#freedom beauty truth and love or whatever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rippersz · 2 months

Text

𝙰𝚕𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚊 𝙳𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚞 + 𝙻𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚜𝚊 𝚆𝚎𝚎𝚖𝚜 𝙰𝚜 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜 (𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗𝚜) (SLIGHTLY NSFW):

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

They are busy busy business ladies. Alcina runs the Dimitrescu Vineyard and often encounters all of the complexities that come with owning a company, while Larissa runs Nevermore and deals with her own pile of tasks each day. They’re fiercely independent like that, but even the strongest, tallest, most intelligent businesswomen have to find solace somewhere. In this case, it’s found in each other… and in you.

୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧

ʚ♡ɞ Larissa’s top two love languages are Gift Giving and Quality Time. Physical Touch is a close third. She hates not spending time with both of you and does whatever she can to free up her schedule. It’s difficult, but she manages because you two are worth it. And date nights, vacations, even little trips to town are the things that keep her happy and smiling. She’s always the first to suggest you all go somewhere, and even if you or Alcina are especially tired, you fall prey to her big glittering blue eyes. As soon as her face falls and she starts to pout, Alcina makes a show of covering your eyes and her own with her hands.

“Oh draga (darling in Romanian) don’t look now. She’ll tempt us. Drag us off to Hell. She’s utterly insatiable.” And you’ll giggle while Larissa’s expression falls sharp and her eyebrow ticks up. “Hell? You don’t think I’m an angel?” And Alcina can only roll her eyes before pushing you off to grab your jersey while she swipes an arm around Larissa’s waist and brings her into a kiss. “You are an angel. Sometimes.” “And other times?” They both grin. “The most wicked devil I know.”

Her gifts are also always from the heart. Very sentimental, like a well-written card, or a niche thing from the Jericho antique shop that she thinks you’d like. For Alcina, it could be a very ornate wine opener, and for you it could be an old broach or a locket big enough to put a picture of your family in.

ʚ♡ɞ Alcina’s top two love languages are Gift Giving and Physical Touch. Acts of Service is a close third. The truth is, she has a lot of money. A lot. Like a lot. And she is eager to show it off and spoil you two. Now Larissa is just as proud a woman, and enjoys her freedom and independence to pick out her own wardrobe, but Alcina can’t help herself. Larissa returned home one time and Alcina instantly rushed in to wrap a beautiful Parisian fur coat around her shoulders. It was the perfect size, the perfect length. Larissa wears it every winter, even if she told Alcina that she didn’t have to. It came with matching gloves, but Larissa slips those onto your hands so you two can match when you go out together. And as for yourself, her special little darling, she’ll seek out the things you’ve mentioned (even in very brief passing) that you liked. Oh that cute little trinket you saw in an Instagram advertisement? Suddenly it’s on the kitchen island waiting for you with a little note from ‘Yours, ~ A. D.’ - She signs her initials like that every time. You and Larissa keep them in a hidden box. It’s nearly full.

And I don’t think it really comes as a surprise when I say Alcina is a big admirer of physical touch with her loved ones. She is fiercely protective and vain, so she adores showing you off as the two women on her arm, but if someone stares for a little two long, her gaze burns her through sunglasses. The bright gold always startles normies. So this usually means she walks in the middle of you two whenever you’re out, with both of you on each arm. But if Larissa’s the one who is treating you all, she walks in the middle and struts around proudly.

ʚ♡ɞ You wanted to do it one time, just to see what it was like, and you looked like a young woman with your lesbian mothers. It was very embarrassing. They teased you HEAVILY. Every shop you went into, it was always “Oh what about this sweetheart? Do you want this for your room? Right next to your diploma?” Or “Oh this frame would be perfect. We could put it with your school pictures love, what do you think?” - You got so frustrated and flustered that you walked right off and it took them 5 minutes to realize you had literally walked away further down the street. Alcina scented you out and came to find you in a perfume store, trying to hide your smell. When they got there, you glared until they agreed they’d never do it again (but sometimes it slips in when they’re feeling wicked).

ʚ♡ɞ Now of course that does lead to power dynamics- which are very much a thing in this relationship. When it comes to Alcina Dimitrescu’s involvement, there will always be power dynamics. She is very not normal about her control issues, but that’s okay. You love her anyway. And Larissa learns to accept that it is both a blessing and a curse. She has to spend a lot of her own days in control, but it’s not necessarily by choice all the time. Before you two, she was very lonely and had to compensate with work, but now that she is with you, she has the opportunity to relinquish some of the control and responsibility that comes with the job. Thank goodness Alcina is all too eager to pick up the slack.

ʚ♡ɞ In terms of personality dominance, those two definitely take the cake. It is, to an extent, a good cop bad cop dynamic, but they do agree on a lot of things. Like they agree you’re adorable. And beautiful and handsome. And that they want you. In many more ways than one. And also they agree that giving you your privacy is just as important as having their own. The last thing they want to do, especially Alcina, is to infantilize you. In the beginning, Larissa had to sit Alcina down for a very difficult discussion to explain her own behavior to herself. She pointed out that Alcina sort of suffocated you a bit, which was true. She was quite controlling—always wanting to be by your side, always preparing you for the worst. CLEARLY she has some trauma, but you get through it. Alcina is eternally grateful that Larissa felt confident enough to speak to her. Past partners have been forced into submissive silence by their own fear because Alcina is such a strong force of a woman. She is very loving, but can be harsh.

ʚ♡ɞ Larissa, on the other hand, is a doting lover. She texts your group chat every free second she gets. Sends you a picture of her meal in the privacy of her office to thank you for making lunch. You always respond with hearts or suggest the three of you call while you go about your lunch hour. She suggested you three try syncing up the time so you could see each other and spend a bit more time together - seeing as you all get home rather late sometimes. Alcina joins the call a bit later but greets you with warm hellos and asks how her “Sweet girls” are doing. Larissa is also the type to buy flowers. She adores them. Some people think it’s silly because they’ll just die if not taken care of, but she doesn’t think so. She comes home with bouquets in hand to make up for a stressful week or a particular stretch of time in which you three can’t see each other often. If Alcina goes away on a business trip, she’ll welcome her back with black roses and so many red kisses that the poor woman almost falls over. If you’re stumbling through the door at midnight after a long day doing whatever it is you do (I’m thinking business analyst or perhaps even owning your own shop), then she waits up and gives you a little single rainbow rose still in the plastic because she knows you like the novelty of it. Oh and kisses too of course.

ʚ♡ɞ That being said, you’re sort of the morally grey cop in the cop dynamic. Rarely do any of you do something to truly piss each other off or upset each other, but it does happen. If you somehow upset Alcina, Larissa sits you down for a chat while Alcina rants in the background. Alci is very passionate and does have a temper, but for all of her bluster and bark, a quick “Alcina, sit” from Larissa has her growling, rubbing her temples, and taking a seat in the living room with you two. From that point on, it’s only a matter of discussion. Alcina has a habit of keeping her feelings to herself until she blows up, but Larissa is very preemptive. She KNOWS such habits amongst you all could possibly ruin your relationship, so she tries her hardest to keep the peace. You and Alcina argue, but Larissa talks you through it until the calm is restored.

ʚ♡ɞ If they piss you off or upset you, you have a very difficult time talking to them about it. You’re a soft-hearted person for them and the last thing you want is to cause a rift, but if you don’t come to them about it first, they WILL find out. Your two lovers are extremely intelligent and very observant. Alcina can tell something is off by the slightest falter in your beating heart and Larissa can tell something is off if you speak a single word in a different tone. To them, you are an open book. And they know that they’re intimidating at times. Larissa is a sweetheart, yes, but her irritation is brutal. And Alcina is… Alcina. So it can be (understandably) quite hard. That’s why you’ve taken to texting them before they get home, asking them to chat in the living room or the bedroom. And if not that, then you speak to them separately. You go to their offices, sit and sort it out as best you can, and then the three of you regroup later. It’s the healthiest option…… but it doesn’t always work. You can get very insecure being with these two literal otherworldly women, so sometimes you just shut down instead. Hide within your thoughts and occupy yourself until you can’t anymore. It happened once where you were so upset and anxious that you stayed at your office and fell asleep. Larissa and Alcina were shit scared. They went searching for you there of course, and Alcina carried you to the car before Larissa drove you three home. It was a stressful experience but after you all talked it out in the morning, you promised to try and be more open - but only if they did the same.

ʚ♡ɞ HOWEVER, if you two somehow manage to piss off or upset Larissa Weems, it is Hell for you both. All three of you have a distinct bond that can’t be broken even with the sharpest of scissors. You’re all linked in some individual way, and it’s lovely, but it also means that you’re very soft on each other. And you and Alcina have a silent understanding that although Larissa can take care of herself, she is also highly deserving of all of the protection and love you give her. Meaning you don’t want to add to her stress. But when you do—she is a slow simmering ball of emotions. She may be loud at Nevermore when faced with Wednesday, but when it comes to her lovers, she just gets a bit disappointed. And that is something you and Alcina can’t handle. So when that happens, and she isn’t the one to put it back together or demand you all sit down and talk, that means you and Alci have to do the heavy lifting. So you do. Alcina pours glasses of wine, you put on some music, and the three of you sit in silence either working on your laptops or indulging in some hobbies until Larissa finally speaks up. She just needs to be in your presence, to recognize your quiet understanding that something is wrong, before she really gets into it. And after that, you of course make it a point to never repeat whatever it is you did to make her upset. And Alcina pulls her into her arms while you hug her from the back because you know Larissa appreciates the attention, the affection, and the warmth. Then you kiss. A lot. A lot a lot. Smooch smooch smooch muah muah muah.

ʚ♡ɞ When you call Larissa, she answers with a “Hello, darling” because she always checks the caller ID before picking up.

ʚ♡ɞ When you call Alcina, she answers with an “Alcina speaking.” because she never checks the caller ID before picking up.

ʚ♡ɞ You and Larissa called her once in the past and she answered with her usual, hard-toned greeting. When you and Larissa mocked her with a high-pitched “aLciNa sPeaKing”, she hung up and blocked your number for five minutes. Sometimes, you’re still tempted to do it.

ʚ♡ɞ You steal their perfumes and shampoos. One time, Alcina used Larissa’s conditioner and ever since, Larissa asks her if she should order two bottles of her hair care instead of one. Alcina just rolls her eyes and reaches out to grab her. Larissa goes scurrying away, letting out a yelp and a laugh.

When they cuddle you and smell their products, they only grin and pull you closer. They want you to share their things. And also you’re just too lazy to keep your own stocked.

ʚ♡ɞ Your kisses with Larissa, just you two, are sweet and slow. They last a long time and usually lead to wandering hands and a lot of lipstick marks. Larissa happily leaves marks and hickies on you, but the three of you understand that she can’t have the same. If someone at her job saw that, they’d probably complain. But below the clothes, she’s painted to high heaven. Alcina does, after all, have a very voracious appetite. She spends a lot of time kissing and marking because it soothes the dragon in her. And Larissa is just the same when it comes to you specifically. The marks never take to Alcina’s skin, so Rissa usually uses her teeth and tries to leave marks anyway. But on you, she takes full advantage. Teases you with hickies and bites until you’re begging her to move. To treat you. It’s unfortunate then that she’s just so busy and has to return to work and absolutely must leave you high and dry until you’re nearly crawling all over her when she returns home later.

ʚ♡ɞ Alcina’s kisses, on the other hand, are always mean and rough. She pushes your faces together, grabs your hair, clutches your jaw in one large hand. She’s eager to overpower - it’s just in her nature. And she’s not scared to lean down and reach you, pull you up into her arms, and shove you against a wall. She uses her teeth to nip, and her tongue to fill your mouth and take you completely. Safe to say, she never leaves her kisses without you stumbling away–breathless and smiley. And there’s no escaping her until she’s done with you. Never ever. You will only push away from her when she wants you to. And you rarely want to of course, but when you’re busy and late to a meeting, you’re under a time crunch.

ʚ♡ɞ Larissa and Alcina kissing, though… whew. Dear god, whew. Dear LORD, whew. Larissa’s hands go sliding around Alcina’s waist and she has to lean up on the tips of her toes to meet Alcina halfway. And when they get there, they smile first before kissing roughly. Alcina knows not to put her hands in Larissa’s perfect hair, so she settles for gripping the back of her neck and pulling her close. Close close close until Larissa lets out a squeak and Alcina has to lean and pick her up bridal-style so they both don’t go tumbling to the ground. It doesn’t happen often, but when she does, Larissa can only giggle giddy and happy. She doesn’t often feel petite and girlish, but Alcina has a way of making her feel like a woman worth caring for. You do too, of course, but it’s different. Not any less or any better, just different. And they kiss until they both run out of breath and Larissa pushes Alcina away. The taller woman grumbles and steals another kiss before they finally go their separate ways.

ʚ♡ɞ There’s so much more to this little poly relationship. From kinks to flaws to business work and all that. Let me know if you wanna see more <3

୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧

I love them :3 Yes I doooooo - Rip x

୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧୨˚୧

Tags: @oddball21 @kaymariesworld @bloommushroom @readingtheentrails @thegoddamnfeels @theonefairygodmother @theflashesoflove @sweetderacine @opalthefrog @gwensfreak @shyladyfan @erablaise-blog @bellatrixsbrat @sunnyanon @emilynissangtr @lex13cm @sugipla @hasthebaconinhispants @deongocrazy @nocteangelus15 @eveymay @one-pining-queer @azu-zu @niceminipotato @hopelessly-sapphic @barbarasstar @enchantressb @syrenacrainn @im-a-carnivorous-plant @willowshadenox @aemilia19 @ladylarissaweems @scarlettssub @ladysdraga @willisnotmental @gela123 @h-doodles @zillahofviolets-bayolet @weemssapphic @the-bearr @amateurwritescm

#rippersz #fanfictionwriter #fanfic #fanfiction #larissa weems #larissa weems x reader #wlw fanfic #alcina dimitrescu #alcina dimitrescu x reader #alcina dimitrescu x larissa weems #alrissa #alcina dimitrescu x reader x larissa weems #re8 alcina dimitrescu #wednesday larissa weems #wlw fic #wlw fiction

334 notes · View notes

meanbossart · 2 months

Note

I gotta ask this has been rattling in my brain for a while.

How did your DU drow react when Astarion asked him for help with the ritual? What were his thoughts? Or was he simply like stop it, no, we aren't doing that. OH, How did you picture your Astarion and DU Drow react after he "died" and was brought back? I know that we don't really get that much dialogue or reaction from the companions when that happens (Praying they add something later down the line in another patch)

Again thank you for sharing your beautiful art and fanfic with all of us its so refreshing to see!!! :)

OHOHOHO I'm glad you asked. I feel like that first question is very revealing of DU drow's character and It was a fun moment to ponder upon, because I think much of his behavior might lead one to believe he would be willing to go along with whatever Astarion wants, instead of pushing back at all, at least on the surface.

There's two factors at play here - first, DU drow knows of his heritage at that point, and thanks to the blank-slate treatment of the tadpole he's gotten a brand new perspective on it by the time he learns of the truth. Prior to losing his memories, accepting the fate that Bhaal had bestowed onto him felt like a choice and the best thing that ever happened to him in life, a confirmation that he was special and destined for greatness instead of just damned to the lowly existence he had endured so far. After his brain is scrambled however, DU drow got a taste of what true freedom feels like while unburdened by his upbringing; he's strong, he's powerful, he's self-sufficient, he enjoys the fruits of his labor without appreciating what got him here - he does not feel like he needs Bhaal, and the fact he ever did is laughable at best and violating at worse. This leads him to abhor the idea of depending on higher power to succeed instead of just raising oneself up by their own merits, or abiding by any mentality where you take orders from a source.

So when Astarion speaks of ascension, and especially after he learns of the source of that power (Infernal magic) he's disillusioned by it. While his memories are still hazy, the situation still feels awfully familiar to him. He doesn't think Astarion needs that higher power because he doesn't, either, and to take it would surrendering to fear and giving away even more of his autonomy than he already has.

And if that sounds a little self centered and like he's missing some of the point, it's because he is. While DU drow has fallen in love with Astarion by that stage in the story and wants what's best for him (he actually entertains the idea of him ascending up to a point - he wants him to be happy) he still has a difficult time empathizing with others. Ascending feels like a bad choice, but he can only justify that feeling from his own, narrow perspective.

(I mused on about characterization for too long again. So more under the cut - the sky is blue the sun is hot etc.)

Then there's the uglier, far more vulnerable and knee-jerk reaction to it. Now that Bhaal is no longer his purpose in life or the gift he once felt it to be, Astarion has taken it's place. Bhaal needed DU drow, in his eyes, much like Astarion does now. And as much as the vampire might have told him that his feelings on the matter changed (and that he was no longer manipulating DU drow for his own ends alone) he can't fathom a reason to be kept around unless he continues to be needed. He has slotted himself as Astarion's protector and devotee, and a vampire lord does not sound like they need much of either.

As much as he would never admit to it, DU drow does not know a life where he doesn't pledge himself, body and soul, to another purpose. He seems like he's happy to barrel through life directionless, but he needs something that anchors him or he has an inexplicable feeling that something terrible will happen. And honestly, maybe he's right - for a man who loves killing, he has a much easier time applying some strategy to that desire as long as he's doing it to some an specific end. Without Astarion, he probably feels like his choices are to either submit to his hedonism entirely or just lie down and die.

I don't need to spell out that this is pure codependency at it's finest.

So, when Astarion asks for help to complete the ritual he is conflicted. He wants to do whatever Astarion wants, but his brain is setting off alarm bells that, if he acquiesces, this will be the end for them and for him. And whatever comes after is a terrifying void of nothing. While he loves Astarion and ultimately does the right choice in pleading with him to give up on this power, his motivations are far from selfless or pure, as much as DU drow may not yet realize it.

This is why, after everything takes place, and specially once he severs his connection to Bhaal and his mind clears a little further, DU drow would go on to grapple with a lot of guilt for taking this opportunity away from Astarion, as I have touched on in the fic and will continue to do so. He's happy to feel like he has a reason to be kept around, but the inevitable hurdles that Astarion must continue to face as a spawn are obviously painful to witness. This is why he dives full force into trying to "fix" his vampirism instead, following that.

NOW, FOR THE NEXT AND HOPEFULLY FAR BRIEFER ANSWER TO YOUR OTHER QUESTION (spoiler alert, it's not brief at all, god damn it):

Yeah everyone just standing around in that scene feels little weird LOL not that it took away too much from how dope a cutscene it was (I probably watched it with the attentiveness of a sport's fan witnessing a footbal game turning in the last 10 minutes of a match) but If I were to embellish it instead of just going with something like "everyone is shell-shocked and paralyzed", I would say Shadowheart is the first to rush over to see if there's anything at all she can do to help, and probably the first (and only, in that moment) to break down crying. I think she very quickly composes herself after he's brought back, tells him he gave her the scare of a fucking lifetime and that he's the luckiest idiot in all of the realms - but that she's glad he's back. No hugs for him though LOL

Astarion is pretty much the opposite, that he would stand there in shock feels kind of apt to me. Like, holy shit, what just happened? Did one of the only good things in my life really just get taken away in the blink of an eye? Am I just cursed to have everything snatched away from my hand as soon as I'm growing comfortable with it? Yes, of course I am. What else did I expect. When DU drow pops back up he's probably like "Oh yeah I knew it'd be fine" (plus the little Twee comment, that was very funny to me.) and DU drow is similarly going "Oh definitely, it was my plan all along to be killed and then resurrected by an ominous house-keeper skeleton this whole time. Anyway, smooch for a dead man?"

This... Clearly very traumatic little incident is probably addressed by them only later. He gets a kiss and a hug at camp and a very stern "if you do that shit again I'm raising you back up just to kill you myself" from Astarion and Shadowheart's just down to drink in celebration and drown her trauma away for now lmao.

OH YEAH AND GALE WAS ALSO THERE. There was a whole Gale debacle in my playthrough but, the TL;DR, is that especially towards the end of the game he was Not in the best of terms with DU drow. Still, I obviously think he's an empathetic person and had his own "oh shit" moment. I'd say he takes this opportunity to try extending a very sincere hand out to him later that day, both for his courage in defying a god and dumb-luck - which DU drow completely passes on like an asshole and just gives him a cold-shoulder about, leaving feeling even more dejected than he already was and probably further cementing his choice to pursue the crown of Karsus later, despite DU drow's disapproval. Good job buddy!

Thank you so much for the ask and for your lovely compliments!!! Sorry for writing you a dang ESSAY 😬

#ask #du drow #DU drow lore #about time I start using a tag like that #bg3 spoilers

119 notes · View notes

deliciousangelfestival · 8 months

Text

Every Time You Lie- Ch 1 || Lloyd Hansen

Character: dark!Lloyd Hansen x female!reader, dark!Husband Lloyd Hansen x Wife!reader.

Synopsis: Any woman is jealous of you, especially with the status of being the wife of Lloyd Hansen—the CEO of the biggest pharmacy company in the country. From the outside, everyone sees you as a perfect family, a successful husband, two kids, and living in a big house.

But the truth is different. You are trapped in this marriage because of the mistake you made. You are willing to give everything you have to get your freedom. Free from him. Free from your vicious mother-in-law. Free from your snobby son.

This story has manipulation, tragedy, and drama.

Both of them shouldn’t be together.

Warning: Betrayal, suicidal thought, non-con, smut, harsh language, tragedy. Minors do not read. 18+

Author Note: I do not consent to copying or translating my work.

Any reblog, comment, and feedback are appreciated. I want to know what you guys think about this one.

Series Masterlist || Chapter 1, Chaper 2 , Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 , -

Main Masterlist || Ko-fi

Any woman would kill to take your place—good looks, fame, connection, money, perfect kids, and perfect husband, Lloyd Hansen.

But outsiders only see the surface. They don't know what happened behind the door.

Heartbreak, betrayal, distrust, lie.

If any woman could withstand all these four, you are willing to give her the position of Mrs.Hansen to someone else.

You became the head of multiple charities to help people. But you can't save herself.

All the money you have doesn't give you happiness. It's the opposite. As long as you still breathe, seeing Crystal Pharmacy building standing tall and proud reminds you that it's your fault why it turned out like this.

Crystal Pharmacy used to be known as Laurent Pharmacy that belonged to your father.

Your gentle father is a scientist who is friendly, kind, and gentle towards his kids even though they keep making mistakes. You are proud to have a patience father like him.

But because your sin of trusting the wrong person made you lose everything: your father, brother, sister, and company.

Your sin is loving Lloyd Hansen. You never thought sales like him could manipulate you and everyone.

It turns out it was all his plan from the beginning to get close to you so he could access your father's company.

Now everyone seems to have forgotten the name of Laurent Pharmacy, and the legacy from your father is also gone.

You are trapped in this sinful mistake, perhaps have trapped marriage and your karma.

You married the man who destroyed everything your father had built. Your brother despised you and made him move away from the city, and your sister doesn't want to see you.

All that has left is only Lloyd and his mother, your mother-in-law, Krystal Hansen.

Oh, she hates you; she always has this passive-aggressive talk towards you.

Every day she reminds you, "You are lucky to marry my son when there are a lot of women that are better than you."

You hold your anger each time she looks down on you. You can't run away or even get a divorce because you can't do anything. Because Lloyd holds everything you got.

So, the only thing you could do is become a dutiful wife, always do and listen to whatever he says, and become a good mother.

You thought becoming a mother of two kids could make your mother-in-law start to warm up to you. But no. Having two grandchildren is still not enough for her.

First, your first daughter, Emily Hansen. She's beautiful, smart, and courageous. You're grateful that she doesn't act like her father. She even defended you when Krystal tried to mock you, and Lloyd couldn't get mad towards his daughter.

But Krystal doesn't like Emily because she's a girl and wants a male heir to continue the company.

Then your second child, a son. His name is Lionel Hansen. Everyone was overjoyed when he was born. But at that time, you were stressed and always went to a therapist every week.

Krystal accused you of having an affair with your male therapist.

That's the first time you snapped at her; how dare she be accused of something untrue while his son tortured you every night.

What made you heartbroken is that your husband doesn't talk back to his mother and lets her do the DNA test.

Well, the DNA proves that you were right. Lionel is Lloyd's son. In a second, Krystal changed, and she wanted to take care of Lionel.

You were devastated, screamed. She can't take Lionel away from her. It's enough to have one Lloyd in this world.

You can't help crying about Lionel, but you almost forgot about Emily. She needs attention too. She was 13 years old when Lionel was born.

No one is taking care of Emily. Seeing you being fragile, her father busy at work, and her grandmother only pouring her affection towards her brother, she felt neglected.

Then she met your sister, her only aunt, Mia. They became close, and then Emily discovered the truth about her father's company and how her father made your family crumble.

It felt like a jab in your heart when Emily told you she would move out, and she was ashamed to have a father like Lloyd. After her 17th birthday, she left the house and left you alone.

The only pillar that made you able to stand is gone.

Krystal gave Lionel back to you because she's exhausted caring for him.

He's already seven years old. But you don't feel connected to your son. Perhaps you're afraid because his attitude is similar to his father's.

The only thing you can do is stand still, be pretty in a beautiful dress and jewellery, and be proud to be Mrs Hansen.

But…

Everything changed at your 20th wedding anniversary.

"Ah…hng…!!"

"Urgh…!"

A loud moan echoed through the room. A man and a woman were intertwined on the bed. The man's back moved back and forth. Lloyd's cock dug deep into you.

"Ha…Ahh…"

Lloyd feels pleasure and fullness every morning, making love with you.

He lifted your legs and draped them over his shoulder. He grabbed your thighs with both hands and moved his back vigorously, speeding his movement.

"Ah…!"

When he heard you moan, he knew you already hit a climax. Lloyd leaned his body towards you and moved his waist to reach his climax. He spilled his seeds inside your body.

"Ha…That was a good way to celebrate our day. Right, Y/N?"

Lloyd took his cock from your body and lay down next to you. He put your head to rest on his chest. He stroked his hair and kissed your forehead.

Those who do not know will see you and Lloyd as a normal couple.

Even though you just had an orgasm, you immediately feel dead again.

"Yes." You nodded her head.

Lloyd hummed and stroked your back. "I have booked a boutique store for your dress."

"Thank you."

What Lloyd is talking about is your dress for their 20th wedding anniversary. If anyone asks about that party, you will say it's unnecessary. But Lloyd wants to hold the event and invite all the business partners, and Krystal wants to show off her new diamonds.

Lloyd smacked your ass. "Let's get up and start our morning."

You hummed and followed him to the bathroom and took a shower together. It's the same activity. After you put on your outfit, you will go to his changing room and put on his tie.

He will wear the suits that you have prepared the night before. When you came in, Lloyd was already wearing his suit and tie.

But there's something different. That's not the tie she prepared beforehand. In fact, she has never seen it before.

You grab the jacket suit from the hanger and go to Lloyd's back. "New tie?"

"Hmm, I bought it when I went to Paris." He stretched his arms to the back to wear the suit jacket. Then he straightened his outfit. After that, he sprays perfume on his neck.

'That's a new perfume too.' You've never seen that perfume before.

Then your woman instinct sent something to your brain. But you shook it because it's too early to speculate.

Three of you, including Lionel, have breakfast in the dining room. He's 12 years old and taller than you because he likes to play basketball and volleyball.

"Lionel, put down your phone." You softly order your son so he can eat his food.

"Hmm…" Lionel hummed, but he didn't stop playing the mobile game.

Reading the newspaper, Lloyd put down the paper and said, "Listen to your mom."

Lionel rolled his eyes. "Alright. Geez." He turns off his phone and starts eating.

Only the sound of food utensils in the dining room until Lionels start the conversation, "Mom, I want to buy new shoes."

"Didn't you just buy one like yesterday?"

"This one is different, it's a limited edition. And these shoes are only available at your friend's store. All my friends already own it and I don't want to get left behind. Pleaseeee, mom…"

"That means you have to be on the waiting list. It will be difficult, Lionel."

"Mom!! I want it!! If grandma is here she will get it for me." Lionel crossed his arms and huffed.

Under the table, you fisted your hand. Lionel is your son, but you can't scold him because he will tell everything to Krystal, and you will get scolded.

"Just give him what he wants. Talk to Amelia, you are her top client." Lloyd suddenly joins in.

You couldn't say no when your husband has made his decision. "Okay."

You were at the private boutique watching the model walking on the catwalk with the choice of dress that you probably would choose for your party.

You glanced at your secretary. "I will pick the blue dress and the white shoes from the second model."

"Yes ma'am."

After the short fashion show, every model went backstage. You also grab your bag and leave the room. But one model still stays, "Mrs. Hansen?"

She's the one wearing the blue dress you picked. When she got closer, in an instant, you knew she was gorgeous, and her beauty was captivating. The rosy cheeks on her skin, slender body, and mystery air around her.

Compared to you, who is aging gracefully, I can't help being jealous towards this young model.

"Yes?"

She smiled shyly and cleared her throat. "Hi, uhm, my name is Zoey. I always wanted to meet you. It's because of your charity I could go to college."

You smiled at her. "I'm honored to hear that. So you became a model?"

Zoey nodded her head. "No, I'm helping my friend since she couldn't come. I work as a secretary."

"Congrats."

"All thanks to you. Can I give you a hug? You're my inspiration."

"Uhm, sure." You weren't sure, but Zoey had already made her move and hugged you. After that, she became giddy and left you.

When you don't see her, you tell the shop assistant, "I don't want the blue dress anymore, change it to black."

"Yes."

You quickly left the store and got into the car. Your heart is beating fast. Because when Zoey gets closer, you smell her. In a second, you knew, that's the same perfume Lloyd wears.

One thing about Lloyd is he always wears something customized that is only available to him, like perfume. All his perfumes were custom-made only for him. And he said he got it from Paris. Paris is the city where perfumers gather.

And Zoey said she's a secretary.

Fuck. Both of them fucked.

Lloyd is cheating on you. You weren't that shocked because deep down, you knew this would have happened. Even though Lloyd is already 43 years old, he still has a muscular body, like 30 years old. He is rich and drives nicely.

You sighed heavily and rubbed your head. The driver notices you from the rear mirror. "Mrs. Hansen, are you alright? Do I need to call a doctor?"

You raised your hands. "You don't have to. Headed to Amelia's store, please."

"Yes, Mrs.Hansen."

You sit on the gold chair near the window at the boutique on the second floor.

"Y/N. Are you're alright?"

You look at Amelia, who is sitting in front of you. She brings you tea and cakes. But you didn't touch anything.

Amelia is the only friend you got. Lloyd didn't stop you from meeting her because she’s rich. Her boutique store only sells limited editions, and many famous people became her clients.

Your finger touches the teacup. You looked at your reflection in the water and sighed. "Lloyd is cheating on me."

Amelia slammed the table "That bastard!!!"

"Shh, don't be so loud."

"Fuck that; there's only us on this floor." Amelia leaned closer. "How did you know?"

"I met his mistress 1 hour ago."

Amelia clicked her tongue and threw him back to her chair. She was silent for a moment and then said, "Divorce him."

You scoffed, "Like I haven't thought about it a million times."

"Then do it; what's holding you back?" Amelia knew you didn't have a happy life. You're miserable. Under the expensive makeup and the fancy dress, she could see your soul crying.

'What's holding you back?' That's the right question.

Even though you have nothing, you still have your pride. You don't want to divorce Lloyd until he apologizes and realizes what he has done.

But now, you don't even know anymore.

"I don't know Amel. My kids?"

"Tsk, tsk, that's bullshit. Your oldest have moved out and already became a resident while your son is ungrateful child. If I have a gentle mother like you I won't touch any kind of drugs."

When she mentioned Lionel, you remembered, "Amel, can I ask you a favor? It's for my son. I knew there was a waiting list. I will pay double the price."

Amelia rolled her eyes. "Huh, really, Y/N. You're too kind. It's alright; I will call the designer to make another one."

You smiled at her; at least someone knew your effort. Amelia mother is a socialite whose an alcoholic and doesn't know parenting.

Your friend became a drug addict, but she turned sober. Amelia sip the tea. "You remember Katherine from flower rearrange class?"

"Yeah, what about her?" You knew Katherine; she's a quiet and skinny woman. Her husband is an oil tycoon.

"She got divorced. Turned out her husband is abusive, and a cheater. Even though she doesn't get any money, she looks happy. I met her when I went to Florida."

Amelia grabs her phone to open her social media. "See, doesn't she look vibrant and happier?" You look at Katherine's photos; she smiles a lot and seems to enjoy being alone.

Perhaps. Someday. You could be like her.

On the way back home, your phone suddenly rang. When you saw the contact, a smile appear on your lips. It's from Emily.

The only thing that could make you want to stay alive is because of her. You didn't want to be biased towards your children. But you've been through; Emily is the only child that understands you.

She never stepped foot into the house after she entered university. Both of you only met outside. But it's getting difficult to meet since she got accepted working at the hospital.

"My dear, how are you?"

"Mom…" Her voice sounds trembled.

"Emily, what's wrong?"

"Mom, aunt is Mia is sick. Could you come to hospital? Please."

"What?!!"

The moment your car stopped at the hospital, you ran from the car to the lobby. There you saw Emily already waiting for you. She's wearing her blue uniform. She looks exhausted. She lightened up when she saw you, "Mom."

You immediately hug her. "Emily, what's going on?"

Emily dragged your hand. "I will explain it later. Follow me."

She brings you into the ICU. Inside, you see your sister, Mia, lying on the patient's bed. The big sister you used to know was healthy, but now she looks skinny.

You gasped, and your vision became blurry. "Mia, what happened?"

Mia, whose eyes were closed, slowly opened when she heard your voice. Her younger sister. "Y/N…?" She raised her hand to try to touch you.

You immediately hold her hand and bring it closer to your cheek. "Sister, why you didn't tell me? Does brother Theo know?"

Mia didn't speak at all; she only nodded.

Emily put her hand on your shoulder. "Aunty Mia got diagnosed with breast cancer. And… when she found out it's already on stage four."

"Oh no…"

Then you feel someone stroke your head, the movement is slow, but you know it's from your sister. You look straight at her and saw her smiling at you.

"Y/N… I… miss… you…"

At that moment, all the resentment and anger is gone. Both of you went back to the siblings you used to know.

"I miss you too Mia."

You cried silently, looking at your sister condition; if both of you never fight, you could stay with her. If you had never met Lloyd, none of this could've happened.

"Here you are wifey. Damn Mia, you lost a lot of weight."

Your breath hitched when you heard that voice. It's not even an hour yet, and he already found you.

One of the reasons you can't get a divorce from Lloyd is his possessiveness. And you can't hide from his sight.

"Fuck… you… Lloyd." Mia cursed at him even though it was difficult for her.

Lloyd didn't say anything. He only looked down at her. Then he wrapped his arm around you. "Let's go home. There are a lot of germs here. I don't want you to get sick." Your body couldn't fight from his grasp.

Emily blocked both of you with her body. "Don't get mad at mom. I told her to come here."

Lloyd nodded his head. He patted her shoulder. "Come home once for a while. And don't forget to attend the party. I invited many actor and singers."

******

On the way back home, both of you were silent. You no longer care if he's mad since you didn't tell him where you're going.

"I will stay with my sister."

Lloyd was looking at his phone; he scoffed, "Yeah, no."

This man is already over 40 years old but still childish. Didn't he see that your sister is dying?

"This time I won't listen to you."

Lloyd sighed; he put down his phone and stared straight at you. His hand touches your cheeks and brings your face closer to him. "Wife, if you make me angry, you will attend her funeral tomorrow."

"Lloyd, ehmm…" Before you talk back, he kissed you roughly and bit your lips.

"Aww." You pushed him away. "You're heartless. She's my sister!!!"

"Yeah, and she's doesn't even worth of your time. I need you to supervisor for the party. It's important more worth it then your sister."

You gasped, "How dare you."

Lloyd rested his hand on your thighs. "My wife, didn't you forget your promise to never meet your siblings?"

You hold your anger, it's impossible to talk through him. As you're getting older, you're supposed to get wiser. But Lloyd?

He is still a man-child.

"Don't be mad. I will send the best doctor and medicine for her. How about that?"

"Thank you."

"Ah, I'm going to sleep at the office. I have to make sure the product is ready."

Is this how he will start lying to see his mistress? Sure, as long as he doesn't bother her. "Okay. Thank you for telling me."

On the day of the party, Lloyd kept his promise. He really came home early in the morning. You didn't ask, and he didn't tell you about his day, so it's a win-win.

Three of you wear a formal dress. Lloyd and Lionel wear the same design of the black suit, and you wear the black dress you bought.

On the car, Lionel, who sit on the back, still playing games, ask, "Is Emily going to be there?"

"She will be late, since she's watching your aunt."

"Huh? Whose aunt?"

"Don't you remember? I told you before about aunt Mia. My older sister?"

"Let's forget about her." Lloyd suddenly joined the conversation.

When the three of you arrived at the party, the red carpet and paparazzi were already waiting for your appearance.

"That dress made you look slim Y/N."

That arrogant voice. You rolled your eyes before turning to see your mother-in-law Krystal Hansen.

You turned around and were glad you didn't hold any champagne glass. Because if you did, you would drop the glass.

The reason is that the woman standing beside Krystal is Zoey. She is wearing the blue dress you picked before.

"Aw,Mrs. Hansen. You look beautiful."

"Hmm thank you. Hello mother." You greet both of them, when you trying to keep your composure.

Krystal hummed. "This girl is my secretary. Her name is Zoey. She's one of the successful people from our charity."

"Yes, madam Krystal. And I'm always grateful for that."

Krystal felt more proud. She always likes it when someone compliments her. Zoey is a nice girl who knows her place. How she wishes her daughter-in-law would be her instead of you.

"Excuse me, I need to greet another guest."

Krystal clicked her tongue, seeing you walking away from her "Tsk, you see Zoey? She's really rude towards me."

"But it's true ma'am. There's many of guest here."

"You're right. I should meet my friend."

*********

You lied; you didn't meet anyone. You went to the balcony to get some fresh air. You were suffocated. Now everything has become clear.

Zoey isn't Lloyd's new secretary. Both of them met through Krystal. You never go with Lloyd every time he visits his mother. It's only him and Lionel.

Is this Krystal way to make you separated from Lloyd?

"Mrs. Hansen, you need to hear this." Kelly, your secretary, appeared out of nowhere and holding your phone.

You saw the caller's name. It's from Emily. You answered the phone and heard Emily sobbing, "Mom, she's gone."

When you heard that, you dropped your phone and lost your balance.

"Ma'am?" Kelly, hold your body before you fall.

"I need to leave."

"Mrs. Hansen you can't leave yet because your husband still hasn't given the permission."

"Kelly, I just lost my sister."

"I'm sorry, ma'am." Kelly and the others knew how scary Lloyd was. They knew how possessive he was with you.

The only way is to talk to Lloyd so he would let you go. You look around, seeing everyone look like they have no problem.

Your mother-in-law is busy talking; your son is with his friends, your husband?

Where the heck is Lloyd?

You left the ballroom to look for him. He must still be on the same floor. Then you saw a man and woman hugging. You hide behind the wall.

You knew that broad shoulder even though it was dark. That body belongs to her husband, and the woman who wore the blue dress are Lloyd and Zoey.

Suddenly you felt a pain in your chest. It's been happening a couple of times lately. Being near them gave you more pain.

Yeah, you should walk away. Give them some space. Besides, you need to be alone.

Lloyd was looking for you. He asked his bodyguard where you were and found you sitting on the floor in the quiet hallway. He saw you drinking wine all by yourself. It seems like you have finished one bottle.

"Y/N?"

Your head feels heavy; your makeup is ruined because of the tears. "Oh, here he comes, the maestro of my misery."

"You're drunk." Lloyd took off his coat and wrapped it around your shoulder. He helped the man to make you stand up. "What happened?"

"Mia is gone."

So that's why you cry, "Well, anyone will die. But she's quicker."

"Hehehehe."

First, you cried, and you giggled? "What's so funny?"

"My younger self was a fool to fall in love you. My biggest mistake is to trust you."

Lloyd felt his heart being stabbed. You never said these mean words towards him. "Alright, you're completely drunk. You don't know what you're talking about."

You pushed yourself away from him. "No. Let go of me."

"Y/N."

You were dizzy because of the alcohol; perhaps because you're drunk, you dare to say, "You slept with her."

"Who?"

"Zoey."

"I didn't."

He knew you were depressed because you lost your sister, but what's with this accused? And how did you know that she was?

Without giving Lloyd a chance to speak, Y/N continued, "Don't lie; I could smell your perfume from her."

He didn't say anything.

Your fingers stabbed his chest. "I could have spent the days with my sister instead dealing with this party. While you fucked your mistress."

Lloyd grabs your hand "Y/N. There's nothing between me and her."

You clenched your trembling hand tightly. There was a tension that could not be hidden in your speech "I shouldn't have married you."

"..."

You murmured "My father told me to let go of everything. He never blamed me. But I'm so stupid to believe you. And now I lost the chance to say goodbye to my sister."

Lloyd never sees you like this. "We should talk about this at home." He tried to grab you but he failed.

You squeezed your arms "As I grew older, I learned the hard way to let go. But you…"

You pointed at him. "You are not capable of love. You're selfish."

“If I stop seeing that woman and mother starting from today, can we make up?” Lloyd asked.

"It's not enough." You shook your head and then said the words Lloyd never expected.

"I want a divorce."

He frowned and searched for his cigarettes in his pants pocket. He pulled out a cigarette and held it between his fingers before saying curtly, “So, you want to give her and me your blessing?”

That's even better. He should've married her. You nodded "If I could turn back time or there's another life, I wish I never met you."

Lloyd raised his voice. "I married you because I loved you!"

Your raised your voice and said "Do you know I prayed to God every day to take my life away? I want to be free from you. That's how much you've hurted me."

He launched towards you and clenched your wrist, "Even if you hate me or die before me. We will never, ever get divorced."

Your hands hurt because of how tightly Lloyd held them, but it was nothing compared to the pain you were feeling right now.

“What’s the meaning of dragging on?” You didn’t struggle from his grasp. "Please just once. Stop lying. The first time you lied to me. I lost everything."

“Look, the biggest problem with us is that I love you but I don’t know how much you love me!” Lloyd held your hand up to kiss it. “We communicate too little. You have an unbending and headstrong character, while I’m a conceited and proud man!”

He lowered his gaze, and after calming down his emotions, he held you by the back of your head and leaned his forehead against you.

“It’s the stupidest thing I did in this lifetime, the darnedest mistake I’ve made! I hope… Y/N, you can give me a chance, a chance to redeem myself, okay?”

Lloyd hated himself a lot, especially at the thought of him cheating on you.

You knew the end of his voice was trembling, but you pretended not to know and shook your head. You pretend not to hear anything and said “It’s better that we sign the divorce agreement and lead our own lives.”

You gave a cruel smile when you saw regret in his eyes.

You are still staring at each other; none of you speak.

"Mom, Dad?"

You widen your eyes when you hear that voice; even Lloyd lets go of your hand.

"Lionel." You tried your best to act calm.

"Mom, I've been looking all over the place for you." He whispered at you because Lionel realized the atmosphere is not right between you and Lloyd.

"What is it?"

"I got the email that my shoes are here. Can we get to Amelia's boutique?"

"Like, right now?"

"Yes pleaseee…. All my friends at school will wear it tomorrow."

"Son, it's already 9 p.m." Amelia's store closed at 7 p.m.

"Moommm…." Lionel knew it was already late, but he knew you would eventually do what he asked. You always do.

You can't stand his nagging, just like his father. He won't stop until he gets what he wants.

You called Amelia's number, asking if her store was still open. She cursed at you, saying, of course, the boutique was already closed at this hour, but she told the security to give the shoebox to you if you arrived.

"Alright let's go." You took off Lloyd suit jacket and handed it back to him.

"Is it okay to leave dad alone?"

"He has a lot of friends. He's fine." You dragged Lionel's body to leave the place, leaving Lloyd alone.

The rain is pouring hard, thunder. Luckily the road was empty. You and Lionel are inside the car.

"Emily didn't come." Lionel said while he was still looking at his phone.

"She's at the hospital because your aunt Mia died." Your mind hasn't stopped thinking about your sister. Emily hasn't called you yet.

"Oh right, I heard she's sick."

"You knew?"

"Dad, and grandma talk about her."

'What? So that means Lloyd, Krystal, and Lionel knew about Mia, and they didn't say anything to you.

Lionel always plays at Krystal's house, which means, "Do you know Zoey?"

"Grandma secretary? Yeah, we talked sometimes when I was there."

"Uurgh." You feel sick, imagining they act like a family without you.

There is no greater blessing than a family hand that lifts you from a fall, but there is no lower curse than a family hand that strikes you when you’re down.

Your husband and son didn't show any condolence about your sister. It's not like you lost a ring. You lost someone that you grew up with and shared the same blood.

"Mom, are you okay?"

"I'm not."

You must get out; if you are still stuck in the car, you will lose your mind. "Bring me the umbrella."

Jimmy, the driver, wonders why you want the umbrella, "Mrs. Hansen. I will get the package."

Gosh, you hated that name.

"It's okay, besides the security knew my face."

"Be careful." Jimmy is worried because the rain is getting heavy.

But this extreme weather can't stop you. With that long dress and umbrella in your hand, you walk under pouring rain.

Everyone was walking quickly to stay away from the rain. But you were slower than them, with everything in your mind. You just want to keep walking. But the trip is short.

You have arrived at the store. The light was still on, and someone was waiting near the door. "Hello, Miss L/N." Only Amelia's boutique called you with your last name.

"Boss has told me. Here's the package." You thanked him, then you heard the loudest thunder.

"Where’s your car ma'am?"

"It's near. Thank you Jack." You said goodbye and left him.

While you're walking, tears keep falling from your eyes. You could see your tears drop on the floor if it wasn't raining. Leaving the traces of you crying. You crouched down and buried your head between your knees.

You cry your hearts out before you get into the car.

The rain was pouring too hard. Even the car headlights couldn't make the stress clear.

Every car drives slowly, but there will always be one car that wants to go against the rule.

"Honkkkkkkk!" Someone drives way over the speed limit.

The moment you stand up and walk across the streets, the drunk driver can't control the steering wheel, and the car goes out of control.

The last thing you see is a blinding light, then something heavy hits you, making you fall and hit the ground.

"KYAAH!!! SOMEONE GOT HIT BY A CAR!"

You hear someone screaming. Is it towards you?

Perhaps. Because you couldn't move your head.

You heard that you will have a flashback of your life before you die. They were right.

You don't want to remember any memory of Lloyd. Instead, you want to remember the moment with you celebrating your father's birthday and your sister and brother.

If you could rewind time, you want to return to that day.

'Biip' 'Biip'

"Uurgh"

'Mia, turn off your damn alarm.' You want to shout, but none of the words come from your mouth. Why does your body feel heavy? You try to move your body, but you can't.

"Call the doctor, I saw her finger move." Then a voice suddenly appeared. Why did she hear the word of the doctor?

"Mom?" You hear a female voice. But why does she keep calling Mom near your ears?

"Mom, I'm sorry." Then you hear a boy crying and sobbing.

'What the heck is going on? Did your brother prank you? Why did someone keep calling you a mom?"

And why is it so difficult to open your eyes?

You slowly tried to open your eyelids. When you did it. The light was too bright. You were sure you turned off the light before you went to bed.

"Omg, she opened her eyes!!!"

"I will call Dad."

'Father?' Oh right, today is your father's birthday.

You try to turn your head, but it hurts.

"Mother, don't move too much. Are you thirsty? Do you want to drink?"

Yes, even though you don't understand why she called you mother, your eyes blinked to say yes.

She puts a straw in the glass of water and brings it closer to your lips.

"Slowly Mom, or you will get choked." She gently rubbed your back.

After you tasted the water, you felt refreshed. It felt like you never drank water. Your throat doesn't feel hurt anymore.

You look around, then realize you're in the hospital.

"I will raise the bed." This girl is kind; when you look at her closely, her face looks like someone's.

Then the boy who cried before came back dragging a man.

"Look, Dad, moms awake."

You looked at the man wearing a black turtle neck shirt and beige colour. His face looks like that crying boy.

You've never seen him before, but he kept looking at you.

He walked closely and touched your face. His fingers gently caressed your face.

"I'm so glad you woke up."

'Did I sleep so long that it made everyone cry?'

This man's face got closer to your face, but you moved away. You met him for the first time, and you felt scared of him.

"Y/N?"

And he knows your name.

But you don't know who he is and the other two youngsters. You can't help but ask, "Who… are… you?"

Any reblog, comment, and feedback are appreciated. I want to know what you guys think about this one.

Series Masterlist || Chapter 1, Chaper 2 , Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 , -

If you enjoy the story, please send me a coffee Ko-fi . Thank you 💖💖💖

#dark!lloyd hansen x reader #dark!lloyd hansen #lloyd hansen x you #lloyd hansen x y/n #lloyd hansen x reader #lloyd hansen #lloyd hansen x fem!reader #husband!lloyd hansen #the grey man au #the grey man #chris evans characters

269 notes · View notes

velidewrites · 4 months

Text

Don’t Look Back

Five hundred years ago, the humans fought hard for their freedom in the Great War and won. Now, their former masters seek retribution in a rebellion that grows stronger year by year. When Elain Archeron finds out marrying Greysen Nolan might be the only solution to keep her family safe from the ancient, cruel Fae, she doesn't hesitate to fulfil her duty. What Elain doesn't know, though, is that the man with the fiery hair and russet eyes is not her fiancé, but his killer—and when she finally finds out, well…it will be far too late to turn back.

Rating: Explicit

Notes: Happy Holidays @rainbowdolphinrealm! I absolutely loved being your Secret Santa for the @acotargiftexchange and getting to know you over the past few weeks! My little elf has told me there may be some Azris angst in the background, and a surprise Azris treat is also sleighing your way soon 👀

Read on AO3 or continue for Chapter 1 below!

*Please note that for reasons beyond my control (insanity) I have given this fic way too much lore. Here is a map I've drawn!

Chapter 1: The Visitor

Elain had never thought she would be dreading the spring. It was the season her gardens bloomed, the season that melted the lakes around the manor to reflect the fluffy clouds dotting the sky above. The flowers she’d planted over the harvest would sprout to life, their sleepy buds erupting into colours Elain would dream of all winter. Two years ago, her father had gifted her the most extraordinary tulips for her birthday, the intricate paintings over the pack of seeds promising shades of violet she’d never seen in New Prythian. He’d brought them right from the fields of the Montesere province far on the Continent with a vow to bring her along on his travels next year—so that she could see their beauty for herself.

Her mother died the spring after.

Father had gone anyway, but Elain—Elain stayed. She had lost all desire to travel, anyway, especially when the circumstances of the death had hardly been expected. The Continent had assured them the Fae rebellion was not a threat to be taken seriously, and that the Governor had everything under control. Out of the eight human clans looking after their world, Lord Nolan had perhaps been the only one Elain would put her trust in. If he claimed the scattered remains of the faeries of old were entirely harmless, then it must have been the truth.

Until a small group of them had broken into the Merchant’s manor and killed his wife in her sleep, with magic so corrupted and vile that not even a speck of blood had left a stain on her sheets. One moment, she was deep in a peaceful slumber, and the next, she was simply…gone.

Everything had happened very quickly after that. Orders had come in from wherever Father had sailed off to, and the manor had been fortified with ash-dipped iron from Vallahan—made by the Forge himself—and spells Father had acquired from his trades with the North. All entirely legal and ratified by the Governor—according to Father, at least. Elain knew better than to ever question the Merchant.

The manor, though fortified to the teeth, had not been enough to keep Elain or either of her sisters safe. The very last order came in with the Merchant himself, a rare smile on their father’s deep-creased face as he announced it to his daughters. Elain had never seen Nesta so horrified as her older sister had been in that moment—pale as the moon, whiter than the sheets their mother had died in. For Nesta Archeron, the eldest daughter of the feared Merchant of New Prythian, was to marry.

Somewhere along his usual search for old faerie artifacts, abandoned over the centuries after the Great War, Father had found his way into an alliance that would secure his territory’s position on the island. With Nesta’s marriage, there would be no Fae slipping past his borders, no other clan opposing him—no human ruler to ever deny him whatever faerie secrets they’d been holding in their keep. It was an alliance that rattled the seas all the way to the Governor’s seat in Rask—perhaps even crooked the crown on his greying head an inch.

Nesta, after all, had been promised to none other than Tomas Mandray. To the son of the Harvester.

Every human territory had a role to play in the new world order—after the Great War, order seemed to be exactly what the humans needed. Their freedom, won by bloodshed and sacrifice, broke them free as slaves of the Fae. Elain still dreamed of the horrid images her governess’s books taught her—of humans in chains, gleaming with white-hot magic, burning spells into their skin that made any chance of escape nearly impossible. Had it not been for the courage of the six ruling queens, all hope would have been lost. Five hundred years later, it would have been Elain in those chains, her sisters, her Father, even the all-powerful Governor. Even the Harvester.

His territory—the dark, somber island of Hybern—was one Elain would never so much as think of travelling to. Pretending the work the Harvester did there did not exist made everyone’s lives a lot easier. While the Merchant dealt with old Fae artifacts and traded them across borders, the Harvester’s work involved a lot more of getting one’s hands dirty. Enchanted faerie objects, after all, were not the only things believed to have valuable properties. High Fae hearts, for example, promised a long life, untainted by illness.

And the Harvester…well, the Harvester delivered them. Amongst many others.

The marriage had taken place shortly after the summer, and neither Elain nor her father had been invited to witness the nuptials. She had simply watched the ship sail off West as she lost yet another sister.

She would not think about that right now—not when spring had finally arrived again. Soon, her tulips would bloom again, flecks of pinks and violets shining softly under the young, shy rays of sunlight. Elain would not be there to witness it—right after Nesta’s marriage, Father had left for the Continent again, and this time, Elain expected the order.

She was to be married next.

My dearest Elain,

It is with a full heart that I bring you the joyous news of our latest triumph. I have successfully docked in Saetre, and the Governor has received me warmly—as expected. As I’m sure you have already guessed, he was most pleased with the offerings I have bestowed him. You’ve seen them yourself—the old Illyrian dagger seems to be his favourite as of right now, though I have not yet even shown him the rest of the treasure I have acquired from the Wildlands. I can already imagine his eyes light up as I hand him the pair of wings your sister had sent in from Hybern. I shall convince him to display it right above his throne, I think—a testament to Nesta’s success.

Our deliberations commenced shortly after dinner—a roast turkey and the most exquisite stew, if you’re interested. I have already sent a footman along with a separate letter containing the recipe—so that you may have the maid try it out in the weeks before my return. Winters in Rask are quite unforgivable, and I must admit a hearty meal like this was exactly what I needed. Rask rears its own livestock, you know—an impressive one, too, if I do say so myself. To not be dependent on Braemar for your dinner plans—imagine that! I am growing quite tired of the Huntsman raising his prices every harvest. Ridiculous.

Anyway, I digress. Rask has consumed my attention entirely, as I’m sure you can tell. I am confident you would enjoy it here, too. Winters are rough, yes—but I remember how much you’ve always wanted to visit the provinces in the West. Just imagine your beloved tulip fields, illuminated by golden sunlight—imagine being able to see them at your whim. What a life that would be, would it not?

My sweet Elain, I am writing to tell you that it could be. You know how dear our family has always been to me—but you, my beautiful daughter, have always been closest to my ageing heart. It is precisely why I had devoted all my efforts, all my resources, into this agreement. Elain, it is one for the pages of history. A union like no other.

You see, the Governor—Lord Nolan, our very ruler himself—was so impressed with your dowry, and concerned with the fate of our family in the past year—that he had offered his son, nay, his heir, as a candidate worthy of your hand. Your hand in marriage, Elain.

Indeed, the past year has brought our family hardship unlike ever before. I do mourn your mother still, and the loss of our young Feyre continues to be a fresh wound in my heart. It is only fair we honour them, would you not agree? Your sister, your brave, headstrong sister, has already taken that first step—and look how happy she is with the Harvester’s son. She holds power like no other human in our family ever had—right now, she is perhaps the most powerful woman in Prythian. Perhaps even more than the Siren herself. Elain, with your beauty, your grace, your heart—you could outshine them both.

I am sure you were too young to remember meeting Greysen Nolan—you were only five, after all, and he only twelve—but he has grown into a fine young man, and as heir to the Governor, he is the most eligible bachelor our world has to offer. A fine marriage like this would give us the protection we need—New Prythian would never have to deal with faerie filth again. Our people would be safe, Elain—and all because of you. My beautiful Princess.

I do hope this news brings some comfort to your healing heart. Lord Nolan has bestowed his son with a title prior to your official engagement. The Visitor, as your fiancé is now called, has taken on the role of supervising all clans and their work—of ensuring their role in our world guarantees our continued survival amid the growing rebellions in Old Prythian and Vallahan. Elain, as wife to the Visitor, your dream will finally come true—you shall accompany him on all his travels, see the world as you’ve always wished! It brings me joy to know I have assured you that fate.

I am to remain in Rask until the snow melts. The Visitor and I shall set sail for home with the coming of spring, and we shall host a celebration in your honour. An engagement ball envied in the eyes of any other young lady in Prythian, New and Old!

I am told Greysen (is it too soon to address him as such, do you think? He is to be my son-in-law) enjoys roses the most. Perhaps you could show some thought and consideration and embroider a pattern on your ball gown? I trust that this letter gives you enough time in advance. You’ve always been so skilled at crafts and other projects of creative character.

Be safe, my sweet Elain. Better times are coming—and sooner than you think!

With love,

The Merchant

Elain discarded the letter on her nightstand, thinking she might puke if she so much as tried glancing upon it again. From the neat, elegant cursive to the tone of the very words, the message reeked of her Father—of the Merchant . There were so many things wrong with its contents that the anger she’d been stifling in the pit of her stomach for the past few weeks had bubbled all over again, threatening to burn its way up her throat. Elain had never been any good at art—that was Feyre, the Merchant’s other daughter the Fae had only taken a few months ago. Taken and never returned. She was likely dead, her body discarded somewhere in the Wildlands. And Father didn’t even care.

He didn’t care that it was him Elain had always wanted to travel with, not Greysen Nolan, not anyone else. He’d promised to bring her along, at least once. Now, it was too late. He would lose his final daughter—for the safety of New Prythian. Naturally.

A new wave of guilt crashed into her with a sudden force, killing the fire inside her with little effort. She didn’t want the marriage, that much was true—but, her father’s personal agenda or not, the Fae rebellion was as real as the Visitor, no doubt already sailing her way. The Fae, though very few in number thanks to the work of the human clans, still posed a very real threat—her mother and sister were the prime example of how dangerous those creatures were. Five hundred years ago, they’d nearly won the War—had nearly rid the world of all humans and enslaved whoever remained. Until the humans turned their own magic against them—and took their freedom back. They have continued to preserve it ever since.

The clans of Old Prythian had always been successful in dwindling the numbers of whoever remained—the Fae, in all their mighty immortality, could hold out for centuries, using their magic to roam the lands in secret. Three hundred years ago, most of them had been pushed far north to the Wildlands, old faerie territories Elain had read about in her studies. There was little information on the former Solar Courts and their rulers—other than that the most powerful of them had a history of cruelty that could make the Harvester himself flinch in horror. Some part of her was glad the territory had been reduced to rubble—that, at the very least, the humans’ ancient killers could no longer rely on their fortresses to lock them all up.

She had seen the Huntsman’s reports on recent rebel activity in Braemar, though. The faeries may have been few, yes, but those foolish enough to crawl out of the Wildlands caused problems that would usually send shivers down Elain’s spine. The Huntsman’s own daughter, stationed in the North under the Guardian’s protection, had been slaughtered no more than six years ago when their outpost was attacked. Father had told her stories of fresh, crimson blood, gleaming on the thick, white coat of snow.

For what had to have been the hundredth time in the past few weeks, Elain debated that perhaps, an alliance with the Governor’s son would not be such a terrible thing. She may not have known him—let alone harboured any affection for him—but their marriage would strengthen the clans. If she married Greysen, perhaps no one else’s daughters would be slaughtered, no one else’s mothers killed in their sleep or sisters hunted in the forests surrounding their own homes. Elain could protect them—in whatever way she could.

Either way, she had no choice.

***

The forest rippled with the sound of teeth tearing into flesh. Over the centuries, they had grown longer— sharper , which was just as well. He needed as much protection as he could get these days, especially with weapons so difficult to come by. The camp was already growing unsettled, and he could feel the tension weighing on the air whenever he returned. The past few winters had been difficult enough.

The coming of spring was a welcome change. Spring meant they could hunt—the new year brought on as many animals as it had opportunities. The prey in his arms, grasped by the claws he’d sunk deep into its skin, just so happened to be both.

And what an opportunity it was. They’d been wishing for it for decades—centuries, even, or perhaps even more. Like many others, he found himself losing count of the passing years. They all seemed the same—eat, sleep, move, hide. Kill had only recently started to disrupt his routine. Yet another change he welcomed.

He spat out the blood, nose wrinkling with distaste as if on instinct, and watched as the liquid settled into the mossy earth. The body fell to the ground a moment after, leaving a heavy thud in its wake, heavy enough that he could have sworn it echoed between the trees. He would get an earful for not being careful later. The thought made his eyes roll as he wiped his nails clean on his crumpled shirt.

He pulled it over his arms, then, letting the fabric float away with the gentle spring breeze, and took a deep, steadying breath. The small, golden rays of sunlight peering through the budding leaves warmed his bare chest, and he tilted his head up to the sky, soaking up the sensation until the quiet gurgle at his feet inevitably commanded the return of his attention.

He sighed, kicking away the arm resting on his boot. The body rolled to the side, baring the unpleasant face to his sight yet again. For what must have been the fourth time in the past two minutes, he felt himself grimace. Something so ugly should not have been this finely dressed.

This, however, was a problem he could easily take care of. Holding his breath to avoid the stench of his prey’s spilling guts, he kneeled to free it from the immaculate, navy-blue jacket, dark, charcoal trousers and boots before its blood managed to stain them. The formerly pristine shirt was unfortunately already lost to him, though he supposed his own would do just fine.

For a split second, he wondered if the body should be buried. It would take little effort on his part, and he knew it had been travelling with a party before trailing off the carriage path to piss. It would be best to not leave any evidence behind, lest any of the man’s companions decided to follow their master and look for relief in the forest as well.

He sighed again, a sound he feared was starting to become a signature of his lately. With a flick of his hand, the dirt rustled quietly, and the ground parted, swallowing the body entirely.

Good. This was good. He only wished he’d taken a good look at the man’s face before letting the worms dig into the body he’d so benevolently left open for them. He needed the memory unscathed for the spell, and right now, he could not for the life of him remember the colour of his prey’s eyes. Oh, well.

He got dressed quickly, finding the fabric a little too tight in the shoulders. Come to think of it, the trousers also seemed to be a tight fit, his thighs unusually restrained by the silken threads. He would have to walk more slowly, he supposed. Ripping his seams open in front of dozens of humans was hardly the surprise he’d spent the past two months carefully devising.

Rising to his full height, he closed his eyes then as though for concentration. The tingling on his skin was hardly pleasant, but he endured it all the same until the memory in his mind finally faded away. There was no stream nearby to look over his reflection, but he knew the glamour had worked, anyway. It always did.

To those who knew the man he’d just murdered, he would appear as Greysen Nolan—the newly titled Visitor, hell, the Governor’s own firstborn son. He couldn’t help but smirk.

It seemed that Daddy was in for one hell of a disappointment.

***

Elain could not breathe in her gown.

“Just a few more minutes, Princess,” the seamstress repeated, the sound muffled through the needle she’d clenched between her teeth.

The nickname did little to ease her nerves. The Princess was hardly her official title, but her father insisted the staff—that everyone in New Prythian called his one remaining daughter as such. She used to adore it as a little girl, though upon further reflection, she had no doubt she’d earned a few spoiled brat ’s in those years. Still, the name seemed to have stuck, and, as she always did, Elain felt her cheeks flush furiously in response.

“I’m not a princess, Lavinia,” she reminded the seamstress, trying her best not to make her tone sound too pointed.

The woman scoffed. “You might as well be, Lady Archeron. The Visitor is a titled man, and if that wasn’t enough, he is the Governor’s heir.” She adjusted the ribbons adorning Elain’s sleeve. “Our royalty may be long gone, but everyone knows the throne resides at Rask.”

Elain hummed. “There is a reason we are no longer ruled by six queens. To anoint a new monarchy would be to dishonour their sacrifice.”

The seamstress scrambled quickly, “Of course, Lady Archeron. I only meant—the Governor holds a lot of power in the realm.”

Elain sighed and looked into the mirror. “I suppose that much is true.”

“You don’t seem very excited,” Lavinia remarked, meeting Elain’s gaze in her reflection. “Surely the Visitor is an excellent match?”

“Certainly,” Elain nodded. But excellent was not someone Elain was looking for. She wasn’t looking for anyone, truthfully, and yet here she stood, watching Lavinia touch up her gown for the final time before her engagement ball was to commence. “This is good, I think. You’ve done a wonderful job—as always.”

The seamstress offered her a smile. “Try to be happy, Princess.”

“Of course,” Elain lied.

It was clear enough that Lavinia had left her alone, quietly excusing herself out of the room. Elain could hear her mutter instructions to the guards at her door—she was to be escorted downstairs, whenever she was ready. Apparently, guests had already begun pouring in, and the Visitor was to make his grand entrance shortly.

Elain hadn’t even seen Father yet. Wherever he was, he clearly would make his appearance once the public had gathered in full.

It was to be expected, but Elain felt her heart sink nonetheless. She could use a few words of encouragement right now. Usually, it had been Feyre offering them without Elain even having to ask. But Feyre was gone. Had been gone for a while.

And she wasn’t coming back.

Exhaling shakily, Elain looked into her own eyes in the mirror, ignoring the tear welling up in one corner, her expression stern.

“You’re doing this for them ,” she told herself. “For Feyre, and for Mother, and for Nesta, so that no one else has to suffer like they had.”

Her reflection nodded, the pearls in her ears sparkling with the movement. She breathed out again, one last time, and braced herself for the three quiet knocks on her door.

“It’s time, Princess,” the order sounded shortly after. Elain, of course, obeyed.

The gown was a pain to walk in. It was beautiful, to be sure—she hadn’t lied when she’d complimented Lavinia’s work—though that hardly made it a comfortable garment to wear. Elain appreciated the way the corset hugged her curves, or the way it perked up her breasts, but she also appreciated being able to take a breath without immediately choking on it. She had never squeezed into a dress so impossibly tight. The flowers—roses—crafted by the ruffles of tulle rested attached at her hips, the ribbons of her sleeves caressing them as Elain made her way down the hall. The gown spilled down her body in petals of ivory and a dusty pink, making Elain herself look like a blossoming rose, floating with every step.

She almost enjoyed the thought until she remembered Father’s letter once again—until she remembered Greysen Nolan’s favourite flowers were, in fact, roses, and the gown’s very design served to appeal to his tastes instead of her own.

Had it not been for the guard’s heavy boots sounding behind her, Elain would have entertained the idea of turning back. Would Father drag her downstairs himself? Would he lock her up in Greysen’s carriage and ship her off without second thought? Elain had never once thought her own engagement ceremony would ever feel like an execution. And yet, here she was, followed closely by the Merchant’s personal guard, dressed up like a doll for a man she didn’t even know.

The somber thought accompanied her down the marble steps spiralling down to the ballroom, consuming her so thoroughly she could hardly feel the countless stares watching her every more. Father must have invited more people than she’d thought—dignitaries from all over the island, perhaps even the Continent itself.

Perhaps her seamstress was right—perhaps Rask was the closest they could get to royalty, and Elain truly could not have found a more advantageous match. She also could not have married at all.

But then she met her father’s gaze, and the guilt hit her with a familiarity that nearly swayed her off the stairs.

His eyes—brown, exactly the shade of her own—were shining with pride so unabashed she could not help but smile in his direction. She was doing all of this for him, too was she not? For her family—so that they may never see misfortune again. Nesta had been strong enough to proceed with her own match. Why should Elain be any different? She could do this—otherwise, watching that pride dim from her father’s gaze might just be the thing that killed her.

Slowly, she made her way up the dais to meet his extended hand. Behind them, two high chairs she supposed had been made to resemble thrones sat waiting for the Lord and Lady to be. Elain’s heart quickened in the constraints of her corset.

“This is real, Elain,” Father murmured over her shoulder, as though he could hear how loudly her heart thumped in her chest. If he did, he’d grossly misinterpreted the reason behind it. “This is truly happening.”

Elain swallowed something thick in her throat, and forced another smile as she turned to face him at last. “I know, Father.”

The white of his teeth nearly outmatched the chandeliers above. “You look absolutely spectacular,” he complimented, his smile wider as he noted the tulle roses. “Are you ready to meet your husband?”

She supposed there was no turning back now.

Father nodded to the guards. “Invite the Visitor in.”

Every single head in the ballroom turned as two, white-gloved hands turned the golden, ornate knobs and swung the doors open.

Elain held her breath—then counted to three. Four. Five.

On seven, he entered.

She’d spotted his jacket first—a deep navy-blue adorned with fine, silken thread. Fitted, charcoal trousers and boots, echoing quietly off the marble floor as the Visitor finally stepped into the light.

Elain’s breath caught in her throat.

He was, without a doubt, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

His long hair was like molten fire, a stark contrast against the depth of his jacket. Shades of red, auburn and orange, falling down his back in waves as the firelight danced on his golden brown skin—almost like greeting an old friend. There was something raw about his beauty—he was hardly one of the perfect, polished aristocrats she’d danced with at other balls. No, there was a cruelty about him—as if he’d been crafted by the same flame that gleamed playfully atop the chandeliers warming her skin, melting every guard she’d ensured to build up, every reason she could think of that made him the worst fate the world had in store for her.

Elain could have sworn that fire sizzled in his russet eyes as he reached the dais—as he stopped before her and bowed at the waist.

When he looked up again, their gazes locked and held. “It is an honour to make your acquaintance, Lady Archeron,” he greeted, his voice smooth and deep. “My name is Greysen Nolan.”

#this looks like a cover of a reverse harem novel I PROMISE YOU IT IS NOT #there is a perfectly acceptable amount of smut in this fic #we're just going purely off vibes #and the map LOL #acotar gift exchange #elucien #pro elucien #elain x lucien #elain archeron #lucien vanserra #elucien fic #elucien fanfiction #acotar #my writing

83 notes · View notes

one-idea · 3 months

Note

Tbh I'm with Zoro re:Nika v Luffy. Luffy is full of love for the world and adventure, almost as much as he loves his friends. Nika willingly staying separate from the world Luffy adores so much is a HUGE red flag that It's No Longer Luffy In The Driver's Seat. They're probably very, very similar, but would it be enough for the Straw Hats? I imagine it would be for some of them, but besides King of Hell over there I think Jimbei and maybe Brook would notice the difference and care.

I’m assuming this is for the madoka magica au. (My beloved)

And you’re completely right.

Luffy under normal circumstances would never leave the crew. He loves them and the world and adventure, why would he ever leave? He doesn’t remember the situation that lead to him fully becoming Nika in the first place so he doesn’t understand Nika’s incessant calling to leave this world behind.

As for the rest of the crew….

When Zoro fully became Asura and rewrote the universe, he also took the crew’s memories of the world without Luffy.

They have no clue the current reality is different. There are moments where awareness slips in. Where they go “something here isn’t right?” But they are all together and happy so it’s not that big of a deal. The moments are easy enough to sweep under the rug.

I think if any of the crew did remember the reality without Luffy they would agree with Zoro’s decision. They don’t know that Nika had made a plain of existence just for them. That they would reunite with Nika after death. For them Luffy was gone and he was eternally alone. They would agree with Zoro’s decision because of the information they had.

Jimbei and Brook probably have more “this isn’t right” moments than the others because they have been around longer. Their age and experience tipping them off more. Robin probably realizes it as well but I wouldn’t put it past her to put all the pieces together and agree with Zoro’s actions. The crew was willing to fight the world government for her, she to would rip apart reality for her captain.

No the problem is Ace

Ace who remembers it all. Zoro tries to block it out but Ace was in Nika’s divine realm. He was privy to information the Strawhats didn’t have. He knew that they would all be together for eternity. And Zoro separating Luffy from Nika could have major consequences.

Ace pulls Zoro a side to tell him this. But it’s Ace and Zoro and they aren’t the best at communicating.

And Ace is also so conflicted because on the one hand Zoro not only divided Luffy’s soul but he also took Luffy’s freedom. It’s a beautiful cage but a gilded cage is still a cage. It was Luffy’s choice to merge with Nika. Zoro is disregarding Luffy’s choice and freedom.

But at the same time how can he be mad. He has both of his brothers back and they are all free, as far as the other two know. Because Luffy has no clue he’s in a cage. He’s completely free to do whatever he wants in this plain of existence. Is it truly freedom if he can’t leave? But is he truly trapped if he doesn’t know about the cage?

Ace’s head hurts. Philosophy was never his thing and he desperately wishes Sabo, Deuce, or Marco were in his place because while Sabo is here he doesn’t remember the old reality either.

So Ace confronts Zoro about it. About how this is going against Luffy’s will. About how this could have consequences they don’t even understand yet.

And Zoro just smirks at him and asks if it’s not a demons job to go against their god?

Ace is immediately on the defensive wanting to know if Zoro will completely disregard Luffy’s wants and decisions from here on out.

Zoro responds with “of course not. He is my captain and I his first mate.” He would do anything Luffy asked him for. But Luffy would never ask him to release him. How could he when Zoro stand between Luffy and anything that could ever make him want to leave again.

Ace threatens to tell Luffy the truth. To which Zoro tells him if he does then that would make them enemies. But he’s not to worried because he knows Ace is having trouble remembering things. He might have failed to fully block Ace’s memories in the first place but the more time Ace spends in this world the more natural it will be. After all this is a new chance for Ace to be human. To be with his brothers. He wouldn’t want to mess that up, would he?

Ace knows all these things. Can feel the memories of before getting hazier. He knows his brothers are happy here and there is no reality where he would try to take their happiness from them. But Luffy’s freedom was taken from him and that he can’t forgive “even if I forget everything else I will always remember that you, Roronoa Zoro, are a demon.”

Zoro just smiles at him and starts to walk back to the others. As he passes Ace he pauses and leaves the freckled man with one final thought. “We should pretend to be on good terms. If you’re always attacking me, Luffy could end up hating you.”

It’s an empty threat, Zoro knows. Knows that Luffy could never hate Ace. But seeing the two of them fighting nonstop would upset Luffy. Zoro has no desire to fight Ace, as long as he stays in line. And he knows exactly what will keep Ace in line.

Because Ace is having a full meltdown down. Could Luffy hate him? He’s in the right! Zoro took Luffy’s freedom. Zoro cut Luffy’s soul in half. Is it wrong for Ace to want to restore Luffy’s soul? To bring back the divine plain? But Luffy loves his crew and adventure. Is his brother better off in this world where he can go on adventures forever with his loved ones. Where he’s not the only one responsible for the safety of the world? Would Luffy hate him for breaking this reality? For fighting with Zoro?

Could Ace survive without Luffy’s love?

It’s a moot point. Luffy will always love Ace. But Ace’s self hate has never been able to understand that.

Here’s the original scene from Madoka Magica for reference

Note. They are both right in their own way. They have different points of view and information the other doesn’t.

Zoro wants Luffy to be with the crew because Luffy hates being alone more than anything. And the crew loves him. Zoro loves him

Ace has knowledge of Nika’s true plan. Knows that Luffy wasn’t going to be alone forever. It would just take time. But he’s horrible at sharing this information.

Ace going to the literal devil who just rewrote the universe to have his way and standing in front of him like “you I have a problem with you and I’m going to fight you.” Like poor boy has a split devil fruit (now shared with Sabo) that’s not even awakened and is staring down the King of hell with no plan or back up. Keep bitting off more then you can chew Ace. Never change.

#one piece #monkey d. luffy #straw hat pirates #roronoa zoro #one piece zolu #zolu #fire fist ace #one piece ace #gol d. ace #portagas d. ace #sabo #madoka magica zolu au #Ace is Sayaka. I will take no argument. both are stubborn to a fault and won’t backdown. constantly bitting off more then they can handle.#and it leads to both of their deaths. stop and ask for help you selfless morons #Ace: I’m going to tell Luffy😡 Zoro: but what if I play on you insecurities🤔#asl brothers

58 notes · View notes

vigilskeep · 5 months

Note

Why Wynne as the werewolf tho?

short answer: it would fix her

long answer: dao companions ideologically vary from highly valuing survival (at the expense of principles) to highly valuing their principles (at the expense of survival), and wynne is probably the most firmly on the side of principles and self-sacrifice. she has multiple occasions when she will turn against the warden on moral grounds and fight them to the death, she objects to prioritising even a loved one’s survival over the greater good, she advocates for the circle as a necessary sacrifice of freedoms, and she herself is functionally already dead and believes she only continues to exist to serve a purpose. the latter is also how she already struggles with whether or not she has retained her humanity. that’s why i think she’s the most interesting character to suddenly have the immediate, primal, ugly, hungry, and irresistible urges of a werewolf

i also think that wynne’s quickness to judge people and events, and then to announce those judgements as universal truth including directly to the faces of the people they’re about, is the biggest obstacle in her ability to understand the other companions. (justice and anders-justice suffer from this too lmao. a spirit’s black and white view of the world combined with an educated andrastian human’s condescension does have this poor result.) in, ideally, a wolf form that is at least initially unable to speak, i think she’d get some really fascinating and much needed perspective. entire wolfwalkers sequence in my head with wolf-wynne getting violent and morrigan turning into a wolf to lead her on a chase into the woods to burn it off and wolf-wynne regaining control not with “humanity” as such but with finally, with these eyes, seeing the beauty in wilderness that morrigan knows so well, and suddenly they’re having fun and they turn back into human form laughing. or smth along those lines. i also think you can do a lot that’s super fun with wynne and zevran in this scenario, especially because i’d love to have our elven companion at the forefront during nature of the beast. i love their dynamic it’s hysterical and chewy (i think i see it misinterpreted a lot but that’s another post) but also with scientific curiosity i’d love to see what happens if a) we’re in an area that highlights zevran’s few moments of seriousness and b) wynne is actually forcibly stopped from giving him so much ammunition for five minutes

on the note of still keeping focus on the elves for notb, the brecilian forest is also the centre of her very quickly resolved personal quest with aneirin, so i’d love him to have a fleshier storyline. i’d briefly consider combining his character with lanaya’s, for instance?

admittedly the spirit of faith might get in the way, i haven’t ironed that one out yet. but if nothing else it’s a cheap answer to being able to alter the canon symptoms of lycanthropy a little for whatever serves plot convenience best

#wynne

58 notes · View notes

highpriestessaset · 6 months

Text

Pick an image: allow your intuition to guide you in your selection.

NEO 🕶️

[Superpowers:]

Patient, sees the bigger picture or different perspectives, inquisitive, hard-working, looks to long term goals or delayed gratification, adaptable

[How to use:]

These skills help you to see eye to eye with other individuals and species. I see someone who is caring and eager to understand how another maneuvers throughout their life. Where many would be fearful or judgmental, instead, you are curious.

You may be interested in marine biology, veterinary duties, care giving, or anything that allows you to study, interact, care for, or capture the beauty of life- whether it be plants, animals, humans, etc.

[Message:]

It seems like a dream you may have is put on hold due to financial concerns. It feels that a fixed mindset may be at the root of the issue. The message for you says that utilizing a growth mindset will bring you a lot closer to achievement.

(Click here for resource.)

————————————————————

TRINITY 🕶️

[Superpowers:]

Leader, has a good sense of direction, bold, initiative, innovative, independent, free-spirited, energetic, playful/fun, light-hearted, innocent

[How to use:]

These skills help you to travel or maneuver around situations that may be difficult. It seems like you have your own level of inner peace you are able to maintain by knowing when and how to go at things alone.

[Message:]

You are fully capable of capturing some sort of entrepreneurship or self employment opportunities. There may be some confusion amongst yourself or from outside voices with opinions about what you should do.

The message for you is to release the expectations of others and any you have placed on yourself that limit your options. This may look like going along with a loved one’s vision for you that you may not be passionate about. Whatever those expectations are, in releasing them, you give yourself permission to take a risk on your own idea that can make YOU happy and provide financial security.

Let go of the fear of failure, let go of the “what will they think”, let go of the thoughts that keep you from making any moves at all. Life is a journey of discovery- discovering what we like or don’t like. Even when we discover things we don’t like, that is information that brings us closer to knowing ourselves. Use your superpower of maintaining your inner peace to step away from negativity and simply discover yourself.

————————————————————

MORPHEUS 🕶️

[Superpowers:]

Intuitive, intelligent, thoughtful, truth seeking, assertive, advocate, wise, private or reflective (introverted), health conscious

[How to use:]

I see someone fit to be some sort of an educator, speaker, writer, influencer or advocate for a cause. The Star card shows me that you are passionate about freedom and peace.

Someone specific here may be interested in justice/law by advocating for people wrongly incarcerated.

Another specific person here may be interested in advocating for body acceptance and/or health related topics. Sharing your story can be powerful.

[Message:]

The truth speaks for itself. When you communicate, it is important to remove the ego. We can speak on what is true for us but, we cannot force anyone to believe anything. If what you say resonates with another, they will be interested in hearing more from you.

The message here says it is important to remove the ego because at times, it makes it hard for others to listen. Your messages may be powerful but they can only impact those who hear AND receive them. Let go of the need for others to hear and receive your messages WHEN and HOW you want them to. Remember, the truth speaks for itself.

*Readings are for entertainment purposes only.*

-// Blessings 🌺

67 notes · View notes

goldenblu · 1 month

Note

ohhh my gosh that whole mask sanji idea has me REELING. sanji gains emotions the hard way but he's constantly questioning if it's real or not, if it's still an act, if it has ever been an act, who is his loyalty to now, to his country or his crew? which family? and maybe stealth black has been a mask as well, maybe that cruel, apathetic assassin is a product of pretending for the vinsmokes- so is there anything left of him that is not hollow desire to play for affection?

even if there isn't. the strawhats will love every part of him they find. maybe it will be hard at first, maybe they will feel betrayed and lost and angry. but he is nakama, and a mask is still a product of skin and bone. he has always been capable of being sanji.

like no pressure to continue on this idea in fic form but my god, if you have any more thoughts on this or anything like it i would pay to see them <3 it's so beautiful

YOU. YOU GET IT.

asdksfja;lksjf sanji realizes that he’s come to see the strawhats as something more than a target, a tool to use and then cast away.

(he doesn’t dare to think the word family because that would be a betrayal of his real family, wouldn’t it? it would be an admission of his failure, and he refuses to be a failure.)

it’s all part of the act, he tells himself. it doesn’t mean anything. it won’t last.

but it doesn’t change the fact that he remembers all the strawhats’ favorite foods, that he knows how tell when chopper needs a little hot chocolate pick-me-up, that fighting back to back with zoro feels in sync and familiar in a way that it shouldn’t. all of these useless pieces of information and instincts that he shouldn’t have but does anyway.

so sanji panics—and isn’t that a new experience for him, panicking. every time the strawhats look at him, they see someone who doesn’t actually exist, shouldn’t exist. it makes him feel some emotion that he’s never felt before and can’t identify. it’s terrible; he can’t stand to be this person he’s not for any longer.

maybe he’s the one to reveal his true identity and goal to the strawhats. because he knows he’s in too deep; he needs to cut these ties himself and finish the mission he should have finished long ago.

or maybe it’s not up to him at all, maybe judge sends one of his brothers to find him because he’s taking too long. ichiji or whoever shows up on the sunny, gets a laugh out of sanji trying to play house on a boat, and then announces that sanji doesn’t need to pretend anymore, it’s time to deal the finishing blow and return home with whatever information he’s acquired.

however it happens, sanji does the whole “my name is vinsmoke sanji” speech from wci except it’s real this time, and that’s how the truth comes out. which is fine, it doesn’t matter what the strawhats think of him. it’s better this way, it’s better that they know where sanji’s true loyalties lie: with germa.

(right? this has always been an indisputable fact. so why does he feel so conflicted about it now?)

i don’t know how the plot would play out from here but later, when push comes to shove, sanji realizes at the very last minute that all he’s doing is exchanging one mask for another. he can’t go back to how things were before—his father won’t like that one of his perfect sons is compromised with such weaknesses, but more than that, sanji doesn’t want to be the emotionless third prince of germa anymore.

(the thought he won’t allow himself to think: maybe he never did.)

he never realized before that it was possible to have the freedom to choose, but he does now. so he pulls an uno reverse card and instead of betraying the strawhats, he betrays the only life he’s ever known and saves the strawhats instead, very publicly turning his back on the vinsmokes. the details of how exactly this happens escape me but let’s assume he’s successful in telling germa to fuck off. (for now, at least. i imagine this doesn’t last since judge would be unimaginably angry and go after him, but that’s a problem for later sanji.)

regardless, when it’s all said and done, sanji doesn’t expect the strawhats to allow him back onto the crew. he’s not a good person, he’s deceived and killed hundreds of people in cold blood. he lied to them, betrayed them, pretended to be someone he’s not. the strawhats know that now. by all rights, they should want to kill him. most people would. sanji would.

but they don’t. sanji doesn’t know what they see in him, but whatever it is, it’s enough for luffy accept him even after everything he’s done. admittedly, the rest of the crew still has their reservations; it’s clear enough that they’re hurt and angry and wary of him.

you broke our trust, nami tells him.

i know. sanji hesitates, and then says, i’m sorry.

it’s new to him, this feeling of guilt eating away at him, and he almost stumbles over the words. he’s never had to apologize before, not genuinely. stealth black doesn’t apologize. stealth black doesn’t feel regret.

but he’s not stealth black anymore. he’s someone else. he doesn’t know who, exactly, but he does know who he wants to be. black leg sanji, the man who only existed on this ship for these past few weeks/months, the man who was capable of caring and being cared for—sanji wants that to be real.

luffy’s giving you a chance to rebuild it, nami says. so don’t waste it.

it’s hard, at first. sanji has never not had to play a role before so now he’s confronted with the question: what parts of him are the result of the persona he puts on and what parts are truly sanji? he’s worn a mask in some form or another for so long—certain things are so ingrained in him that he can’t tell the difference anymore.

the next time he cooks dinner, he wonders: is this desire to feed his the crew real, or is it a leftover habit from black leg sanji? the next time he kills someone for going after the strawhats, he wonders: this ruthless capacity for violence, does that come from himself or from vinsmoke sanji?

but maybe it doesn’t matter where it came from because he can make it his. because nothing can take away the fact that for the first time, sanji is doing what he wants to do and not just what he’s told to do.

he says as much to luffy, who smiles and responds, i always knew you could do it.

and over time, the strawhats begin to trust him again. usopp stops being quite so nervous around him. nami starts working on her maps in the galley again, and this time sanji doesn’t have to lie when she asks him questions about the islands he’s been to. zoro tells him that he’d better not hold back during their spars, so sanji stops trying to hide it and lets his sharp edges stay sharp and dangerous and deadly. chopper learns the truth about sanji’s physical enhancements but it doesn’t stop him from worrying over him anyway, which makes sanji’s chest feel warm for some reason.

(and that’s a whole other thing—now sanj has to figure out how the fuck he’s supposed to deal with having emotions because holy shit do you people feel this way all the time?? it’s so much, it’s overwhelming.

he keeps having to ask: what is this feeling or that feeling or that feeling?? and everyone teaches him: fear. sadness. happiness. all things that sanji once thought were impossible for him to feel.)

he still struggles to balance kindness and cruelty sometimes—though he’s capable of feeling compassion now, it’s mainly only ever for the strawhats, and he’s still merciless to anyone he considers an enemy. in any case, his crew is there to support him, to help him figure out: who is he in the absence of everything that’s defined the last nineteen years of his life?

the answer? the cook of the strawhat pirates, sanji. just sanji. that’s who he is and who he’ll always be.

#one piece #sanji #black leg sanji #vinsmoke sanji #stealth black sanji au #i need to come up with better au names lmao #got a bit sappy at the end there but it’s okay IN THIS HOUSE WE EMBRACE CRINGE #ask #mine #my writing #in a perfect world i would write a fic for this but alas it’s not gonna happen #don’t have the bandwidth and also #(slight spoiler warning for hold your fire)#i think it might overlap a bit with what i have planned for the second half of hyf hehe #WHICH I STILL HAVENT STARTED WRITING YET orz

38 notes · View notes

imagining-in-the-margins · 1 year

Text

The Birds & The Bees (S.R. | Pt. 27)

Summary: Spencer’s half-truths are catching up to him, and Ms. Fletcher is causing problems.

A/N: Welcome back, my bunnies. Three chapters to go. Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Category: Slow Burn (NSFW, 18+) Content Warning: Alcohol, kissing, verbal arguments, allusions to death and blood, ambulances, (metaphorical) hallucinations, paranoia, distracted/emotional driving Word Count: 10.5k

MASTERLIST | Series Masterlist

Since the dawn of man, so has existed the fear of the darkness. I had been no exception to this universal truth.

I’d always written off my fear of the nothingness as a product of my upbringing; my idea of home. Las Vegas was the only place I knew of where the neon signs outnumbered the people. The evenings were often more illuminated than the midday mark when the sun showed no mercy.

But on the nights where I wandered, I would travel far enough until I could find a unique kind of night. I could still feel the crisp air in my blood. With flimsy pedals beneath my feet and the endless desert ahead, I would ride until my legs ached the same as my lungs.

My mother would’ve hated my tendency to wander if she’d ever been able to notice. My father hated it for different reasons.

But if only the world had understood that it was not my love for solitude, but my yearning to be part of something greater that led me to the shrub-laden sand.

When I stood among the cacti and fellow nocturnal creatures, I would find that the night was so much brighter than in my bedroom. I would stand soaked in the starlight that fought against the darkness. Eventually, I would learn the names of every star that had one. They would become something like a friend to me, those stars. The guardians that offered silent, reverent guidance whenever I was lost. All the while flickering to remind me that they were still alive.

It was no wonder to me that I had trouble sleeping when I moved away from the desert and towards the East Coast. My heart knew what beauty hid under the blanket of the bare night.

The nightmares that plagued my psyche were nothing but a contrast to the nights I knew.

It was rare to have nightmares on the nights there had been a Bunny in my bed. Luckily, on those rare occasions, I would still wake from the horror to find her sleeping soundly against my chest. I wondered how the sound of my heart hadn’t been enough to wake her. I thanked whatever Gods were torturing me for allowing her unbroken dreams.

I hadn’t had a nightmare in the five days since Lila’s wedding. Of course, I hadn’t let her leave my side, either. The unique horror that was watching her get hurt, however imaginary, was too painful to bear alone.

But it had come time for her to return to her life without me, even if it was just for a couple hours. I knew I would miss her terribly, but I also knew I had to let her go. I had to allow her the freedom to grow so that when she returned to my arms, there was never a doubt that it was where she’d wanted to be.

Still, I felt an overwhelming relief when I woke to find her already so. She ran gentle fingertips over the rough scruff on my cheeks.

The first thing I noticed was the way her eyes and smile widened when she saw me wake. The second thing I noticed was the same as it always was. Except somehow, in a matter of hours, she had become even more beautiful than when I’d gone to sleep.

“Good morning, Bunny,” I mumbled.

“Good morning,” she whispered back. Her placid voice still shaken by the touch of sleep, she continued, “I missed you.”

My heart wrenched in my chest. It rioted against the starless sound of her sadness, and I was powerless to stop it from using every possible muscle to bring her closer.

Her lips found mine like a sunflower to the sun. Her limbs climbed me like honeysuckle vines searching for home. She found it there, buried in our embrace.

Even in the morning, she tasted like sweetness. She was the morning dew following a cloudless night, my oasis in the middle of a cruel stretch of desert.

When she broke apart to breathe, I found myself still tempted by her honeyed lips. I came closer, pressing our foreheads together like she might be able to read my thoughts. Like always, she giggled like she had heard them.

But when she pulled away again, I let her set the distance. I watched the way her bosom moved with her breath. I cradled her face so that I could count the steady beating of her heart as it resonated through her neck.

I felt how it shifted ever so slightly as he pressed her body against mine like she had something to hide.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said with little confidence.

Quickly, I moved my hands to hide the way I flinched at the thought of what she would want to ask.

I buried my face against the crook of her neck. I breathed in the scent of her hair. I laid hasty kisses against the column of her throat so that the pain in my chest might be mistaken for lust, instead.

“Anything,” I whispered, “I’d give you anything.”

It had been the truth. I would never regret giving her everything she’d asked for, even when I knew what she was about to ask. Even when I knew with the utmost certainty that it would leave me destitute in the daytime desert once more.

My Bunny knew it, too, which was why she was timid when she asked, “I wanted to know if you’d be alright with me going to that party that I was telling you about.”

My heart leapt in my chest with the worst kind of warning, but I tried to remain playful so as to not alert my Bunny of my impending doom.

“It’s tonight? Already?” I whined.

It had worked. She didn’t notice how my lips were more broken as they worshipped her. She only laughed while she squirmed against me and set my body on fire. I continued to kiss her wherever it tickled, dropping lower until I heard her breath catch in her throat.

My Bunny gasped for air while she laced each of her fingers through unruly curls atop my head. She pulled me away, and I obeyed. Yet she gave me enough freedom to grant her one more kiss against her breastbone.

My lips lingered, feeling the heavy beating of her heart. It was too tempting for me not to try.

“Stay with me, instead,” I grumbled against her skin, “I need more time to worship you.”

Her legs rubbed together with obstinate determination.

“Spencer!” she whined back, “You promised you wouldn’t do this.”

She had been right. It had still been worth a try. Just because I hadn’t gotten the answer that I’d wanted hadn’t meant that I would stop attempting to fill each second with adoration. I sighed against her chest and saw how her skin rippled from the humid heat of my breath.

“Of course you can go,” I conceded before I returned to my usual lackadaisical exploration of her.

I had loved her so many times. I knew her body better than my own, yet that morning, I stumbled as I held her. My Bunny was too smart not to notice.

She used her quick grip on my hair to guide me back up to her. Although I knew she wouldn’t fall for my tricks, I still used my leverage to climb atop her while I moved to meet her eyes.

As expected, that clever girl barely paid attention to the erection pressed between her thighs. She recognized my desire as nothing more but a sword and shield to defend against unwanted examinations into my emotional state.

“Is something wrong?” she asked before I could lower my face to capture her lips again.

“No, no. Nothing’s wrong,” I said too quickly to be the truth.

I tried to kiss her again, but that time her hand pressed hard against the top of my chest to keep me from lulling her straight into the bliss of ignorance.

“You’re lying to me… Why are you lying to me?”

She really was a clever thing. Almost gratingly so. Of course, if I’d had nothing to hide, it would have continued to be endearing.

It was my own fault. I was the stubborn one. I was, once again, sabotaging things in an effort to avoid the very result I was leading us to. I looked into her eyes and felt like a damn fool, despite how much she begged me not to.

“I’m sorry. You’re right,” I admitted more freely than the last time I’d kept something from her. Still, I couldn’t fight the urge to write off my concerns as nothing more than meaningless. “But it really isn’t anything important. I just…”

“Spencer,” she scolded.

She’d made me promise to be more honest with her. I had tried my hardest not to break it, but it felt inevitable. There was nothing greater than my desire to protect her purity. It was the very core of my love for her.

I had seen so many terrible things that I would never forget, but my Bunny didn’t need to know what horrors lurked behind prison bars. She didn’t need to confront the demons, the blood-soaked talons that would make home in any ounce of goodness they found.

You’re doing it again.

“Please tell me,” she pleaded.

I couldn’t tell her no.

“I had a bad dream and it’s making me feel uneasy,” I admitted.

“What was the dream about?”

You.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted to tell her. It was more so that my mouth refused to make the words. The oxygen fled from my lungs, turning quickly to carbon dioxide to silence me. My heart was pounding, too far from hers for her to hear it. Yet she could see it in my eyes and feel it against her palm. She saw the terror she had no knowledge of.

That time when I kissed her, she didn’t stop me. I took it as a white flag; a shared realization that there would be some things that still scared me too much to mention.

Emboldened by the ambrosia of her lips, I explained it away the only way I knew how. The same thing said to me by my mother about the monsters in the closet. And like this danger, those, too, had been real.

“All that matters is that it was a dream and there is no reason to worry about it.”

Like the stubborn thing she was, my darling daisy fought against the reduction of my suffering. Her hands became softer while her resolve became more rigid. She wound my hair around her fingers like she might find errant nightmares among the strands.

“You know you don’t have to hide things from me, right? I love you,” she said like it was the simplest truth in the world.

I smiled, still waiting for the day I would believe it fully.

“I know, I try to understand why every second that I’m awake.”

Her nose crinkled with her laughter. What I wouldn’t give to hear that sound every morning.

The truth, I heard from within my heart. That is the thing I am refusing to give.

The realization was so overwhelming that it felt unwieldy. So suddenly, reality collapsed in on itself and fell onto my shoulders in its entirety. Like Atlas, I stumbled. In a moment of weakness — no, strength — I admitted to myself and to my Bunny that it had become too heavy.

“I know you deserve freedom, and you can make your own decisions, and that you are strong and capable and…”

I paused. I looked down at the young woman with eyes wide with hope and I tried my hardest not to crush it beneath my heel.

“I don’t need to worry about you, but I do,” I admitted with a broken heart. “I just hate when I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, and it eats me alive that you could get hurt and I wouldn’t be there to prevent it and…”

She ended the thought with the cruelest kindness. Her lips felt like water on a fire, and I became lost in the haze left behind. I held her closer. I pushed her onto her back and climbed atop her without any protest from the wriggling rabbit beneath me. I held her head instead of the sheets, propping myself on my elbows so that I could kiss her harder. I spoke to her honestly, then, with fumbling tongues and hurried breath. I tried to explain how deeply these roots ran, how often they had been scorched or severed and tried to find another way.

They all led me back to her.

Before I could open my mouth to speak, to finish that terrifying thought that fought its way to the forefront in every single moment of silence, she stopped me.

“Why are you thinking like that, Spencer?”

For the first time, my instinct was to tell her the truth. For a fleeting second, I considered telling her about Maeve. My mind mapped out each nuance and explanation, but when it came time for my heart to decide, I said nothing.

I let out the breath in my lungs and like dried dandelion pappus, the memory of Maeve fluttered away.

This time would be different. It had to be different.

“Nothing. It was just a bad dream,” I professed. Then, trying to avoid any further expanding on those feelings, I focused my attention on more beautiful things.

My Bunny, beautiful above all else.

“But you’re here now, and I would be an idiot if I didn’t take full advantage of that.”

Any hesitation left her the moment I kissed her cheeks. Her giggling returned; this time accompanied by excited attempts to catch my lips with hers. Once I made my way there, I fell back into the comfortable lull of her love.

“You are so beautiful,” I sighed. “I love you more than life itself.”

The rabbit stilled. The musculature of her face twitched in the most subtle way, but I saw it. I saw how hard my Bunny tried to bite her tongue, but she couldn’t let it go.

“I love you, too…but…”

She looked at me, but not in my eyes. She tried, with naive eyes, to read the unreadable in my tense muscles. I held on, as stubbornly as she had. My resolve gripped the facade as hard as I could, not because I’d wanted to lie to her, but because I’d wanted to lie to myself.

She hadn’t let me, though.

“It worries me when you talk like that, Spencer.”

“Why?” I asked, hoping for the answer I’d been searching for since the day I met her.

“Because it just sounds like… you don’t value your own life.”

Oh.

“Like you’re just waiting for the chance to jump in front of a bullet for me,” she said as she crumpled into herself. Her shoulders pulled up and forward, and her hand that had been resting on my shoulder fell away.

As it hit the bed, I wasted no time readjusting so that I could hold it there against the sheets. I prayed she couldn’t feel the way they shook.

“I would,” I confessed, despite the fact it was unwelcome. “I would die for you in a second.”

My Bunny gave a solemn smile; sad but honest. It held multitudes of universes that I chased after in her eyes just before she lowered her gaze.

“Please, don’t,” she pleaded somewhat playfully.

Although it had been uttered like a joke, there had been an honest vulnerability in her request. Behind soft lashes I saw the layer of dew gathering in her eyes that she blinked away in a quiet moment.

She had never asked me for much. Still, I couldn’t promise her that I would change as quickly and wholly as she’d hoped. As she had deserved. So, I offered her all that I could.

“I’ll try my hardest, Bunny.”

She accepted it. She soaked in the small change like succulent roots following a downpour. Just like the cacti I’d called companions, her hope brought blossoms to the bright morning light.

“So… what I’m taking out of this is… I can go to the party?” she snickered.

“Of course, Bunny,” I chuckled.

That dastardly desert flower sneaked her hand back just so she could throw her arms around my neck. She pulled me closer, and, in a frenzy of laughter and kisses, she eased the pain that had always accompanied letting her go.

When she’d stopped, though, the fear resurfaced from the cracks in my armor.

“Just… promise me you’ll be safe,” I whispered against her skin. “You can call me any time, and I will be there.”

“I promise, Spencer,” she sighed.

I felt the release in my own lungs. I closed my eyes and lowered myself until our chests met in the middle. I laid my body weight on her like a security blanket, listening for the gentle beating of her heart so mine might remember how to do it right.

“I’ll be curled up with you in bed tonight, just like it should be,” she assured me.

I thought of all the ways that might not happen before I could convince myself to consider the far more likely reality that it would. The tension began mounting until I was worried that I might crush the flower in my grip.

I forced myself to sigh to relieve the pressure once more.

“I can’t wait,” I whispered.

At least it had been the truth.

The air was thick and smelled like a mixture of liquor and smoke. The smoke itself had varying levels of pungency, and I didn’t dare try to differentiate the source of each. I would be lying if I’d pretended the thought of finding something to calm my nerves hadn’t crossed my mind, though.

It wasn’t so much the nature of the party that had me panicked; it was something inside me that seemed to have changed. Perhaps that was why I’d been so insistent to Spencer that I need time to do the things college girls do.

As I stood in a room full of belligerent fools, though, I wanted more than anything to just go home. Even that realization felt frightening. It had only been a few months that I’d known Spencer, and really, it had only been a few weeks since we traded vulnerabilities.

How could it be that I’d forgotten how to blend into a crowd so quickly?

I was supposed to be having fun. But the moment I found a mostly empty room, I took advantage of the reprieve from heavy bass and invasive eyes. I didn’t just stop there, either. I continued to slip into the empty bathroom and let out a deep sigh when I found it was not occupied by a couple who would only feel encouraged by an audience.

No, it was just me. Just me and the muffled sound of a party that I’d gotten dressed up for, even though I knew Spencer wouldn’t be able to see me.

I looked at myself in the reflection the same way I had in Vegas. I touched my own exposed skin and remembered the way it had felt that first night he touched me. Silently, I wondered if it would still feel the same.

A smile appeared before a conclusion had been reached by an inebriated mind. An eerie sense of calm started to cover my skin with goosebumps like lilies sprouting over a grave.

I realized then, as I chuckled to myself in an empty room, why it was so hard to be there. I knew with the utmost certainty that I felt out of place there because I was. I always had been.

This was not to say there was anything wrong with the girls on the other side of the old home’s hollow wooden doors. There was nothing wrong with enjoying a more hedonistic lifestyle and, for many years, I envied them for being able to find the courage to indulge.

But the version of myself that I had presented to them felt as distant from myself as the reflection in front of me.

I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. I pictured a quiet night alone with the man I loved, and I reminded myself that this was not a decision I had to make. I could grow into a new version of myself that existed without him the same way that I’d grown along with him.

At the end of the night, I knew, he would be waiting for me. I couldn’t wait. I wanted to hear his voice, soft and comforting as he lulled me into another wonderful dream.

Just as my heart began to mend itself, and I felt the life returning to me, it drained from me in a matter of seconds.

“Hey Bunny,” a young girl sneered.

My eyes shot open to find that I was no longer alone in the bathroom. I had been joined by a face I knew too well.

Her friends would call her Montana. Spencer would call her ‘Ms. Fletcher.’ But to me she would always be the grating voice of insecurity. The supposed self-appointed President of my boyfriend’s fan club, and the most irritating girl I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing.

I would say that the hostility she instilled in me was a result of the alcohol, but I would be lying. Even Spencer had warned me about her. Never with much detail, but always with an overwhelming amount of disdain. She was the only student in his entire career that he would forcibly remove from his class. When I’d asked him why, he’d simply said that he pitied the girl.

I didn’t ask any questions. The look in his eyes told me she’d done enough to deserve his apathy.

Still, she was young and foolish and hopelessly in love with a man who hardly remembered her name, and so I felt obligated to show her a modicum of respect. Even if the only motivation was my own desire to be kind.

“Oh, hey,” I offered as politely as I could.

The girl stalked forward with enough confidence that it almost made me stumble. Despite her negative qualities, she possessed enough sureness in her own sexuality to make most things seem possible.

For a second, I wondered how different life must be for girls like her, but then I remembered that I didn’t particularly care about how anyone else looked at me. Spencer already looked at me with enough adoration to fill a black hole to oblivion.

Yet when she looked me up and down, I felt myself shrinking, if only for a second. I nonetheless forced myself to stand tall and refuse to cower.

“You look cute,” she snickered, “Where’s your boyfriend? Does he know you’re here?”

“Yeah, of course he does,” I shot back a little too quickly. She latched onto the tremble in my voice and dug her nails into the vulnerability.

“Sorry, I should have specified which boyfriend,” she continued.

This time when my hair stood on end, it was nothing like lilies. It was the needles of a cactus and the thorns wrapped around the roses.

“I meant Spencer,” she purred.

Don’t fucking call him that, was what I’d wanted to say. But the shock of the indecency had rendered me speechless. I just stared at her, exactly like the deer caught in the headlights. I had promised myself not to be prey anymore, but it had been so long since I’d been faced with a predator as ruthless as the unfortunate girl in front of me.

“I know you were seeing a couple guys there for a minute,” she continued without giving me a chance to answer. “I never thought you would have it in you. I guess you proved me wrong.”

A whore by any other name, I suppose.

I tried not to let it bother me.

“Uh… sure,” I said.

It didn’t work.

“Yeah, Spencer knows I’m here,” I repeated.

Her body brushed against mine as she forced her way in front of me. I stood firm in my space, refusing to give her even an inch more of my resolve.

As she perched herself on the counter, she made a point not to fix the risen hem of her skirt. I wondered whether she had meant for me to be jealous of her or attracted to her, but ultimately, I felt neither. If anything, I was confused by her attempted displays of dominance.

“Don’t you find it weird?” she asked as she leaned forward like it had been a scandalous thought, “Calling him his first name?”

“Not really… he’s my boyfriend,” I answered.

“Yeah. I guess it’s different when he’s like, actually your professor,” she laughed.

A familiar nausea began rocking in my stomach. It was unrelated to the alcohol. It was more like a warning of an impending storm that ushered me to find shelter.

But my shelter wasn’t there. He was at home, where I’d begged him to be. He wasn’t there when she said something that made me recoil.

“I almost slipped up so many times in class. Wouldn’t that have been embarrassing?”

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. It drowned out the distant sounds of the party and alerted me only of my desire to release the rage that had been brewing for several months now.

I took a deep breath in and released some of it with a quick exhale. I stepped to her right and pretended like I had something to fix about my make up so I could stop looking at her shit-eating grin. I ignored the obvious mockery of when he’d actually used the wrong name for me.

Shouldn’t that very incident have shown her how silly this charade was?

“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t call him by his first name,” I said more confidently after the oxygen returned to my brain, “He really doesn’t like it when his students do that. It’s disrespectful.”

She was unbothered by my words. In fact, it seemed like she’d hardly even heard me. She just continued on, each word hitting me like talons and teeth.

“He seemed to like it when I was in his office,” she said. If that had been all, I would have easily written it off. But it hadn’t been.

“Right before Thanksgiving?” she giggled before adding, “Although, I guess you weren’t there for a couple weeks…”

I swallowed the anxiety that shot up my throat in the form of liquor and bile.

“A man like him gets lonely.”

My fingers twitched as they struggled to find something to do. I forced them to move, to fix any errant hair or pigment on my face to not give her the satisfaction she was after.

She was lying. She had to be lying.

It didn’t make any sense that Spencer would cave to something so unabashedly lustful. My mind recounted each time he spoke about purity as the only thing worth protecting, but then the few times he spoke about men broke through.

‘He’s the same as any other man,’ was what he’d said about Kyle.

He had been right. At the time, I knew he was also speaking of himself. But how far did those indiscretions reach? Surely, it couldn’t be what this girl was implying.

Could it? It couldn’t be.

The confidence wavered as I realized that, even if it hadn’t been Spencer’s intention to trick me, he had narrowly escaped any discussion on exactly why he had cheated on Max.

I was taking too long to respond. The silence in the room was heavier than the air. The tension was even worse than both combined. It had only been a few seconds, but it was long enough that she had felt the need to deal what I’m sure she thought would be a fatal blow to a soft heart.

“Not to mention all the late night messages. Those never really stopped.”

Immediately, a burden was lifted from my chest.

“Right,” I laughed. The airy sound of my voice must have tipped her off to something, because I saw her tense in my peripherals. Without even turning to her, I hummed through the continued laughter, “Because that’s what my boyfriend known for. Texting.”

She didn’t concede even when I looked at her with a pout full of pity.

“Yeah, I guess those dating sites are more similar to e-mailing, so the old man is more comfortable with it,” she persisted, nonetheless.

My lips flattened but the sarcastic smile remained. Because I understood then, what Spencer had meant.

I felt bad for her, too.

I felt bad that she felt it was necessary to lie about any of it. I pitied her because I couldn’t imagine a world where she thought I wouldn’t know about my own boyfriend.

How many men had convinced her that paranoia was normal? Who had taught her pain to the extent that she was so confident I would believe any of the lies she’d told?

“Besides, it’s harder to hide phone calls from certain nosy people,” she spat. For the first time, I saw her initial confidence for what it really was. It was just fear; an almost debilitating amount of self-hatred disguised as something else.

I might not have known what happened with Spencer and Max, but I sure as shit knew that this girl was lying through her teeth.

“Right. I don’t know what you’re doing, but… it’s not going to work,” I told her. I tried to infuse the words with kindness that she was probably not used to. But when I said, “I trust my boyfriend,” she continued to fight.

“That’s so cute,” she snickered with so much disappointment it was almost palpable. “Stupid. But cute.”

I summoned all the willpower I had left after the alcohol had drained away most of my inhibitions. I was going to let her go on believing she had won, albeit with a bruised pride and nothing to show for it.

I was so ready to walk out the door without uttering a single mean word to her.

But Spencer had been right about her. She couldn’t take no for an answer. She just had to keep going.

“Guess Kyle was right about you, too,” she said.

And I snapped.

“What, you expect me to believe that Spencer Reid slept with a student just because she offered? Do you have any idea how fucking stupid you sound?”

The sound of my own voice surprised me. Her eyes grew wide, not with fear, but excitement at having earned the response she was hoping for.

She didn’t even particularly care if I was right, or even if I’d believed her. She just wanted a spectacle, and I’d given it to her.

“Actually, that’s a silly question. Of course you don’t,” I laughed, loud and bitter between the songs. The few people in the room took notice of the two of us, but no one took a step closer.

“You don’t have any idea what Professor Reid thinks about anything, because he doesn’t even know who you are.”

Behind the smile, I saw something inside of her crack. I should’ve known better than to poke the beast, but the rage inside of me demanded it be known. Like the wrath of Persephone, I flung thorned words at the woman and hoped that she would turn to mint and wither beneath my heel.

“The few times I mentioned you, it kind of seemed like he didn’t even remember your name,” I spat, “which is pretty fucking hard to do to someone with an eidetic memory.”

I could hear feet shuffling into the room, I could feel their eyes on my back the same way they stared when Spencer had called me by the wrong name.

I probably should’ve been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. I didn’t feel anything other than anger and hurt that didn’t result from any one specific person. That poor, pitiful girl just happened to be the right person at the wrong time. She had unknowingly batted at the wasp’s nest and would forever bear the scars.

She couldn’t hide her own disdain. She tried to speak, but her teeth told her not to. She bit down on her tongue and avoided looking at me or the crowd I felt forming.

Even though I had turned into the aggressive one, I still felt trapped.

“So you know what, even if he did sleep with you, which I find hard to believe considering — contrary to what you clearly think — he doesn’t really like nasty, vindictive little girls who try to fuck him before they even finish writing their dissertation, you certainly didn’t leave any lasting impact on him,” I shouted. I yelled loud enough for even the people in the hallway had to hear me. Then, much quieter and through what were almost tears, I choked, “And that’s somehow even more pathetic than lying about it in the first place.”

Like a hurt animal backed into a corner, I had lashed out and accidentally shared a glimpse of my insecurity that she wouldn’t let slip away.

“Wow,” she chuckled with a fake pout. “Did I strike a nerve, Bunny? Has ‘your boyfwend’ seen this side of you?”

“God, you’re so fucking stupid!” I spat. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but once it started, I couldn’t make it stop. “I don’t even know why I wasted my breath on you. Have fun living in your fantasy world where you think my boyfriend would ever want to fuck you.”

I turned on my heel and threw the door open. It took every bit of focus for me to not fall from the dizziness of the rage and anxiety. Even when familiar, friendly faces tried to stop me, I shoved their hands off me and pushed my way through the crowd.

“Bye, Bunny!” she called.

“Hey, you know, since you’re so obsessed with me, please feel free to date Kyle,” I answered. I threw my hands up like white flags as I ran the other direction, “Heaven knows he’d love you!”

As I stumbled through the crowd, I tried to find any reprieve from the feeling in my chest. I almost thought to lock myself in another, less intimidating bathroom, but the thought of looking at myself in the mirror made me sick.

I knew I wouldn’t like what I’d find.

So, instead of giving in to the misery she wanted, and instead of facing my own misgivings, I threw myself into the life I had once tried to live. I grabbed my friends and a drink I didn’t want.

I didn’t call Spencer.

I knew I wouldn’t like what he’d find.

Don’t think of a pink elephant.

It should be a simple instruction. Think of a blue monkey or a purple bird with a broken wing. Think of a brown bumblebee or any other oddly colored thing.

Just don’t think of a pink elephant.

In 1987, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper confirming the existence of the Pink Elephant Paradox, although back then, the experiments dealt with the less alliterative polar bear. The idea remained the same: the more you try not to think of something, the more likely it is that you will.

Perhaps the reason why we switched from tundra bears was more than a mere purple prose preference, and in fact had something to do with the inherently intrusive nature of everything else we’ve come to know by its name. From drunken hallucinations per Henry Wallace Phillips’s The Man and the Serpent in 1896 to the more recent tale of Walt Disney’s Dumbo, there has always been the haunting allure of the Pink Elephants on Parade.

I was not drunk, yet I couldn’t rid myself of the thought that I’d wanted more than anything to forget. I knew the psychology; I knew that the harder I tried not to picture every way everything could go horribly wrong, the more I would fixate on it until I was trampled by two-ton feet.

Thinking about my Bunny being mangled by talons and teeth wouldn’t make it any more likely to happen, but it would certainly drive me insane. Yet it somehow felt like a disservice to not even consider it.

If something did happen and I hadn’t been worried, what would that make me in the aftermath? Nothing different than the alternative, I reminded myself. Because if something did happen and I had been sulking without action, I’d be equally paralyzed by my failure.

Perhaps that was the true source of my torture. It was the powerlessness of it all. This pain, this endless suffering was a remnant of each time that my intellect abandoned me when I’d needed it most.

I stared at the door to my apartment and tried to imagine the wood being adorned with flowers. I looked at it until dry eyes burned and my resolve shattered.

The pink elephant appeared, and on his trunk, he wore a crown covered with wilted flowers and brittle thorns.

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

The sound erupted as I watched blood dripping from its proboscis. There stood the albino elephant stained with the blood of every innocent life lost to poachers. It cried out a warning that would be heard too late.

As I lifted the phone, I knew what I would find.

Don’t think of the pink elephant. Ignore its cries and hold on to the hope that it will be different this time.

But there it was, with LED burning through the daze and refusing to be forgotten.

“You better come get your little rabbit before someone gets hurt,” the message read.

I faced the unfamiliar number with nothing else to say.

“I’m on my way,” I answered.

And I ran.

No matter how loud the door was when I slammed it behind me, I couldn’t hear it over the incessant pounding of my heart. I was acutely aware that what I was doing was reckless and dangerous, but my body moved without instruction. It functioned purely on a mixture of adrenaline and muscle memory.

Each traffic light that flashed green felt like a mercy and mockery. It was as if some greater being, some bastardization of God was indicating to me that it wouldn’t matter how fast I got there—it was already too late.

My mind was filled with endless images of every vile thing man has ever done. I pressed a shaking palm against one eyelid until I saw nothing but red.

Red like blood-stained lilies. Red like the burning surface of the sun. Red like everything at the end.

Danger.

I could hear the sirens calling my name.

You’re in danger.

But I wasn’t, she was.

This is going to hurt.

I slammed on my brakes just in time to avoid colliding with the ambulance flying down the road perpendicular to my own lane of travel. The ear shattering screech of rubber and asphalt still seemed louder than the high-pitched screaming. The grim reaper with flashing lights affixed to metal limbs.

All the air in my lungs left me at once, like I’d awoken from a dream to find myself stuck in a liminal space.

The sudden shift in pressure and space did, however, alert me to the fact I had little to no clue where I was. I looked up at the street sign and I begged the universe to alter however much was necessary so that it would change.

I didn’t want to believe that it was correct when it told me that the ambulance had become my guide to where I’d needed to be. The world stopped at the same second the stoplight turned red. I waited, basking in the reckoning like humility might save me now.

Eventually, I received permission to proceed, although it did little to assuage a heart that had already broken itself in preparation for what it would find. Each piece of ceramic once held together by the liquid gold flowing from her lips had lodged itself in my lungs.

Yet when I made it up to the house that I knew she would be at, there was no ambulance in sight.

It hadn’t been enough time to find her. It couldn’t have been. Before I got out of the car, I forced myself to don whatever remained of my civility to be sure not to hurt anyone but those who should be held responsible.

I was not judge. I was not executioner. I was just another fallible fool. I tried to remind myself. I tried to maintain any visage of authority before I confronted what would, undoubtedly, be the least helpful collection of young adults in town that evening.

As I approached the door, the few people who braved the freezing temperatures hardly seemed to notice me.

The door was already open. The scene was, however, far from inviting. The heady stench of liquor and marijuana was somehow the least offensive part of what I’d found inside the four walls.

The music was so loud that I could feel the bass in my blood like a hammer to my heart. Every second that passed that I hadn’t found her yet, I felt a part of me dying. The tragic romantic in me swore that was a sign sent from my Bunny.

But it wasn’t. She promised she would call me. She promised everything would be alright.

“Yo! Professor Reid!” a relatively familiar voice called to me.

I turned to find a boy from my class, who I could only assume lived somewhere in the filth.

“Where is she?” I asked with as much patience as I could muster.

Luckily for the boy, he was sober enough to know who I was looking for.

“Around. Somewhere… I think,” he muttered inarticulately, “I’m almost positive I haven’t seen her leave.”

But he hadn’t been sober enough to help, it seemed. I abandoned any hope from him and opted to scan the sea of faces, instead. I tried to focus on any that felt familiar enough to be able to find her.

My heart pounded harder. My rib cage rattled like a death knell. With each passing second, it got louder until it was impossible to ignore.

If I’d been anywhere else, I think I could have pulled it together. I tried so hard not to project my own experiences onto these… children, all things considered. They were kids who just wanted to find themselves. They were going about it all wrong, but that was simply part of the journey.

But in every girl, I saw Alexa Lisbon. In every boy, I saw the faces of the boys who chose to find themselves by stripping me of my safety.

I recalled the first time I’d tried to tell my Bunny what happened to me, only to get lost in the ghosts crawling out of the graveyard buried in my chest. I never wanted her to know what that was like.

Yet when I looked around, I watched every unwanted advance and lost soul bumbling through a group of people who’d yet to learn how awful they could be under the right circumstances.

That was when the boy spoke again, unaware of what he had been implicitly allowing.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he laughed “That’s hilarious.”

The mask slipped. It cracked and shattered the same as my heart and I lost any patience that might have remained.

I turned to him but had the wherewithal not to touch him.

He wasn’t Kyle. He was just an idiot.

“Listen, I understand this is all fun and games to you, but if someone doesn’t tell me where she is in the next thirty seconds, I will have every cop in the county at your doorstep before you even have time to climb out of the window. Do you understand?”

His eyes widened before his whole face turned to a nervous grimace.

“Chill, dude.”

A couplet consisting of two of the worst words he could have uttered. But thankfully for him, they had been quickly followed by the only thing capable of extinguishing my rage.

“She’s right there.”

Before I could even turn to see her, I heard her.

“Professor!” she yelled over the music. The title was featherlight and filled with so much joy that I nearly fell to my knees at the mere sound.

It was innocent; still innocent.

“Bunny, oh my god,” I sighed. It felt like the first time I’d breathed since she left me a few hours earlier. I would need the extra air, too, because she tore through the crowd and barreled into me with no inhibition. I couldn’t help but laugh as she nearly took us both down to the ground in her haste.

Despite her fervent, untamable teenage-esque excitement, I managed to hold her with something resembling fragility. My hands knotted in her hair as I held her against my chest. My embrace became stronger the longer she touched me; like she was the roots that kept me tethered to the ground after a lifetime of wandering through drought riddled fields.

It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds, but the past half hour of trying to find her had caught up to me at once. I savored each second of the peace I found in her.

The same second my arms relented, though, she had straightened herself enough to wriggle her arms free. She grabbed hold of my face with both hands and her full force, and my wistful little lavender girl downright insisted that I kiss her.

I did. Or, at least, I tried. The pungent taste of what I could only imagine was pure liquor almost made me recoil. Once the initial shock had faded, though, I subdued the eager girl into a more tender meeting of our lips.

It took her about five seconds to decide that she’d had enough of that and return to her previous efforts to get me drunk from her tongue alone. That had been a lot, but nothing unmanageable. I just laughed and tried to pry her hands from my cheeks.

When she’d dropped one hand, I thought her sense had returned to her.

But then she grabbed hold of the waistband of my pants and I decided it was probably high-time to take her home.

“God, you are drunk,” I chuckled.

My Bunny was safe in my arms when she hummed. So happily, so freely, she curled within my embrace and nuzzled herself against my chest. My heart had calmed, but still reached out for her all the same.

Gently, I lifted her face back up to look at me. I looked into glassy, bloodshot eyes and still saw universes worth of love. I sought signs of pain and found only the kind that would be rendered inconsequential in time.

Still, I had to ask, “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

“Mmmhm m’great,” she slurred with very little enunciation, “wan kiss more.”

“Not right now. Let’s go home first,” I offered.

I hadn’t realized how much it would break her heart. Her eyes grew big and filled to the brim with tears that would almost seem comical under the circumstances. I tried to straighten out her disheveled appearance but found myself growing even fonder of her somehow.

Which would work against me when she pleaded, “Please?”

It would never stop feeling like this, I realized. Her begging would never cease to render me stupid. All the IQ points in the world would never make me strong or smart enough not to give into her swiftly and without remorse.

But at the same time, I knew how many people were watching. I knew how easy it would be for someone to read my actions as a rejection rather than a desire to keep her intimacy entirely to myself. So, I gave into her the only way I knew how.

I pressed a soft kiss against her forehead. I lingered there, feeling the warmth of clammy skin that still tasted as sweet as the honeysuckles from my youth. I held her steady like twining vines upholding a weary flower so that she could feel the sun without having to leave the safety of the shade.

She seemed pleased. Her dopey smile, while altered by the alcohol, still seemed as genuine as it had been the first time that I’d held her in the early morning light.

It would never stop feeling like this, I realized. I would love her with my everything, forever.

What a wonderful, horrifying feeling, to let your heart wander amongst so many that would crush it without hesitation. What a worse fate it would be to have never had it at all.

“Come on, sweetheart. We’re leaving.”

My Bunny followed my direction without another word. There was nothing resembling a protest. Part of me wondered if she would have followed anyone in that state, but I knew it was just my paranoia projecting onto her yet again.

Catherine Adams is dead, I reminded myself. There was no reason to believe that she, or anyone else, might recycle tactics that had managed to hurt me.

Yet the scar on my hand stung the entire ride home. It demanded my attention even more than the heavily intoxicated girl half-asleep in my passenger seat. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over at her, but every time I did, the pain became even more nauseating until I could hardly focus.

Eventually, though, I’d made my way home without incident. The disgust and adrenaline had exhausted themselves, leaving nothing but the many skeletons in my closet. They crowded my insides until it felt like I would burst with a flurry of acid coated, mineralized shrapnel.

I looked over at my Bunny who fumbled with a still-locked car door. I saw the almost suffocating innocence, the ease with which she could find herself in any number of my work-associated memories.

There pink elephant hadn’t come, no matter how much I’d called it. It couldn’t because Catherine is dead, I reminded myself.

But the man who shot me wasn’t.

“Who were you arguing with?” I asked.

My Bunny gave up trying to leave the car and instead curled into a ball right where she was.

“What’re ya talkin’bout?” she said with a yawn so carefree that a broken heart might mistake it for mockery.

She wasn’t being cruel; just naive. She had been as clueless as I’d always wanted her to be around me. But in that moment, her sheltered mind lacked the imagination to understand why I’d even arrived in the first place.

“You’re… friend, I guess, texted me and told me you were in trouble,” I explained with as much patience as I could.

My Bunny twisted into a perplexed, and slightly defensive posture.

“Whaaat?”

Rather than trust myself to explain it without releasing my internalized hatred and raising my voice, I simply handed her my phone. Again, she grimaced at the contrast of the LED against the darkness. Once she was able to steady herself enough to read it, however, all she did was roll her eyes.

“Oh, well… that sounds way scarier than what happened,” she scoffed.

“Yeah, it does,” I spat back bluntly. The sound hit like a bat to a fragile girl’s heart.

The wounded look in her eyes provoked an all-encompassing regret.

“I feel like… you’re mad at me,” she whispered. She squirmed in her seat and tried to straighten her back only to find herself sliding back down with shame.

I should have apologized to her then. But it had been late, and I’d exhausted all efforts in my attempt to save her from nonexistent enemies, so instead of admitted fault, I clung to the painful memories that had nothing to do with her.

“Who were you arguing with?” I asked again, more aggressively than I’d ever wanted to speak to her.

“A stupid bitch.”

Resting my elbows against the steering wheel, I lowered my face into my hands.

She wasn’t the only one who’d felt ashamed.

“I’m going to need more information than that,” I demanded.

The spunk I’d admired in her came out sounding like venom.

“Why? It‘s none of your business!”

“Don’t give me an attitude right now,” I warned.

She didn’t heed it. Instead, she threw her arms forward to shield her heart and screeched, “Why are you mad at me? I didn’t send it!”

There was nothing left. The well of charitably had been drained and left nothing but starved, scorched roots seeking for something it would never find. I wanted comfort, but she had needed it.

With a raised voice, I shouted, “Because! I just had to walk into a… disgusting house party filled with a bunch of stupid drunk boys because I thought you were in danger, and if it turns out this was all just because you were… bored, or insecure, I have every right to be upset with you, Bunny!”

If I’d stopped for a minute, I would have heard her sobbing. If I had looked at her instead of my own scars displayed against my palm, I would have seen how the sound made her shake.

But I didn’t. I steadfastly ignored the reality that this had not been the time, place, or circumstances to try to sort through my own responses to something that had turned out to be nothing.

“I thought you were hurt! I thought you—!”

My throat closed around the words. I choked on the thoughts that had been filling my head. Even in my panic, my body had known not to speak them into existence. Those thoughts were supposed to be her shield. They were not meant to be wielded as swords.

“I thought…” I croaked.

I thought it had happened again.

But it hadn’t. It hadn’t happened. It had been different this time, exactly as she’d promised.

You’re safe here, she had told me. But that was only because the fear I felt hadn’t been shared or understood by the drunken, withered flower beside me because I hadn’t told her any of it. I had kept it from her—lied to her—only to blame her for it. To punish her for being able to live the way she deserved. The way I had promised to allow her to.

“You scared me,” I said with a trembling, but still rage filled timber.

It was my fault, though. Not hers. She didn’t scare me. I was just scared.

Before I could craft the words, however, she spoke them for me.

“I’m sorry…” she whispered. Dejected tears began pouring like endless rivers down her cheeks, and I drowned in them exactly like she had.

“Bunny,” I cried with her, “it’s not your fault. I’m sorry. I’m not being fair to you.”

She just kept crying, though. Her sobs got louder the more kindness that I showed her. I couldn’t blame her for the confusion I’d caused.

The clear blood of torn petals soaked the softness of her and made it heavy. I reached over and guided the poor girl back to me. I lifted the weight with careful hands. I wiped her make-up-stained tears aside and tried to find a way to reassure her.

“It’s okay, Bunny. I’m not mad at you,” I swore to her. The gentle words, like the kindness, had the opposite effect of the one I’d intended.

Once she spoke, though, I realized that the tears had hardly been about my actions. In fact, it seemed like a lot of her anger hadn’t been from my unspoken fears, but her own.

“Some stupid bitch told me that you kissed her!” she warbled.

“Well, that’s certainly not true,” I scoffed. Perhaps I would’ve been more articulate about how ridiculous of a notion it had been if I hadn’t been caught off guard by the accusation. But I was truly so confused that I didn’t know how else to express it in the moment.

“S-She told me…” my Bunny whispered between endearing and adorable hiccups despite the tears, “She told me that you slept with her after you kicked me out.”

The rage from earlier returned in full force. One hand gripped the steering wheel enough to void any blood from the space between skin and the bone of once broken knuckles. The monster within me bared its teeth in search of vengeance.

But then it was gone, subdued by the insistent sniffling of the most beloved part of myself. The stubborn leaves that clung to parched branches, beautiful in their resilience while facing the relentless cold.

She had been so beautiful, even then. Even when she had nothing left to give but broken whimpers, there was a light that shone so painfully bright.

I’d tried so hard to prove to her that I would never do anything to hurt her. I had promised her that very morning that, if given the options of losing everything to save her, I would take it without hesitation. I would bury myself under six feet and every regret I’d ever had if it meant that she would never feel pain again.

And there I was, causing it from both my own hand and another’s.

“Please don’t tell me you believe that,” I begged her. “I would never do that. I would never do that to you, Bunny.”

She nodded in agreement, yet she covered her head with her arms as she shouted, “I know, but I still got mad!”

Any relief from her believing in me was outweighed by how pitiful she looked. It wounded me deeply to see her withdraw from me like I would ever find fault in her righteous anger.

I had been angry, too. Angry that someone would dare to use me as a proxy to hurt her. Angry that, through my own desire to protect her, I had probably failed to give her the requisite knowledge to laugh in the face of such a distortion of the truth.

I abandoned the steering wheel in favor of her. I carefully unfurled the dispirited flower until she revealed her brilliance to me. I comforted her the best way I knew how. I pulled her closer until her small hands clutched my shirt. That time when she nuzzled her face into me, I felt the cool dampness of her tears.

Exactly as I had promised her, I tried to bear the weight of her sadness so that she might be able to breathe again. Eventually, she continued to explain her own frustration. Her voice was small, shaky, and pure, just like the creature I knew her by.

“Who lies about that?” she asked, “Why would you ever do that to someone?”

My mind immediately went back to the young girl that had fantasized about my Bunny’s worst nightmares. The obstinate child who couldn’t take no for answer. The same broken girl that relied on her conventional beauty to hide the ugliness that rested just below the surface of perfectly painted skin.

I refused to let my hands turn to fists. I kept my palm splayed across her back so she could feel the steadiness, the safety of my embrace. I wouldn’t let any anger at her make its way to my darling. The same as before, that girl would not her what she wanted.

“She’s just jealous because she knows she’ll never be you.”

You, my bespoken proof of purpose among the mad. You, with a softness bestowed upon but still envied by the Gods. You, with your trembling hands holding up the weight of a world that will never deserve you.

You, I felt loudly enough to drown out the rest, You are to be perfect to be made into mere tragedy.

“I love you so much,” I said, infusing the words with the metaphors I would never have time to perfect. “I would never do anything to jeopardize your happiness.”

Except tell the truth, a dark voice recounted.

I ignored it’s taunting. I still had time to make it right, but in that moment, all I’d wanted to focus on was my Bunny’s barely perceptible smile.

“I love you, too…” she whispered.

It hadn’t been enough. I had been greedy after a difficult night, so I asked my darling girl for one final favor.

“Stop crying, sweetheart. It breaks my heart.”

“I can’t help it,” she admitted with some strange combination of a chuckle and a sob, “I’m very drunk.”

I laughed, too.

“Yeah, you are,” I laughed because it had been true. I wondered if I would ever get used to bearing witness to such unabashed vulnerability. In my heart, though, I knew I wouldn’t.

It would always be like this, I thought just before the shadows mirrored it back to me in their own words.

It won’t be different this time.

I turned to the night, illuminated only by flickering streetlights. Within the shadows, I saw the ghosts from the skeletons still crushing the tired muscle affixed between many layers of bone cages. My fears sneaked through the sinew and lingered just beyond the glass and metal that housed us.

It will be different this time, I swore.

“Come on. Let’s get you some tissues and water,” I said, definitively making up my mind.

The innocent girl, now free from the tears, lit the way for our return to peace with a smile.

“And cuddles and kisses?” she asked.

“Yes, lots of those,” I assured her.

As we made our way to the door, I fought the urge to turn back. I opened the weary wood that tried to keep us safe. I heard it’s wailing as it fought against the intrusion, it’s harsh sound acting like a warning that something was lurking just beyond the light.

After my Bunny made her way into the meager safety I could offer her, I stood for a moment on the other side of the threshold.

The death knell in my chest rattled louder. It begged me between its beating to look back before taking another step.

I ignored every instinct and followed her, instead.

But in the distance, I swore I heard a strangled cry through torn tusks.

Don’t think of a pink elephant.

(Tell me what you thought of this chapter here!)

Please consider liking, reblogging, or commenting on the fic if you are on the taglist. Otherwise, you are essentially asking me to take an extra step to include you while offering me absolutely NOTHING in exchange, which is a pretty shitty feeling.

Please send me an ask or a DM if you’d like to join the taglist. I also update on my Wattpad and my AO3 at the same time, if you prefer those notification settings.

TB&TB: @dashneydanger , @skiller0dani , @itsmytimetoodream , @dontcallmekittens , @a-girl-interupted , @phantombaby , @fightingdragonswithwho

241 notes · View notes

inu-yasha · 8 months

Text

Kikyou is full of love and kindness

Kikyou is a very tragic character. Her character is so complex that it is difficult to understand her, but she can be understood if will look at it differently to. Her character is tragic, deep and beautiful. I think Kikyou is the best written character of Rumiko out of all the Kikyou versions. Kikyou suffered more injustice from Inuyasha's old team from the 2000s. Her personality was completely erased. Her warm and soft side seems to have disappeared, her scenes with Inuyasha are erased or drastically changed, where Kikyou is shown as a truly unpleasant person. In a newer fan version from another artist, she is insulted and written that she is just an "ex girlfriend" This woman didn't deserve this. Kikyou faces injustice from every possible angle.

This post has been in the making for over 2 years. I've been thinking about writing this post for a really long time like you see, but I always put it aside. Now I can finally do it. This post is an analysis of her character. I know that there have been many 'analyses', but this analysis is different and shows a different side. I want to show that Kikyou is not a 'cold bitch'

The most common accusation against Kikyou and questioning her love is that she "asked Inuyasha to turn into a human. and higurashi accepts him who he's and truly love him"

I answered this question here, so can see it, but I wanted to add something because Kikyou and higurashi are often compared ,She and higurashi come from different backgrounds and times.

They both have different upbringings and both have different and mentality. higurashi is free and can do whatever she wants, no one limits her, she has many friends and she is free to love and hate,and all emotions. No one limits her, no one expects anything from her, she had no care or people's lives in front of her, she didn't have to hide or control her emotions. She wasn't lonely. She could always talk about her problems with her friends, she didn't have a father, but she had a mother who took care of her and her brother, so she didn't have to bear the burden of raising a brother, she didn't have to bear the burden of being alone. Kikyou she wasn't a free human.

Nothing is known about Kikyou and her past, but what can be sure be said, that Kikyou had to mature at a very young age because she had to take care of her younger sister. Kikyou became her parent and sister and she was also under the care of village and people for whom she was a 'great priestess and power', she was responsible for people's lives. Here I will support the anime, it has canonical scenes from the manga, so…. Kikyou and Kaede before shikon no tama traveled together and studied and I think that was Kikyou's only freedom, her feelings and loneliness were less. Everything changed when she got shikon no tama. Kikyou had to face demon attacks wherever she was and save the village and people, her duties became more burdensome. She couldn't show weakness or any other feeling. Kikyou wasn't free to love or hate. She was supposed to be a mass without feelings. She had to suppress all her feelings. She only had a sister and no friends. She couldn't talk to anyone about her worries and concerns, the burden she had to carry. She couldn't kill Inuyasha because she knew how he felt, I understand because she felt the same way. Inuyasha came into her life and was the first and only person Kikyou opened up to.

I will repeat it, her speech came from the depths of her suffering, wounded, lonely soul and heart. She told the truth. She didn't feel human, even though she was human. She felt that she didn't belong anywhere, all she had to do was take care of the former village and kill demons every day, without any feelings, as if she didn't feel anything. She was human, but she didn't feel like anything. She didn't know where she belonged. Literally like Inuyasha, that's why she could understand him so well. Inuyasha saw this sadness, her eyes, her smile, everything was sad, but I have the impression that if she could, she would cry. But all he has to do is suppress everything. Inuyasha was also despised by humans and demons because he did not belong to any worlds, he was a mixed race despised by both worlds. Kikyou understood this and Inuyasha's feelings perfectly.

Kikyou loved him as a half-demon and had nothing against it, but seeing how people reacted and that when he had a gem nearby and had to keep an eye on it, and he wanted to lead a normal and peaceful life with Inuyasha, the jawel had to disappear. She just wanted a quiet life with her sister and the person she loves. Nothing more. She only asked him, she didn't force it on him. He made the decision himself out of love for her. He wanted to do it for her and live happily with her. This also shows how much Inuyasha loves her too. Kikyou and Inuyasha knew that people looked down on the relationship between a demon and a human. Inuyasha's parents are a good example and they could live together peacefully the jewel must disappear. Kikyou simply thought that if the gem was used with good intentions, it would disappear. She will be free and will be able to live a peaceful life with Inuyasha and her sister.

it's easy to say "I accept you as you are" when you don't know how people look at people and demons, and you come from the free world, with free choice and you think that everything is so simple And your only problem is school and worrying because 'inuyasha went to Kikyou' and she can't have him just for herself. Kikyou bothered her so much because she took Inuyasha away from 'her' who wasn't hers, and she acted as if he only had to look at her. Of course, there is a moment where she understands Kikyou's feelings, but it's only momentary because later she has a problem again that Inuyasha is with Kikyou and she can't stand it. Her understanding is shallow and a shallow approach. An egoist is kagome and egocentric, focused only on herself, her pain, her feelings, and her friends only confirm this.

Inuyasha and Kikyou thought they were betrayed on each other, but even though their anger was visible, they still loved each other. Kikyou, instead of killing him, used an arrow to put him to sleep. She wasn't able to kill him, and she could have done it, but she decided to put him to sleep and chose death because she didn't want to live without him. A love stronger than the anger and excruciating pain Kikyou felt. Kikyou died with a lot of anger owards Inuyasha, Inuyasha also felt betrayed and attacked the desperate higurashi thinking it was Kikyou and despite everything he didn't stop loving her. They both felt angry and hurt by the betrayal, and that's what they thought.

Kikyou came back to life, but did she ask for it? No.

Urasure,created Kikyou so that she could have a slave and use her power. She thought that Kikyou would be at her service. Kikyou has returned against her will and she is now anxious, angry and hurt!! Inuyasha literally says the same thing in chapter 1, only Inuyasha calmed down and understood that he loved Kikyou, even though he denied it.

When Kikyou attacked Inuyasha, Kikyou received another slap from fate. Well, her younger sister stood against her. This is truly disgusting behavior from Kaede

I don't really care at this point that she knew Inuyasha wasn't evil, but what she knew was that they both betrayed each other and even Kaede thought Inuyasha had inflicted that wound on her when Inuyasha denied it, she immediately believed him and tried to stop her sister, knowing that she had the right to be angry. At that moment, Kikyou felt betrayed once again, now by the person closest to her, who she's cared in the past. It's really painful when your sister opposes you and tell to person who thinks he betrayed you, killed you, deceived you to destroy her body Kikyou understands that she can't count on anyone even in her pain and anger. She stood up for a girl I barely know and Inuyasha. and once again she learns that there is no one but himself and her own pain, immediately after waking up. Her sister really made her understand..

It made even me angry, and I still feel disgusted by Kaede. She is an ungrateful brat, which she shows throughout the series. Kaede should apologize to her. Not Kikyou to her. from Kikyou's point of view, very hurtful.

Kikyou tries to kill him a second time. At this point it is known who is behind the betrayal. Inuyasha and Kagome knew about it, but Kikyou didn't yet. Kikyou wanted to go to hell and go with him so that they could be together. Inuyasha didn't mind.

This means that Kikyou and Inuyasha love each other so much that they can go to hell together, to be together. This is Love. They really love each other. Kikyou, knowing that she did not belong to the living or the dead, tried to live normally in the village as in life. It didn't work, but she tried.

This woman has been rejected from the world and people for the second time, and the only person who understands her and always runs to her is Inuyasha.

Kikyou finds out that it is Onigumo and her goal is to destroy it, which is natural. So he steals the jewel and gives it to Naraku. Not because she helps him, but because she wants to destroy him.

Her actions may not be understandable, but she is not selfish. She just took it upon herself to kill him. She wanted to do it herself because she doesn't know any other way, only Inuyasha was there for her and supported her, but Kikyou didn't really have time to learn how to rely on others, shared her pain and worries. She acts alone because she knows that she is alone and lonely and is ready to take the risk because the person who destroyed her life and Inuyasha is alive and doing great. She has always been lonely. She doesn't know any other life, only this time she doesn't have her treacherous sister with her. She travels, helps everyone and does everything to bring the murderer to death. this way Kikyou showed that she knows how to destroy Naraku when they couldn't destroy him for almost the entire series. Of course, higurashi finished what Kikyou didn't finish.

Kikyou was the only one who showed concern for Inuyasha's feelings, the only one who took his feelings into account and the only one who truly cared about him.

She knew his friends would be worried about him. Kikyou thanked him for being with her. Her care and gentleness and gratitude are with her. Kikyou is just happy that he could be close to her even for a moment, but she knew that he also had friends who would worry about him.

Kikyou was the only one who predicted naraku's movements like kagome's eyes. naraku wanted her eyes, what Kikyo had previously predicted and warned inuyasha and helped her and his team giving higurashi an arrow to help her.

Kikyou helped people and was not afraid to face the attack of her murderer and lose her life in this revenge. Kikyou helped Inuyasha's team, she did a lot more than Kagome, the only thing she can be thanked for is saving Kikyou's life, but she didn't even do it of her own free will, only for Inuyasha. Kikyou predicted Naraku's movements very well and carefully. Kikyou saved Kohaku's life, but also Miroku's by absorbing his curse, which means that Kikyou accepted Naraku's curse into her body, which was really dangerous for her.

Kikyou gave up her revenge for Kohaku saving his life. She chose his life over her revenge and only Kohaku truly loved and respected Kikyou apart from Inuyasha. She had someone with whom she shared the same pain again and he was the same as her. And really, Kikyou appreciated Kohaku and wanted him to live, and she managed to do so. Kikyou always saved others, but she could never save herself. The well-being of others was always the most important, especially people she loved like Inuyasha and Kohaku

Kikyou is the core of everything. It was her soul that wanted to meet Inuyasha, that's why Kagome met Inuyasha and stayed with him. If it weren't for Kikyou's soul, these two wouldn't have met. It was Kikyou who fought and predicted what Naraku would do at an early stage of the story, she knew how to get rid of him, even though she was neither dead nor alive, she helped everyone, always showing goodness and kindness. Her love for Inuyasha, despite the anger and pain she felt at the beginning, has always been there. He loves Inuyasha, always has and always will. Same with Inuyasha. Death could separate them, but despite everything, Inuyasha loved her with all his heart.

Kikyou is an extremely complex and tragic character. Full of pain and loneliness, full of kindness and love. She deserves more love than hate

#inuyasha #inu yasha #pristess kikyo #kikyou #kikyo #inukik #pro inukik #inuyasha x kikyo #kagome higurashi #kaede #kohaku #my analysis #higurashi kagome #sango #miroku #pro kikyo

61 notes · View notes