he also goes by-?

Soap is about to introduce Ghost but he is immediately cut off by his cold Manchester Accent.

“That’ll do Sergeant!”

Ghost looks at Soap and back to (y/n).

“Mind tell us what are you exactly?

Ghost starts to interrogate her. He stares holes into her soul watching her. She fumbles her fingers looking down.

König walks over towering over the men. He watches them waiting for an answer.

“You can tell us love, give her some room sons.”

Price stands beside Soap looking down at her with a soft gaze.

“It was a couple of years ago. Laswell order a Special Forces to raid a abandoned Russian bunker and they found me. I was the result of a supposed failed experiment and they found me and kept me under the wraps. I trained with special forces and Laswell deemed it necessary for me to be brought out of the darkness and use my powers to help your task force 141.”

“I was born a mutant. They only tested on me which amplified my powers more.”

She sighs looking down nervously.

“My eyes change color depending on the mood I’m in or if I’m scared.”

“My eyes are green”

“But when I get nervous or scared they turn blue”

She looks up and to be met with Königs soft and loving gaze.

He can’t stop looking at her. He’s absolutely enamored by her beauty and her smile but most of all her eyes.

#konig #konig fic #konig imagine #könig x y/n #colonel konig #cod konig #konig mw2 #konig modern warfare #konig x reader #konig call of duty #könig #könig my beloved #könig fanfiction

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nanowrimo · 2 years

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Black Joy Is Revolutionary or Why Writing Black Doesn't Equal Trauma or Pain

It’s important to talk about what kind of stories get represented in mainstream media. NaNo Participant Kymberlyn Reed tells us why stories centered around Black joy are necessary. As a little Black girl who loved reading, it always saddened me that there was never a Babysitter's Club or Sweet Valley High series in which Black kids were centered (not sidekicks or best friends lacking a backstory) just having fun, going through typical teenage stuff and hanging out with cool friends. The fantasy genre, as much as I loved it, also seemed to have no place for Black people to had amazing adventures in far away worlds.

That's why — as a middle aged Blerd — I have been on an absolute roll with so many wonderful stories about Black people just existing and I think there needs to be MORE of them. There is room for Black joy in a society that devalues Blackness as a whole (while co-opting and/or misappropriating the aspects it finds marketable).

This isn't to say there's no need for stories centered around the very real issues of social justice. There's a reason Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give resonated with so many readers of all races (and why so many school districts are trying to ban it). However, not everything about Blackness is about pain and suffering.

And that's the problem. The idea of a single black experience — mainly centered around our suffering —has far too long dictated what people want to write and/or read about us. If there had been more books about Black mermaids in the past (despite the fact that many African cultures have myths about mermaids), people probably wouldn't be losing their minds over Halle Bailey right now.

Not every book about Black people needs to be a "teachable moment" for non-Black readers. Black people should not have to exist or expend unpaid emotional labor just to "teach." Our historical and current traumas should not be the only way to create "empathy.”

Black joy seems to upset people or has some of them believing it's not "authentic Blackness." One of my all time favorite romance authors — Beverly Jenkins — once received a letter from a white reader who was SHOCKED that Black people actually fell in love and had committed relationships! She long believed that Black people just had indiscriminate sex and children out of wedlock.

It took a historical romance featuring a Black hero and heroine to open this woman's mind.

Reading and writing about Black people doing the mundane (as we do everyday) in made up worlds shows us just being, that our skin in all of its glorious hues, is just a part of who we are. We have many intersecting identities, and limiting us to the "poor downtrodden Black person in need of saving" deprives us of our individuality.

Black LGBTQ have coming-out stories and meet-cutes.

Black girls can be princesses.

Black men can be cowboys (and in fact were some of the original cowboys).

Most importantly, Black people exist in every walk of life, even in places and spaces where the media at large ignores our presence. For example, there are Black surfers who teach free courses at The Inkwell, a historic stretch of beach located in Santa Monica, California.

When you read or write about Black people living fully, you are changing the narrative and in a lot of ways, changing minds. Not only that, but writing Black joy is fun too. It's inclusive and it's telling Black readers our stories matter.

All of them.

Kymberlyn Reed is an author who's been published in two countries--Germany and the U.S. No, she doesn't speak a bit of German, but her writing "sister" does.

She's been doing the NaNoWriMo thing for a long time now and will always be a pantser because her characters refuse to behave otherwise. She owns more books than clothes. She's also a lifelong Blerd, fountain pen and Japanese stationery aficionado, lipstick junkie, and an unapologetic metalhead who can do a pretty good death metal growl with enough absinthe in her system. Photo by Junior REIS on Unsplash

#nanowrimo #writing #amwriting #black joy #black stories #by nano guest #kymberlyn reed #Black Writers

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my-deer-history · 2 months

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Francis Kinloch in Müller's letters to his family: Part 4

These extracts are from Johannes von Müller: Sämmtliche Werke, volume 7 (1810).

My translations here (with added paragraph breaks for legibility), original German transcriptions below the cut. This is the queerest part yet.

29 July 1776, to his father

The first cause of my silence, l. P.,* is that my regulated life really leaves me with little to write about; the other: that I am very busy. I read for a few hours with my friend, and that is almost the only time that I can devote to reading.

*For “lieber Papa”, “dear father”.

10 Oct 1776, to his father

You can guess the reason for my long silence, dearest father; when one is labouring on an important work, one becomes this work entirely; and in addition I finished a few more books with my friend Kinloch.

[...] A book seller from Neuchatel, Mrs B and I have convinced Mr B to put together a collection of his works. On account of this opportunity, he is working through all of them, and making additions and changes. Since he is not allowed to read himself, he wished to go through these writings with a friend who was already familiar with the contents. To that end, this summer we often read these and other writings for 2 – 3 hours a night in Mr Kinloch’s presence.

[...] My friend K is going to Italy. It is difficult; but the North American war and my work, which would be too disrupted, prevent me from accompanying him. This letter is not long enough to express to you how painful parting from him the day after tomorrow* will be for me.

[...] The loss of my friend makes me sad. Luckily, Kinloch is mine in every part of the world; our persons may be separated, but not our minds; I should care more about his perfection than about his presence; one day, in the long career that according to nature is open to us, we may well find ourselves together again**

*This places Kinloch’s departure for Italy on 12 October 1776.

**Original annotation: This friendship with Mr Kinloch remained unabated until Müller’s death. He received letters from him even in Cassel.

24 Dec 1776, to his brother

For myself, I seek nothing except that independence, which I consider to be the highest good of a human being, which I now enjoy, and will always enjoy through the generosity of my friend Kinloch and through the sciences.

Then I write my letters, rarely any others (except letters concerning business) besides those to my two friends, Bonstetten and Kinloch.

[...]Mr Kinloch sees Italy with the eyes of a man devoted to great occupations, with the sensitivity of a friend of antiquity and the fine arts. His letters are a diary of everything he sees, hears and feels. Through him and that other friend, I know Italy better than almost any other country.

April 1777, to his brother

When you wrote to him, I was in Lyon. My friend Kinloch, when he returned from Italy, wrote to me to find me at the lake below Genthod on a specific day, because he wanted to visit me; I however could not wait for him and took a cabriolet. I met him three hours from Geneva. He stayed with me for three or four days.

He strengthened his admiration for the monuments of the ancients when he saw them; his love of free government when he saw the current state of the nation and the constitution; and through everything, history, art and intercourse, he strengthened his noble desire for rightful fame and great virtues: and as he saw so many others, he learned to estimate my friendship even more highly. And it really seems to me that we loved each other ten times more during these few posts, and the purpose of our friendship is always our mutual perfection; nor does Kinloch want any other friend, and I do not want any others besides Bonstetten and him.

When he left Genthod and we had read and spoken a lot together, it was not possible for me to watch him go; so I went to Lyon. [...] I am never happier or healthier, nor do I think more clearly or feel more vividly, than when I am travelling; hence, I made a lot of observations and at the same time did a lot of work, both with my friend and after we left Lyon - at the same hour but by different routes - and I drove back.

I read everything to him that I had drafted about Switzerland over the winter, then we read several works by Juvenal with endless pleasure, from which I am also learning several parts by heart, and then we read about the countries that we had seen, besides many chapters from Montaigne, whose masterwork is the chapter on friendship*

*Michel de Montaigne’s famous essay De l’amitié (On friendship) was written after the death of his beloved friend Etienne de la Boétie. Montaigne posits that a person can only have very few - or even just one - true friends, a position based on his profoundly deep love for Boétie, whose death just four years into their acquaintance devastated him. Müller and Kinloch would have seen a close mirror of their own relationship in this, built as both were on intellectual pursuits and mutual self-improvement, and with a subtle but present homoromantic undertone. Read an English translation of the essay here, where Montaigne outs himself as team-Achilles-was-the-bottom.

4 Sept 1779, to his brother

It was with unspeakable pleasure that I received news from Kinloch a few days ago that, after feeling forced by mortal danger to take up arms for Carolina, he had distinguished himself so much as aide-de-camp in Georgia and Carolina under General Moultrie that, in a letter to the Congress, the general named him a very brave youth and the pride of his fatherland, and this was printed in the newspaper. This fame that my friends acquire is a powerful spur for me.

29 July 1776, to his father

Die erste Ursache meines langen Stillschweigens, l. P. ist, daß mein einförmiges Leben mir wirklich wenig zu schreiben darbietet; die andere: daß ich sehr beschäftiget bin. Ein paar Stunden lese ich mit meinem Freund, und das ist fast die einige Zeit, welche ich der Lecture widmen kann.

10 Oct 1776, to his father

Die Ursache meines langen Stillschweigens errathet ihr, liebster Papa; wenn man an einem wichtigen Werk arbeitet, so ist man ganz dieses Werkes; und denn vollendete ich mit meinem Freund Kinloch noch einige Bücher.

[...] Ein Buchhändler von Neufchatel, Frau B. und ich haben Herrn B. zu einer Sammlung seiner somtlichen Werke vermocht. Bei dieser Gelegenheit durchsieht er sie alle, und macht Zusäße und Veränderungen. Da er selbst nicht lesen darf, so wünschte er mit einem Freund diese Schriften zu durchgehen, dem zugleich der Inhalt geläufig wäre. Zu dem Ende haben wir diesen Sommer oft 2 – 3 Stunden des Abends diese und andere Schriften in Herrn Kinlochs Gegenwart gelesen.

[...] Mein Freund K. geht nach Italien. Es ist hart; aber der nordamerikanische Krieg und mein Werk, welches zu sehr unterbrochen worden wäre, verhindern mich ihn zu begleiten. Dieser Brief ist nicht lang genug, um Euch, auszudrücken, wie schmerzlich mir übermorgen dieser Abschied seyn wird.

[...] Der Verlust meines Freundes macht mich traurig. Zum Glück ist Kinloch in allen Welttheilen mein; unsere Personen mögen getrennt werden, aber nicht unsere Gemüther; seine Vervollkommnung soll mir mehr am Herzen liegen, als seine Gegenwart; endlich in der langen Laufbahn, welche der Natur nach uns offen ist, mögen wir uns wohl zusammen finden *..

* Diese Freundschaft mit Herrn Kinloch blieb ungeschwacht bis zu Müllers Tode. Er erhielt zu Cassel noch Briefe von ihm.

24 Dec 1776, to his brother

Für mich selbst suche ich nichts, als jene Unabhängigkeit, welche ich für das höchste Gut eines Menschen halte, deren ich nun genieße, und durch den Edelmuth meines Freundes Kinloch und durch die Wissenschaften allezeit genießen werde.

Alsdann schreibe ich meine Briefe, selten andere (außer Briefe die Geschäfte betreffen) als an meine zwei Freunde, Bonstetten und Kinloch.

[...]Herr Kinloch sieht Italien mit den Augen eines Mannes, der sich den großen Geschäften widmet, mit der Empfindlichkeit eines Freundes der Alten und der schönen Künste. Seine Briefe sind das Tagbuch alles dessen, was er sieht, hört und fühlt. Durch Ihn und jenen andern Freund kenne ich Italien genauer als fast kein anderes Land.

April 1777, to his brother

Als du ihn schriebest, war ich zu Lyon. Mein Freund Kinloch, als er aus Italien zurückkam, schrieb mir an einem gewissen Tag mich am See unter Genthod zu finden, weil er mich besuchen wolle; ich konnte ihn aber nicht erwarten und nahm ein Cabriolet. Drei Stunden von Genf traf ich ihn an. Drei oder vier Tage blieb er bei mir. Er hatte sich beim Anblick der Denkmale der Alten in der Bewunderung derselben, bei Ansicht des heutigen Zustandes der Nation und der Verfassungen in der Liebe freier Regierung, durch alles, Historie, Künste und Umgang in der edlen Begierde verdienten Ruhms und großer Tugenden bestärkt: auch da er so viele andere gesehen hatte, hatte er meine Freundschaft noch höher schätzen gelernt. Und es scheint mir würklich, wir haben einander zehnmal lieber gewonnen in diesen wenigen Lagen, und der Zweck unserer Freundschaft ist allezeit unsere wechselseitige Vervollkommnung; auch will Kinloch keinen andern Freund, ich will auch keinen außer Bonstetten und ihn. Als er Genthod verließ und wir vieles gelesen und gesprochen hatten, war mir nicht möglich, ihn abreisen zu sehen; also ging ich auf Lyon. [...] Niemals bin ich freudiger noch gesünder, auch denke ich nie heller noch empfinde lebhafter, als wann ich reise; daher ich eine Menge Beobachtungen gemacht und zugleich sowohl mit meinem Freund, als nachdem wir Lyon zu gleicher Stunde, aber auf verschiedenen Wegen, verlassen und ich zurückfuhr, sehr viel gearbeitet habe. Ihm las ich alles, was ich diesen Winter über die Schweiz abgefaßt hatte, dann lasen wir mit unendlichem Vergnügen verschiedene Stücke im Juvenalis, aus welchem ich auch mehreres auswendig lerne, und dann lasen wir über die Länder, die wir sahen, nebst vielen Kapiteln im Montaigne, dessen Meisterstück das Kapitel von der Freundschaft ist;

4 Sept 1779, to his brother

Vor wenigen Tagen habe ich mit unsäglichem Vergnügen von Kinloch Nachricht bekommen, daß, nachdem er sich durch Lebensgefahr gezwungen gesehen, für Carolina die Waffen zu ergreifen, er unter General Moultrie als Aide de Camp in Georgien und Carolina sich so sehr ausgezeichnet, daß er von dem Feldherrn in einem Brief an den Congreß ein sehr tapferer Jüngling und eine Ehre seines Vaterlandes genannt worden ist, welches gedruckt worden. Dieser Ruhm, den meine Freunde erwerben, ist für mich ein gewaltiger Sporn.

4 Sept 1779, to his brother

#francis kinloch #johannes von müller #michel de montaigne #18th century history #queer history #amrev

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vynegar · 1 year

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luke’s proposal card: poem analysis

The poem that features prominently in Luke’s proposal card is a translated version of “Heimweg vom Fest” by Hermann Hesse. This post will have some translations about the poem and discuss how it suits Luke’s proposal.

My usual disclaimers apply for any of my translations here. Check my masterlist for more translations and analysis. Please also note that the original language of the poem is German, so I’ll be referencing other people’s translations of it.

Background

I found the Big Data Lab entry for the poem in Luke’s proposal card, which I had previously translated as “Going Home After the Holidays” and was unable to find the source for. Here’s the BDL entry + my translation of it.

《节庆后回家》，是由德国诗人赫尔曼，黑塞于1913年创作的诗歌，收录于诗集《孤独者的音乐》中，1914年由海尔布隆Eugen Salzer出版社出版。原文写作“但要么至善要么至恶——可怜的灵魂恰恰喜好，或是痛苦，或是欢乐——因为它只为燃烧而燃烧。夏彦母亲在引用时，进行了略微的修改。

“Going Home After Festivities” is a poem written in 1913 by the German poet Hermann Hesse. It was included in his collection of poems titled “Songs of the Lonely”, published in 1914 by the Heilbronn publisher Eugen Salzer. The original text reads, “[the four lines of the poem which comprise the last stanza]”. When Luke’s mother quoted it, she made some slight changes.

I’ll get to the actual content of those four lines soon, but that last stanza is what appears in the game and reappears for the BDL entry. It seems to use the translation by Lin Ke (林克) that appears in Herman Hesse Selected Poems (黑塞诗选), published 2017 by Sichuan People’s Publishing House (四川人民出版社). Although the BDL entry states that Luke’s mother changed it, the only difference I saw in what appeared in the card story was the omission of “But” at the start of where she quotes.

Translation

You can find the original German text here, along with an English translation “The way home after celebration” by Sharon Krebs and a French translation by Pierre Mathé). Below is the last stanza in English:

The poor soul wishes to cherish

Only the most evil and the best,

Be they agonies, be they celebrations --

For [the soul] glows for the sake of glowing.

@enheduanna-bfv also found the German version of the poem, and would translate the title as "On the way home from a feast".

And finally, here’s the Chinese translation that seems to be the same version used in the game, alongside my translation of it (possibly influenced by Krebs’s). Please note that differences in translation could be due to different interpretations or errors at any step of translation, especially my own.

节庆后回家 Going Home After Festivities

又一个节日响成了碎片， Yet another holiday splinters with a sound.

恐惧令人窒息，我蹒跚 In suffocating fear, I stagger

走过冰雪覆盖的农田，across the frozen-over farmlands,

害怕再也回不到家园。fearing I can never return home again.

你呀，缘于痛苦的沉醉，You, the intoxication that comes from pain –

喜乐的杯盏破碎之后，After the joyful cup shatters,

我愿在心里，我情愿将你 In my heart, I’m willing to

当成半是欢喜来承受。endure you as a half-joy.

但要么至善要么至恶—— But the greatest good, or greatest evil –

可怜的灵魂恰恰喜好，it’s just what the sorry soul is after.

或是痛苦，或是欢乐—— Whether suffering, or celebration –

因为它只为燃烧而燃烧。because it burns for the sake of burning.”

As a note, my original translation was:

“The greatest good, or greatest evil – it’s just what sorry souls are after. Whether pain, or pleasure – because it burns for the sake of burning.”

Taking the cue from Krebs’s translation, I changed the “sorry soul” to singular, so it can connect more explicitly with the last line (the “it” in the last line would also refer back to the soul). I also changed the pain/pleasure word pair since it didn’t evoke quite the right dichotomy, and suffering/celebration at least let me keep the alliteration I used to reflect the parallelism of the line in Chinese.

Discussion

I think it’s pretty striking how the title evokes such warmth with the idea of home and celebration, then completely subverts that with its opening stanza – the celebration ends violently, and the poem paints a wretched, despairing picture of someone in the mindset of fear and anxiety. The tone of the rest of the poem is never quite as bleak, but even at best it’s a bittersweet one where pain is always on the other side of the coin.

There are a few ways I find this poem quite fitting for Luke’s engagement card. The first I thought of was that the more somber tone belied by the innocent title was like the experience of reading the story. Instead of the engagement being the happy occasion that we’d expect, Luke shows us the grave that the bought for himself. We’re faced with Luke’s mortality and fears and resignation in a way that we’ve never been before; instead of a pure celebration, it’s something that’s in pieces and bittersweet.

Rosa is indisputably “home” to Luke, and with that in mind, the narrator’s desperation in their journey back home seems emotional enough to describe how Luke must feel about Rosa.

For the second stanza, I’ll try to base it on Krebs’s translation since it makes more sense with the rest of the poem. The narrator declares that they would rather carry the pain with them than the “half-hearted joy” that remains when the “cup of bliss” shatters. Luke certainly intended to choose pain instead of allowing himself what happiness he could have, but I also think he ended up compromising many times for that half-joy, in the many compromises he makes himself when it comes to Rosa: be part of the family, but don’t ever cause them trouble; reunite with Rosa, but don’t ask for anything more; officially be with Rosa, but don’t let yourself take the next step. Luke may not align perfectly with the main message of this stanza, but the ideas here are similar to his mentalities that were explored in the card story.

And finally, the last stanza, the one that Rosa’s mom would recite to Luke, since it was his mom’s favorite that she often used as a lullaby, and that Rosa will repeat back to Luke as a plea. The card already explains what it meant for Luke’s mom and what it can mean for Luke – living their life fully, honestly, passionately. The only thing I can add is that if the poem begins with Luke alone and frightened, seeking his home and family, then it’s a beautiful bookend to have the words spoken to him by his family be the thing that pulls him out of his resignation to half-hearted joys.

#luke pearce #tears of themis #xia yan #tot luke #tot analysis #tot translation #thoughts of themis #'yeah this will just be a quick little thing i post before starting on that vyn stuff' (1.2k words)

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utanotherthem · 4 days

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Snowtops

Snowtops is the Ruins replacement. This area is more populated than original ruins. And yes, it is a snowy mountain location. Like... Really snowy. Really mountain. But somehow, flowers were able to grow here. (ye its a mountain underground so what)

A few examples of flowers:

(btw they're the main part of puzzles in Snowtops)

Characters:

Max, aka Monster Kid in Frisk's role. There's no drastic changes in their personality, they simply are more serious. And also sarcastic. They're an orphan who ran away from the orphanage because it sucks, duh! They climbed on Mt. Ongamm and decided to set up a camp there, but oh noes, they fell into some huge hole!

How was the fall, may you ask? Painful.

Max wakes up on a pile of red leaves, and decides to go further. The first person (or not an actual person) they meet is...

Cinner, a cinnamon tree seedling in Flowey's role. A very mischievous one, and also not much of a talker. They're not trying to be friendly like some certain flower, but instead just attack Max and chase them (not only in the beginning, they will be causing utterly nefarious deeds a few times throughout Max's adventure)

The chase sequence ends when Cinner gets driven away by...

Asgore (and Flowy the Floer) in Toriel's role. He's a bit older than his original counterpart (the reason for it is him having a biological child), and is much like a wise elder. Instead of German, he sometimes speaks Norwegian. And he has a cool beard :)

Flowey isn't really different from UT Flowey. He's just more determined and silly. He also is Snowtops boss on Pacifist/Neutral route

After Asgore leaves Max because yes, they somehow managed to get into Icepeaks (basically the dangerous areas of Snowtops), when they stumble upon some weird robot which seems to be inactive. After finding some coal, Max turns on the robot. Perhaps this was a mistake.

The robot is Mettaton, in Napstablook's role. An egoistical ghost in robot body, fueled by rage and envy. She wants to be a star, and even got herself a body from Undyne, but she's not very successful. Instead, her two cousins became popular. And yes, she is jealous of them. At first she attacks Max because they woke her up, but then she tries to capture them for the same reason Papyrus tries to capture Frisk in original UT.

Also there's this spider. He replaces Ruins Dummy. He's the peakest character.

There's also some NPCs in there but I'm lazy to draw them and they're unimportant.

So, after a battle with Flowey, Max goes into the next area of the Underground... Blaksoyle.

#underswap #undertale #undertale au #undertale another them #monster kid #asgore #flowey #mettaton #cool spider #help what tags should i add im new to tumblr and idk

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archduchessofnowhere · 11 months

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“I can bring her comfort and respond to her pain, which few can understand as I can”

Past May 29 was the 166th anniversary of the death of Archduchess Sophie, the eldest child of Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth; and because of a turn of fate, the day before that was the 151th anniversary of the death Sophie’s namesake, her grandmother Archduchess Sophie, born a Princess of Bavaria.

In Elisabeth's biographies Baby Sophie's death tends to be portrayed as the first in what would be a long list of tragedies in the Empress' life. And yet many of them also pay little attention to it, dedicating it one or two paragraphs. But a piece of information they (almost) never fail to give in the few lines they use is this: that Archduchess Sophie actively blamed the infant’s death on her daughter-in-law, adding more pain to the already devastated young mother.

There are different variations in each biography, but the story goes as it follows: after the Hungarian tour was announced, Elisabeth had insisted in taking both of her daughters to the trip, which infuriated the Archduchess, since she thought the girls were to delicate to make the trip. A fight broke out. The court doctor decided that the archduchesses were in conditions to go to Hungary, so they went. But the girls fell ill soon after arriving, and eventually the eldest died. Archduchess Sophie thought that the child's death was Elisabeth's fault for taking her against her wishes, and told her so. This story is no more harshly portrayed than in the miniseries Sisi (2009), where Sophie tells “it’s your fault” to Elisabeth as she cries over her daughter's coffin.

This was what I read when I first learned about the little girl’s passing, and, as a newby, I didn’t question it. But as I continued to research Elisabeth and the Imperial family, I became interested in Sophie not as Sisi’s mother-in-law, but as an individual, and since then I started to grab this kind of statements with a grain of salt. Where does this come from, anyway? From someone’s correspondance? From a witness? Did this story originated around the time of the girl's death, or only later on?

Lately I finally got my hands on Unsere liebe Sisi, a collection of Sophie’s letters regarding her daughter-in-law. I read the chapter dedicated to Baby Sophie's death, and what I found in those letters was a far cry from what was depicted in Sisi (2009). So what was Archduchess Sophie's reaction to her granddaughter's death?

Before I beging sharing the letters, I must make the disclaimer that I don't know German and that I used a machine translation, so the nuances are lost. Also Sophie had the habit of abbreviating words, I could guess most of them with my very limited knowledge of German vocabulary but some I had no idea. So that affected the translation in some cases. Lastly, all the bolding in the letters is mine. That being said, let's beging.

First let's put the 1857 trip into context. This was a planned State visit, not a vacation. Relations with Hungary remained tense after the 1849 counter-revolution, so the goal of the tour was to try to reconcile the Hungarians with the still unpopular Emperor. Since the Italian tour of 1856 had gone relatively well, mainly do the young Empress' presence, they tried to replicate the effect in Hungary. They were set to depart on May 4 and stay until June 23. Everyday was packed with activities: meeting with dignitaries and Church representatives, attending to Mass, public parades, visits to every important city in Hungary, gala dinners, etc. The imperial couple's daughters were not meant to appear at any public event, they had been taken to be closer to their parents, but still they were to stay in Buda with their nannies for the entirety of the tour.

Although I'm yet to find a biography that cites a single source about the alleged fight between Elisabeth and her mother-in-law on whether taking the girls to Hungary or not, it could be possible, since Sophie doesn't sound terribly excited about the girls going. In a letter to her son Archduke Max dated May 7 she wrote of the enthusiasm which the imperial couple had been received. On the arrival of the little archduchesses to Hungary a day after their parents she says:

The children arrived on Tuesday at half past seven in the evening in bad weather, but were nevertheless received by a large crowd with stormy cheers; I only hope that they did not scream and cry in their terror…

Only a few days after the tour begun, Gisela fell ill with fever. At first it was thought that it was do to teething, but the next day Baby Sophie also fell ill. As the days passed Gisela got better, but her sister only got worse. When this happened Archduchess Sophie was in Saxony with her twin sister Queen Marie. Slowly, news on the girls’ health reached her. Again to Max she wrote on May 22:

Franzi writes me much and in detail about our poor little Sophie's unfortunately very serious illness, which, however, on the 19th, when he wrote to me, he did not yet seem to believe was dangerous.

(…) I immediately asked Franzi by telegraph for news of the evening, and when we returned yesterday from a beautiful promenade... I received a very reassuring telegraphic dispatch, which I read with fear and anxiety in the presence of good old Cuz.... [not identified], who had taken such deep pity on me and who had prayed so fervently with Aunt Marie and me for our poor baby during the afternoon service in the Chapel on the hill...

In this letter Sophie goes in detail on Baby Sophie’s agony and her parents desperation, but what I wanted to highlight was the ending, which shows how anguished the Archduchess was over her granddaughter’s condition.

Two days later Sophie improved and the parents were given the all-clear to continue their trip. Sophie informed her son Archduke Karl Ludwig on May 24:

... I am now doubly enjoying the pleasant life with good Aunt Marie, since the news from Ofen about our poor baby has been so reassuring. The poor parents were able to leave the children on Saturday with a lighter heart [in order to continue their journey through Hungary], but it takes me a lot to have to be separated from them now. By the way, Gisela has been well and fresh again for a long time

But sadly Baby Sophie's recovery was only momentary, and she died five days later. The whole family was heartbroken. Sophie's pain comes across her letters, but also her faith. She, like her son, tried to accept the child's death with Catholic resignation. She opens this letter from May 31 to her sister Ludovika, Elisabeth's mother, like this:

So we still had to give up our beloved child. She was to die in Hungary; that was God's will; we must hold fast to this faith so as not to perish in lamentation.

She describes Ludovika of the miserable state she found her son and his wife, then she tells her that:

In the short time during which God lent us the sweet child, she spread so much love, joy and happiness over all of us, as her small but already quite abundant powers made possible. There is one thought that is firmly in my mind, which I thought over and over again when I saw the great sacrifice that God demanded of our poor children coming ever closer, namely, thanks to God that you, my poor, much-tried Luise, did not know our dear baby in all her freshness of life, cheerfulness and such charming, loving kindness as I did, for this memory is now my greatest torment.

Sophie was no stranger to this kind of grief. She herself had once lost an infant daughter, Maria Anna, who died after a seizure aged only four-years-old. There is no doubt her little girl was on her mind, since she said it herself. To Karl Ludwig she wrote on June 6:

Sisi feels the need to speak of her beloved child, to surround herself with everything that reminds her of her child, so I can thank God that I can bring her comfort and respond to her pain, which few can understand as I can.

She also remembered her in a letter to Max dated June 4:

...The poor little girl still suffered a lot the last night, but when, thank God, her parents arrived on the 29th at half past ten in the morning, wonderfully fast from Debrecen, which they had left about noon the day before, she was already completely exhausted, but calm and remained conscious until 10 minutes before her death, which took place at half past ten in the evening. The agony began at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but despite some involuntary cries - as with Anna - she does not seem to have suffered

It had been seventeen years since the little Archduchess Maria Anna passed away, but her memory was still present in her mother. Sophie truly understood better than anyone else the pain of loosing a young daughter to an illness, and had nothing but sympathy towards Elisabeth. To think that she, out of all people, would tell her daughter-in-law that her beloved child’s death was her fault seems almost vile to me after reading Sophie’s letters.

But, even if she didn’t say it to her face, did Sophie think Elisabeth somehow was to blame?

If she did, she never wrote it down. I'm sure that if a letter or diary entry from Sophie explicitly blaming Elisabeth existed, it would've been published in every single book about the empress in existence. But in her letters she only talks about the grief of the family and trusting God's will, though in this letter to Max there is an indication that she did thought Hungary had been the cause of the girl's illness:

It was as if the poor child clearly felt that the air in Hungary was not good for her, for even before and during her illness she often said 'Please go to Milan', where she was so well (...) Sisi and Franzi told me that the little one had been so beautiful in the last hour and after death, she also looked so friendly the other day [the day after her death], where the parents still saw her before and after mass before her departure. It hurt Sisi so much to have to leave her, she would have liked to come back with her, but she did not want to let the Emperor leave alone. It was also a heavy sacrifice for her to have to leave the dear poor child on the 23rd, when she was only apparently better, in order to continue the journey through Hungary. She only gave in to [Archduke] Albrecht's imploring plea, who was so keen to give the ever-loyal Jazyphians and Cumanians [?] the good fortune of being able to admire the Empress, who made such a favorable impression everywhere in Hungary as well as in Italy. Now it is so painful for the poorest woman to think that she was away from her beloved child for the last days of her life. I told her in consolation that God would certainly give her credit for the difficult sacrifice.

Not only seems that Elisabeth herself felt guilty about having been away from her child while she was ill, but Sophie actually tried to put her mind at ease, instead of making her feel even more guilty. Also in this letter a figure rather forgotten in the 1857 Hungarian tour emerges, and whom perhaps did had some blame to bear: Archduke Albrecht.

Albrecht was a grandson of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, and the head of the Teschen Habsburg branch. He was the archduke who had the most influence on Franz Josef, and had been governor of Hungary since 1851. Every step of the tour had been planned by him, and it was because of his insistance that the imperial couple continued with their trip when Baby Sophie only seemed to have improved, despite Elisabeth wanting to stay with her child. We don't know if he ever felt remorse for continuing the tour during the last days of Baby Sophie's life, but interestingly Archduchess Sophie notes that she found Albrecht in Laxemburg, where the young Empress was staying:

(...) The day before yesterday I took Ludwig [Viktor] with me, who was just due for a few hours without lessons, and found Albrecht and Hildegard [his wife, and also a first cousin of Elisabeth] in Laxenburg.... Albrecht returns to Ofen (Budapest) on Friday.

Albrecht and Hildegard probably went to give their condolences to the grieving mother, but we don't know how their meeting went down.

So, if it isn't in the Archduchess' correspondance, where did the idea of Sophie blaming Elisabeth originated?

This time I didn't need to look for some obscure source to find a (likely) answer: it's Egon Corti's classic biography of Empress Elisabeth.

Elizabeth wept from morning till night and talked of nothing but her baby, and she felt her first meeting with the archduchess Sophie most terribly. Seeing the Empress’ grief, her mother-in-law tactfully refrained from comment, but in every order and every word Elizabeth thought she could detect an unspoken reproach, suggesting that the disaster would not have happened if only they had listened to the Archduchess’ wise and experienced advice. Elizabeth was now nineteen, but she felt as though she had been married for at least ten years and could not understand that Sophie’s attitude toward her was still that of a sensible old mother toward an inexperienced child.

Although his biography is generally well-sourced, he doesn't provide any source for this statement. Perhaps it's Countess Mária Festetics' diary? But if that is the source, why not say? Or directly quote it?

It should be noted, however, that according to Corti, Elisabeth thought that her mother-in-law blamed her, not that Sophie told her so. The Empress was full of guilt, so it wouldn't surprise me if she truly felt that everyone, and specially Sophie, held her responsible for what happened. I don't know if Corti was the first biographer in making this claim (during the 1920s there were a couple of biographies of Elisabeth that I hadn't had access), but his work is both very popular and highly regarded, so posterior biographers were likely quoting him when they repeated this claim. But the more the story was repeated, the more it changed, until Sophie turned into a wicked mother-in-law torturing a young grieving mother for something she had no control of, instead of the heartbroken grandmother that, again, had lost her little girl.

#in my sophie apologist era #i wanted this to be out for the 29 or the 30 but life (university) happened #sophie of bavaria archduchess of austria #empress elisabeth of austria #archduchess sophie of austria #archduke albrecht of austria duke of teschen #franz josef i of austria #sisi (2009)

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