#i had to reread it two times to fully grasp its meaning

[twyrrinren]

#how to be that girl #ryoko kui #i had to reread it two times to fully grasp its meaning #aaaaaa #hiroki gave his old clothes that's why they are small but baggy

[autumnalwalker]

Empty Names - 20 - Changeling Child

Author's Note: In which Ashan helps out a fairy that just realized they aren't human and draws uncomfortable parallels to his own experiences. Also, Lacuna horrifies everyone with mad science. There were a lot of delays with life generally getting in the way of this chapter being written, but I am a little proud of myself for just barely squeezing this in before the year ends, as per the goal I set for myself a month ago (in my home time zone anyhow). That said, I didn't manage to give this chapter my usual once-over full reread before posting, so I won't be too surprised if I edit this post later, if only to add the spoiler commentary to the tags. Hope you enjoy, and Happy New Year, everyone. Minor edits to wording/typos have now been made and additional commentary has been added to the tags. Word Count: 11,337 Content Warnings: Fantasy fight scene violence. Attempted (but failed) mind control. Passing reference of blood and gore without detail. Mild body horror. Deadnaming and misgendering a trans person (not Lacuna for once).

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It is a strange thing, to suddenly obtain a new material possession when one has previously made a point of keeping as few as possible.  Stranger still when that new possession is slightly too big to fit into the folded space within the sleeves of your robe to keep safely on your person at all times.  Eris did however include a white carrying case to go along with the matte-black laptop she gifted to Ashan last week, so that is something.  It is not quite the same shade of white as his robe, but it is close enough that Ashan appreciates the thought.

For the time being, that laptop has stayed hooked up inside the guestroom within Bridgewood Manor that Ashan has been occupying since that first mission with Road nearly two months ago.  At Lacuna’s urging he has tried to incorporate it into his morning and evening routines, if only to check the electronic mail.  Thus far that has mostly just consisted of messages from Lacuna containing images with humor he is still grasping, the occasional suggestion from Eris regarding educational resources, and one from Bridgewood congratulating the three of them on connecting to the Manor’s WiFi.  That last part had been nearly as esoteric process as Lacuna’s explanation of memes, and that had rapidly devolved into a rambling lecture about long cats, defunct deities, a philosopher called Plato, dual linguistic meanings lost in translation, and the ultimately futile and deceptive nature of the written word.

Whether it had been Lacuna’s intention or not, that extended feline rant led to his spending even more of his downtime on the computer than in the Bridgewood library since then.  Not for the memes, but to find out who Plato was.  That reference to an (apparently) historic figure as if familiarity were assumed once more drove home the fact that being stolen away before even completing an elementary-level education made him a foreigner in his own homeland.  True, Aliana had tutored him on mathematics, logic, literary analysis, and other such skills in addition to magic, but none of the history or philosophy he learned under her guiding hand came from Earth.  And why would it have?

But now this strange little bifurcated box offered a way to, if not fully amend, then at least mitigate that ignorance.  While Ashan had long been aware of the Internet and its theoretical use as a store of knowledge and a communication medium, between a childhood in a home without a computer and adolescence spent in world without electronics he had never really experienced it until Eris showed up at the Lonely Walk office and handed him a surprise gift.  To hear about it is one thing, but to actually scroll through the pages upon pages listing titles for tens of thousands of transcribed books free for access and hyperlinked inter-referencing encyclopedia articles tracing an interwoven tapestry of conceptual linkage from ancient philosophers to arboreal bearcats was another thing entirely.  Ashan had known scholars on Orthon who would weep with joy and envy at the mere idea of such a library. 

Admittedly, there were some complications with exploring the wider Internet caused by his translation charm not knowing how to handle trying to use a keyboard.  Writing words by hand had been bad enough ever since the onset of his condition, causing whatever he wrote to come out as a pidgin of a dozen or so different languages - many of which he had never even personally encountered before - that was effectively gibberish to anyone without translation magic of their own or a very intense interest in linguistics.  Trying to force his thoughts through a single achingly unrecognizable symbol at a time to try to form words specifically in a language that had been stolen from him was… distressing.  Speech recognition software had proven no better, with the device - as Eris explained it to her - responding to specific physical sound patterns without any true perception happening for his charm to tap into.  But he still has the collection of links and bookmarks his friends had sent him, and that is proving to more than suffice.  Just those first two resources Eris provided him with were more than could be read in a single human lifetime.

Friends.  What a wonderful thing to be able to call someone.  How had he never realized what he was missing?

So now, on this particular morning, after his long-standing morning rituals of exercise and meditation (and a breakfast that he is perfectly capable of remembering and not putting off when there are not more pressing matters to attend to), Ashan turns on his laptop and checks his electronic mail.  There is one new message, sent from Lacuna at two in the morning.

Its subject line reads “Simulations are done.”

Ashan is not normally one to hurry or rush things.  Ashan barely takes the time to skim the full text of the message before closing the laptop and departing from Bridgewood Manor and the surrounding Estate at the quickest possible pace that will not leave him visibly winded.  The brief time that it takes to reach the tree bridge that will transport him to its twin tree across the street from the office feels like an age in his excitement, and he tries to remind himself that after this long of a wait a few extra minutes will not make a difference.  It is certainly nothing worth breaking decorum over, even with no one else around.

An eager grin the like of which has not graced his face in years creeps in all the same as he steps out of the Bridgewood Estate’s secure transit between the trees and into the early morning sunshine.

He crosses the street and then the sidewalk, and then the outermost of the security wards surrounding the Lonely Walk Outreach Agency.  Invisible to the mundane or inattentive eye though they might be, after all the time he has spent adjusting and fine tuning them it is difficult for Ashan not to perceive them as a shifting rainbow lattice-work overlaid in concentric bubbles around the refurbished antique building.

The front door is unlocked, indicating that Lacuna must already be inside, given that Road and Eris were not expecting to be back from the followup to their most recent mission for another day or two.  Ashan heads straight downstairs towards Lacuna’s basement lab; the woman is hardly ever anywhere else these days.

And yet, when the door slides open he finds her usual chair unoccupied despite all the computer monitors surrounding it being turned on.  Ashan’s first thought is that she has simply stepped out for a moment to feed or relieve herself, but then he notices the figure displayed on the monitors.  Eight different cameras at eight different angles and levels of zoom are displaying eight live feeds split across two screens  Eight mechanical eyes watch a faceless white mannequin in worn and baggy clothes standing almost perfectly still in the middle of an evenly-lit blank white room.  Its chest and shoulders rise and fall to the rhythm of slow and steady breaths despite the lack of mouth or nose.  A timestamp on one of the video feeds tells Ashan that the recording has been running for nearly five hours now.

Ashan crosses the lab to the testing chamber door where he finds the clothes Lacuna was wearing yesterday lying crumpled on the floor.  Curiosity morphing into concern, he hits the large red button to open the testing chamber doors and steps inside.

The mannequin takes no notice of him.

“Hello,” Ashan softly calls out to the figure.

No response.

“Lacuna, is that you?” Ashan asks, sliding his wand out of his sleeve and into his hand in a practiced gesture.

A shudder runs through the mannequin.

“Lacuna,” Ashan emphasizes the name, “are you alright?”  Cautiously easing closer, he realizes that the mannequin is making a fist around something in one of its hands.

The mannequin twitches and jerks, contorting its limbs.

“Lacuna, may I see what that is you are holding?”

The mannequin goes still again before slowly turning its head down to eyelessly look at the hand it has brought up to chest level.  Its fingers uncurl to reveal a sphere of interwoven plastic tendrils that rolls off of its hand and shatters when it hits the ground.

In an instant, the mannequin grows three inches, shifts its skin from blank white to a mere sickly pale with the occasional freckle, sprouts hair, and contracts its blank face to reveal the contours of features.

It surprises Ashan just how light Lacuna is when she falls forward into his arms.  He is barely even eye level with her shoulder on the rare occasions she stands up straight, but he realizes now just how much she is skin and bones beneath the loose-fitting clothing she always seems to favor.

“Don’t tell Eris,” Lacuna breathes into his ear before passing out.

*******

“I’m sorry,” Lacuna apologizes for the tenth time since waking up.    The first three times had come in quick succession upon regaining consciousness a minute or so after fainting.  The fourth came when asking for a moment of privacy to change back into her clothes from yesterday, and the fifth when emerging from her lab some minutes later.  The sixth was a part of turning down Ashan’s advice to put herself into the autodoc suite.  The seventh was instigated by her stumbling on the stairs ascending out of the office’s basement, which in turn led to the eighth when accepting Ashan’s offer to help her up.  The ninth took the place of thanks when Ashan unstuck the cap she was struggling with on the bottle of apple juice she retrieved from the refrigerator.  What this latest one is for is less immediately apparent.

Now she sits at the other end of the kitchen table from Ashan, staring down at an empty wrapper of plain salted crackers.  Stripes of morning light cut between the window blinds and divvy up the space between them.

“For what are you sorry this time?” Ashan prompts.

Lacuna flinches at the question, withdraws momentarily, and hesitantly answers, “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?  That must be annoying, sor- Gah!  Why do I keep - I mean -” She stumbles over her words a few more times before closing her eyes, holding up one finger, and taking a long drink to drain the rest of her glass.  Setting down the glass, she opens her eyes and tries again while drumming her fingers on her arms in a rolling motion.

“I should have gone to bed and gotten a decent night’s sleep after sending you that message.  So that I’d be able to help you today.  Instead I got over-excited and tried to squeeze in a little bit of time now that the server load was free.  For a personal project.  Selfish.”

“Apology accepted,” Ashan says, keeping the disappointment out of his voice.  He tries to tell himself that just one more day of waiting will not hurt him.  And if Lacuna is a reckless enough enchanter to run some manner of botched transmutation ritual on herself, perhaps it would be for the best that he does not let her try to experimentally “help” him.  “But why did you not want me to tell Eris?  Friends are supposed to aid one another when distressed, are they not?”

“I don’t want her to worry about me.  Same for Road,” she mumbles.

“You mean to say that becoming stuck as a faceless imitation of a human being all night is not cause for concern?”

“It’s fine!” Lacuna snaps defensively and then shrinks back from her own raised voice.  “It’s fine,” she says more quietly.  “I’m fine.  I’m fine.  It’s a problem I’ve been working for a while now and that’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to me so far.  And the enchantment had a safety timer built in, so I would have been fine.” She raises her head, looking through Ashan rather than at him.  “Compared to some of the other mishaps, this one actually felt… nice?  It was quiet.  Like all the thoughts going in my head all the time finally shut up for once and let me just be.  Awareness without a sense of self to be aware of and in a room with no external stimulus.”  She slaps a hand to her forehead and laughs.  “Okay, wow, that does sound bad when I say it aloud, but I promise I’m fine.  It was actually about as restful as sleeping, I’m just a bit frazzled right now from the sudden jolt back into things.  And probably dehydration.  And maybe low blood sugar.  But I’m good now.  Mostly”

As Ashan opens his mouth to form a reply to that, several other noises interrupt him at once.  The sharp ringing of the outer barrier detecting an intruder with violent intent.  A shout of fear.  A howl of pain.

Before Lacuna can even make a surprised exclamation of her own, Ashan is already out the kitchen, past the repurposed check-in counter, and throwing open the door.  The frightened and haggard individual sporting a denim jacket covered in enamel pins on the other side stops dead in their tracks at the motion of a wand coming within an inch of poking their eye out.  Looking under and past the unexpected visitor’s placatingly raised arms, Ashan catches a glimpse of a smoking pantherine shape on the sidewalk dissipating in a sparkling green haze.  The tree-lined street is left empty except for fallen petals and parked cars.  The blue electric hatchback with claw marks on the side parked nearest to the former bed and breakfast had not been there when Ashan arrived barely half an hour ago.

Ashan’s eyes flick back to the individual standing in front of the door, locking gazes.

“What was that?” he asks.

“I was hoping you could tell me.  Now please, you gotta let me in.  Before it -” 

They double over groaning in pain.  With effort they crane their neck up to reveal a face flickering between two forms.  One of an unremarkably average brown-eyed human with two or three days of unshaven stubble, and the other violet-eyed with smooth, waxy leaf-green skin.  Violet eyes or brown, the look of desperate fear and confusion is the same.  It strikes Ashan how young they are.  No more than late teens.

“Help me,” they gasp.

Ashan guides them to a couch in the nearby living room, locking the door behind them.  They recover quickly enough after lying down - Lacuna catches up just in time to see the surprise guest’s face flicker for the last time - but even after their face settles back to human their left arm remains green.  They cradle it to their chest, as if it were still in pain.  Or as if they were trying to hide it.  Shame?  Fear?  Embarrassment?  All of the above, Ashan guesses.

“Name,” Ashan says, instruction more than question.  He remains standing, alert for the first sign of treachery from whomever he just invited in or of another attempt at entry from whatever that was outside.

“Tam,” the individual on the couch stammers.  “Tam Lin.”  Their green left hand clutches tighter at the utterance.

Ashan stares this Tam Lin down.  On the one hand, that sort of fear - the bewildered fear of having been abruptly thrust Backstage for the first time - is as difficult to fake as it is recognizable.  On the other hand, that which he suspects them to be are known to be excellent actors and none of their kind would so easily give away their Name.

“Tell me Tam Lin,” Ashan asks, “what brings you here today?” 

The green hand twitches at the Name’s emphasis, even without any attempt at nominal magic infused into his voice.  Yes, definitely one of the fair folk, but why the guileless deception?  Why take such risk with a Name freely spoken, as sensitive as their kind are to that?

“The website,” Tam says,  “it said you can help with weird stuff like this.  You can help me, right?”

“Most likely,” Ashan answers, “but first we need to know more specifically what your problem is.”

“If I may,” Lacuna speaks up from where she has perched on an ottoman at the other end of the couch from Tam.  As she slips her phone back into her skirt pocket and intently looks Tam up and down all her earlier disorientation has vanished completely.  Ashan knows that eager, almost hungry look.  It is a look he has seen on experimentally-minded wizards presented with a unique specimen and alchemists greedily eying rare reagents.  And on children seeing their favorite animal in the flesh for the first time.

With only the slightest misgiving, Ashan nods in assent.

Lacuna’s eyes light up and she leans in even closer.  “Right.  So.  Tam.  Let me know if I miss the mark anywhere.  As a kid you saw all sorts of fairies and similar magic.  When you got older you wrote them off as childhood make believe, but ever since you had strange and vivid dreams about them.  Maybe you even were one in your dreams.  When you hit puberty, those dreams got more frequent.  More intense.  Easier to remember.  Almost a second life whenever you were at your lowest points.  Still just dreams at the end of the night though.  Nothing you couldn’t put out of mind and focus on the ‘real world.’  And then one day.  A recent day.  I would guess.  One or both of your parents died.  Ever since, you’ve started having those dreams every night.  And then every time you closed your eyes.  And then when you looked in the mirror, wide awake, you looked like you did in your dreams.  That’s when something started following you.  Not knowing where else to turn, you turned to the Internet, and found us.  No one answered your calls or the message you left.  That’s my bad.  Real sorry about that.  So you hopped in the car and drove all night to our address.”

Tam stares at her, eyes wide and jaw agape.  “My moms are still alive, but everything else is - how did you know?”

Ashan tilts his head, surprised and curious to know himself.

Lacuna slips back into her usual discomfort, awkwardly rubbing the back of her neck.  “Sorry.  That was weird of me, wasn’t it?  Got carried away.  Touches on a… special interest of mine.  So.  Basically.  You’re a changeling.  A fairy swapped with a human baby to be raised in its place to take its Name.”

“You’re joking,” Tam denies.

“You were quite literally shapeshifting in front of me,” Ashan points out.

“Not intentionally,” Tam says.

“It wouldn’t be,” Lacuna says.  “Historically speaking, most children accused of being changelings were just some flavor of neurodivergent.  The real ones tend to blend in as normally as the baby they swapped with would have, fooling even themselves.  Not that there isn’t overlap between the two from time to time.  A Name isn’t just the name it’s tied to, it’s a whole identity, physical and mental.  Most changelings have no idea they’re not human until something triggers a change, at which point whatever fae liege made the bargain will come to retrieve them.  Or send a servant to do so.  Kinder ones will be upfront about it and explain things.  Maybe even make an offer to continue living as you are.” 

“And crueler ones will send a hunting beast to drag you back kicking and screaming,” Ashan posits.

Tam’s nervous nod is all the confirmation Ashan needs as to what tripped the wards around the office.

“What I’m still hung up on,” Lacuna says, “is what triggered your change.  Normally it’s the death of whichever parent made the deal, but…” She trails off as her eyes alight on one of the pins adorning Tam’s denim jacket.  A heart of four stripes.  Yellow, white, purple, and black.  “How long ago did you start calling yourself Tam?” she asks.

“A little over three years ago.” Tam answers.  “Just before I turned sixteen.  But, come to think of it, the dreams actually stopped for a while when I came out, if that’s what you’re getting at.  The therapist my moms had me see told me it was probably just a repression thing that didn’t need an outlet anymore now that I’d accepted myself.  I’d just about forgotten about them until this all started out of the blue a couple weeks ago.”

“You said ‘moms,’ plural,” Ashan observes.  “What about a father?”

Tam shakes his head.  “I asked about it once and they told me they went through a fertility clinic.  Anonymous donor.  No legal way to know who.”

“Oh, that’s clever,” Lacuna says.  “Dirty dealing and a really messed up way to get around the classic ‘firstborn child’ contract, but clever."

“Clever or not,” Ashan says, “I suspect it is beside the point at the moment.  The more pertinent question is this:  What do you want Tam?”

“What do I want?  I want to stop being chased by a giant monster cat!  I want to stop randomly turning green!  I want my life back!”

“Do you truly want that?  Even knowing what you know now?  Even with the knowledge that it may not be your life to begin with?”

“Of course it’s my life!  So what if I was switched with some other kid at birth?  It was me that everything happened to.  It’s me that everyone in my life knows.  My moms, my friends, my experiences, and my life!”

“And you are not the least bit curious about what else your life could be if you found more answers and embraced what you really are?”

“Oh screw you and your mind games.  Do I look like I give a shit about some absentee fairy king dad wants for me?  I know who I am and don’t you dare imply that my life hasn’t been real.”

“Good answer,” Ashan says.  “Now hang on to that conviction.  You shall need it.”

“What for?”

“For when we go tell a fae liege unused to being told ‘no’ that they cannot have what they want.”

*******

“Last check if you want to wait until Road and Eris get back,” Lacuna’s voice says through Ashan’s earpiece as he stands just inside the picket fence marking the border of the office and the unwarded sidewalk.

“Road left me behind for the express purpose of helping any clients that show up needing help while they are away, and that is exactly what I am doing now,” Ashan responds.  “We have taken the necessary precautions and I see no reason to doubt my ability to resolve the matter.  Or are you saying that you would rather wait?”

“I’m nervous, not gonna lie, but what else is new?  You’re the one with the hard job here, so we’ll be fine.  Anyway, mirror charm’s still holding strong on this end.  Tam still looks like you in here, and you still sound like them.  Let’s just hope it fools everyone else as well as it fools me.” 

According to Tam, the beast that has been hounding them for weeks now only shows itself when no one else is around, which presented a complication for any plans to assist them.  Fortunately Lacuna had been able to dig up a pair of bracelets she had enchanted some time back as part of one of her ever-vague “personal projects.”  Allegedly they operated via a modified perception filter to cause observers to perceive one wearer as the other while leaving the wearers’ perception unaltered.  That last part had caused Lacuna to deem the bracelets “an experimental failure but exactly what we need now,” while leaving Ashan and Tam to take her word on their efficacy.  While even now Ashan can tell that the bracelet is doing something whenever he glances down at his wrist, actively focusing on it is nearly as nauseating and disorienting as that concealment ritual of hers.  

The same goes for the little metal rectangle engraved with a not-quite-fractal on either side now hanging from a cord around his neck and tucked beneath his robe.  According to Lacuna it is supposed to provide protection from anything trying to get into his mind.  It was the one amulet out of the whole clinking mass she had tried to foist upon him that he accepted, and mostly just to placate her, if he is being honest.  She had been busy these past weeks with enchanting trinkets from her library of pre-recorded rituals from her old job and if Ashan had hung all that she had offered around his neck the combined static noise of their auras that close to him would have run the risk of making him sick.

Once again, he wonders how she has not accidentally killed herself already.  Or at least blown up her lab.

But enough of that.  What comes next requires a clear mind free of distracted musings.

A static tingle runs over Ashan as he steps through and beyond the outermost ward and onto the unprotected sidewalk.  He continues forward, past the car Tam hastily and crookedly parked on the curb.  The claw marks on the vehicle are long and deep, and numerous enough to indicate multiple attempts at retrieval. He comes to a stop with one foot on either side of the painted divider line bisecting the empty street. 

“I am ready now,” Ashan says to no one.  “Guide me to your master and I shall follow of my own free will.”

A sudden breeze carries the scent of dry leaves and kicks up a swirl of sparkling green dust.  The same synesthetic mapping that allows Ashan to “see” the wards around the office shows him a rapidly growing ring within the verdant haze.  A low growl rumbles out of the hole within the formless ring and a pantherine shape slinks out from behind the breeze. 

The great cat sharing the street with Ashan would be longer than he is tall even without the tail that coils and unfurls as it slowly sweeps back and forth.  The beast’s baldness only accentuates its bulging muscles and the isolated shock of dark hair atop its head. The brown eyes that stare up into Ashan’s look just like Tam’s.  It snarls, barring too-human teeth for the shape of its head, and then turns away. 

Ashan follows the hunting beast across the street to a fairy ring of white mushrooms near the bridge tree that most certainly had not been there when he arrived earlier this morning.  It pads around to the far side of the fairy ring, looks back to Ashan, gestures downward with its head, and flexes its claws.  Its front paws have thumbs. 

The message is clear enough: Step into the ring.  Run again and claws will catch. 

If the earlier swirl of dust was a tunnel, the fairy ring is a hole beckoning him into its depths.  Ashan knows better than to let himself fall in. 

He leaps. 

He does not look before nor during the leap.  Such transitions do not wish to be perceived.  It takes longer than it rightly should for his feet to touch the ground.  He keeps his eyes closed and tries not to heed his less biological senses lest nausea take him as he falls.  Not that “falling” is the correct word for it. That would imply an up or down. 

His arrival is signaled not by an impact but by the smell of dry leaves and the tickle of inhaled dust. He pinches his nose to stifle a sneeze and opens his eyes. 

The space he finds himself in cannot seem to decide if it wants to be a forest or a castle.  He is surrounded by pale-barked twisted trees.  He is standing in a solid-walled narrow corridor.  Fallen leaves crunch under his feet as he shifts his weight to look around.  A neat carpet stretches behind him off into shadows and before him up to an ornate beaded curtain.  A cloud-muted sun filters down through a canopy of desiccated foliage.  A star-backed moon shines through a high vault of stained glass.  Either way, motes of dust catch the weak light, shifting through the slow motion gyre of a breeze too weak for flesh to feel. 

“Are you alright?  We lost the feed for a minute there.”  The static crackle of signal decay does little to conceal the concern in Lacuna’s voice.  Is that not the tone she normally reserves for Eris?  Are she and Ashan closer than he realized, or does she worry like that with everyone she considers a friend?  He has little basis for comparison to correlate sensitivity of concern for safety with emotional investment. 

It is a distraction. 

He wants to ask her what she sees through the filter of the camera atop his ear.  To verify the chimeric nature of his environs that shifts with every turn of his head and blink of his eyes.  To tell her that her charm of mental protection does not work to shield his senses.

But he is playing the part of Tam Lin right now and Tam would have no reason to ask such questions of the empty air. 

He nods and hopes she takes the cue to be silent when the hunting beast pads past him toward the hanging moss (beaded curtain).

For all that Ashan prides himself on stepping as lightly as any thief or dancer, he cannot help but stir up puffs of dust from the carpet (pulverize dry leaves into blooming clouds) with every step.  The hunting beast’s guiding passage leaves no such trace.  It is its master’s creature within its master’s demesne.  Unlike Ashan, it is not showered with gray powder when passing through the moss (curtain) and into the throne room (parched glade) beyond. 

The hunting beast crosses the space and seats itself on its haunches in front of a tangle of roots (a bas relieved throne), from atop which presides the fae liege with whom Ashan has come to bargain.  It/He/She/They/Fae wear(s) wears robes of gray that are in the active process of becoming moth-eaten before Ashan’s eyes.  Fingers and forehead alike are adorned with bechained jewelry; metals tarnished and patinaed, gemstones dull.  Its/His/Her/Their/Faer face is an overlaid multitude that blurs expressions into an indistinct haze of imperfectly aligned features. 

Ashan nods his head and sweeps an arm in a gesture of respect.  It is not something Tam would do, but while Ashan has not dealt directly with the fair folk before he has been trained well enough to know the danger of losing oneself to a role in a place such as this and a true wizard bows to no higher authority.  Fortunately, this lukewarm obeisance does not seem to perturb the figure on the throne.

“The Seventeen-Named Count of Curses and Dust bids you a welcome homecoming and congratulations on joining the ranks of the Named, Carter, my little changeling.”

With that proclamation one of those seventeen unspoken Names is chosen for temporary prominence and a conceptual waveform collapses.  Ashan’s surroundings solidify into a single hybrid of a forest woven together into the shape of a castle.  Tight-packed trees interlace branches to merge into solid walls.  Leaves fallen from the canopy above have been carefully arranged into patterns on the forest floor. The fae liege now sits upon roots that have been expertly coaxed into the shape of a throne and wears only a single grandfatherly face.  The hunting beast at the foot of the throne winces.

“You honor me with this audience, great Count,” Ashan says.  “Pray tell, what next lies in store for a newly returned changeling?”

“So you do still recall the tongue of your true people in waking as well as dream.  That shall save us much time in preparing you for your role as one of my emissaries.  Once you have resworn your oaths of fealty to me your training in the ways and arts of my court shall commence.  There shall be no time wasted on pointless festivities, for ours is the dominion of the dust to which all things return.  To be my emissary is to weave the curses that will hasten that return, especially for those foolish enough to believe they can postpone it indefinitely.”

“Well, there’s your offer,” Lacuna says to Tam on the other end of the comms link.  “Magic and probably a bit of world-hopping.  Still want out?”

“Hell yeah I want out,” Tam exclaims loudly enough to be picked up by Lacuna’s microphone.  “Screw this dust-to-dust reaperman crap.”

Ashan nods in silent acknowledgment of the expected response and addresses the fae lord in front of him.  “O great Count, thank you for your answer, but I must now take my leave.  To be one of your emissaries is not my place.”

“You misunderstand your position, little changeling,” the Count says, “your role here in my court was ordained long ago.  Now Carter, kneel before me and renew your oaths.”

The hunting beast crouches and growls.  Ashan stands unbowed and serene.

“I do not answer to you.”

“Such impudence!  Have you no gratitude for your liege who saw fit to grant you a Name purchased in fair contract?  By that very Name, Carter, I command thee kneel and renew your oaths!”

The Count’s voice echoes through the forest and shakes the dust from the trees.  The roots of the throne writhe and the leaves stir from the floor.  The hunting beast yowls and Ashan stands unbowed and serene.

“I do not answer to you.”

Another of the Count’s Seventeen Names takes prominence and the parched forest glade closes into a vaulted stone audience chamber.  Fallen leaves sew themselves together into a threadbare tapestry of a carpet.  Soft wrinkles stretch smooth and tight over a sharp-featured skull.  From atop a marble throne embossed with arboreal motifs, the steel-eyed Countess of Curses and Dust glowers down at Ashan.

“You are mine.  You.  Shall.  KNEEL!”

A will that is not his own claws at the edge of Ashan’s consciousness, ancient and vicious.  The mental wards he was taught early on and has diligently kept up ever since fray and fracture.  The invasive presence reaches in and touches a stray surface thought, withering it down to a vague sense of something forgotten.  Perverse delight seeps in from the outside at the prospect of doing the same to every other thought until his very self is reshaped by erosion into an ideal servant.

The amulet beneath Ashan’s robe oscillates between burning and freezing against his skin.  The intruder in his mind recoils and retreats.  The Countess of Curses and Dust lets out a scream from her throne that sends the feasting moths fluttering away from her regalia.

“I.  Do not.  Answer.  To you.”  Ashan gasps.  He has denied the fae liege for a third time.   By the Law of Threes he should be safe from that avenue of coercion for now.

“What trickery is this?”  The Count(ess) asks.  Their face and hall flickers between aspects on every third word.  “You are not my changeling.  What are you?  You are full of shards of glass and shattered iron that writhes and drips with rotted ichor.  I will have no dealings with mad and broken gods or spawn of the eldritch.”

Suppressing a shudder at the thought of what Lacuna has hung around his neck and wrist, Ashan slips off his bracelet and the glamor disguising him as Tam Lin with it.  With an audience gained and the nature of Tam’s would-be master displayed, there is no further need for that ruse.

“I am the student of Aliana Glassgaze, wizard, warder, and master of the Dancing Dream Paints style.  I am here as the appointed champion of Tam Lin whom you would call Carter to speak on their behalf.  I have judged the treatment you would afford your vassals and would now negotiate their release from your service.”

The room settles back into a hall of stone.  “Interloper,” the Countess accuses, “you have no grounds on which to negotiate.  Carter was one of mine when still Nameless and accepted the offer to become a changeling with full knowledge of and agreement to the terms that would come after.  Whether or not he still remembers that agreement is immaterial.”

“Contracts made before a change in Name are not binding except between the Name’s new and original owners, and you were merely a middleman in that exchange.  Elsewise you would not require a renewal of oaths.”

“You argue semantics of the general where it is the spirit of the specific that matters.  Changeling contracts are always between intermediaries for neither the unreal Nameless nor the unborn Named are fit to negotiate.  This contract was made and fulfilled in accordance with custom.  All services to the blood father of the prior Name-holder were rendered as contractually agreed upon and fairy was swapped for child as payment rendered.”

Ashan puts one of the practiced smiles he copied from his mentor; the narrowing of eyes and lopsided upturn of the lips that lets an opponent know they have just walked into a trap.  He never was able to muster the emotion she put behind it, but it remained an effective tool of intimidation and unbalancing provocation whether applied hot or cold.

“You would invoke the spirit of tradition, but this contract violated even that.  You failed to account for the realities of modern anchor world humans.  The exchange of child for changeling as a valid price is predicated on the bond between parent and child, but no such bond existed between the contract holder and child in this case.  This so-called blood father was a mere anonymous donor of seed who met neither mother, child, nor changeling.  It is doubtful he was ever even aware of the stolen child’s existence and certainly had no part in the bestowing of a Name.”

The audience hall shrinks down claustrophobically close.  Peeling wallpaper faded to gray surrounds the empty and dust-covered royal nursery.  The petulant Heir of Curses and Dust pouts from atop a pile of broken toys.

“That doesn’t matter,” they insist.

“Does it not?  You were tricked into providing your curses to a human for free and in the process inflicted harm upon an uninvolved third party.  That Name was not sold but stolen and was given to the changeling on false pretenses.”

“Liar!”

“If you truly thought I was such, you would not be wearing that face.”

The Count of Curses and Dust regains his composure and returns to being an old man on a throne of roots.  The moths return to resume their eternal feast on his regalia.

“All of this is beside the point,” the Count says with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “By my station, it is well within my rights to compel any courtless fairy whose Name I have command over into my service.”

“Then let us make a bargain,” Ashan suggests.  “What is your price for leaving Tam Lin whom you call Carter and their friends and loved ones alone in perpetuity?”

The Count stares into Ashan’s eyes for a long moment and once again the young wizard feels an alien touch brush against the edge of his consciousness.  This time the Count’s will does not seek ingress but instead traces the outermost border.  An assessment of general shape if not interior contents.  Twice Lacuna’s charm grows warm and twice the presence momentarily retreats before returning more cautiously.  On the third time the Count breaks the silence.

“You would deny me the return of a changeling whose Name I bargained for, so it is only fair that I receive the means to create another in return.”

“My Name is not for sale.”

“Neither of them?  You have two, do you not?  One you wear now and one you have all but abandoned since childhood.  A childhood name for a new changeling child would be most fitting indeed.”

“My Name is not for sale.”

“Are you sure?  I would think I would be doing you a favor to unburden you from it.  I can tell that all the recent times you’ve worn it have been marked by loss and longing.  Wouldn’t it be better to let that pain go?  To allow yourself to be fully the you that you are now?”  The Count leans forward with a smile that is kindly at first glance.  “Think about those loved ones you wish you could be with but cannot bring yourself to embody that old Name like you would need to.  They could have the you that they remember back and the you that you are now could finally move on.  You would be doing them a kindness.”

“My Name…” Ashan hesitates.  It would be a kindness.  As he is now, he cannot possibly hope to return to his parents without causing more pain than healing.  But a changeling with his old Name unburdened by everything he has been through?  A fae liege of the Count’s power could probably even alter memories and spin a story well enough to avoid a Masquerade breach.  Without that wounded Name, perhaps he could even find it within himself to forgive Aliana and they could travel together again the way things were.  Maybe he could even talk her into joining with Road and working with his new friends.

Maybe…

*******

“Maybe we’re wrong,” Eris said to Ashan the night after their mission with the vampire crypt beneath a suburban basement.  Hot drinks late at night in the office’s kitchen had become something of a post-mission ritual between the two of them.  At least when the two of them were both well enough to stand.

“Wrong about what?” Ashan asked.

“About family.  Love.  Broken bonds.  All that stuff.”

“I am not sure I follow.  Perhaps having been drained of blood is still affecting your cognition.”

“Eh, I’m mostly fine.  What I’m saying is the Masquerade's done a number on both of us.  You feel like you can’t go home after running away and my parents straight up disowned me after I came home covered in blood I couldn’t explain one too many times.  But maybe we’re wrong about not being able to go back.”

“That is highly doubtful.”

“Doubtful, but not impossible.  Look, let’s make a deal.  If you ever change your mind and decide to try talking to your family again, I’ll go with you to support you and back up whatever you decide to tell them.  Masquerade cover story or the truth, doesn’t matter.  Then after, we’ll go see my folks.  If it works out, then great, and if not, at least we tried and we’ll still have friends here to come back to.  So, what do you say?”

“I say that blood loss and blunt force trauma are impairing your judgment, and even if I were to accept your deal I would not change my mind on this matter.   But…”

“Buuuuut…?” 

“Maybe I am wrong.”

*******

“My Name is not for sale,” Ashan says for the third time to the Count of Curses and Dust within his wilted forest glade.

“So be it,” the Countess of Curses and Dust proclaims, her voice echoing throughout her gloomy stone audience hall.  “In that case, let us balance the deal with a more finite service in exchange for the denial of a servant.  A favor of my choosing to be decided upon and called in at a later date, as is the most traditional price of contract between fairy and mortal.”

Ashan imagines the way Aliana would laugh off such an offer but chooses not to mimic it.  “Do you think me naïve?  Once again you invoke tradition, but this is a tradition that any knowledgeable mortal would know to avoid.”

“Then this negotiation is at an end, for you have nothing else to offer me.  If you will not offer me your lesser Name, then you would certainly not part with your far greater one, and if you would refuse a single favor then I cannot hope to extract any other oath of service from you.”

“I have access to the library of the sorceress Bridgewood,” Ashan proposes.  Any payment out of the Bridgewood Estate would need to be negotiated with the current Bridgewood of course, but this fae lord does not need to know that.

“So that is why your mind is so hideously warped and sharp to the touch.  Speak that name no further in my presence.  I have never known a more unclean thing with a refusal to return to dust than that sorceress, save for the attack dog she made her consort.  If you claim to be her ally, then we truly have no more to negotiate”

“If you truly put such stock in tradition, then let me make one final offer on behalf of Tam Lin whom you call Carter.  Let us both put forth the prices we would otherwise be unwilling to pay as stakes on a wager.  My aforementioned request for noninterference against your request for a future favor.”

“The favor, and your childhood Name.  As the price of mentioning that hated sorceress in my home.  What is to be our game?”

Aliana’s way of doing things it is then.  Yet again.  Did she too try and fail to avoid this route time and again before giving in and making it her first option at every occasion?  Unlikely.  She always enjoyed it too much.

“I invoke the rite of trial by combat between appointed champions, to be held on neutral ground.”

*******

Hours later, after extensive negotiations regarding the precise wording of the terms of the duel and subsequent prices the loser must pay, Ashan finds himself standing on one of the few level rooftops in Crossherd’s outskirts.  This far out from the pocket dimension’s heart geometry and geography get strange.  The buildings here were dreamt up to give the impression of an endlessly expansive city skyline, not for use or habitation, so while they look normal enough from a distance upon closer inspection they quickly become nonsensical.  Overlapping windows tilted at odd angles, doors that open up to the outside seven stories in the air, fire escapes that connect to neither windows nor the ground, sometimes even whole buildings intersecting with their interiors leaking into one another and corners erupting from each other’s faces.  The interiors are even worse; where they are not completely hollow facades they are unnavigable mazes of doors that open into flat walls, stairs that recursively loop back on themselves, and floors with no route between them.

This particular rooftop however has become something of a fixed point in the city’s inconstant periphery owing to its repeated use giving it a firm place in the collective consciousness in a certain portion of the city’s residents.  In other words, while Ashan was handling the contract negotiations, he had to send Lacuna out ahead to make sure that no one else was already using the rooftop to violently settle a dispute away from potential collateral damage today.  Or rather, Lacuna sent one of her remote drones which even now hovers on paratech repulsors above the scorched and pitted ring of concrete where the half-formed air conditioning units and ouroboric ductwork has been cleared away to give would be duelists, pit fighters, and blood feuders room to do their work.

Crossherd has ever been a city built on symbolic stereotypes and tropes, and the climactic rooftop showdown is a powerful one.

Ashan’s opponent - the very same hunting beast that had been sent to retrieve Tam Lin for its master - impatiently paces the far side of the rough ring.  Someone has clad the nearly hairless felid in ill-fitting pale gray plate armor and strapped a rusty sword that it has no good way to wield to its back.  If it were not for the anger burning in its too-human eyes every time it glances his way Ashan might pity the poor creature.

Behind their two designated champions, Tam Lin and the Count of Curses and Dust stand witness.  In the Count’s case he is possessing the body of one of the Nameless fairies under his command.  Much like the surrounding buildings, the empty-eyed wretch looks normal enough at a glance but the illusion falls breaks apart and tumbles down into the uncanny valley under scrutiny as if someone described what a human looked like to some skilled alien sculptor who had never seen one in person and thus thought the eye whites and teeth should be the same material and was left to guess as to whether clothes were part of the body or not.  The fact that Tam has been having trouble maintaining human form every time he looks at their distant cousin whose fate they presumably once shared has not escaped Ashan’s notice.

“This is your last chance to put aside this foolishness,” the Count says through his Nameless vessel.  “Call off this farce of a duel Carter and renew your oaths to me.  Do it now and I will not hold this tantrum against you, for you are young and confused.  You do not realize the value of what you are and what you would be with me.”

The emphasis of the Name elicits a scowl from Tam and a growl from the hunting beast.

“That’s not my name anymore, old man!”  Tam shouts back.  “So you can shove your offers.”

“Nonsense,” the Count says.  “You cannot simply create a new Name for yourself.  That is a privilege reserved for mortals, and no matter how much you believe you are one that can never be.”

Ashan tunes out whatever further barbs Tam has to exchange with his erstwhile and would-be master.  He slides his wand into his hand and takes a stance, already envisioning the anchor points from which he will draw his conjurations.  He focuses on the hunting beast, the way it moves, the range of motion of its joints, the places where the armor hangs loose.  Which way will it dart once the duel begins?  Can he incapacitate it before it gets the chance to close the distance between them?  Should he open by tying it down with point restraints or start with a loose encapsulation and tighten his grip from there?

No, do not overthink it.  Remember Aliana’s advice: A duel is a dance and he must adjust his rhythm to that of his partner.  He has already avoided the mistake he made with Logos and set the stage in a locale that does not favor his opponent, now all that is left to do is wait for the signal.

Somewhere in Crossherd’s heart, a clocktower bell tolls the changing of the hour.

The hunting beast lurches forward, then to the left, then to the right.  It leaps with claws out and fangs bared.

Five fingers on one hand point to five points on the rooftop.  The hand makes a fist and five threads tie themselves to four limbs and a neck.  A wrist twists and the threads pull tight enough to keep claws from reaching throat.  The fist falls and the hunting beast is dragged crashing down to the concrete.  A wand draws a circle in the air and a shimmering disk appears.  The wand slashes downward and the disk falls onto the hunting beast pressing it further into the rooftop until the conjuration molds to its target’s shape, sealing off any struggle.

The duel is over before it begins.

But then the threads go slack and the disk goes flush with the concrete below.  

The hunting beast is gone but for a shimmering emerald haze.

Ashan spins a glass cocoon around himself just in time to block the claws seeking to tear out his spine.  The hunting beast disappears once more from behind him and then reappears to his left.  Then to his right.  From behind again.  In front of him where the prior conjurations have since dissipated.  Each time it reappears it strikes at Ashan’s conjured barrier, probing for weaknesses and finding none, then disappearing again in a cloud of green.

Ashan holds steady and examines his foe’s movements for a way to counter them.  The delay between reappearances rules out true teleportation.  No sign of active cloaking magic or illusions, so probably not invisibility.  No active magic signatures at all save for a fraction of a second when the green haze appears.  A phase shift then, or possibly stepping in and out of its master’s demesne.  Either way, he can work with that.

He pushes outward on his translucent cocoon, turning it into a tight bubble just big enough for him to properly move his arms and legs, but too small to fit both him and the hunting beast lest it try to reappear inside the barrier.  Bending down, he begins drawing the first of a sequence of glistening symbols on the ground to turn the surrounding area into a planar-locked ward.

“Arise, my servant!” the Count’s name echoes across the rooftop.  “Be not a savage beast, but my noble knight!  Become my Champion of Curses and Dust!”

Bone cracks, pops, and knits back together.  Skin stretches, tears, and heals.  The armored hunting beast stands upright on its still-feline hind legs and hisses through its muzzle protruding from beneath its helmet.  It reaches a forepaw-now-hand behind its back and unslings the rusty sword.

The Champion of Curses and Dust charges Ashan once more.  The wizard speeds up his drawing of the ward and begins the chant for the spell to activate it.  The air inside Ashan’s bubble grows cold and frost covers the ground.  The sigils flash.  The spell completes.  No more teleporting to worry about.

When the rusty sword makes contact with the conjured barrier it passes right through, melting a hole that causes the rest of the conjuration to unravel.  Ashan barely manages to spring backwards in time to keep from being impaled.  Instead the rusty sword cuts through the ward’s central sigils and into the concrete beneath.  

Staggered as he is by the dual backlash of two actively maintained spells being violently disrupted, Ashan fails to press the opportunity presented by his opponent’s blade getting lodged in the rooftop.  As the Champion of Curses and dust works the sword back and forth the concrete cracks and crumbles with a century of erosion passing in the blink of an eye.  When the sword is at last prised free, a hole in the rooftop the size of a grown man’s torso collapses into the room below, exposing rusted pipeworks and corroded wiring.

With the ward destroyed before it even got a chance to do anything the Champion disappears into green haze once more.  By reflex, Ashan throws a hand behind himself to conjure a shield in anticipation of the next strike before realizing his mistake.  He jumps to the right quickly enough to dodge the worst of the blade’s path when it reappears and once again passes through his barrier as if it were nothing, but the tip of the rusty sword manages to clip the edge of his arm, just above the wrist.  The wound itself heals before blood can be spilled but his hand grows old and wrinkled before his eyes and he can feel the same happening to his arm beneath his sleeve.  Arthritic pains flare up from his fingers to his elbow as joints seize and grow stiff, forcing a strained gasp from the otherwise young wizard’s lips.

A twist of his heel sends Ashan spiraling into the air to gain distance from his attacker but the corkscrewing conjuration propelling him is cut down, disrupting his trajectory and crashing him into one of the remaining air conditioning units halfway across the rooftop.  He rolls to his feet but still finds himself on the back foot with precious little to do but avoid and evade.  Bereft of his usual kinetic barriers he resorts to retooling his technique to conjure streams of fire, wind, and lightning, but even those do little to deter an opponent that can effortlessly shift in and out of this plane of existence, and is an inefficient enough power draw that his breath quickly stings his lungs from the cold air.  

All in all, it is nearly as bad as trying to fight Eris when she is wearing those dispelling gloves of hers, a sparring setup that Ashan is yet to emerge victorious from in their regular matches between missions.  

A memory flickers in the back of Ashan’s mind of waking from unconsciousness when his mentor thought a monster had just killed him.  In her cold fury she had filled the cave with conjured wires and floating shards of glass.  The monster’s own weight had forced it through the deadly web like so much cheese over a grater.  And then his mentor had set the wires and shards in motion and it became more like meat through a grinder.  The sight had given the young Ashan nightmares for weeks afterward, but maybe if he could now duplicate the technique at a lesser scale to merely injure…

Ashan begins to envision and draw the net of monomolecular wires and spinning blades around him for his opponent to cut itself on but hesitates just short of funneling in the energy to make them a reality.  Unfortunately, a lifetime of being careful to never kill nor maim with power that could easily do both deeply ingrains inhibitions that are not so easily overcome.  That hesitation very nearly costs him the use of his other arm.  Fortunately, a lifetime of training for blows coming from the periphery of vision ingrains reflexes that are not so easily overcome.

Another burst of flame buys him some breathing room at the cost of a chill seeping into his bones.  If only he could buy himself a moment to draw another planar ward.  If only that sword could be taken out of the picture.  If only the Count of Curses and Dust hadn’t transformed his Champion mid-fight.

If only…

Gods take him for a fool.

“I call foul play and outside interference,” Ashan manages to say between dodging sword strokes.  “By the agreed terms of the duel you must either forfeit or allow a counterbalancing interference.”

“Counterbalance accepted,” the Champion of Curse and Dust laughs from the mouths of Nameless servant and hunting beast simultaneously.  “Let us see what my wayward changeling can do to earn his freedom.”

Ashan locks eyes with the frightened Tam Lin watching from the sidelines and shakes his head.  No need for them to act.  They are not Ashan’s only ally present to act as witness and second.

“Lacuna!” Ashan shouts.

“Already on it!” her voice calls back from the hovering drone above.

The projector mounted on the underside of the drone flickers on and shines a ritual circle down onto the rooftop in the center of the designated arena.  The shifting glyphs spiral into a nauseating self-recursive mess that makes the incomprehensible guts of the building beneath seem logical by comparison.  The drone’s speakers begin screeching an ear-piercing white noise and the accelerated, computer-generated ritual begins.

The second sight of a well-trained wizard and the sensory organs of a beast tailor made to hunt prey across dimensions are sensitive things capable of picking up on the subtle shifts, folds, stains, and cuts in the fabric of reality that make up what is known as “magic”.  Whatever Lacuna is doing is anything but subtle.  From the sensation of hooks digging into his skin and intestinal lining, Ashan would guess that it is meant to be a combination of planar lock and teleportation anchor kicked up to a degree that would be overkill for anything short of a demigod or one of the eldritch.  Or perhaps a fae liege.  Even without that, the sudden chaotic mess of metaphysical noise is enough to set him clutching his head and retching out his breakfast.  Blurry glimpses through tear-filled eyes suggest that neither Nameless vessel of the Count/Champion of Curses and Dust are faring any better.  Tam Lin however seems unaffected and comfortably human once again.

Having experienced a few of Lacuna’s abominable rituals before - although none nearly this horrific - Ashan is the first to recover.  A flick of his wand is all that it takes to wrench the rusty sword from his howling opponent’s grip.  By the time the Champion of Curses and Dust is back on its feet, Ashan has already conjured chains linked to each plate of its armor.  He stabs his wand forward then pulls it back and the chains strip away the armor in a single motion.  His opponent attempts to disappear but there is no green haze to vanish into, only the pain in its gut and the noise in its bones as it drops back down to all fours.  A simple dome is all it takes to contain it to the point of being unable to fight any further.

Ashan staggers over to his trapped opponent.  Doing his best to ignore the wretched droning of Lacuna’s ritual he asks, “Do you yield?”

The hunting beast in the dome whines.

“I said, do you yield?”

The hunting beast looks up at him with human eyes and whimpers.  Once again Ashan is struck by the similarity of those eyes to Tam’s when they are in human form.

“My champion yields,” the Count of Curses and Dust says through his Nameless servant on the sidelines.  “You have bested us both, now stop that accursed spell.  Not even that hated sorceress would resort to a distortion so vile.”

“Lacuna, please stop,” Ashan says.

The noise, audible and metaphysical, cuts out and the projector goes dark.  The drone drops down to eye level with a flurry of apologies from its speakers.

“Was it really that bad?” Lacuna’s voice asks.  “It took a bit out of me, sure, but I didn’t think it was that far off from standard parameters.”

Ashan merely stares into the drone’s camera at a loss for words.

“I did not know the sorceress had made constructs that could speak and work magic,” says the Count.  “Little wonder such a thing is insane.  As are any who would trust it.  No matter, the duel is done and the contract sealed.”  The Count’s vessel turns to face the approaching Tam.  “Enjoy your freedom, Carter.  Love and lose those mortals you think you can be one of.  And when the pain of outliving everyone -”

“For the last time, old man, that’s not my damn name!” Tam shouts.  “My name is -”

“I introduce to you, Tam Lin,” Lacuna interrupts while maneuvering the drone between them, “whom my friend and ally Ashan Glassheart has acted as champion for today.  Tam and Ashan, for whom this formal introduction serves to prevent the accidental giving away of Names by acknowledgement, you know the rules, don’t blame me, oh goddess that was incredibly rude of me I can’t believe I just said that to a fae lord please forgive me just trying to help just ignore me and forget I exist I’m going now.” 

There is an audible pop of static from a microphone being turned off and the drone rises back into the air.

“A thoroughly insane construct,” the Count mutters before turning his attention to the still-recovering hunting beast.  “Enough of this.  We depart.  Now.”

“I’m not done yet!” Tam says.  “Yes, that’s my Name.  The one I chose for myself.  Because ‘Carter’ was never my Name.” They turn to address the hunting beast.  It’s yours, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you dare,” the Count threatens.

Tam ignores him and kneels down eye to eye with the fallen beast and touches hand to shoulder.

“I return to you the Name of Carter, which was wrongfully stolen and passed into my care.  I return it to you, its rightful owner.  I return this Name to to you, Carter, my brother.”

This time the shifting of Carter’s form to a more human one is smoother, not wood being hacked apart and nailed back together but water poured into a new container.  When the transformation is done the two fall into a tearful embrace.  Hoarse “thank you”s choke out between sobs from a throat that has never been allowed to make its own words but now knows how thanks to the experience of a well-used Name.  Carter’s nails and canine teeth are still a little too sharp, his body's muscles still bulge from years of hunting prey, and the vestige of a tail still protrudes from the remaining cloth scraps of underarmor, but otherwise he could very likely pass for being fully human with minimal effort.  He and Tam could even pass for twins who just happened to take very different paths in life.

It occurs to Ashan that that is exactly what the two of them are.

“Remember,” the wizard says to the Count, “the terms of the contract include non-interference towards family as well, and non-retaliation towards the winning participant or participants of the duel.” 

The Seventeen-Named Count(ess) of Curses and Dust scoffs and its/his/her/their/faer Nameless vessel steps behind the breeze to depart without further comment.

“So, now what?” Tam asks.  They and Carter both look towards Ashan expectantly.  The fear of the unknown future for a life that has just been turned upside down thrice over is already beginning to creep into their relief at their ordeal being over.

“Now, we return to the Lonely Walk Outreach Agency.  We have multiple guest beds there where you may spend the night in safety.  When our leader, Road, returns they will be able to help the both of you find a way to return to the life that was stolen from you.  Or to help you find a new one Backstage now that you are in the know.  Balancing the two is always difficult, but it is also an option.”

The new twins nervously nod in unison.

What would Aliana say here?  Better yet, what would Road say?

“Not that either of you need to worry about any of that just yet,” Ashan says with a nearly genuine smile of reassurance.  “You have both had a long day and deserve to rest.  Tam, you have handled the sudden revelation of the existence of the supernatural as well as anyone ever has.  You should be proud.  Carter, while I hope you never have to do so again, you fought well today and I am honored to have faced you.  May that strength keep you safe in the future.  Now then,” Ashan looks around to hide his sudden embarrassment with the act of searching, “let us find a way down from this rooftop.”

“Hey,” Lacuna’s voice says directly into Ashan’s ear through the comm piece he forgot he was still wearing, “you did good too today.  The real hero here.”

“Thank you,” Ashan whispers back.  He conjures a platform to take him and the new twins down to the ground and suppresses a shiver.

“You’re welcome.  And sorry if this is weird to say, but if you ever want to talk about whatever that was with you having two Names, I’m here for you.  I don’t think it’s quite the same thing, but I’ve got some experience with that.”

“I will keep that in mind.  Thank you, my friend.”

No, it is not the same, not nearly.  But a friend’s experiences need not be identical to share a burden.  And who knows, Ashan considers while looking at Tam and Carter already smiling with wonder and comparing memories of mothers that only one of them has met in the flesh, perhaps a change in Name and a foot Backstage need not be the end of everything.

Maybe he is wrong.

Today is not the day to find out though.

He has plenty of time.

Maybe one day he will be ready to find out for himself.

<-Previous Chapter Masterpost Next Chapter->

#Eris introduced Ashan to the Internet with Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia. #Lacuna introduced Ashan to the Internet with tumblr memes and the Homestuck “Detective Pony” fanfic's Longcat Rant. #She has the rant memorized because she used to recite it as voice feminization practice. #writing #original fiction #urban fantasy #web novel #WIP #Writeblr #Empty Names #serial fiction #writing practice #writers on tumblr #creative writing #literature #prose #writers #novel #fantasy #fiction #my writing #emptynameswriting #I pulled the names Tam Lin and Carter from the song “Tam Lin” by S.J. Tucker. #The overall chapter concept was born from hearing the first few lines of “Looking Like This” by Lyre Le Temps #and imagining a first-time shapeshifter freaking out from not understanding what's happening and then sort of ignoring the rest of the song #Then I realized that there are some nice parallels between Ashan's backstory and the changeling myth #and there are some connections between change of Name/identity manipulating form and Lacuna's ongoing transmutation experiments. #Once again the SCP Foundation influence is leaking through in my conceptualization of fairies taking Names to replace people. #And then that mixes with the not-subtle-at-all trans themes throughout Empty Names.

[cherrynojutsu]

Title: Like Silver

Summary: A companion series for Like Gold.

Sakura misses him so much. She misses the faint smell of woodsmoke and sage, and mismatched eyes captivating in their intensity and unfathomable depths. The Rinnegan is beautiful, soft lavender ringed by hypnotizing layers of circle and tomoe, but flecks of silver dance in his right, tiny asterisms bewitching in nature, if one gets close enough; she’d first noticed it when they were children at the Academy. She knows they're Itachi's now, a slightly different scattering of luminaries aglow in the deep pitch of obsidian, but they're still as enthralling to her as they had been back then. She dreams of that silver sometimes, recalls it any time she sees something similar in color or reflet.

Blank period, canon-compliant, Sakura-centric, some expanded plot points from Like Gold, fluff and pining, eventually becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M (eventual nsfw-ness)

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes beginning/ending author's notes

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Chapter 1/?: An Introduction to Electrocardiography

Sakura gazes out the window of her office, a pile of paperwork set aside for a poetic sort of procrastination, trying to indulge for once in a Konoha spring, though she's finding it arduous.

As pretty as it is this time of year, all she can manage to feel is wistful.

Hanami has come and gone already for the most part, though there are a few stubborn cherry blossom trees lingering at the tail end of their blooming. She can see one here from her window, up on the hillside that slopes towards Hokage Rock, clinging to the uneven land. She’s sure its roots have to be all twisted, a labyrinth of gnarled wood clinging to any scrap of land it can wind itself around as its branches and petals try against all odds to reach upwards into the open sky that she can’t take her eyes off of.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but it’s one she doesn’t care to unpack.

This year was her twentieth viewing of her namesake, though Sakura obviously doesn't remember the first few. Her parents take great pride in the retelling of tales from those first few years of her life, the ones she was too little to remember. The highlights come up annually on her birthday without fail, how she grasped at the petals like they were something precious, clutched in her sticky little hands the entire day.

A framed photograph is perched on one of the built-in shelves of her parents' living room, of her and her father on her first birthday. He was holding her up on unsteady legs, ridiculously proud and pointing towards the camera where her mother had been trying to get her to look. Her short pink hair was flying absolutely everywhere, matching the fluttering petals and in-bloom cherry blossom tree in the background, chubby hands grasping upwards. Strawberry cake and frosting were smeared all over her cheeks. They’d had a picnic for her, at the park nearest to their house.

“We came home and cleaned you up, and then your father helped you water your tree for the first time, in the little pink watering pail you unwrapped earlier. You were so cute.” That’s what her mom says every year. Sakura has the sentence memorized at this point, could recite it on cue, if she needed to.

Her parents had planted a cherry blossom sapling in their backyard a few days after they brought her home from the hospital as a newborn, so the tree is around the same age she is. She used to spend time under it often, as a kid, and some of her earliest memories involve sprawling beneath it to study the heavens while her mother gardened. She would also sneak berries from the patch when her back was turned. Sometimes her dad would join in her pilferage, and they would sit beneath the tree like a couple of bandits with stained lips, though those first few years she can remember he barely fit underneath it, as tall as he is. Many a tickle fight had been had, shaded by those branches. She would read books there on nice afternoons, when she was a little older.

The tree is fully grown now, also on the final cusp of its blooming for the year, floriferous wood expanded outwards to drape her childhood stomping grounds in a sea of soft pink. They have a picnic under it every year, in her family’s backyard, when they celebrate her birthday together. Her actual birthday has come and gone, but her birthday dinner is two days from now. Her parents swung by her apartment on Sunday afternoon for a bit with outlandishly large cupcakes, but her mom had mentioned they’d do dinner and a gift on their usual night, Thursday, since it works so well with their schedules every other week.

“We have to have your picnic, under your tree, like always. It’s a tradition! My beautiful girl. I can’t believe you’re twenty. It seems like just yesterday you were only yay high,” her dad had told her, gesturing below his knees before hugging her too tightly, ruffling the hair she'd inherited from him before they left. The cupcakes were strawberry with cream cheese frosting, one of her favorite treats. They’d left her with four extra to enjoy between then and Thursday, one for each day if she wanted it, turning her birthday into more of a week-long affair than a one-day celebration.

She and Ino had demolished two of them while watching some of the terrible movies they love to hate together, later that evening. It had been a smorgasbord of strawberries, really, because they'd washed them down with strawberry daiquiris, sugary sweetness topped with ridiculous amounts of whipped cream. They'd sat on her balcony, after, sipping a little tipsily and just looking.

"You should try to enjoy your namesake more this year, Forehead. You're so busy that I'm not sure you've realized, but you've really grown into it," Ino had said, beckoning vaguely towards a Konoha beginning to bloom, renewed with a warm breeze, spring ushered in by a fluttering of pink petals. Ino likes to give compliments in roundabout ways, she’s learned over the course of their friendship; crass as the blonde can be, she does have her moments. Her words meant a lot to Sakura, so she’s trying to take them to heart, to stop and smell the cherry blossoms, so to speak. It won’t be long before Konoha crescendos into the sweltering heat of the summer.

She loves her parents and her friends. She really does.

But birthdays are weird, Sakura thinks.

Last year, Sasuke had sent her a letter on her birthday. She’s reread it so many times that she has it more than memorized; it’s stitched into the muscle tissue of her heart at this point, or maybe scarred into the lining of her aortic valve, sempiternal markings adorning the tunnels that sustain her, causing her breath to catch every time.

Sakura,

Hanami has come to the wilderness in the Land of Honey. Bees are awakening and foraging for the first pollen of the season, with which to begin again. Cherry blossom petals are everywhere, lining the pathways and floating on the water.

Happy birthday.

-Sasuke

It had been short, simple, and even a little poetic; she had cherished it, as she does all of his other letters. She’d cherished the pressed flower with it just as much; a cherry blossom, neatly flattened with a precision that screamed Sasuke, near exactly the same shade of pink as her hair.

Sakura had started crying when she unfolded the paper to reveal it sitting atop his words. His hawk had waited patiently at her office window for a response to be written and tied to its leg, perched atop the windowsill and watching the goings-on of the village below, absolutely no concept in its predator brain of how much she delights in seeing it fly, a graceful tether to the boy - now man - she has been in love with for ages.

Cherry blossom petals are everywhere. Is there a hidden meaning there, or is she making a mountain out of a molehill?

She’s tried not to read too much into the letters. She's not sure if he sends any to Naruto or not; she's too afraid to ask, because she'll either get a heart-pounding hope if he doesn't get them, or a soul-crushing disappointment if he does. She can't imagine him sending a yellow flower to Naruto, but he may very well have sent him a different gift for his birthday.

Maybe he just thought she would like a flower, which she did - it’s pressed for safekeeping, along with all of his other correspondence to her, sporadically and chronologically throughout a book she keeps on her nightstand, An Introduction to Electrocardiography. It is her take on an album of small things she holds close to her own heart, things she wishes she could read in his. Sakura didn’t want to buy an actual album for such a thing; that felt too formal, for something as ambiguous as her ties to Sasuke, overflowing on her end as they may be. So she’d settled on a book about deciphering the heart’s tells based on science only, electrical impulses and repolarization, the sizes and positions of the chambers, how to diagnose conditions utilizing one’s findings. It’s one she doesn’t need access to anymore, extremely familiar with EKGs after years of study. She’d wanted it to be something no-nonsense, all hard facts and data on how to read activity plotted over time.

Evidence-based. Are letters evidence, though? She’s not sure that would hold up as empirical proof in any of the scholarly journals she’s studied or submitted work to since beginning her research. She thinks wryly, though, based on what she has witnessed get published, that scientific verification doesn’t always matter if you know the right people.

She’s thought many times sifting through it that perhaps it is too optimistic, too hopeful of a book subject for such a thing. Sakura has agonized over it, frankly, wondering whether it was an inappropriate choice.

...But now that they’re in there, it might ache worse to move them somewhere else.

It’s the last day of March now, and she didn’t get a letter this month, which is unusual, because she’s gotten one near each month in the time that he’s been away. She’s paged through the book a few times over the past several days, rereading and admiring the preserved sakura blossom, frozen in suspended animation indefinitely on a page about precordial leads.

Sakura hadn’t really expected anything from him for her birthday, other than a monthly letter like he usually sends... but this year she didn’t even get that. She’s trying really hard to not be disappointed. She has so much to be thankful for, in the grand scheme of things...

...But the petals of the cherry blossom from last year have faded over time, she’d evaluated yesterday, sitting in her bedroom. It might be like her, always pressed in a book, fading whilst stuck indefinitely between the boundless teeth of academia. There is always more data to record, more evidence, with which one can prove or disprove their findings.

No letter this month, though. Nothing to record, no new evidence.

It might be time to move the letters somewhere else, she thinks pensively. Maybe a place where she’s not tempted to look at them all the time; their placement in the book, small scraps of paper that stick out in only a couple of places, makes it easy to go back and reread them. She’s pretty sure she has an empty shoebox in her closet that she could move them to, in a pile rather than catalogued between pages rife with information and a fragile sort of hope. Maybe she’ll do it tonight, put it up in the far right corner of the upper shelf, shoved towards the back so she can’t reach it without the stool, so she’s not tempted whenever the next bout of heartsickness slams into her like one of Tsunade-shishou’s fists used to. She needs to go by the library after work first, to return some things, but maybe when she gets home, she’ll do it. She could eat a cupcake, too; that might make it a little easier.

Sakura misses him so much. She misses the faint smell of woodsmoke and sage, and mismatched eyes captivating in their intensity and unfathomable depths. The Rinnegan is beautiful, soft lavender ringed by hypnotizing layers of circle and tomoe, but flecks of silver dance in his right, tiny asterisms bewitching in nature, if one gets close enough; she’d first noticed it when they were children at the Academy. She knows they're Itachi's now, a slightly different scattering of luminaries aglow in the deep pitch of obsidian, but they're still as enthralling to her as they had been back then.

She dreams of that silver sometimes, recalls it any time she sees something similar in color or reflet. There’s an extremely unique necklace in an antique shop she visits with Ino and Sai from time to time, and occasionally on her own, over on the northeast side of town. It’s a salt-and-pepper diamond, dark grey with inclusions, dainty and set in what must be a hand-fabricated setting. It hangs from a silver chain, towards the back of a display case filled with other vintage and distinctive pieces, but it’s the only one she ever finds herself drawn to. It is so similar to his right eye, dark smoke near black, speckled with beguiling silver startling in its clarity. The bevel cut reveals new flecks dependent on the angle at which you view it.

Sakura studies it closely on each visit, because it is so hauntingly breathtaking and it reminds her of him.

Ino has said it’s not her color, and that she should stick to warm tones and gold, for which she is better suited; Sakura has not confessed to her why it catches her eye so much. Sai has agreed with his girlfriend on the coloring note, sensitive as he is to such things, but the way he studies her every time she tears herself away from it makes her suspect he knows exactly why it captivates her so. It’s been sitting there for years at this point; she has to mentally talk herself out of buying it on each visit. It’s beautiful, but she would spend far too much time gawking at it, and it might hurt more with extended study than the gentle tugging at her heart she experiences when she’s in that old building throughout tiny fragments of lackadaisical afternoons.

Sasuke has been gone for a long time. She hopes he's finding the peace he's been seeking, that he's seeing the world with new eyes just as he'd imagined. She thinks of him every day, sends out little orisons like petals in the breeze in the hopes that they’ll find him, wherever he is.

I wonder where he is now.

Try as she does to enjoy the breath of spring Konoha is right now, and her namesake as Ino said, all she can seem to do is shift her vision to the sky, hoping against hope for a glimpse of a familiar bird-of-prey that will stay an ample amount of time for her to craft a response, before it abvolates away for another month.

Sakura smiles, then, close to laughing at the absurdity of it all, because she is so predictable. She loves this village despite its many flaws and challenges, despite the things about it she and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei and Ino and even Tsunade-shishou, off in the Land of Wind, are trying to change, but even after so many years, she’s still pining for something beyond it, something in the wilds of the sky just beyond her reach.

There’s always next year, she supposes, pupils drawn again towards the outstretched branches of the cherry blossom tree on the hill, before trailing her eyes along further. She can grow a little more to try to reach him. When she was little, she had wanted to grow tall so she could try to touch a star, like the branches of the tree in her backyard did when she and her father laid beneath them on balmy summer nights. He would tell her ridiculous stories about all of the constellations, things she knew had to be untrue, even at the ripe age of five. Precocious, he’d always called her, but in the loving, joking manner he had.

Her gaze follows the horizon, leisurely taking in the rest of her home. It really is a lovely day, despite her yearning. Spring is here again, and today's is a gentle sunset, one last little bit of sunlight with which to conclude March. The temperature is already spiking, unusually warm for early spring, but summers in the Land of Fire are always hot. She really should finish her paperwork, but it’s hard to find the motivation just yet.

Something possesses her, then, to turn her neck more, take in more of the skyline's continuation. She wants to see all of it.

And then Sakura’s eyes fall on an achingly familiar figure cloaked all in black, perched only a roof away and observing her, and she thinks she must have nodded off, because she has to be dreaming.

She subtly pinches herself in the millisecond of time that follows, but she is very much awake.

The words are blooming out of her throat before she can even process what’s happening, exultation sinking into her every vein. “Sasuke-kun!” She moves to crank her window open the rest of the way, and he hops from the neighboring roof down into her office, all nimble legerity that she still thinks has to be a mere mirage conjured from her memories. When he straightens to his full height, she muses that he has to have grown taller. The mere sound of his footsteps on the tile flooring, as familiar a refrain to her as if he’d just walked out of the village yesterday, are a treasure beyond price.

“Sakura.” His voice is a rich timbre that she has desperately felt the absence of; hearing him say her name almost makes her want to cry. She smiles wider instead, to the extent that it almost hurts, and her gaze latches hungrily onto the very eye she was just daydreaming about. A storm of soot and silver, beveled into countless fragments like some kind of dark, rustic diamond, and so staggeringly beautiful that she’s pretty sure she’s blushing just from beholding it. Gods, it's not fair for someone to be so handsome.

“When did you get back?” She asks, utterly overcome with joy. This is better than a letter or any birthday gift she could have received, brighter than any star she’s beheld.

“Just now.” He’s smiling, a small and subtle upturn of lips that is so characteristic of him. Then his words hit her, and her face must be getting redder.

Just now? As in…

“I’m sorry I missed your birthday,” he adds before she can simmer on that for too long, and she has to blink in bewilderment, because that is the absolute last thing she expected him to say. Sakura wonders how much heat can creep into one’s face before they spontaneously combust.

Then she realizes she should probably respond, as humans tend to do in conversations. “Oh! Um… it’s okay.” She folds her hands in front of her shyly, grinning like an idiot. “Thank you for remembering.”

There is a lengthy moment in which she just soaks him in, hoping he can read in her eyes how much she’s missed him. He is still so beautiful, prized eyes and aristocratic angles that have solidified a bit more into the face of a man in the time that’s passed. His hair is different now, covering his Rinnegan eye. His cloak is a little more threadbare, too. He’s tall.

His expression, normally unreadable, is calm. Content, even.

There’s a question nagging at her that she knows she needs to ask. She tries not to bite her lip as she asks it, braces herself for the possibility of not liking the answer.

“Are you… just back for a little while?”

Did you find what you were searching for?

He gazes at her for so long that she thinks he may be glimpsing her soul, peeking into her ventricles to see his own words immortalized there, seared into her core to be felt each time her blood pumps.

“...For more than a while.” And she smiles the biggest she ever has. Oh, this is so much better than a letter or a gift.

“Well, welcome back, Sasuke-kun. It’s… very good to see you again.” It feels as if a piece of her heart has been returned to her, something of the divine stitched back into her chest and full to bursting in omneity.

There is a pause, and then he’s reaching his hand out towards hers, initiating physical contact with a touch that is feather light, so gentle she thinks she is going to start sobbing.

She can’t help it; she pulls him into a hug, tinged with elation. She hopes he doesn’t mind too much; he stiffens for a brief moment, but then settles, wrapping his arm around her and settling his head atop of hers, and she could die happy right there, embracing him with feelings momentarily set free from where they’ve been whelved into her chest.

He smells faintly like sage and smoked cedar, just as she remembered. She can hear his heart thumping, a strong cadence, and it grounds her. Oh, she’s missed him.

“...I’m home, Sakura.” Soft words float above her head, and she can feel the vibration of them through his chest, right by her ear.

Oh, she’s crying.

Sasuke lets her embrace him for a long time, for which she is so grateful. She knows he’s not one for physical contact; it’s a privilege to be allowed into his space even for a single second, let alone for an extended period.

She draws back eventually, glancing up at him again through the tears still collecting in her eyes. Her face blazes when he reaches to wipe them away tenderly with a calloused hand, careful and with a lenity that she’s always known was there, hidden under the surface.

She could just stare at him for hours, she thinks as he lowers his hand. He’s still looking down at her with one of the softest expressions she has ever seen him wear. She really hopes she’s not dreaming.

It’s tremendously hard to get it together, but she tries, because she doesn’t want to spend the entire time crying, not when he's finally back. There are so many questions she’d like to ask him that she’s finding it a challenge to pick one with which to lead.

He surprises her by speaking first, quietly. “I… had something made for you.”

It takes a moment for the words to compute.

Made for me?

Her processing speed must be exceptionally slow, stuck in the utter mush her insides have become, because he adds, “...For your birthday.”

Sakura blinks, and furrows her brows in confusion. “Made… for me?”

He nods. “...I’m sorry it’s late.” The way he speaks it is cryptic, like the apology weighs more than one needed for a tardy gift. Doesn’t he know she doesn’t care? He could have showed up in July with something for her, and it still would have made her knees weak and her heart thump furiously in her chest.

Made for me? She’s still stuck on that sentiment as he breaks eye contact and turns to rummage through his satchel, beneath his cloak.

Sasuke pulls out a medium-sized flat box, a simple white, and she doesn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t that. Something that comes in a box is a lot more formal than a pressed cherry blossom, something more… permanent.

She reaches out to take it on autopilot, and is stupidly distracted by the way his hand brushes against hers, a small spark that makes something in her quake. She wonders if he felt it, too.

Sakura clutches the box with both hands like her life depends on it, murmuring softly, “Thank you, Sasuke-kun.” She’ll wait until later to open it, after he’s left; whatever it is, she doesn’t want to embarrass him, and she also isn’t sure she can tear her eyes away from him just yet, anyways.

Is it just the lighting in her office, or are his ears a little flushed? She didn’t notice that before; maybe he’s had a drawn-out journey back. She wonders how much ground he covered today, if he’s still winded. He might need to rest.

But then he mumbles, voice husky with what she assumes is disuse, “...You should open it.”

His words echo in her head again. I… had something made for you.

“Okay,” she answers in a hushed voice, so she doesn’t scare him away, shifting slightly to set the box on her desk carefully. Suddenly she is very nervous, anticipation settling into her gut.

When she lifts the lid, she swears her heart ceases beating.

The most exquisitely intricate uchiwa fan she has ever laid eyes upon is placed in the box before her.

It’s carved into a likeness of a cherry blossom tree, branches twisting lissomely into bamboo framework, impossibly fine. A different set of words is reverberating in her head now.

You should try to enjoy your namesake more this year, Forehead. You're so busy that I'm not sure you've realized, but you've really grown into it.

Made for me?

“O-oh.” Sakura is not sure what she expected, but it wasn’t this. She fights back the tears, biting her lip and wide eyes soaking it all in, enjoying her namesake in a way that is entirely unprecedented in its sheer severity. The amount of time it would have taken for someone to sculpt and bind and sew is unimaginable; every detail is finely wrought, flawless down to the silk and stitching, lacquered and carved pale wood shifting effortlessly into eighty slivers of bamboo, intricately webbing silk together with the lithe grace of gossamer. It’s a cherry blossom tree, petals and all, pearlescent thread shifting slightly, gorgeously in the light, unimaginable detail. She has stitched people back together countless times over the course of years, but even her expert dexterity would look like a child’s first embroidery stitching in comparison. The stamen within the petals are nearly more detailed and finely milled than an actual, real life cherry blossom, plexure sutured in a fashion so baronial that it’s impossible to believe human hands were even responsible for it.

The silk. Oh, the silk. The color shift bears a striking resemblance to the Uchiha insignia. This is not a gift one gives to a teammate.

Oh, she's crying.

This has to be a dream, some kind of paracosm her heart thought up to give her brain the high of a lifetime. Hope burgeons and unfolds in her chest cavity, bleeding into her extremities like the pale pink shifting into red before her eyes. She’s never, ever going to forget this, not even if she lives to be one hundred years old.

Made for me?

She picks it up with disbelieving hands, grasping it more carefully than she’s ever held anything in her entire life, as if she’s going to wake up at any moment and it will dissolve into synapse, lost in the hazy juncture of morning the way one tends to lose awareness of the contents of a dream upon coming to lucidity. To her absolute bewilderment, it stays solid in her hands, a finery made even more unbelievable by touch. The grooves of the carving are as gentle as his hand had been on hers earlier. She thinks it would have had to be commissioned at least a few months in advance, outlandishly expensive. She’s never seen silk like this. She doesn't know; she's smart, but she's no artisan. Maybe she should ask Sai. She's crying.

She adores it.

Tears won’t stop welling in her eyes; she thinks they may be escaping from a tender spot inside her chest that’s been reserved for him since she was a child, a leak in a metaphorical dam. She takes a steadying breath, blinks, almost has them conquered. Get a grip, Sakura.

Then Sasuke’s hand is on hers, gently turning the handle over.

Her name is carved into the pale wood, on the back in formal calligraphy, Sakura daintier and more perfect than she could ever write it, as if it had just been uncovered in one of the inner layers rather than whittled there manually. Sasuke presses her fingers to it before loosening his grip, and in that second it feels as though his lost hand is in the wood, caressing her from split atoms in the grooves from the other side.

The tears spill over her cheeks - she admits defeat - intricacy of the entire thing blurring out of focus but still somehow burned into her retinas for all eternity.

Made for me, made for me, made for me-

Her voice finds her after a few more tears fall. “It’s beautiful.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, overwhelmed with complete and utter awe, trying desperately to choke down a sob. “Thank you, Sasuke-kun. I… I’ll treasure it. Always.” She cradles the fan closer to her chest, her heart - maybe An Introduction to Electrocardiography wasn’t a poorly-chosen book, after all; there is much to be read from something this precious - and regards him with watery eyes. She wishes she wasn’t crying; the distortion of the tears is making it hard to see the silver she’s loved and missed so much.

His hand lifts to her face after a moment, and to her surprise, he wipes away her tears again. She barely catches the something-more in his eyes, then, through the waterworks, precious metal flashing and pouring into the words scarred into her ventricles to live there forever, fortified in silver, but he is looking at her so -

“...Always,” he agrees, voice a little breathless, sparking scintilla near hypnotizing her in their luster, and he seems so happy -

Then he leans down to press his lips gently to hers, and this is better than her heart stopping, like when she opened the box. This time, her heart soars, and she touches a star she’s been dreaming of for eons.

#naruto #sasusaku #ssfanfiction #cherry writes #like silver #fanfiction #i'm really out here with just hundreds of pages of fanfiction in my google doc drafts huh

[lollytea]

If you don't mind, do you have any more Shere Khan and or Bagheera headcannons you would like to share?

DO I???

(You are so welcome!! I get so excited whenever somebody shows an interest in shagheera cuz of me. I live for it!!

I have like a truckload of headcanons about their past and present but I’m saving them for this fic once I get into the mindset to get back to it. Soon I’m hoping! BUT I’ve always thought way too much about Bagheera and Khan so I probably have plenty of rambly thoughts I can talk about!)

— Bagheera was raised by his mother and, to an extent, his great grandfather. Great gramps was ancient and couldn’t really do much to care for a child, other than sit in his chair and entertain the little one with stories of his life back in India. Bagheera would listen, enthralled. Bagheera idolized his great grandfather.

— The world hadn’t been very nice to Bagheera’s mother so, as a result, she kept her child sheltered. She coddled him, fussed over him and was overprotective to a fault. This led to Bagheera being a gentle, skittish, naive and high strung boy.

— He got the biggest whiplash of his life when he started school and realized that other boys were not like him. They were loud, rowdy, nonchalantly rude and played rough. Bagheera struggled a little at first but he eventually adapted, mirroring the ways of other kids so he would fit in better. It was during this time that Bagheera’s personality really began to define itself. He was painfully aware that he was small for his age, clumsy and not very fast or strong and he developed quite a complex about it. But it wouldn’t be forever. He had every intention to improve himself in that department. For the time being, he attempted to compensate with a sharp tongue and a hot temper.

— Shere Khan had been raised with his future already decided for him. Since he could walk, he had been told that he would inherit the family’s business empire and he held a lot of pride in that. However when you allow a child to mentally develop with the knowledge that one day they will basically rule the whole universe, (at least it feels like that when you’re so small and are too immature to fully grasp the reality of your future) it may do some permanent damage to that child’s psyche.

— Shere Khan was spoiled, doted on, put a pedestal, had his parents singing his praises. As their only child and heir, of course he was to be treated like he was special. Because he was. Shere Khan was special. Until he wasn’t.

— If you struggle with your studies, you’re too stupid to inherit the family fortune. If you get upset and cry, you’re too weak willed to inherit the family fortune. If you’re not good at everything you do, you’re not as brilliant as we thought you were. Years and years of mixed messages results in a child who doesn’t know for certain if he’s the most talented boy in the world or if he’s completely worthless. It’s the uncertainty that causes such instability. Shere Khan is cocky, smug, arrogant, a perfectionist, cagey, confrontational, competitive, hellbent on proving he’s the best and terrified of ever being seen as weak.

— Bagheera has had a fascination with books since he first learned to read. Unfortunately your literary options are scarce when you’re dirt poor but he does what he can. He frequents the neighborhood’s tiny library even if it’s limited, he’s reread the books he does own to the point he has them memorized and he collects newspapers and magazines to obtain as much knowledge as he can. Occasionally he’ll gather newspaper clippings of current events and make his own “history books.”

— Shere Khan is deeply interested in botany, though he really doesn’t have the time to focus on it with the overload of other subjects he’s obliged to perfect. His grandma gifted him a selection of bulbs and he likes to grow flowers on his windowsill. He’s extremely proud of his plant work. But that’s a secret shh.

— Bagheera and Shere Khan are almost equally matched academically, with Khan inching just a little ahead. However it’s clear from the start that while Khan is the sharper of the two, he can’t compare to the genuine passion Bagheera has for learning. Despite their smarts, the two boys aren’t really liked by teachers. They and their other four friends are incorrigible troublemakers, with Shere Khan being the most disruptive of them all. And while Bagheera can’t help but be dragged in, he does try to behave himself sometimes. Unfortunately he’s constantly getting in trouble for drawing in his notebook.

— There are a lot of bad aspects of this friendship. Shere Khan is prone to flippant insults and Bagheera’s self esteem is shaky enough as it is. There are times when Shere Khan makes Bagheera feel terrible about himself. And though Shere Khan doesn’t understand the extent of Bagheera’s feelings, he knows he’s making him feel inferior. And he leeches off that insecurity to assure himself of his own superiority. Shere Khan probably wouldn’t be half as annoyingly egotistical if it weren’t for Bagheera.

— However, as time goes on, this more malicious side of things starts to fade into a complicated yet comfortable companionship. It’s odd. Everyone agrees that it’s odd. While the antagonistic vibe never quite goes away, with the two constantly challenging eachother, there are days where they get along fine. It depends on their respective moods. One day, Shere Khan would hassle Bagheera until a fight breaks out and the very next day, they could chat with eachother for hours about their favourite novels and the day after that, there’s a reasonable middle ground of jokingly teasing eachother. No one understands it. Shere Khan and Bagheera never even notice that this is peculiar. It’s just their normal.

— Shere Khan and his family would usually leave for a few weeks every year to stay at their summer home. Bagheera would write him letters to keep him updated on the lives of himself, Baloo, Louie, Haithi and Kaa. Half of Khan’s responses were irritable that Bagheera was pestering him with messages, while the other half was listing words that Bagheera had misspelled. One year he returned a week after Bagheera’s birthday and passed him a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It was a pocket dictionary. Shere Khan framed it as condescending, since Bagheera liked big words so much but was so terrible at spelling. He certainly hadn’t expected Bagheera to be as delighted with the gift as he was. But he found himself proud that he had given it to him.

— As opposed to their other friends, Shere Khan and Bagheera were fond of the night. They would often sneak out after dark and meet up for walks around the city. Sometimes they’d talk about everything and nothing, sometimes they would argue and sometimes they would say nothing at all. But they enjoyed it. Both felt the need to wander late at night and neither wanted to do it alone.

— Bagheera really started to grow as a person during his time in flight school. He made plenty of friends, grew in confidence, expanded his knowledge and had the support of his best friend, Baloo through all of it. He also learned some things about himself, which goes without saying. He hadn’t seen Shere Khan in years but upon a little reflection, realizes with amusement and a little embarrassment that his admiration towards Khan was most likely a childish crush. He comments to Baloo that being so interested in a boy who was mean to him was rather pathetic on his part. But a part of him knows that it was probably more complicated than that. Whatever it was, he accepts it but doesn’t dwell too much and moves forward. He figures he probably won’t ever see Shere Khan and while it is a little sad, he will certainly survive.

— Shere Khan also learned some things about himself while pursuing higher education but when it comes to his previous friendship with Bagheera, he opts to think about it as little as possible. While Bagheera was currently becoming far more outgoing, Shere Khan was steadily closing himself up until he was left entirely isolated. It was voluntary, of course. He had no interest in making friends and even if spending weeks without speaking to anyone had its mental effects, Khan was too stubborn to change his ways.

— Just like when they were children, Bagheera would send Khan letters. However, Khan had already made the decision that Bagheera was not to be involved in his life anymore. However he was so starved for familiar interaction, he read every letter and even wrote responses, even if he never sent them. He kept all of Bagheera’s letters in his desk drawer. And then they were moved to a box. And then that box was piled under by other boxes. As an adult, Shere Khan doesn’t quite know where exactly the letters are but he’s certain that they’re still somewhere in the house.

— When the two meet again as adults, Shere Khan comes to the reluctant conclusion that the boy he always showed up in school work, had become a far smarter and well read man than Shere Khan will ever be. And once he does allow himself to admit that, Khan can come to appreciate the person Bagheera has grown into. He’s very impressed.

— Bagheera is comfortable with himself. He wouldn’t say his self confidence is a hindrance anymore, not like when he was younger. But he finds that even as an adult, he often has moments of doubting himself. After being made feel so small for years and years, that sort of thing never quite leaves you. Even in adulthood. And isn’t it strange when the person who made you so insecure when you were children, is now the one making every attempt to build you back up again.

— Bagheera wouldn’t say he’s especially brave or anything. He’s still afraid by little things like thunder and spiders. But upon meeting Shere Khan again, he simply cannot wrap his head around the notion that anyone could find this man intimidating. All Bagheera sees is his old friend, who has taken on yet another mask to make himself seem cool.

— There are things Shere Khan has always known about Bagheera. He’s passionate and opinionated. A bit of a windbag really. As a child Shere Khan had found this annoying. But nowadays, he would consider it a pivotal aspect of Bagheera’s brilliance. Khan wasn’t all that intense about any personal matters these days so Bagheera brought so many new concepts to the table. He activated the side of Shere Khans brain that wasn’t strictly office based. It was a welcome change of pace.

— Bagheera has heard from many people that Shere Khan is apparently terrifying. It’s the icy demeanor, it seems. But oddly enough, once he had gotten used to Shere Khan all those years ago, Bagheera found his nonchalant disposition to be comforting, and now it was even more so. Khan rarely got outwardly agitated or panicky or raised his voice. And for Bagheera, somebody prone to anxiety ridden outbursts, a person like that was most welcome in his corner.

— Shere Khan has noticed that Bagheera carries around a worn, well loved pocket dictionary. Now he remembers giving him one over twenty years ago but it’s not likely that it’s the same one. Years and years go by and even long after considering Bagheera his other half, for some reason Shere Khan can never bring himself to ask. Maybe he just doesn’t want to know the truth. Believing what he wants is nice.

— Bagheera had always enjoyed sketching but it isn’t until his adulthood that he decides to indulge in buying paint supplies. Before long, a once empty space in Shere Khan’s penthouse is cluttered with paints and tarps and finished canvases propped against the walls. He’s particular fond of depicting countryside landscapes. Self portraits too but he’s afraid people will think he’s self centered. Shere Khan simply says if you’re both beautiful and artistic, then self portraits should be a no brainer. Bagheera had to politely ask Shere Khan to stop going to art galleries and showing immense interest in his art to raise the bidding among the rich crowd, as he would really like to see how much he can do on his own.

— Shere Khan played piano as a child. He didn’t remember the act of playing itself, but the obligation to sit at the stool and practice when he would much rather be outside. He associated piano with a lot of negative feelings, so once he had left his family’s home, he avoided the instrument at all cost. However, he accidentally discovered a little later than life that if he wasn’t under any pressure to do so, he quite enjoyed playing. It was calming for him. He liked the music it produced. But he was a bit out of practice. He was uncomfortable with being less than perfect at something and found the whole ordeal of improving oneself to be humiliating.

— Bagheera had a piano set up in their home for Shere Khan’s birthday. On the walls surrounding the instrument, he hung up the first few paintings he had done before he had gotten the hang of the whole art thing. It does take a month or two before Khan is willing to sit in the stool and give it a serious try but once he does, there’s music every evening at exactly 6:25pm. Not perfect music. But Bagheera makes it known how delighted he is to hear it.

— As he gets older and works gets more taxing, Bagheera has a tendency to fall asleep earlier. Usually in the evenings as he’s sitting in his chair and on page 6 of his book. Shere Khan hates this because if he leaves him there, he’ll wake up with a bad back and a creak in his neck, so he has to make the effort of dragging him to the bed. And Bagheera is not easy to carry.

— Shere Khan on the other hand can stay awake for days at a time, usually working and Bagheera hates it. Because not only is this biologically impossible for a person to pull off without losing some sanity, he doesn’t like to sleep on his own.

— They enjoy watching antique auction shows and get into extremely intense debates over it. Usually over the price or how ugly they think said antiques are.

— To this day, they still like to go on late night walks around the city. There’s a different atmosphere now that they’re no longer children but it helps them remember where they started off. And just like always, sometimes, they would talk about eveything and nothing, sometimes they would argue and sometimes they would say nothing at all. 

#im sorry i talk too much there is something wrong with me <3 #i was really losing steam in the second half of this and it shows but i hope the first half is fun #talespin

[bitchapalooza]

More hetalia highschool AU, 🌟magic team🌟 edition :)

Under the cut bc it is long ❤️

Vladimir is that one kid obsessed with Twilight but only for the vampires; it was his first ever exposure to vampires thanks to his dad thinking Twilight was an appropriate book for a 11 year old. Team Edward going strong for five years, he'd proudly declare like it actually mattered. He tries his best to dress goth at school even though his uniform gets in the way. Fake ear piercings(his parents won't let him pierce them yet), over the top makeup, he's dyed the top half of his shoes black because his parents were concerned about his obsession with black and wouldn't buy him the black tennies he wanted— "mom look, these are marked down for back to school! Can I pleeeease get them???" "....may I know why the black ones specifically?" "They match the ever nothingness of my soul." "Yep! The white ones it is then!" "Mooooooooooom!"— Vladimir has been dubbed the cringy vampire kid of course.

Lukas is into pretty much anything concerning cryptids and magical creatures because they can't be proven to be fake or real, which intrigues him. He carries a book about mushrooms at all times and info dumps on pretty much anyone about identifying poisonous mushrooms and which mushrooms are safe to eat. His backpack is covered in buttons and pins to show off his interests. He keeps an amethyst in the front pocket of his backpack, reason unknown other than to just randomly pull it out and let Mikkel look at it. He's that kid that always wears his hoodie no matter the season, he never takes it off. Under his hoodie is always a crude worded t-shirt that the school would not approve of, much less his parents. He's relatively quiet and because he's quiet he's considered a weird kid.

Arthur can't decide if punk is his style or if goth is. Either way, his way of self expression at school in addition to the uniform is horrible. Checkered black/red shoes his grandma got him with his older brother's hand me down worn out greying socks—"can I PLEASE just have my own clothes???" "we have perfectly good clothes for you in the garage! I can fix them up to fit you better and everything!" "but I want cool NEW clothes!" "those are cool clothes and as far as the other kids know, they're also new. Now get your transformer backpack and get to the car. I put a new patch on it last night so that should hold it for the rest of the year."— Old Pierce the veil shirt, with holes chewed into the collar from his older brother Dillan, peeking out from under his white polo. A black and red choker to match his black and red slowly tearing apart too big flannel on top of a black pull over. A deep blue beanie, the hoodie of his pull over almost constantly on top when outside the school. He dyes a part of his hair a different color every month. He spikes his hair using too much gel and is convinced he looks good. He talks too much about bands and always gets Vlad and Lukas going on and on about fictional creatures he does not FULLY believe in himself. He does, however, believe in magic and loves Harry Potter, more specifically the Weaselys, to bits.

Natalya is a sophomore, a year behind the boys, and she just kinda pushed her way into the friend group until they eventually accepted her into it. They were the only three she knew who liked occult related topics. She's on the baseball team because she wanted an excuse to hit things with another thing and NOT get detention because of it. She wears the khaki uniform skirt and takes full advantage over being able to wear any kind of tights underneath; skull pattern, plain black, blood splatter pattern, fire pattern. Anything that makes her feel like a badass. She's always talking about antiques and forging weapons, more specifically knives. She has a whole collection of fidget toys but her favorite is this pea pod keychain her father gave her. She's always talking about how she'd like to be a medical examiner and to just prove that she's serious, she'll bring up a picture of a human model and point out the difference between a self inflicted fatal wound and a homicide. She puts up a charade of being able to see and talk to ghosts to freak out Alfred, her extended friend first met through Tolys.

They collectively believe they're cool and that other people know this. They're genuinely blind to the obvious snickers sent their way, being called losers and nerds. They're really knowm for like really pathetic things like; Natalya is Ivan's, tallest and most intimidating member of the wrestling team, weird younger sister by a year. Lukas is just the weird quiet kid that reads by the courtyard garden during lunch. Vladimir is not only the vampire goth kid but the kid who's parents believe the teachers are giving his son low grades on purpose and will yell at them for it. And Arthur is just. He's another Kirkland, immediately assumed to be a massive trouble maker because of his now graduated brother Alistair and one grade above him brother Dillan. Everyone loved his eldest brother Darick and sometimes compare him to Darick.

Compared to what others THINK they do, such as witch craft for some odd reason, the four of them do pretty typical teen activities. Like hang out at the mall. Do their honework together. Play video games and D&D when they have the chance. The boys do have sleepovers still as they have since meeting each other in middle school, Nat not really being a fan of sleeping where she doesn't live but comfortable enough to go to their houses and just chill for the day. They have become friends because of their related interests but thats not what they're ALL ABOUT.

Fun facts/stories about these losers I thought about while bored as fuck:

• Lukas, in his freshman year, went on a nature hike field trip with his lit class after reading Into The Wild. And he brought his mushroom book of course. They walked around, looking at the sights, talked about the book. Lukas just stops at one point, falling behind the class. He picks up a mushroom, goes to the teacher and is like "You see this? Its not poisonous." And straight up fucking eats it without warning. The teacher called an ambulance even though Lukas kept telling him he was fine and that that mushroom was 100% okay to eat raw, but for sure better off cooked. Lukas calmly shows the paramedics his book and they're like "yeah that actually was safe to eat, we don't need the book to confirm that, but um. Please don't ever pick something off the ground and eat it again. Just. Please don't do that, son." .....he did it again before leaving to go back to school but this time he didn't tell anyone.

• In elementary school, Natalya brought in a model of the human brain she asked her dad to borrow. He had to say yes because she was his only child genuinely interested, not bored of, his medical profession and he found it very cute and honoring. So she's at show and tell, its her turn right, and she silently goes up to the front of the class and pulls out the model brain. Teacher tries to step in because, hey, these are 6 year olds—AND WHY DOES THIS 6 YEAR OLD HAVE A PLASTIC BRAIN??? But Nat just shooshes her. In surprised shock, the teacher is just quiet as Nat begins to explain parts of the brain and their function— which was all wrong actually. She knew the words and everything but she didn't get the locations right. She sounded confident and smart and she was telling this to a bunch of 6 year olds so they believed her of course. End of the school day, her dad is having a hilarious conference with his youngest's teacher about the brain incident.

• Vladimir loves reading. He's loved it since he began to learn how, even if his dyslexia gives him grief along the way. So since he loves to read he'll always get excited and read ahead in class or in the public library reading club. One summer, the reading club was reading The Giver and it was getting really good. Vlad was loving the story, so much so that Vlad began to read ahead in his own time when he really wasn't supposed to be, the club was reading it together out loud and discussing it. Now he's read enough and worked hard enough to figure out how to help himself focus better and understand each word and sentence without having to reread it all multiple times over or get stuck. But sometimes the meaning and context to what he's reading doesn't ALWAYS process with the words as he's too focused on reading the words right and it passes right over his head. So Vlad is reading ahead and he's getting to the part where The Giver has given Jonas the memory of the sled again. And Vlad just sits there after reading that paragraph. He rereads it. And rereads it again. And then he leaves his book on his bed, goes to the the hall closet and takes out the ironing board. He grabs a plastic container to use as an ill attempt of a helmet and he just. Rockets down the staircase and hits the wall. He screams and cries and his parents rush in from the livingroom. When asked what happened he just says "I wanted to understand the sled scene better! Now I do and I feel really bad for Jonas!" He just couldn't quite grasp WHY the sled accident hurt, never had a broken bone nor sled afterall, and needed to find out. And that's how Vlad got his first broken arm at the age of 12.

• When Alfred and Matthew moved in with Arthur's family, Arthur didn't like it. He was a moody young teen but he was also just tired of the full house. His cousins were loud and nosey. He had to share a room with his four older brothers already and now with Matthew while Kathleen and Alfred got a room to themselves. Arthur thought this was so unfair. So his solution was to run away. He was 13, he needed a place to have some peace and quiet for once. So he texts Francis and Lukas, the only two of his friends living in his neighnorhood. Francis is not on board with helping him run away at first but then Lukas brings literally all his camping gear for Arthur's use and then Francis is on board because he had the feeling Arthur was going to get himself killed somehow. So as the elder one of the group he accompanied Arthur and Lukas out to the short stretch of woods behind the last street of their neighborhood, intending to go to the big clearing before hitting the roads leading to the airport and whatever else buildings. They're out there setting everything up together and they're done by like 4 pm. They sit down and talk, munch on oreos and other snacks Arthur deemed as essential survival foods. Then Francis looks at his cell and remarks "wow its already 6! Ah, Lukas, we should get home. Afterall, neither of us ran away so we still have supper to eat. Come on Lukas, let's go before our parents come looking for us." They exchange goodbyes, Francis trying his best to hide his cocky smirk. So Lukas and Francis start walking off, Arthur crawls into the tent and eats half a cookie before frowning and feeling too alone. He didn't expect to feel alone because all he wanted was to BE ALONE. Before he knows it, he's running out of the tent yelling after his friends to stop and wait up. "Oh whats wrong, Arthur? I thought you wanted to run away." "I— I forgot I hadn't fed my rabbit is all! I'll run away tomorrow! I'm not... Feeling lonely if.. If that's what you think...." Arthur did not run away the next day. Buuuuuut the three plus Vlad made a tree house together in the Kirkland backyard that they still use today!

#if you thought these four would be cool kids in this au then you thought wrong #hetalia #hetalia au #hetalia england #hetalia belarus #hetalia norway #hetalia romania #hetalia magic team #there should be more content of the magic losers + belarus tbh magic team is a bad group name but so fits their collective vibes so well

[commanderserwin]

Hello! Umm 😶 may I ask for an erwin x reader its an enemies to friends to lovers trope where they headbutts and are against each other during their early cadets years then erwin got promoted to commander and are secretly smug about it but reader knows and shes like yeah right your eyebrows are still hideous but she loves his eyebrows then she learned about erwins dream, about his father... just do you hehehe I just want a strong reader that go against erwin but they end up together 😘

❯ characters. erwin smith x reader

❯ notes. hello! i’m so so sorry this took a lot! i got caught up with exams then my werdsmith undid half of what this was supposed to be (it was supposed to be an angst/hurt/comfort but i think i’m gona draft that fellas 😔 kinda finished tho sigh) but yes! so sorry, i hope you’re still there and this is okay for you! i hope you enjoy, my love ♡ 

hooked.

The enemy. A simple bond of dislike towards each other that has always left the two of you spewing words left and right, demanding from others who is right and wrong, who is better and the best, who is smarter, faster, stronger— all in the midst of training, and in lectures or classrooms, always looking for confirmation that they are the best. People thought that it was just the two of you being kids— the complete opposites of each other, always striving for the best for the attention of the superior officers, and from the instructors.

Even so, that they would always pair the two of you, put the two of you in the same squad, always pushing and pushing to be together to work things out but things would always get tangled and be turned into a mess but would turn out okay.

“That’s not how you do it,” Erwin commented, tapping your solution with his finger. He began to raise his hand to call on to the instructor but you placed it back down. 

“I know, but it works,” you gritted through your teeth, busy with rereading the letters on the paper, as you pushed it to him. “Check it.”

“I don’t want to get a low remark on this.” Erwin grudgingly accepted the paper, hesitating to write his own name together with yours. But he wrote it nonetheless because it works out.

If that was how things were in lectures, it was the complete opposite during the trainings. Erwin would always jump faster than you, taking your point away from you while you lurched on a branch, angrily flailing your arms at him.

“That was my point!”

“Be quick,” Erwin screamed back, smiling while you flipped him off. He would annoyingly go to you, dusting off of his trousers while you marched forward at him, pushing him away.

“Thief!”

Then, while he watches by the corner of his eyes as you leapt to go back to the group, Erwin would shake his head, checking his gear and ultimately following you.

The friend. A simple bond of understanding that the two of you had already grown apart yet together, placing differences away to compromise, to work together and not against, as both of you started to question the use of hating each other when others are disappearing left and right— living with no promise that they’ll see tomorrow’s sun. The wisdom of growing a little older, the hardships of the work, the understanding.

It all started from that one sleepless evening, until you have memorized the lines and breaks on the ceiling, until you have closed your eyes hoping for the sleep to come but it never did. Little did you know, Erwin was also feeling the same thing. So when your paths crossed in the mess hall, both of you looking for something else to get off of bed, you two found each other.

Erwin sat on the table, a dimming candle beside him while his hands were clasped as he was deep in thought. He turned his head around just as you were about to leave, your eyes met his— and there was sadness swirling with the blues you have come to like.

“Can’t sleep?” Erwin asked quietly, looking at you.

It took you a minute to respond, all wanting to leave or to stay, to be with company or to go back memorizing the ceiling as the sun rises. You nodded, gripping the chamberstick as you rounded the table to sit in front of him.

“There is still hot water left, if you need it,” Erwin said, holding the mug before him. “Should I go make you some tea?”

You shook your head, clasping your hands together tightly, thinking if you should be here. Erwin stayed quiet, sipping his tea every now and then, looking out the windows behind your head, and then going back down to look at his mug.

“Are you okay?” You murmured, meeting his eyes as he looked at you. “Is something bothering you?”

“Just thinking,” Erwin nodded, eyes still deep in thought. He looked at his cup, smiling softly. “Just thinking about my father.”

“Oh,” you tapped your fingers on the table, racking your brain about Erwin. All you could remember was how he would animatedly talk of his father, saying his stories— until you perked up, making Erwin look at you. “I remembered he’s a teacher. How is he doing? Does he still teach?”

Erwin dropped his eyes, noticing the grasp he has on the cup. He raised his head, staring at you, and you knew just from one look that his father was gone. It was too familiar because you have gotten used to looking that way towards the families of your dead comrades.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, “I didn’t know... I’m sorry, Erwin.”

“It was a long time ago.” Erwin nodded, finishing his tea while he glanced at you.

Stories. You smiled softly, tilting your head to the side as you propped your elbow on the table. Erwin smiled back, perking up while you spoke to him.

“Will you tell me one of his stories?”

The lover. A simple yet deeper bond of each other, one that has seen the best and the worst, the hate and love, a bond that has called each other theirs— not the way enemies declared each other as nuisance, not the way friends declared each other as delight, but the way amour runs through the heart and brain.

It was a surprise. All the looks and the late night conversations just like before were normal. It was usual to hold each other's arms when walking in the headquarters, a tug on the sleeve, a hand on the back— everything that has become normal throughout the years.

But it was the fleeting glances. It was the smiles that became so much more, the eyes that speaks beyond the languages of being friends, the lips that has touched once— once because of the courage running through your veins as you placed your hands on either side of his neck, pulling him down to place a kiss as gentle as a feather, but the feeling inside was as heavy as all the weight in the world.

Then he pulled away, his eyes reading your face, and in a second, he leaned down— lips upon lips, twice, thrice, four times, as much as time permitted until somebody has knocked on his office door, calling out for him.

"In a minute," Erwin croaked, his thumb running over your lower lip as you stayed pressed against him, arms wrapped around his neck while his eyes stayed glued to yours. "I'll be out in a minute."

"Go on."

Erwin leaned down again, lips touching yours, smiling, as he pecked your lips over and over again until you laughed in his kisses, pushing him away. Erwin wrapped his hands around your body, until he used his hand to hold your chin steady, placing more kisses until you pulled away, a stern look on your face.

"Not on me," you mumbled against his lips, leaning forward but catching yourself as you patted his chest, "You'll be late."

"I can afford to be late," Erwin said, his thumb rubbing circles on your jaw, "They can wait."

"Just because you became Commander you could do whatever you want," you pursed your lips, clasping your hands behind his neck. Erwin raised his brow, a knowing look on his face, "Don't be too smug about it, Eyebrows."

"I haven't heard that in a while."

"Time to bring it back then," you nodded, brushing his brows as you pushed him away gently, turning him around to push him towards the door, "Okay, go on! Now!"

"Trying to order your Commander around?"

"Go, Eyebrows, or I will kick you out," you pulled him towards you, wrapping an arm around his back, dragging him outside but he was persistent.

Erwin looked down, smiling at how flustered you were, tinge of blush on the apples of your cheeks as you tried to look angry but the soft look on your eyes were telling a different story.

"I could stay."

“No.”

“I could, really,” Erwin placed his weight down, a hand coming up to the door as he looked at you. “I don’t mind.”

“Erwin...” you warned, taking his hand off of the door. “Get out.”

“Why?”

Erwin raised his brows, tapping his fingers on the door while you exhumed feign anger, caught in between wanting him to stay or to leave, and wanting to go towards him or the opposite way because... you just couldn’t handle being too close to him ot else you’ll lose your calm composure.

“Fine,” Erwin mumbled, slowly dropping his hand but you caught it in quick.

“No!” You hurriedly say, raising your hand at him, heart beating so fast that it made you feel so warm, “I mean, yes. Go.”

Erwin nodded, a smug smile forming on his lips as he shook his head in awe for what a flustered mess you were before him. He only realized that when he was about to step out, he felt a slight tug from behind only for you to notice that you were holding on to his shirt, tightly— until you have let go, scurrying past from him as you left him the door dumbstruck, unsure of what he should do next, but knowing fully that he wants to follow you.

Take his steps again as it lead him to you. He would gladly take all your screaming and scheming back when two were cadets— the deemed enemies of the Corps. He was thankful that because when he couldn’t sleep from thinking of his father, he has met you— his father acting like a string to pull the two of you together. He was grateful for the courage you had in you that resulted to the kiss— kisses that he found looking for more. He followed your hurried footsteps like a lost puppy while you repeatedly looked back with a frown on your face, as the distance between the two of you came into nothing as your shoulders brushed upon each others.

Looking straight ahead, you hooked your finger on his little finger— pinching his side as Erwin tried to lean down but you gave a him look, which caused him to straighten up, taking your hand whole in his own.

"Later, then."

#erwin 🤝 a lost puppy #erwin smith imagines #attack on titan imagine #attack on titan imagines #aot imagine #aot imagines #snk imagine #snk imagines #aot fanfiction #erwin smith x reader #erwin x reader

[angst-fairygodmother]

A Merry Chase (Klaus Hargreeves x Reader)

A/N: Listen, @heroics-and-heartbreak sent me this great prompt for the Title Game and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. And then...voila? Word Count: 1243 Rating: M -  references to season 2 vaguely, smut-like activities... Now cross-posted to AO3: here

You lounged in the sun, you back resting against one of the many low brick walls that littered the grounds of the Texas mansion you and Klaus had come to call home (at the insistence of the very rich old woman who had been instantly charmed by Klaus and later taken you in at his request, a bit more like a stray puppy than you liked feeling), a book spread on your lap, its crisp new pages practically glowing in the light, and sunglasses brushed up to keep your hair out of your face.

“Y/N,” Klaus whined, practically throwing himself to the ground next to you. Speaking of puppies.

You tried to ignore him. When he just repeated himself, louder and more incessantly, you frowned, gesturing at him with the book.

“I am trying to read, Klaus,” you snapped.

“I know. It’s so boring. Why would waste such a nice day reading when we could be…swimming…or lying naked in the garden…or,” you cut him off with a raised hand.

“I like reading. It is a warm, peaceful, sunny day and I am enjoying the quiet of a good book. Or at least, I was.”

He pouted at you, eyes falling to catch the title of the thing that had so captured your attention away from him.

“The Lord of the Rings? Oh come on! You practically know that one by heart. Why read it again?”

“Because it’s my favorite. I like rereading it. And besides…it’s different now. It’s…still new. I can’t explain.” You shrugged and tried to return to your reading, blocking out his huff of annoyance.

You quickly lost yourself back into the rich fantasy world, descriptions making the world around you melt away. All of your troubles, all of the strangeness of being tossed into the early 1960s, in Texas of all places, the ever-growing crowds of people flocking to Klaus’s exploitation of his powers, your own anxiousness about what people might do if they found out about yours, disappeared in favor of the fantasy epic you knew and loved well. You were just getting to one of the first epic actions sequences, the battle with the Ringwraiths on Weathertop, when the book was yanked from your grip. Startled, you jumped in your seat and looked up to see Klaus standing over you, your book held up high.

“Hah-hah!” he cried, sticking his tongue out at you. “Try reading now!”

“Give that back,” you growled, rising to your feet.

“No!” And then he took off, bounding over the compound grounds like a gazelle, white and teal jacket flapping in the wind behind him.

With a huff and a rueful laugh, you took off after him, the loose fabrics of your own outfit billowing in the breeze as you ran, feeling light and free, and annoyed.

“Klaus Hargreeves, you get back here right now and give me my book!”

The two of you ran across the grounds, Klaus’s longer legs keeping him just out of your grasp. The smell of the damp grass filled your nose and the sun beat down on your shoulders. Maybe it wasn’t spending the day reading, and maybe as the sun continued to climb you might find yourself regretting it, but right now, you were actually having fun and felt strangely at peace, like there was nothing expected of you, like if you wanted to you could just keep running forever and no one would ever make you stop.

“You can’t catch me Y/N!” Klaus cheered, laughter ringing and cutting through your thoughts.

“Oh you want to bet, gingerbread man?” you asked, a vicious, devious smile creeping across your face.

With a sudden burst of energy, you picked up your pace, just enough to bring you a hair closer, and then you jumped.

In your head, you pictured a graceful leap, flying through the air to grasp your book from him and keep running, shifting the order that he had to chase you now. Instead, what you got was more of a football tackle at its worst, the force of your launch slamming you solidly into Klaus’s back and sending you both rolling and skidding through the dirt, your sunglasses knocked off your head and lost somewhere on the lawn, your book tumbling away from both of you. When you finally came to a halt, Klaus was sprawled on his back, hair splayed behind him like a halo of light, and you were half on top of him, on leg thrown over his and your head laying on his bare chest.

“Well hello there,” he said, smirking at you as he tilted his head to meet your eye. “Quite the position we’ve landed in, isn’t it?”

You raised an eyebrow at him, trying not to let yourself get too distracted by the way his tongue darted out to lick his lips or the feel of him breathing heavily beneath you.

“What will you do with me?” he rasped, voice low and husky. “Now that you’ve caught me, I mean?”

You pressed your lips together, making a show of being deep in thought. “A thief ought to be punished…”

“Mhm,” he hummed in agreement, a sparkle in his eye and an exaggerated pout on his lips. “And I have been a naughty, naughty thief.”

You couldn’t help but roll your eyes and laugh at his expression. You propped yourself up onto your hands, shifting you ever so slightly away from him as you now leaned definitively down over him, poised and perfectly still, dragging out the tension, waiting. And then he lurched upward and his lips were on yours, one hand cupping the back of your neck to pull you closer.

But oh no, you were not about to let him seize control. You let your arms buckle, lowering yourself until you were laying fully on top of him once more, pressed close against the long, lean plane of him by gravity, straddling his waist. At the same time, you sank your teeth lightly into his lower lip, drawing out a high, needy whine as his mouth opened for you.

His free hand came up to clutch at your waist with a sort of desperation that promised bruises later. Your tongues danced and twined, roving over each other in the way one only could when they know every centimeter and every fiber of another’s being. The hand at your neck crept higher to wend its way into your hair, tugging just enough to draw a hiss through your nose, the stinging only fueling the fire within you. Ever so slowly, you ground your hips down against him. The sound he made shooting through you and made you shiver.

Pulling back, his lips found your ear, teasing the shell of it as he whispered, “I’d stop if I were you. Unless you want to put on a show right here on this lawn.”

“Do you want me to stop?” you countered, leaning away to make sure you were staring into his emerald eyes, searching them for an answer.

You felt his fingertips ghost over your ribcage where they had crept up under your shirt. There was a careful thoughtfulness to his actions and you waited.

“God baby,” he murmured. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

You raised an eyebrow.

“No,” he chuckled, arm wrapping around your shoulders to draw you back down. “I don’t want to stop if you don’t.”

You smirked. “Well then, where were we?”

#part of me wants to keep going #the other part says 'nope. you're better when you stop there. leave em wanting more' #this does technically hit on all the points I referenced in my summary for the title game #except for the part where I said 'ridiculously fluffy' #Klaus Hargreeves x reader #The Umbrella Academy fic #TUA season 2 spoilers #or at least close enough that I'm tagging it as such anyway #I tripped and wrote a thing? #anyway goodnight

[seijch]

hi im about to spam u (so sorry) but ive been too scared to read doomsday until now and im so glad i finally did becasue dude. Dude. its so much. "It’s as the sky bleeds from orange to pale blue that it hits." i loveeee how you incorperated such small moments like the hot chocolate and the ily + i know... be even here just the thought of your Last Sunrise is heartbreaking, but to /realize/ your own end coming in that moment, especially watching the soft sunrise... oof.

HI!!! omg when you sent this i was like . abt to sleep but i read this before i did and went irl 🥺🥺 and then also passed out before i could formulate a response sjfksdfds

anyway!! my response to your asks (i hope i got them all but!!) will be under the cut bc i dont know how to shut up ❤

a lot of the way the interactions in doomsday unfold are honestly BECAUSE tsukki and the reader are (i mean first of all, theyre tsukki and the reader with all that comes with) fully aware that:

they have abt a full day of life left

theres nothing that can be done to elongate that time or avoid death altogether

its not like some young adult novel where a group of ragtag teenagers save the world; its the tale of two adults who have had time to come to terms with the fact that their lives and the lives of everyone they know will end soon (and once again everything that THAT comes with). its why i rlly enjoyed juxtaposing the nice weather w the crippling realization of their own mortality 🕺🏻🕺🏻🕺🏻

"you try to stress your words, make it absolutely clear that you’ve never meant anything like you mean this" this is HEARTBREAKING in a whole miryad of different ways - for a realtionship u establish as one with so many things unsaid but still understood, but here to have her say this so desperately?? like she feels this its too big to leave between the lines? it doesnt matter that he knows, she needs to say it and needs him to hear it UGH IM SAD AGAIN

IM SO GLAD YOU POINTED THIS ONE OUT!! this is EASILY one of my favorite parts of the whole fic mostly bc its something i go thru a lot? like im the definition of that tweet abt never making any damn sense but ESP when it comes to my i love yous or other serious things...i say it a lot and yes i mean it every time! but sometimes i MEAN it and i never quite know how to properly express that kinda thing. 

i think its especially big for the reader in the context of the world ending and in the context of their relationship with tsukishima to have that moment of transparency and complete sincerity for the EXACT reasons you described!!!

"It’s hollow; neither of you have been under the delusion that this was anything but." u said u werent sure about his characterisation but this screams tsukki to me. cuz hes blunt and i dont think he would lie to himself about something like this especially. and even when she tries just for a moment to pretend, he just shows her /no, its ok, this is the truth and we have to die with it/... nah it vibes dude. hes such a interesting character for this idea too? because hes not sappy or anything +

so his tears hurt so much more... oof. "This is my goodbye, he says with more than words." this just... i have so many feelings about this. cuz to me hes totally someone who shows affection through small actions when he cant find the words to match his emotions? so this is like a 4-book-saga laying out his emotions cuz he doesnt quite have the words to say it out loud and theyre out of time. its desperate, but not sad desperate? like its the end but its just him making sure shes knows everything 

ok first of all THANK YOU for saying that bc i wrote him being more vulnerable than i think we rlly see in any tsukki not like ... in junior high LMAO and immediately after i felt my characterization alarms ringing ... like yk those natural disaster alarms? thats the vibe...

but i had one of those Moments where i was no longer the one writing and it was the characters themselves just telling me what to say and how to say it nsfsfsd so im rlly glad it worked! and tbh when the concept first grabbed me by the collar i was juggling a few different characters around in my head but i think i made the right choice in the end. its like you said -- hes not a particularly sappy type and hes always been more grounded in reality imo than some of the other characters (another contender for this fic was akaashi but i realized i do NOT have any solid grasp of his character that isnt from fandom interpretation which is a double edged sword tbh)

and honetly i was ok until "If you’re going to take me out, do it in style, you’d said to him, once. So he does." and then i was all of a sudden crying. and the "stripped down to your bare selves" like theyre just being incinerated together and IM- NO WRODS JUST FEELINGS. i think the best thing about this is how unrushed it feels? and it hurts and its aching but they Know. +

and theyve come to some form of peace with it so when it does come, they can focus on eachother and not the end oh im gonna cry again. this was so gracefully put together, thank u for this. i might reread it and cry again, amazing work 😭💕

i didnt touch on it above bc i wanted to do it here but yes!!!! the absolute fucking DESPERATION felt by both parties in that last minute (which idk if you read my tags on the fic proper but 11:59 was originally one segment before i took those last couple paragraphs and made them the very last second ... i think i made the right choice? it rlly does scream FINAL to me) is SO poignant. all of the walls and hidden meanings fall away because in the end theyre all they have left, dying in each others arms at the very end of it all.

this full REVIEW honestly made me so happy to hear esp on a piece i wasnt quite sure how to feel about at first,, thank you 🤝🏻🤝🏻 i hope you have/had a wonderful day!!!!

OK EDIT BC I JUST SAW THIS COMIC SOMEONE MADE ON IG AND ITS NOT THE MOST RELEVANT BUT ANSWERING THIS PUT ME IN A TSUKISHIMA MOOD SO HERE

#fave #man seeing this in my inbox had me go irl keyboard smash i was like HUH #you literally read my damn mind every step of the way and all i gotta say (coherently) is THANK YOU #i feel SEEN and HEARD mndfdsf #💌 love letters #doughnuts-5ever

[five-wow]

Hi, I'm a fellow writer in the fandom and I admire your work. I wanted to ask, as a popular writer, do you get fixated sometimes on the number of kudos/comments/hits etc that your new work gets, and does this impact your motivation/inspiration? I think comparison is the thief of joy, and I really want to get over this feeling when I post my own work, so was wondering if even popular and regular writers such as yourself feel like this to, and if , what's your secret? Thanks!

Hi! 1) You are so sweet, ahh, and 2) YES, I DO. Gosh, yes, I absolutely do get insecure about those kinds of things, and I think that anyone who says they don't ever feel that way is either lying (to themselves, possibly) or maybe just pure magic, like some cross between a writer and a unicorn.

I love ao3 and I love all of its metrics and I love numbers and statistics, but there’s definitely that shadow side where having all of that easily available makes it deceptively easy to compare your own work to other people’s. I do it all the time! It honestly makes it a little hard for me at times to read h50 fic and fully enjoy it, because I keep... looking at it and wondering how my own stacks up against it, unwillingly. That's not a relaxing experience, and sometimes not even a very fun one. (Another part of it is that I just write SO MUCH for h50 and there is SO MUCH I still want to write, and I don’t want to risk reading something that’s very close to an idea I had and then never being quite sure if what I write after that was influenced by the other person’s work or if it’s really still my idea, because I have this (pretty irrational) fear of accidentally stealing someone else’s work even though one of the really great things about fandom is that it’s a very collaborative process as a whole and being inspired by other people’s stuff is usually totally okay, buuuut that’s a different rambly story.)

And I definitely do also get... some cringey feelings, hardcore, around fics I posted that don't do very well numbers-wise. Sometimes it's expected - fic that doesn't follow traditional formats or doesn't feature Steve/Danny, for example, is always something where I KNOW it won't get as much attention because I know how fandom works and that lessens the sting because it doesn't HAVE to hold up to those other fics that perform way better, because I already know it's not really comparable. The truth is, of course, that most fic is not really comparable to other fic, but it’s easy to fall into that trap anyway. If I post something that seems like my average kind of work and it gets less kudos or comments than usual, I do start to doubt the fic and second-guess myself - is something about this weird? Is it too [insert quality x]? Is it bad? Did I unknowingly do something terrible and people are now avoiding me? The answer to all of those is probably no, and going through it a bunch of times has definitely helped, because what usually happens is that I end up somewhat avoiding the fic in question because it makes me a little ashamed and awkward to think about it (a relative failure! oh no! I'm human!) and then, eventually, I return and reread the fic. By that point I have enough distance from it in time that I can look at it a lot more objectively, and it's way easier to see what works and what does not than when I posted it and I had just read it a dozen times in twenty-four hours and the words were burned into my brain. And upon that reread, inevitably, I realize that, holy shit, it was NOT AS BAD as I had made it out to be in my mind! It’s actually kind of fun! Imagine the ego boost of realizing your most cringy recent work is actually pretty okay, haha, and it's silly, but it's a revelation every time. The quality of a fic is not dictated by how many people read it or comment on it or like it, and intellectually I absolutely know that, but it’s hard to remember when it’s about yourself and you’re still in that emotionally vulnerable place of having just shared your work with the world and it feels like the world is not as into it as you thought (or hoped) it’d be. It’s honestly very, very reassuring to have those experiences to fall back on, but sadly the only way I know to get there is to just tough it out and feel super awkward for a while.

When I’m writing, on the other hand, I usually don’t really think about what other people might think of it. I have the advantage that (pretty much) all of my work consists of fairly short stand alone stories, which means I don’t have to struggle with keeping my motivation up for a second chapter of something but I get to start fresh every time, and that’s nice, because I can just lose myself in the joy of throwing words around and making characters do things that make me giggle. That’s not to say I never think of the outside world while writing - I realized, pretty recently, that I occasionally end up constructing paragraphs or pieces of dialogue a certain way mostly so it will make for a good excerpt to put in the eventual fic description, which might give me a sense of accomplishment because it’s nice when things work out and look good, but in all fairness it’s probably far more motivated by attempts to package the finished work attractively so other people will want to click on it than by anything else. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I don’t think so - I don’t feel like it lessens my work and it doesn’t interrupt my enjoyment of it in the moment, which are the key elements for me - but other people might disagree.

But the heart of thing is, just, there are SO MANY factors that influence a fic’s numbers, and not all of them are visible (I’d argue most of them aren’t, in fact), and it always helps me to keep that in mind. It puts things in perspective somewhat and softens the harshness of a black and white kudo count judgment. Numbers can depend on when you post a fic (what day of the week, time of the year, time relative to big fandom moments, whether you’re in the middle of a global pandemic or not), how you pick your title, what you put in the description, how you use the tags, what genres or tropes are popular in your specific fandom, the genre of your fic in general (pwp as a rule tends to get lots of hits and few kudos or comments, for example, making it totally unfair to compare it to G-reated fluff fic with super different ratios), how much you’ve posted before (because if someone likes one of your works, they’re often likely to check if you have more in the same fandom), how many fics other people post around the same time (because yours might be gone from the first page of most recently updated works in a fandom or ship tag very quickly if others push it out), how big your fandom is(!!!) (over two thirds of my works on ao3 are for h50, but h50 only makes it into the top 10 of my most kudo’d works by the skin of its teeth) and definitely also what your fandom’s culture is like (compared to a lot of other fandoms, h50 fans are a-ma-zing when it comes to leaving comments, my gosh, and as a writer I adore all of you), how old your ao3 account is (the longer you’ve been around, the more likely a higher number of people is subscribed to you as an author or has read your previous work or has encountered your name, etc), how long your fic is (under a thousand words in my experience generally does less well than 1-5k, but longer fics might end up with lots of chapters which switches things up because people come back to it when there’s an update, and even if a long work is all in one chapter it will probably stand out for the wordcount and might attract attention that way, etc), whether or not your fic is part of a series (in my experience it will probably get more hits because it’s a chain of fics that leads you to the next one, but the kudos might not go up at the same rate because people might forget a kudo or reread previous works when a new one is added), whether you make a habit of commenting on other people’s fic (I’ve had comments saying MY comment on their work led them to my fic!), if you have social media like Tumblr or Twitter where you can promote your work (it’s advertising, basically), and any of a bunch of random little other factors. Sometimes, I see a sudden little cluster of kudos on an old fic in the daily ao3 kudos email, and I assume someone somewhere maybe recced that fic, but it usually remains a total mystery who or where or even if it happened at all and wasn’t just a weird coincidence to begin with. Sometimes the thing a fic’s popularity depends on is really just whether it clicks with people at that point in time, whatever that means, which is an even more impossible thing to grasp or predict than anything else.

Or you can look at things from a totally different angle and not try to make yourself care less about numbers, but just accept that you do because you’re human and we all crave validation, and instead try to roll with that. A brain hack: when I do start getting down about numbers, it also helps me to focus on one work and just... try to visualise what those kudo (or hit or bookmark or comment) counts mean, if you were to translate them to the real world. While it can be super helpful to remember that there’s a LOT going on that you can’t see and that’s virtually impossible to really explain, it’s also nice to somewhat do the opposite and try to make things as concrete as possible instead. I like measuring in school classes (~25-30 heads, I’d say) and “my fic only has fifty kudos but this other person’s has ten times as many” could easily make anyone sad and demotivated, but “my fic has fifty kudos and that’s TWO WHOLE CLASSROOMS packed full of people that all read my work and liked it so much they wanted to give me a little thumbs up for it” is actually pretty cool and encouraging, I think. Or you could measure in sports teams (I don’t know sports, but soccer has 11 players on the field per team, so as soon as your fic has 33 kudos that’s three teams which means you’ve got yourself a little beginning league! how exciting!) or in DnD campaigns (variable of course, but most of mine have had around four players plus a DM, so if you have twenty kudos? that’s FOUR WHOLE DnD campaigns that enjoyed reading your fic, and it’s fully up to you how many half-orcs that includes). You could apply this method using literally any other measurement that works for you, too. If you have a hard time painting a mental image of numbers, you could even open up a Paint doc or get a piece of paper and start counting out little dots or copy-pasted images of a person, or get a big bag of physically present M&Ms and count them out, or take a good look at your dog and then go around the neighborhood and collect forty-nine more dogs and pile them all into your home and be slightly frightened by the utter delighted fluffy chaos that ensues in your living room. That’s how many people liked your fic! That’s a heck of a lot of wagging tails! Who knew a kudo could bark this loudly!

Disclaimer: maybe keep the dog thing as your very last resort, because your neighbors might not be super into their pet getting dognapped for the purpose of visualizing fanfiction stats. The point is really just to remember that there’s an actual person behind every kudo you get, no matter what the cumulative number is, and even if you have seven or five or three kudos, that’s seven or five or three very real people that hit that button. That’s pretty damn awesome. Also keep in mind how you feel if you read a fic, and take some time to realize that every single person that left you a kudo went through that same process of spending time reading words (the words you wrote!) and experiencing that story and THAT’S why they left that kudo. It’s a real person’s real investment.

This ended up very long and rambly, so tl;dr: You are in no way alone in feeling that way, it's okay and normal and so very very human to feel like that, but you still shouldn't let it get you down, because numbers fake being meaningful very well but are deep down just little squiggles on your screen and they’re more scared of you than you are of them, while at the same time there are real individuals that enjoy your work even if you usually never see them. Your fic is worth posting. That’s the one factor in all of this that’s a constant, not a variable.

(And as a very important sidenote, just be kind to yourself, always. Does it truly stress you out? Are you feeling really bad about it today? Does it make your anxiety spike? Then give yourself room to take a little step back and allow yourself some time away from it. Go watch something you enjoy, or read something nice, or do something else that makes you feel good. Fic is something that should add to your life, not subtract from it. You don’t owe anyone anything, not even yourself in this context, and I used to push myself occasionally to get something finished TODAY, and eventually I started realizing, well, why? Why not instead of reading it over again just get some sleep or watch an episode of something I want to watch, especially if I literally just finished the fic and I feel a little unsure about it and it might actually be beneficial to me and my own feelings about it if I just give it a day or even a week and let it rest and then look at it again and THEN post it, if I want to, whether that’s with some changes beforehand or not? Who set me that deadline that’s apparently looming over me? I did, and it’s fake, and it’s there for absolutely no good reason. Breathe. Put yourself first. Be really really really selfish about your own fic writing experience, even, because it’s supposed to be something you enjoy (that’s what a hobby is!), and the rest is secondary.)

#anon #ask #writing #ao3 #it's very odd to get called a popular writer by the way oh my gosh #nice!!! so very nice!!! thank you!!! but also difficult to reconcile with my own internal image of myself #all the more evidence that brains lie to us all the time #*

[weartirondad]

A Funny Little Thing

A/N: So we were tagged in the last sentence game by @parkrstark (ashfkadja shannon! tysm 💕) and that made me reread this little thing that I had stored away on my phone and I reworked it a little and it’s not awful, yay.

FF.net I ao3

-

Family’s a funny little thing.

Even with all his cleverness and imagination and ingenuity... if he’s being honest, it’s one of the few things he’s never been able to wrap his head around.

(That and pineapple on pizza and smelly chees but he has resigned to that always remaining a mystery to him)

No, but family?

He’s not quite sure what that entails.

-

When he is 7, holding his swollen cheek and trying to blink past the blood that is dropping down from the cut on his eyebrow that’s messing up his view and his lips are pressed into a thin line as to not make a sound, he thinks he gets it.

Family means an absent father with an alcohol problem, strong hands and poor impulse control and a mother too scared to stand up for her son or herself. It means either obeying to his creator’s rules without questioning them or getting a black eye for his fractiousness.

Family is the hell he was born into. Cold and unwelcoming and nothing but pain. Family is an obligation and a burden and he’s sure he could never fully grasp how anyone would go back there out of their own free will.

-

At the age of 14 he somehow stumbles into the Rhodes’ family.

From the second Rhodey’s dad greets him with a wide welcoming smile and a “how are you, son?”, he realizes that this is vastly different to everything he has known before.

Rhodey’s mum is sassy where his is submissive and where his dad is angry, Rhodey’s is soft. Where his family is quiet, cold and rejecting, this one is loud, cheerful, warm and open. They welcome him with open arms and treat him like one of their own.

Rhodey’s uncle becomes his uncle and his cousin enjoys having two boys to dress up and do her biding now.

It takes some time but after a while Tony learns that when the adults raise their hands at him it’s usually to give him a high five rather than plant it in his face to leave their mark.

It’s weird... that this seems to be normal, too, apparently. It’s a stark difference to, well, the Stark Mansion with all its high walls, clean carpets and old vases. This family feels more like home than his own ever has so he starts dreaming about having one of his own one day - in secret and ashamed but silently hopeful.

-

He thinks he has a shot at that when he’s 40, fosters a house full of superheroes - his team - and has an assistant-turned-CEO-turned-girlfriend by his side. He’s happy but then again, there’s always a nagging voice inside him telling him he’s damaged and no one really wants damaged goods.

No matter what he does, it’s never enough it’s never what they deserve. It’s like it used to be at home that wasn’t a home. And so, inevitably they fight and they snap and they leave because, so far, no one has ever stayed.

-

He’s 42 when he buries his hope to ever have something good of his own. Maybe it’s just not meant to be. Maybe it’s in his blood, his DNA coded in a way that leaves no room for supportive conversations and calm family dinners. Or in his brain that’s always too busy inventing, battling his own demons and being scared to ever have someone willing to stick around and to care for him.

-

Somehow he’s nearing 50 now, just half a year out, and he’s on the lawn of one of his holiday houses in the Hamptons and his wedding band is glistening in the sun when he winds up to throw the baseball as far as he can.

His kid-but-not-really-but-in-every-way-that-counts laughs loudly when he chases after it and he watches, a wide smile on his face as his eyes follow the boy jogging across their makeshift field, unruly curls bouncing with every step, hanging into his eyes when he finally gets to the ball and he grins proudly when it disappears on their neighbor’s property.

Tony is shaking his head in exasperation. “I’m not going to get that for you,” he tells him in no uncertain terms, fondness giving away the lie in his words.

“Oh please, Mister Stark,” the kid whines, bumping their shoulders together with a pout, “You know how scared I am of Miss Sunshine.”

Before he has the chance to snark back, Pepper is calling for them.

His wife and May are standing on the patio, barefoot and with light bouncing of their hair. He can hear the sound of their laughter, it fills his soul up with a surge of warm contentment. His entire being is buzzing with the gentle energy they generate.

“I think Happy and Rhodey might be getting here for the barbecue,” Peter tells him matter-of-factly and he’s suddenly overcome with such a wave of fondness that he can’t help but reach out to his kid to ruffle his hair and tuck him closer to his side.

It hits him then how Peter doesn’t flinch away like he did the first time Rhodey’s dad went in to hug him. No, Peter leans into the embrace without hesitation without even a hint of the fear Tony used to associate with his father’s touch. His relaxed posture gives away his genuine trust and unconditional love as he’s enjoying the contact, settling into the familiarity.

Familiarity.

Family.

This is his family.

Not the one he feared he would end up with, not the one Rhodey has had and not even the one he dreamed about having all those years ago but in the end none of that matters.

This is his version of family.

A little chaotic, a good chunk of patchwork with pieces from the most unexpected corners but inherently good and undoubtedly his.

So, yes, family’s a funny little thing but he thinks he understands it a little better now.

#irondad #irondad fic #peter parker #tony stark #tony stark fic #iron dad fic #soooo #i should be sleeping #but apparently im not #and i had to get that out #ill probably post this on ao3 and ffnet tomorrow #josis fic #a funny little thing #ironfam #ironfam fic

[echodrops]

So, just because I was rereading HaaH and a bit curious, you described Keith’s communication with Red as being mostly through visuals and scents (which was super fucking cool and a very interesting detail, btw) but I was wondering—how do the other Paladins communicate with their lions? (if it’s not spoilers, ofc) Hope you’re having a nice summer! ❤️❤️❤️

A cool ask!

Keith

The story mentions that Keith speaks to Red via a combination of visuals and scents, but I can say a little more about it here too before I go on to the others–the Lions tailor their communication specifically to match the paladin they are bonded with. If Red had a different partner, he would “speak” differently to that person. Red and Keith communicate through sight and scent because these are Keith’s strongest senses and the ones to which he has his most visceral reactions. Most importantly though, Red doesn’t just choose images and scents at random; Red’s consciousness is directly tied to Keith’s consciousness. Therefore, when Red wants to convey a concept to Keith, he can choose to reach directly into Keith’s mind and pick the exact sights and smells that Keith associates with that concept. (If Red wanted to convey the idea of “rage,” for example, he might flash Keith’s memory of fighting with Commander Iverson after the failure of the Kerberos mission.)

It should be noted, however, that Red is also a very stubborn, not-remotely-domesticated lion, and so sometimes he’ll use his own associations for concepts instead of Keith’s. This has led to a sort of half-”human”-half-(alien) animal visual/scent language where something like the concept of “humor” sometimes gets communicated as “that one time Matt Holt got stuck in a locker” and other times gets communicated as “that one time I toyed with a tiny enemy until it died.”

By the way, Red and Keith’s method of communication would be completely and utterly incomprehensible to anyone else who tried to experience it. Like… Willy Wonka terror tunnel levels of incomprehensible.

The rest are under the read more to save people’s dashes:

Pidge

Pidge and Green communicate in an extremely complex way: they “share” data like a cloud database, but the information they send back and forth to each other is a constant scrolling feed of a thousand different encryption codes and languages, from basic ciphers all the way up to DNA encoding values. When Pidge and Green link up, it’s the equivalent of Pidge’s brain being hardwired directly into the internet, if the internet was… you know… an ageless, all-knowing fragment of the universe and all combined matter self-actualized into a single physical form at one moment in space-time. It’s extremely mentally demanding, and no one without an absolutely astronomical IQ and encyclopedic knowledge of data encoding and reading could ever hope to understand even a sliver of it. Even Pidge has really only scratched the surface of the amount of information Green is able to convey; there are limits to how much the human brain can comprehend and process, and Green respects that–she has to, or Pidge would experience an aneurysm from an extreme over-activation of brain tissue and die within seconds of exposure to Green’s “full voice.”

Pidge and Green are the only paladin/lion pair whose method of communication is completely intelligible to someone who is not a paladin–Matt Holt can understand and communicate with Green as easily as Pidge can, because, as siblings, the Holts grew up sharing all the same codes. Likewise, Green is partially intelligible to Hunk, enough so that he can communicate with her if Green chooses to “speak” to him. He’d be able to fully understand Green if he saw a point in studying up on the rest of the specific languages and ciphers Pidge knows, but there’s really no time to bother with that when there’s always so much else going on.

Hunk

Remember that scene in Harry Potter where the sorting hat asks if Harry really doesn’t want to be in Slytherin because he’d be just as great there as in Gyrffindor? That’s what happened with Hunk and Yellow. Although it would have been totally possible for Hunk and Yellow to communicate in a way extremely similar to Pidge and Green (albeit more along the lines of mathematical calculations than DNA encoding), Hunk asked Yellow to pick the form of communication that Yellow himself would feel most comfortable with, and thus Hunk and Yellow do not communicate in words, data, or images–they communicate by a constant sharing of their feelings and intuition. Yellow and Hunk’s bond is deeply physically focused, with the feelings of one impacting the other as directly as if they shared one brain. When Yellow is nervous, Hunk gets goosebumps. When Hunk is resolved, Yellow’s roar can shake stars in the sky. Although Hunk often speaks out loud to his Lion, this is mostly just from habit; Yellow does not take note of Hunk’s words but instead responds to the emotional truths that exist behind those spoken words. Unlike Pidge or Keith, whose methods of “speaking” require at least fractions of a second to translate, Yellow and Hunk’s communications are instantaneous and they never experience even the slightest miscommunication. Everyone quickly learned to trust the things Hunk tells them based on what he feels from Yellow, even if they themselves have never gotten so much as inkling of emotion from the Yellow Lion.

Only one issue has arisen from Hunk and Yellow’s method of communication: there are feelings which the lions experience which humans do not, and even a few feelings humans experience which the lions do not. Once exposed to these feelings, neither one of the pair could “unfeel” them, and thus Hunk is now the only human in the universe capable of feeling certain emotions which are not native to human beings, and Yellow has been saddled with the unbearable knowledge that sometimes ugly things are actually adorable.

Shiro

The Black Lion is very different from the other lions. So different, in fact, that there’s honestly no comparison to even be drawn. Although the other lions are irrevocably still at least somewhat “animalistic” in their behaviors and functions, the Black Lion is a lion in form only, and its mind is nothing like an animal’s. The way the Black Lion and its bond to paladins works is so unique from the other lions that we might as well be talking about a totally different form of relationship. The Black Lion does not communicate with its paladin–the Black Lion IS its paladin.

The other lions are able to touch and operate within the confines of their paladins’ minds when their paladins are near or when they really want to “speak.” But Black just exists within Shiro at all times–Black has tied itself to Shiro’s life force, to his physical form, to every cell and even atom of his being. Shiro is the Black Lion’s vessel, and yet there is no separation between their identities–they are not two souls sharing one body, but an interwoven existence that is simultaneously both human and something utterly unknowable.

All the lions are “magical” creatures, as much metaphysical beings as they are robotic monsters, but Black is something else entirely. Shiro can’t explain it. Allura can’t explain it. Coran can’t explain it. Even during the process of their creation, neither Alfor nor any of the people who worked on the forging of the lions could explain it. Black is the breath of the cosmos. A manifestation of life itself. The first spark. The invisible, immeasurable dark matter that permeates the unending universe and allows all things to be. All knowledge. All energy.  

Black and Shiro do not “communicate” because they do not need to. When the Black Lion wishes Shiro to know something, Shiro simply knows it. Things that human beings should not be capable of doing, the Black Paladin can do.

As long as the Black Lion wills it, for as long as it deigns to lend power to the physical realm, Shiro and Black move as one, united in thought, purpose, and deed–seeing with the same eyes, feeling with the same heart.

Lance

Although it might sound like Shiro has the closest relationship with his lion–inextricably soul-bound and all–this is actually inaccurate. Shiro and Black’s bond is essentially one-sided, initiated by Black to suit the lion’s purpose, with an equally frustrated and humbled Shiro doing his best to reach out to the inexplicable entity, to limited success. They share an existence but not, necessarily, a “relationship.” 

The paladin who actually has the closest bond with his lion is Lance, although Lance himself is completely unaware of this. Because communication between the lions and their paladins is so unique, Lance has never recognized that what he can do with Blue (the degree of fluidity that exists in their communication) is not standard and is, in fact, the closest a lion and paladin have ever managed to personally connect before.

Lance and Blue simply love each other. They aren’t just allies, they aren’t just knight and weapon, they aren’t just guardian and charge–before any and all of that, they’re genuinely friends. Lance cares for Blue as if she were another person on their team, a person just like any other, with normal thoughts, feelings, wants, and wishes. He listens to Blue’s boasts and fears, her anecdotes, her memories, and shares his own in turn. Sometimes he has to work twice as hard with his products to hide the dark circles under his eyes because he stays up all night holding nigh-endless conversations with his lion. Although all the lions can sense their paladins across entire galaxies, Lance is the only one who can speak to his lion from any distance; there is no limit that Blue has found. Through Lance, Blue has come to understand the lives of mortal beings in a way that none of the other regular lions seem to–she is the only one that fully grasps and values the individuality of humans. Lance taught her what names mean. What family is. Destiny is a strange concept, constantly under suspicion, but it was nothing short of destiny that determined Lance and Blue should meet. Aka if you say a word about the lion swap to me I will stomp you to death with my hooves.

All of this was mostly possible because, being the first of the humans to meet his lion, Lance had zero preconceptions about what his relationship with a giant sentient catship should look like. It simply never occurred to him that the Blue Lion might not be able to talk. He expected his lion to speak to him, and so she did. Her voice sounds exactly like what Lance thinks a talking lion should sound like. (There is a lot of purring involved, because Lance was not made aware, until much later, that normal lions cannot, in fact, purr.) She reminds him, somewhat painfully, of his mom.

Blue’s voice cannot be understood by any of the other paladins, however, because she does not want it to be. If anyone else were to listen in on Lance and Blue’s mental conversations, Blue’s voice sounds simply like droplets of water, like rain on the surface of a previously smooth pond.

On one–and only one–previous occasion, the Blue Lion chose to speak to Keith. His feelings about that day, and the long, lonely months that came after it, are a bitter mix of resentment and painful gratitude.

#Home and a Half #HaaHVLD #paladin-lion bond headcanons #voltron headcanons #voltron #keith kogane #pidge gunderson #voltron hunk #takashi shirogane #lance mcclain #all of team voltron made it into this one #the lions are all unique and have personalities #and may or may not be the lifeforce of the universe itself made manifest #fight me

[rosywaifu]

Home {A Percy Jackson Oneshot}

Hi Everyone! This is for @coldheartedgay ‘s AU: 

“Can I ask a small request from a PJ AU I made? The general premise is that Half Bloods are born with certain hair color depending on their Godly Parent. Percy - Aqua Annabeth - Silverish blonde Grover - Deep Green Etc.” 

I read this request at one in the morning, so I may have gone a little off-book so if this isn’t what you had in mind, LMK and I will redo it to what you actually wanted! But, when I reread it this morning, I thought what I wrote was actually kind of cute so here you go! Please, enjoy and keep requesting, I love it!! 

Percy brushed the hair from his forehead, trying different hairstyles by pushing and pulling the strands in different positions. He made faces at his reflection; pouted lips, smoldering eyes, sucked in cheeks for the haute couture look. Finally, he let his aquamarine locks flop against his forehead framing the deep green eyes staring back at him. He was worried about today. If all went well, he’d be engaged. He gave his appearance a last once-over and walked out of his cabin. The air was warm but he was able to stay cool from the breeze coming in from the ocean. He brushed the invisible dirt from his dark blue dress shirt, not being able to keep from fidgeting from his nerves. He tucked and smoothed and picked at his entire shirt to keep his nerves smothered. Once he reached the door of the Athena Cabin, he was sure his shirt was worse than when he started. After a deep breath of the May evening air, he rapped his knuckles three times sharply against the dark oak wood. He took a step back to let the air take hold in the space between him and the door. Hardly a second passes before the door swings open to reveal the silver haired beauty that was Annabeth. Percy drank in her appearance appreciatively; soft, silvery hair curled like a princesses draping down her shoulders with just the slightest bounce. Her tanned skin sporting a bright smile. Her dark grey sweater dress contrasted nicely against her hair and complimented her skin tone. Her camp necklace adorned on her neck. Percy thought she was incredibly beautiful and could hardly keep himself from proposing right there in the door way in front of all her siblings. “Wow, Seaweed Brain, you look great! Very dashing.” She smiled as she teased slightly with her words, but meaning every one. “Not so bad your self, Wise Girl. Took my breath away.” He said smoothly making her smile as she clasped his hand tightly into her own as she closed the door behind her. “Ah, I thought Piper got a little crazy with all the primping but seeing how smart you’re dressed, i’m glad she made me look so nice- even for just a casual date.” She sighed as she talked, half because she was so content with walking with Percy right then and half because she was frustrated he never gets any of the hints she’s dropping to have him propose. Annabeth wasn’t normally one to beat around the bush, but she had let Piper and Hazel convince her that proposing was a delicate matter. She had to use subtlety, they said. It had been 3 months now and Annabeth was about ready to shove that subtlety right in its—

“So, I thought we’d have a picnic near the strawberry fields and the water.” Percy’s voice musing out his plan for the evening kept her from finishing her derailed train of thought. “Sounds lovely, Percy.” They walked in step to the place where Percy was sure he pulled off the most romantic picnic area that ever was. A deep blue and grey plush rug, mechanical candles (as to not start and forest fires), fresh strawberries, cherries, macaroons, and sparkling lemonade. He wanted to get champagne to toast to like they do in the movies, but Chiron, as happy as he was that Percy was proposing the Annabeth, would not bend the rules of no alcohol on camp; even to those of legal drinking age. So, sparkling lemonade it was. Annabeth gasped at all the effort, Percy went through- all the food and drink with the candles glowing in the fading blue sky, even lily pads with little pink and purple flowers floated atop to the water in the little inlet. The whole area looked like a magic forest. She gave Percy a big smile who looked a little sheepish at her happiness. He wanted to make this their most memorable date yet. Sure it was happening at camp, and not a fancy french restaurant but camp was home and their favorite place to be, especially with each other. They sat down and talked about random things and nearly anything that popped into her head. Annabeth talked about the new building design she came up with, explaining all the intricate and delicate ideas and designs she came up for it. Percy half listened to Annabeth, truly trying to listen no matter how hard it was for him to pay attention when she talked about stuff like architecture. He wasn’t super into it but that didn’t mean he didn’t try to pay attention and ask quality questions. The other half fretted about the right time to pop the question without cutting her off too soon or waiting until the end of the date. Soon, Annabeth started asking questions for Percy; how his day went, what he had done since the last time they saw each other (which was only since breakfast that morning). Percy’s tensed shoulders relaxed at talking about the sea animal he got to save that day; a large sea dragon of sorts, about the size of a baby calf, got caught in flurry of fisherman’s hook, fishing poles and netting. He got pretty banged up and his dad sent word to him, via hippocampi, that the mythical creature needed his help. And Percy truly animated when he told the tale of his daring rescue, diving under the ocean waves, swimming as far as the English docks to rescue the incredible creature. Annabeth smiled as she could literally feel the love he had for animals. Eventually, the evening began winding down as Percy felt the anticipation buzzing his every nerve. Annabeth began to clean up but Percy stopped her quickly. “Hold off on that a second. I-i have to talk to you..” his voice was jilted and stiff. Annabeth had a gut instant fear that he was breaking up with her. Would Percy really be the type of guy who would give her a great last date before breaking her heart, like how you give your dog the best last day before having to put him down just so they have one last good memory? Percy, with how completely endearing he is, and idiotic, would probably think a great last date would ease the blow of a breakup, unknowing how wrong he was. Annabeth’s moment of doubt was quickly scrubbed away as she remembered how amazing her relationship was with her boyfriend. Things started to ease as they left their teen years behind; calm and soothing. They spent a great deal of time with one another but still had their own friends and lives as to not smother one another. In fact, it was her relationship being so great that led her to wanting to get married in the first place. She stood up and grasped Percy’s hand gently as he led her a tad closer to the water, wanting to feel the comfortable rock of the waves; encouraging him. He knelt down and grasped both her hands tightly in his grasp. “Annabeth, I love you so much, I would probably, no actually i know i would have died without you back when we were twelve on our first quest together. You have saved my butt so many times over the last ten years, I know i’ve saved yours at least half as many. Without you, my life would be less interesting. I wouldn’t know any of the differences of buildings, I wouldn’t understand what it means to be a hero at all without you teaching me your resolve, confidence, determination and power. You are the most incredible, smart, beautiful, infuriating and talented person i’ve ever met. I love getting lost in our discussions on the lives of the greeks might going on, I love getting lost in ADHD and caffeine fueled ramblings. I love to being in the same room as you. I have been building to this moment for years now.” He pulled out a ring box and exposed the small and dainty silver ring, with the most intricate engraving of wave designs and olive branches interchanging curling up to wrap around the small and modest ocean colored jewel. The jewel seemed to change color with the light passing through it giving it the appearance as if the jewel contained a part of the Mediterranean sea within it. “Annabeth “Wise Girl” Chase, will you do me the absolute pleasure of becoming your husband, your meddling partner, for good?” His eyes twinkled with hope and promise, a smile tearing his face apart as he stared adoringly at her deep storming grey eyes pool with love and excitement. Annabeth fell to her knees, a large smile unable to be constrained on her face. “Yes! Gods, yes seaweed brain! I love you!” And before Percy could slip the dainty ring on her finger, she pulled him into a kiss, embracing him fully, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. His own arms pulling her closer into him, wrapping his own arms tightly around her waist. Seconds later, they pulled apart and Percy was able to pull the ring from the box and slide it softly onto her ring finger. As he did so, Annabeth reveled in the fact that some times when the light danced perfectly on the sparkling jewel, it looked like it was colored as vibrantly aqua as Percy’s hair. Percy watched her face smile at her new rings as she admired it. “I got the jewel straight from the ocean. I went deep sea diving for months looking for the perfect one. When I saw it, the filtered light from the sun streaking through the ocean made it look silvery blue and it reminded me of you; your eyes and your hair. Plus I had Leo and Tyson design the actual ring part, giving my two-sense about the design here and there of course but they built it. However i did make sure they included a specific point.” He smiled conspiratorially, making her arch her eyebrow in piqued curiosity. He gently grabbed her wrist and gently pushed the jewel deeper into the ring. It turned into a half shield, covering her wrist to her elbow and about her arms width above and below. She marveled at the beautiful shield; deep silver with the etched designs of ocean waves and olive branches seemingly moving in wave patterns across the shield. “I named it stavroménoi erastés, meaning Star Crossed Lovers, as a reminder I guess that even though our parents hated each other, our friendship and love can survive and conquer anything. To always protect you and to have a little piece of me when we’re apart.” He winked with the boyish grin adorning his features. Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth saw something move near the bushes. And thanks to the nearby ocean, Percy had the same quick instinct. With incredible precision from years of battle reflexes, that and living this close to a forest packed with monsters and Clarisse, Percy drew his sword Riptide from his pocking, dislodging the cap as he pulled it out, ready for use just as Annabeth shielded part of her face with her shiny new sword as she drew the dagger that had previously been strapped to the outside of her upper thigh. They pointed their weapons to the noise, poised to attack at the slightly motion of an ambush. “Show yourself!” Annabeth called with incredible strength, almost making Percy want to drop his weapon at her mercy. He thanked all the gods on his good list that he never had to be on the business end of her dagger like that. Suddenly a large tuft of forest green hair appeared above some of the bushes, sporting rather silly looking branches, that Annabeth quickly deciphered as horns. Soon a glimpse of pink hair, flaming red hair, sky blue hair, dark black hair, dark, oil slicked-looking red hair, bright gold hair and blood red hair peaked over the top. Percy And Annabeth shared amused looks before lowering their weapons. The spots of colored hair soon officially identified themselves as Grover, Piper, Clarisse, Jason, Nico, Leo, Hazel and Frank. They all shared a slight look of embarrassment but it was more or less overshadowed by their excitement. “S-s-sorry, guys! We couldn’t help but watch! We would never want to miss the proposal of Percabeth!” Grover bleated. He ran and gave Percy the manliest embrace he could muster. Suddenly, the whole gang was surrounding them, cheering him for finally being able to muster the courage to do it, admiring the ring, and celebrating their engagement between the favorite couple of camp half-blood. As much as Percy wanted to be mad and embarrassed that they had all heard him pour his heart out and let it gush all over the place, he was actually very glad to have his own little cheer squad, cheering him on and lending their support to this anticipated moment. Annabeth was a little more angry than Percy but her anger quickly subsided as her friends gushed over the idea of a wedding making her insides feel all giddy and excited. The stole a glance at one another over the roar of love and support from their friends, no- family and admired each others glow of love making their hair glitter silver and aqua in the bright, sparkling moon. He was so glad he proposed, knowing right there, right then, the wedding would most definitely take place here at camp; at home.

Word Count: 2,261

#Percy Jackson #PJO #Heroes of Olympus #HoO #Annabeth Chase #Piper McLean #Grover Underwood #Clarisse LaRue #Jason Grace #Nico Di Angelo #Leo Valdez #Hazel Levesque #Frank Zhang #Percabeth #Wedding AU #Hair Color AU #Writing #OneShot #Fanfic

[grant-spiraltf]

The Summer Is Magic - Grey

@writer-ofstuff was having a good day at home until an email arrived in his inbox which he never thought he’d get. “FIRED?!” As he read the email, it became clear to him that there was no alternative. “Blah blah budget cuts... Blah blah deeply regret YEAH RIGHT if you ‘deeply regretted it’, then why am I fired!” After rereading it multiple times, Writer had enough. He grabbed his coat and headed out. At least 4 shots later, he finally felt all the worries about the future fall off his shoulders. The (kinda cute) bartender came up to him and told him that the bar was closing and much to his surprise, it was already 4 AM! So he asked the handsome lad for one last beer and his number, which he both received with a wink. He clumsily opened the beer and he was welcomed by an unfamiliar smell. “Hey, did you give me a speciality beer?” The barman smiled and said, “Yep, on the house if you allow me to drive you home” before continuing to clean up. Writer took a swig and immediately felt lightheaded. It was probably the beer mixing with the other drinks, but it felt weird anyway. He took another good look at the label, but it all started to blur so he took another good look at the liquid inside. “Why’s this beer grey? Hello?” He glanced around but the bartender was gone. Suddenly the bottle started to vibrate, grabbing his attention again and when he looked at it again, the bottle found its way back to Writer’s mouth and he started chugging it all. Once it was empty, the bottle vanished and Writer felt like a veil was being pulled over his conscience. He looked around one last time and found the bartender leaning against the wall, only with a completely different (and gorgeous) face. With a few blinks that kept getting slower and slower, Writer finally blacked out.

Colin was absolutely smashed. He bantered with his friends about having “Pirate’s Blood”, but once he got started he really didn’t like stopping. So when his buddy Josh Dallas invited him over for a drinking night because the wife conked out, he planned on going all the way. Luckily Josh had a spare bedroom so he didn’t have to travel afterwards. Last time they did this and Colin prepared to go home he passed out in the hall and Josh let him sleep there, so this time he made sure he had a bed reserved.

After 3 beers Josh’s speech had already started to slur. Although he was quite a big fella, alcohol was Josh’s greatest weakness. Colin had downed twice as much but he was nowhere near as drunk. He started talking about all sorts of things that were sort of TMI, like how Gennifer tended to make him eat her out while he had said that he didn’t enjoy doing it. Luckily Colin was able to swing the conversation back to normal stuff with a little effort. After nearly avoiding a conversation about dick size by swinging it to Josh's new personal trainer via bicep size, something weird happened. Although there was no storm outside, somehow a gust of wind was forceful enough to open a window and blow something inside. Colin couldn't really see what it was and he was about to go take a look when drunk Josh pushed him back into the seat and told him that he got it covered. Josh bent over, nearly falling but somehow managing to stay up and he got back up again with some weird glowing ball in his hands. “Lol, this looks like something from the show haha, a magic orb-” Josh was wheezing from his own joke when it emitted a bolt of lightning that struck him right in the chest. Colin was a little tipsy before but now he was 100% sober again. He rushed towards his fainted friend while the blog exited the building the way it came in.

After a thorough inspection, Josh seemed to be fine. “He probably passed out again. Fuck that means that I have to carry him to his bed.” Colin dreaded this because he nearly threw out his back last time that he had done that. Suddenly Josh opened his eyes and gasped for breath. He frantically looked around for a moment before noticing Colin leaning over him, and his facial expression changed from shock to something that Colin hadn't seen before. He backed off a little so Josh had enough space to get back up, but Josh wrapped his hands around his neck and pulled him closer. Since it was a pretty hard fall it wasn’t weird for Josh to feel weak, and getting zapped sure didn’t help. He tensed his back muscles to give his buddy a solid way to get up, but Josh didn’t get any farther than a foot off the ground. In fact, he just hung around his neck and staring into his eyes like a sloth. Colin was about to say something about how this was kinda gay until he saw that Josh’s eyes were a little more blue than usual. “What the fu-” was all he could say before getting shut up by Josh’s lips.

Colin wanted to push Josh back down and leave, but somehow he couldn’t get himself to do it. The feeling of Josh’s tongue trying to enter his mouth and his heavy breath somehow made him care less about what was happening and just go with the flow. Josh moaned loudly and the breath that came out of his mouth smelled like vanilla, which made Colin’s cock leak precum. This confused him. He felt an insane need for Josh and wanted nothing more than cater to Josh’s every need, but he also was deeply disgusted and wanted to leave immediately. Meanwhile, Josh had started pawing his crotch and tweaking his nipples until Colin couldn’t hold back anymore. He started undoing his pants and grabbed his erect cock, hoping that his lover would suck him off, but when he looked back at Josh he noticed another change in his demeanour. From shock to lust he had gone earlier, but now there was no emotion whatsoever. Josh pushed him back into the couch and Colin hoped that he was gonna dominate him, but to Colin’s surprise Josh stuffed his cock back in his pants, put on his coat and left without saying a word. Since he was extremely erect, Colin decided to jack off to the thought of Josh’s throbbing cock in his mouth. After his fantasy evolved to Josh fucking him in his ass while making out with him, Colin couldn’t hold back his orgasm anymore. He came hard and covered his face with his own cum, catching a few ropes in his mouth. He breathed heavily and smelled a familiar vanilla smell.

Colin looked around. “Josh? Are you back? I came without you, but if you give me a minute I’ll be ready for another round!” Colin quickly devoured all of the cum that was on his face and body, but he didn’t find Josh. Instead, he heard the clanking of a bottle hitting wood behind him and he saw a brand new beer bottle standing on the table. “Okay, I know I said the last one was the last one, but I can’t resist an open beer and you know that Josh! So where are you?” He playfully searched the room for his playmate, but he couldn’t find him anywhere so he picked up the bottle. “GS Specialty Beer? Josh where did you get this? I’ve never heard of this brand.” Colin smelled it and loved the vanilla, so he took a chug. Somehow the beer tasted perfect, but it felt kind of slimy in his throat. After two more chugs he was disappointed by a lack of more booze, so he put down the bottle and burped. And he burped again. Soon he was burping so much that it looked like there was something trying to come out of him. It was then that he heard a little voice in his mind, asking him what was happening. Thinking that this was all just a bad trip or something, Colin laid down on his side and closed his eyes.

When Writer woke up, he had no idea where he was or who he was. All he knew that something strange had happened like in the stories he wrote like he now possessed someone. He stood up and was hit immediately by a sharp pain. “Fuck, I hate hangovers.” He grasped his throat and found new muscular hands massaging his unshaven neck. He stood up, still a little dizzy from all the booze, and ran to the mirror, only to find the handsome Colin O’Donoghue staring back at him, fully naked and fully erect. One tug on the sizable cock was enough to not only make him moan but also a voice in his head. “Colin?” “Fuck yeah, stroke that cock.” Writer found his new hands immediately obeying the orders and he started stroking his dick. After minutes of flexing and stroking, he finally blew his load over the mirror. With gusto, he licked it all up and went on with his day.

“Buddy it’s been a month now, you know damn well that when you drink too much, I get stuck with the consequences!” Writer was mad at his host, but Colin knew damn well it wouldn’t take long. Turns out that they would continue losing control to the other every time they went to sleep. Colin knew that he shouldn’t dump his hangovers on his new partner, but at least he now had no downsides to drinking anymore! “Ugh fine, you know I can’t stay mad at you for long. But that means that next time that Josh is gonna fuck us, I’m making sure he’s gonna fuck us so hard that you’ll feel it for the rest of the day. Colin laughed inside. Like that was a punishment!

#tf story #celeb tf #tf series #grant-spiraltf #writer tf #writer-of-stuff #colin o'donoghue #summer is magic #writing event

[katiemcg97-blog]

9/20/19 “Reading with a Crayon:Pre-conventional Marginalia as Reader Response in Early Childhood” and “Chapter one: Reading with Meaning”

Both readings were insightful however I found the article Reading with a Crayon: Pre-conventional Marginalia as Reader Response in Early Childhood to be a bit more engaging and to my preference. Yet each reading provided value and relevancy to the literacy course at hand. The main take away in Chapter one of Reading with Meaning, is that shaping students to be readerly citizens means allowing independency in their reading, modeling positive engagement with others and books, and building trust between the instructor and student. The main take away from Reading with a Crayon is that the unique marginalia that children create and the marginalia’s placement within books showcase a child’s literary engagement, interaction with a book. One piece of the article Reading with a Crayon that stood out to me was that recognizing children’s experience of real and fictional places as events through play can contribute significantly to picture book scribbles (Fischer, 2016). I understood this as a child’s interactions with the physical and fictional worlds they encounter can represent themselves as scribbles on a picture book. This must mean that before a child can adequately describe the world around them they are already taking what they observe in both worlds and translating their understanding and interaction of them onto the book itself. How fascinating is that children are already interacting with text and literacy before formal education tells them what reading should be or is in an academic setting? One interesting nugget I found from Reading with Meaning  came from this quote, “Strategies are the how-the specific processes learners flexibly use-to get smart about big, important topics that are relevant to them and help them become powerful and thoughtful human beings” (Miller, 16). I love to think of teaching strategies in this way without the negative connotation state standards have placed upon them. When I teach my students these strategies I am helping them engage with the world not just become better students. I chose to do the readerly habit entitled as “Reflect on the contributions of reading experiences to reader identity in an effort to better articulate who he or she is as a reader” by making a T chart of my struggles and successes while I was reading the article Reading with a Crayon. Before I read the article I made the T chart and considered what do I usually struggle with when reading academic texts? and what do I have the most success with? I presumed that my struggles would be in interpreting data, theories, and vocabulary accurately. Having these struggles in most academic texts is difficult. A misunderstanding in one of these categories can lead to me missing important points of the text. As for my successes, I believed that I would succeed in being able to easily deduce a main idea from the text that can summarize the paper. Additionally, I believed that I would be able to use context clues to understand the meaning of a term I did not know and be able to make connections from this text to other things I’ read, experiences, or classes I have taken. I began my reading and the first thing I wrote down under the struggling column were two words I came across, marginalia and doyenne. I heard of these words but could not define these accurately. I noticed with certain paragraphs I found It hard to grasp its entirety .When the text described the different types of textual experiences (extratextual and intratextual) it was hard for me to grasp the purpose of intratextual annotations and why it would support the extratextual annotations. However, I often must reread parts of a paper multiple times to understand the text fully, After I finished the entire paper, I skimmed again and began to think to myself what I had success with. I realized that the mere idea that I understood the paper as a whole is a success to me. I understood the use of these theories and how the related to the methodology and how it made the paper more coherent. Another success I found was that I was able to think back and relate this course to my child development class. There was a paragraph in the article that discussed imaginative play in the realm of literature. I learned in Child Development that children ultimately explore, engage, and learn with others through play and the environments play occurs in. In this article, I was happy to find that literature can be considered a legitimate playground for a child to explore. The scribbles and strokes that children have created on the books resemble this play and interaction. I believe this readerly engagement was important as it helped me to not only notice the obvious points in which I struggle in understanding a literary work. Through understanding these struggles I can work on practicing to read for more understanding or to think more critically when reading a text. After reading the text it was reassuring to notice my successes considering the struggles. Although I struggled I have come so far in my literary journey and that is something to be proud of. It is important for all readers to recognize their areas of need but to also have confidence in their strengths and to have a positive outlook on reading as a whole. This is something I want to take from this class and share with my future readers one day.

Fischer, S. (2016). Reading with a Crayon: Pre-conventional Marginalia as Reader Response in Early Childhood . Children's Literature in Education, 47(3). doi: DOI 10.1007/s10583-016-9292-4

Miller, D. (2013). Reading with meaning: teaching comprehension in the primary grades. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers.

(Maybe we should add Children have the right to explore books by whatever means including with a crayon :) )

[eremiss]

Violet

The Mor Dhonan sky was streaked with clouds, the dying light painting the sky shades of orange and purple. Specters of colors flickered in the air here and there, growing dim as the day faded and Gwen returned through the western gates. Revanent’s Toll was somehow more and less active since the Domans had set out for their homeland months ago, something Gwen hadn’t fully appreciated until she’d been able to linger in the old town for more than a day or two.

People went about their lives and work as normal, maybe working harder to replace the lost hands or bringing in new ones from out of town. It chaffed her if she let herself dwell on it for too long, most likely a reflection of her personal struggles and her own longing for ease. 

Possibly because Gwen could detect the gaps left behind. The places where the Doman Adventurer’s Guild used to gather and discuss their next plans, where Homei, Doware and the others would meet up and chat on their brief breaks. Even when others occupied the spaces in the passing weeks she felt a vague, distant sense of emptiness lingering there.

That hypersensitivity to absence and loss were what drove her to keep away from the Rising Stones and its infirmary for long hours. What sent her skittering awkwardly around the settlement and passing time elsewhere for as long as she could, rather than in Seventh Heaven or anywhere else where one might search for motive or meaning behind the frequency and length of her visits. Usually that meant spending time outside of the city, for the sake of not haunting the market stalls or Rowena’s House of Splendors and avoiding Slafborn, Coultunet, Hoary and the others.

Their concern was appreciated, even comforting, but at the same time it was too stifling. It was another thing looming over her thoughts, and while it served to galvanize her to keep trying, keep pushing forward, it also reminded her of everything that had gone wrong. Everything that was yet unfixed. Everything she had yet to fix.

But Gwen couldn’t avoid the place forever, and, despite the anxiety tying her stomach in knots and the weight of helplessness that grew a little heavier with each unsuccessful lead, she needed to be there. She wanted to be close, useless and frustrated as she may have been, because distance only made the pain of uncertainty worse, turning a hollow ache into a sharp blade that cut at her nerves.

The furthest she could bring herself to go under her own power was the Tangle, sometimes just to be away, sometimes on an errand or task she’d taken up to pass the time. And even then she was always glancing back, hope and concern mingling into a mass that consumed most of her thoughts. She still left regularly, Eorzea still needed it’s Warrior of Light, but she did so only at the will of others, and she never lingered long.

Maybe she would come back and her friends would be awake. Maybe she would come back and something far worse will have happened.

Everyone, in their own turn, had suggested she write in her journal. Because they all knew that was what she did to sort and order her thoughts, what she did to calm and console herself, what she did to be ready for whatever fate saw fit to throw at her next.

And she had. She’d filled three journals before she realized she’d been repeating the same things over and over, stuck in a loop like a malfunctioning Orchestron. She’d tried rereading her writing and found no way out, nothing that that inspired some sort of paradigm shift or offered her an answer when reexamined out of context. 

She’d thrown those journals away, saving a scant few pages, and the newest one had yet to be touched.

Twilight was slipping into full night, oranges nearly gone and purples fading to black, when Gwen finally shouldered the door to Seventh Heaven open. She hadn’t been sleeping well for the past week, and the sun was taking her energy with it. Gwen labored to maintain a neutral expression, not letting the weight of her worries show on her face as she moved across the bar. She wanted to hope for good news, but also tried to brace herself for nothing to have changed.

She caught Arya’s eye, and the grimace on the young girl’s face briefly had Gwen wondering if she wasn’t as skilled with her poker face as she’d thought. But then Arya’s posture drooped slightly, shoulders visibly slumping, before she shook her head.

Gwen suddenly understood. Arya still hadn’t gotten in contact with X’hrun, or come up with any new suggestions or leads for her and the remaining Scions to try. Warm affection bloomed in her chest, a much needed reprieve from the frustration she’d been stewing in, and she gave Arya a grateful smile. A smile that said she wasn’t upset or disappointed with the lack of news, and that she appreciated the effort.

Arya brightened, though was she still clearly dismayed that she hadn’t yet been able to provide any help, and turned back to her studying.

It was quiet in the Rising Stones, and empty in a way it had seldom been before. The front at the Ghimlyt dark was an ‘all hands on deck’ situation, just as the fight for Ala Mhigo had been, so at the very least this wasn’t the first time Gwen had seen the place practically deserted. But the knowledge of those who were present but asleep made the space seem hollow and uncomfortable.

Ephemie waved welcomingly from across the room. “Gwen! There you are. A letter arrived for you a few bells ago.”

“Hmm?” Gwen crossed to the bar, not listening to how loud her steps sounded in the quiet, and accepted the letter Ephemie produced from beneath the bartop. “From whom?”

“Not sure,” she replied with a shrug, “No name on it besides yours, and the post moogle wouldn’t share.”

Gwen needed only a glance at the looping script to recognize Aymeric’s handwriting. She felt simultaneously heartened that he’d written and glad to hear from him, a little excited that perhaps he’d have news to share, and distinctly nervous, dreading hearing his concern for her. He’d hide it all under overly proper wording and slant associations, unless he’d grown too worried, which was when he would speak more frankly, something that she appreciated but also made her feel distinctly guilty. She knew her friends cared for her, but a precise measure of their concern was something she dreaded knowing. .

She ducked her chin, “Thanks.” Further pleasantries and conversation dried up and crumbled on her tongue, and she merely gave Ephemie a smile before heading away. She could feel the woman’s concerned gaze following her as she headed in the direction of the infirmary.

The infirmary was uncomfortably quiet and still, a small light just barely keeping the darkness away. It was enough to illuminate the sleeping figures and the spaces between the beds, but no so bright that it would have woken them if they’d truly just been sleeping.

The occupants and their beds had been rearranged a week ago to make room for another friend. Now Alisaie slept quietly in a bed beside her brother’s.

Gwen moved to each of the Archons, resting her hand on one of theirs and giving a gentle squeeze.

“We’re still looking for answers. I’m sorry,” she mumbled to Uriangier. “I hope Alisaie is with you.”

“Matoya doesn’t seem so old as I thought all of a sudden. Still rather grumpy, though.” She imagined Y’shtola would have cracked a smile at that if she’d heard it

“I hope you’re with them. We were so far apart when…” Gwen squeezed Alphinaud’s hand firmly. “I think Krile’s got a few choice words about your decision to go off with the Imperials like that.”

“I’m going to have a long talk with you,” she affected mock sternness as she fixed Alisaie’s hair. “All this about me not leaving you, the promises, all the checkups with the linkpearl, and now…” She trailed off, screwing her mouth up to lock away the tightening in her throat and stinging in her eyes.

Gwen came to Thancred’s bed last, dropping gracelessly into the chair next to it. Someone, maybe Alianne, had left a blanket draped over it for her, and Gwen made a mental note to thank her later. She didn’t take it, it wasn’t that cold yet, but the gesture meant a lot.

She slid her hand under Thancred’s, threading their fingers together, and lifted it to lean her cheek against his knuckles. His hand was still warm, which offered paltry reassurance compared to the queasy ache of how limp it was in her grasp.

“I’m sorry this is all taking so long. Things have gotten so hectic... Riol’s still out in the field, he’s--they needed someone--ah...he’s filling in for you.“ A tired sigh slipped out, “I just need a little longer...Just a little more time. I’m still...I’m still looking. I wish I had something more to say, but I...”

Gwen willed him to react somehow, teetering on the edge between hoping and expecting him to squeeze her hand or open his eyes. She longed to hear his voice again, to hear him call her ‘dove’ or ‘darling’ or any of the other pet names he was so fond of, to hear some sort of quip about how she worried too much and didn’t sleep enough before he tried to coax her into a good morning kiss.

Instead he just slept, breathing steadily as he had been for weeks.

She sagged, propping herself up on the bed with her elbows and pressing her face into the back of his hand. She twisted her mouth in another grimace to try and keep herself in check. “I pray you’re safe and well, wherever you are. I think about you every day,” she whispered, pretending the words didn’t tremble as they passed her lips. “And the others, of course. I miss all of you and-- I mean-- I wanted to say…Please come back. Soon.” She squeezed his hand as tightly as she could, praying for some sort of reaction that didn’t come, her words tight and aching, “I miss you, love. I miss you so...so much...”

Deep purples slipped into full darkness without a sound, without a fuss.

Aymeric’s letter waited in Gwen’s other hand, not forgotten but not important-- at least for the moment. She sat, leaning heavily on her elbows and sagging in her chair, drawing what comfort she could from the knowledge that Thancred was alive. Alive and here...but not.

Perhaps the Gubal Library would have something useful, or something that could point her in a new direction. Or she could try scrounging around Amdapor Keep. Maybe the tonberry of The Wanderer’s Palace would have some information about strange or forgotten afflictions, though she’d have to ask Isonne and her fairy to speak to them for her... 

Gwen heard a faint scratching sound before familiar nutkin scrambled up her back, taking the briefest second to peer at her face before cuddling up to the side of her neck. He let out the saddest squeak she’d ever heard, and she tilted her head to the side to lean her cheek on his soft fur. He missed them all, too.

The room was an uncomfortable sort of quiet, the kind that filled one with the urge to make some sort of sound to chase it away or just leave altogether.

Gwen couldn’t find the will to do either, and instead sat, glancing between all of her friends that were there but not. Bodies present, but their souls, their...them utterly absent. She found herself wishing time and again that they’d wake, or somehow offer clue to a solution she clearly wasn’t finding. And when those didn’t work she tried wishing away the whole thing, wishing that had never happened at all.

Unsurprisingly, that didn’t work either.

Gwen couldn’t bring herself to be much further from them, at least not more than she had to. But nothing felt worse than sitting there, surrounded by her loved ones, and being utterly alone.

It was getting too depressing so I added the nutkin and I regret nothing.

Little dude doesn’t show up enough in fanfiction. He is cute as fuck and has the power to brighten anyone’s day. 10/10 would snuggle a nutkin irl

That’s Gwen’s thought process “If I concentrate on the thing and tunnel vision the thing and fix the thing then everything’ll be fine so FIX IT NOW NOW NOW” and why she is very stress and anxiety which is not at all what’s happening in current content

Oh wow lookit that I actually have something real hinting at who I pair my WoL with. (I think I mentioned it before somewhere else but it was like one line lol) 

Also I didn’t see how I could not write about Prelude in Violet (or shortly thereafter) because I’m literal and take the easy road and Violet is in the fucking naaaaaame

This made me sad and I want to hug Gwen now. I’m sorry, hun ;_;

I want the next patch as badly as she does

#ffxiv #ishgard #ffxiv writing #write ffxiv #february prompt #FFXIV 4.5 #Prelude in Violet #Gwencred #I did it I made a ship name #is this literal I feel like it is #broody #Nutkin #Nutkin is best minion

[iatethepomegranate]

Blue is the New Red Chapter 46

Masterlist

Note that due to tumblr being ridiculous, I no longer post external links on individual chapters. If you prefer to read on AO3, please refer to the masterlist link above.

Rated: M for torture, flashbacks, trauma reactions, PTSD, sexual assault of minors, consensual sexual content and related freaking out about it, drug references, non-consensual drug use, possibly underage drinking, homophobia and biphobia, references to self-harm, suicidal ideation and attempt. Chapter warnings:  animal cruelty, allusions to the sexual assault of minors, mentions of Wally's jerkass dad, hints of PTSD

Main Pairing: Birdflash

Status: Multiple chapters, in progress

Overall summary: Nightwing has finally made his return to the Team, but he finds the events of the past two years aren’t quite done with him yet.

Chapter notes:  Batgirl is participating in her first team mission, and Nightwing is finally back on active duty after his long absence.

Additional notes (and an apology): It's been far too long since I last updated. I'm so sorry. I wish I had a good explanation, but the fact is I just could not get myself into the right mindset to write this, let alone reread what I've written so I can remember how it goes. (See a longer explanation on the AO3 page)

Reminder: dialogue in bold is said through M'gann's mind link.

Chapter 46: Reconnaissance (Maybe)

It took Batman three tries before he was able to let Nightwing on the bioship the following morning. If it hadn't been for the smorgasbord of trackers embedded into every piece of Nightwing's uniform, he probably wouldn't have been allowed to go at all.

Batgirl squeaked when the seatbelt fastened itself over her chest. Nightwing, very charitably, he thought, did not laugh.

“You control the ship with your brain?” she asked Miss Martian once she'd recovered.

Miss Martian nodded. “I can also make her respond to commands from non-telepaths. I'll show you how to fly her one day.”

Batgirl rubbed the seatbelt between her gloved fingers. “Maybe once I've gotten used to this.”

“Wait until you see her shapeshifting,” said Kid Flash.

“You just want her to turn into that version of you with boobs again,” said Nightwing.

“Who can blame me? I'm hot.”

“Oh, grow out of your hormones already,” Artemis complained. “You don't hear Nightwing going on like this anymore.”

There was a very specific reason for that, but Nightwing made a conscious decision not to ruin the mood. At least it shut Kid Flash up, probably because he'd had the same thought. Artemis winced and opened her mouth to apologise, but Nightwing waved her off before she could. Better to just move on.

Miss Martian smiled awkwardly and called Batgirl over to show her how the bioship controls worked.

“Batman said he added colour change options to these suits, didn't he?” said Artemis, pressing various spots on the chest logo of her cold-weather uniform until it switched to her usual green. She pressed it again to switch back to white. “Nice.”

“I told him we wouldn't be very covert if we wore white indoors,” said Nightwing. “Nice to see he listened for once.” Nightwing hadn't had call to wear his new cold-weather uniform until today. Similar design to his usual costume, except in white, plus the cowl that had featured on his cold-weather Robin uniform. For the first time in a while, he felt naked without a cape. If the weather proved too punishing, he might have to add one for future missions.

“You stole that idea from me,” Robin complained. Seeing him in the same cold weather uniform Nightwing once wore brought on a feeling of nostalgia that he thought he'd finally gotten over.

“You snooze, you lose,” he said, shaking it off.

Everyone strapped into their seats and Miss Martian willed the ship into flight. It would take a few hours to reach their destination and Nightwing could barely contain his excitement. After such a long time of being stuck on the sidelines due to a never-ending parade of bullshit, he was finally back where he wanted to be, with his best friends in the whole world. There was that nagging fear in the back of his mind about what would happen if they came across the al Ghuls, but the likelihood of that happening was so remote that it didn't take more precedence than that.

Besides, there was nothing better at sharpening his focus than a good old-fashioned team mission. He already felt a thousand times smarter and they'd only just left home base.

“This is exciting,” Batgirl admitted. “I had no idea there was a team like this until a few months ago. How did you convince the Justice League to let you do this?”

“Well, to be fair, it started when KF, Aqualad and I broke into a supervillain's science lab without anyone's permission,” Nightwing said. “Then we found Superboy in a pod and busted him out. We also may have blown up the place, just a little bit.”

“Then we had to wait a thousand years for them to officially approve the team,” Kid Flash added. “Supey crashed at my place in the meantime.” The corner of his mouth tightened. “Well, I wouldn't call it my place anymore...”

“You've mentioned something about your dad before,” said Batgirl. “Ages ago, at that gala where you embarrassed Nightwing with that Enrique Iglesias song.”

“I'm amazed you remember that,” Kid Flash replied. “I don't even remember what I told you.” At least that eased some of the pain out of his expression, even if they were still talking about it.

“I have an eidetic memory,” Batgirl said. “Comes in handy. You mentioned Dick's—I mean Nightwing's—dad took the news about you two better than your own dad did.”

“Yeah...” His mouth tightened again. “He kicked me out of home last year. Been staying with my aunt and uncle.”

“That's horrible. I'm so sorry.”

Kid Flash shrugged, but no one believed he meant it. “My aunt and uncle have had all of us in the same room for a family dinner so it's not like he and Mum are out of my life completely. Just... mostly. I'm gonna invite them to my graduation. No idea if they'll show. No point dwelling on something I can't do anything about.”

Nightwing rested his foot on the edge of Kid Flash's seat; they were too far away for hugging, even if that's what he really wanted to do right now. A friendly foot of support would have to do.

“You really remember everything?” Zatanna asked Batgirl, who grasped onto the change of topic.

“No one remembers everything,” she replied, “but I can get pretty close.”

“Impressive,” said Aqualad.

The conversation very pointedly moved on, but Kid Flash had this faraway look in his eyes, even as he went through the motions of smiling and nodding at what the others said.

“Hey,” Nightwing said quietly. Superboy would hear, but he was pretty good at pretending he couldn't.

Kid Flash sighed. “I'm fine, babe. I just miss them sometimes.”

“I know.”

“I don't know whether I'm more afraid they'll come to my graduation and be horrible, or they won't come at all.”

“You sure you wanna invite them?”

“Yeah. I wanna know they care. If they care.”

“Whatever happens, you're surrounded by people who love you. And we're fully prepared to fight your dad if you want.”

Kid Flash snickered, just a little bit. “Please don't. He'll think we're moving into the final phase of the gay agenda: eliminate the heterosexuals.”

Nightwing cackled. “I'll pencil it in after brunch.”

The issue wasn't resolved, but the levity helped in the short term. Kid Flash relaxed in his seat over time and his father slowly filtered out of everyone's minds. There'd be time to deal with that can of worms later. No need to let it spoil the upcoming excitement of the mission.

Nightwing was so ready for this.

Miss Martian had to land the bioship a mile away from the facility due to a lack of surrounding cover, plus the thermal imaging at the base. Small groups wearing insulated costumes would have a better chance of slipping in undetected.

The team split into their squads and put some distance between each other, the better to trick the sensors. Zatanna prepared a teleportation spell for alpha squad while Nightwing hopped on Kid Flash's back for beta's run to the facility. Rocket expanded her bubble to include Superboy and Robin to improve the speed of gamma.

Alpha would arrive first and relay any immediate findings to the other squads. Batgirl was already a talented hacker and could handle any low-risk hacks, though anything more serious would have to await Nightwing's arrival. Batgirl was a quick study and would surpass him eventually, but that wasn't today.

Nightwing buried his face against Kid Flash's shoulder as they began to move. They screeched to a halt maybe a minute later, but he didn't get the chance to climb down before Batgirl's voice was in his head.

“I've got a virus into the external cameras. Nightwing should be able to take out the infrareds with minimal interference.”

“Thanks, BG.” Nightwing climbed off Kid Flash's back and they pressed themselves against the dull stone wall that surrounded the entire complex.

Miss Martian dropped to the snowy ground and rolled a few times. “There. My body temperature should blend into our surroundings if I'm quick. I'll find the sensors for you.” Martians already ran cooler than humans anyway. She camouflaged and phased through the wall.

“We're definitely safe from the infrared cameras here, right?” said Kid Flash.

“As long as we stick to the wall,” Nightwing replied. “The walls are insulated and the exterior cameras angled to watch for approaching invaders, remember?”

“I may have dozed off in the briefing a little bit.”

Whatever smartass reply Nightwing was cooking up had to be aborted when Miss Martian reappeared. They hugged the wall as they slipped in through a gate, the guard already unconscious, and then legged it to the security station.

Said station was a rickety little shack with a tin roof and a door thicker than its walls. Nightwing slipped inside with Kid Flash while Miss Martian stood guard outside.

Nightwing found a port on the three-monitor computer's CPU and pulled a plug from his wrist computer. He went slowly at first, just poking around in the guts of the programming to see what he had.

“Looks like the al Ghul techs added a shutdown sequence in a hurry,” he said, leafing through the programmers' documentation attached to the code. “Not part of the original programming. It's tied into some functions deeper in the facility.”

“Can you turn them off without alerting anyone?” asked Aqualad.

“I can make it look like a malfunction, but they're gonna know about it.” It wasn't ideal, but that's what he had to work with. “Are you in position? We won't have long to get inside, and we'll have trouble getting out again if they fix the system faster than we can work.”

“Perhaps we should consult Batman. It may affect the League's mission if we are discovered.”

“Make it quick. We had to knock out a guard to get here and I don't know if there are any alarms in this system.”

There were a few tense moments, each longer than the last. Nightwing half-expected they would have to fall back, but Aqualad's voice filled his head again, giving the go-ahead to shut down the infrareds.

It only took a moment. He'd had plenty of time to plan how to do it, after all. Then they hurried out of the security building and through the nearest door, Miss Martian taking point. Invisibly.

“I found an alarm system,” Robin said. “Doesn't look hard to turn off but, you know...”

“Looks can be deceiving?” Nightwing replied.

“Well, this is Ra's al Ghul we're talking about.”

“If you are concerned, perhaps we should leave it alone,” said Aqualad.

“Sure thing, boss,” said Nightwing. “We'll avoid detection the old-fashioned way.”

Kid Flash stifled a snicker beside him. Old-fashioned for him meant tripping over things and falling right into the people they were trying to avoid. So maybe they wouldn't do that.

“Our priority is reconnaissance,” Aqualad pointed out. “No unnecessary risks.”

“You ever notice how our recon missions always end with explosions?” said Kid Flash. Aqualad didn't respond, but his annoyed vibes through the link got the point across. The link wasn't typically strong enough to pick up on specific emotions, but Aqualad was uniquely talented in that regard. He'd certainly had plenty of practice making his frustration with the team's nonsense clear without uttering a word.

The corridors were long and made of soulless concrete. It was not like Ra’s at all. He preferred old-fashioned stone whenever possible, but maybe it didn’t hold the heat in this climate.

“What’re you thinking?” asked Kid Flash

“This place doesn’t look like an al Ghul original,” Nightwing replied. “Maybe it’s an adaptation for the cold weather, or he doesn’t care about aesthetics in a facility he’ll rarely visit. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Maybe he didn’t build it,” suggested Artemis. “He could’ve found it abandoned or killed the original inhabitants.”

“Possibly. If he was desperate enough.”

Unfortunately, Nightwing had been hoping for a more traditional interior, because there tended to be little alcoves that made good hiding spots. No such luck here. He spotted a heating vent and Miss Martian floated up to test if it would open, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Fused shut,” she whispered. Damn it.

“That’d be too easy,” Nightwing muttered. Ra’s knew about the batfamily’s tendency toward air vents and had clearly taken steps to thwart their use.

“I could get it open,” Miss Martian said, “but it would make too much noise.”

They continued, peeking into solid metal doors as they went. Each room looked like a horror movie version of an examination room, some with beds or dental chairs or even metal tables. No computers or samples yet. Nothing they could work with.

“Found something,” said Batgirl. “In the heart of the facility. Some kind of computer server. There are cages, too. We haven’t gone inside yet. I think there may be an elevator in there. Get here quick.”

“On our way,” said Nightwing. Kid Flash’s running would be too loud, so they ran at a Nightwing-level pace instead. Well, Miss Martian flew a little ahead with her camouflage.

If there really was an elevator, maybe that would explain why there was so little of use on this level. It made sense, really. Any infiltrator worth their salt could get in here. Maybe the central chamber was more difficult, or at least the fact it was central would deter all but the most determined snoops. Ah, language.

All three squads met up at a giant pair of metal doors, all taking turns to peer inside. The door was electrified shut, linked to a keypad beside it.

“Does anyone else think it’s strange we haven’t seen anyone aside from that one guard?” said Robin.

“Super strange,” Nightwing agreed. He pressed a button on his mask and scanned the keypad, lighting up four fingerprints that denoted the most commonly-used buttons: 5, 7, 1, 4. There were 24 permutations of those four numbers, and trying them all in a brute-force strategy would undoubtedly trip another alarm.

There was a camera on the wall behind the team, which was dead. It must have gone off when the infrareds did… Nightwing hoped. If he could break into the system and find the camera footage for the code.

“I need to find another security room to have any chance of cracking this without ruining the mission,” he said. Sadly, Ra’s al Ghul knew better than to use WayneTech. “Think there’s one inside, or do we have to go all the way outside again?”

“We passed one on our route,” said Batgirl. “It’s a few doors down that way.” She pointed behind her, to Nightwing’s right.

“What do the rest of us do in the meantime?” asked Rocket. “I feel silly just standing around.”

“We look for alternative entrances,” said Aqualad. “I want everyone to know this place so well they could walk it blindfolded.”

“Now you sound like Batman,” said Robin, as Nightwing took Miss Martian and Kid Flash down the corridor to find the security room.

“I will take that as a compliment. Begin searching.”

The security room was the third door on the left of the concrete corridor. Nightwing had to swallow bile, because the stack of cassette tapes on the wall reminded him too much of Skinner’s compound. He shook his head to clear it.

“Get a fucking grip, Nightwing,” he muttered, crossing to the computer on the cheap grey desk before Kid Flash or Miss Martian could question or comfort him. It was a modern computer with a flat-screen monitor, and it took him moments to break in. Fortunately, the video records were archived on the computer itself. The tapes must’ve been old. Good. He didn’t want to look at them again.

Nightwing also didn’t want to delve too deeply into the video archives. He found a digital map of the facility with all the cameras marked and downloaded a copy to his wrist computer. He also passed copies to Robin and Batgirl.

He found the central chamber on the map and made a note of the camera’s codename: AX253. He then found that folder in the archive and started sifting through the footage until he found someone using the code. It was a bad angle, but it was all he had. He ran the video a couple of times and finally figured out the first digit: 4. That brought the possible number of combinations down to six. Better, but still too many to risk a brute-force approach. Most systems got antsy after more than three attempts, especially in places such as this. If he could piece together at least one more digit…

“What’s taking so long?” said Superboy. “Whatever you did to the cameras could’ve been fixed already.”

“It hasn’t,” Nightwing replied. “I need a few more minutes. Got one digit figured out. Need at least one more to make brute-forcing an option.”

“Genius takes time,” Kid Flash added. Nightwing would’ve elbowed him and told him to shut up, but he was busy.

He sifted through the footage and found a shorter person. Both people had been wearing labcoats. This one was a woman, and she fumbled the combination the first two times because her hands shook. She got it on the third because she went slowly, enough that Nightwing could pick up the whole combination. That was nice. He also knew the keypad could take at least two mistakes.

The combination was: 4157.

“Got it,” said Nightwing. “Anything cool on your end?”

“No luck,” said Zatanna. “That door is our only way in and out.”

“Wonderful.”

They headed back to the door and Nightwing keyed in the combination. The door buzzed and released. Aqualad tested the handle, and it turned.

There were more metal tables in the room, and fur was stuck in some of the cages. Nightwing made a beeline for the enormous computer that took up an entire wall, dragging Robin and Batgirl with him.

“Find another way down if you can,” Aqualad said. “I would prefer not to use the elevator.”

“Bit of a fire hazard if it’s the only option,” Kid Flash quipped.

“Would Ra’s al Ghul care?” said Robin.

“Probably not,” Nightwing replied, pulling a cord from his wrist computer and plugging it into a port. “As long as he gets out in once piece, most of his people are expendable. Hell, even he is to an extent. Yay, Lazarus Pits.” He shook off a sick feeling at the green memory and focused on breaking into this computer, explaining his steps to Robin and Batgirl as he went.

It was a simple enough task to log in and poke around in the files.

“Nightwing, what are we dealing with?” asked Aqualad, who was examining the elevator across the room.

Zatanna had freed some fur from a cage and was feeling it between her fingers. “This is real fur. A wolf, I think?”

Nightwing found some research notes. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at yet yet. KF, get your science brain over here and help me make sense of this. I think we’ve got some test results.”

“All the test subjects have codes,” said Batgirl, pointing to the screen. “Can we find what those mean?”

“Sounds like a good starting point,” said Kid Flash, zipping over to them. He rested his hand on Nightwing’s shoulder, leaning in to get a look as Nightwing sifted through the files until he found a name authority file. “Maybe that’s it.”

Nightwing opened it. “Each code translates to a Latin name and a number.”

“Scientific animal names?” Kid Flash suggested.

“Makes sense,” said Robin. “Zatanna, can we look at that fur?”

Zatanna brought it over. Between the five of them, they were able to identify most of the Latin animal names. Lots of wolves, which made since given the grey animal fur. There were also foxes, various kind of large-breed dogs, large canines, and even horses and a bear or two. Nightwing swore he saw the scientific name for an African elephant as well, which was just upsetting and made him think of the circus.

“So, they’re doing animal tests here,” said Kid Flash. “Can we save some of this data? Uncle Flash would have a field day.”

“I’ll save as much as I can,” said Nightwing. “We still need to take a look downstairs.”

“The elevator is not code-protected,” said Aqualad. “It would appear we are clear to use it, if there is no other option.” He sounded less than enthused. Nightwing couldn’t blame him. You never wanted to get stuck in an elevator when you weren’t supposed to be there at all. Sure, they could try the elevator shaft, but it was a bad idea when you didn’t know if you could get in and out of the elevator if the need arose.

Nightwing went back to the test results, but even knowing the code meanings wasn’t much help. He downloaded those records and went searching for a thesis statement that would explain all this.

Finally, he lucked out:

Mission: devise a method to command dangerous animals to control human population levels.

Classic Ra’s al Ghul. Environmentalism through genocide. How exactly was he trying to command these animals?

“There a lot of information,” Nightwing said. “We should probably leave a small team here to gather as much as possible and keep a lookout for any patrols. There has to be a reason we haven’t encountered many people yet.”

“Robin, Batgirl, are you confident continuing Nightwing’s work here?” asked Aqualad. “We may need him underground.”

“We can do it,” said Robin. “He’s done the hard work already.”

“Very well. New squad assignments: Robin, Batgirl and Rocket are to stay here. Everyone else, with me. Should we need to split further, I want Superboy and Kid Flash protecting Nightwing.”

Nightwing almost made a smartass comment, but it did make sense. He was the only hacker going underground. If something happened, the rest of the team could become trapped if they were unlucky.

They headed to the elevator and peeked inside. There was a hatch up top. Superboy gave Nightwing a boost so he could test the opening. It budged without too much effort, so Aqualad pressed the down button and they all climbed out the hatch. If anyone was in the room below, better they saw an empty elevator than one full of invaders.

Nightwing crouched on top of the elevator beside Zatanna as it lurched downwards. He checked over the blueprints he’d downloaded, but they didn’t provide any information on the bottom floor. They were going into this without any knowledge of what was down there.

“I figured out why the infrared cameras need to be turned off,” Robin said.

“We figured it out,” Batgirl cut in. “These animals are controlled by radio and light signals. The canine and feline animals are controlled by high frequencies, but some of the others are controlled by low frequencies.”

“The cameras interfere with the signals,” said Robin. “Also, they’re probably jammed full of machinery. Enjoy.”

“Thank you,” said Aqualad. Aloud he whispered, “Be ready. We could find anything down here.”

The elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors pinged open.

“Hello?” came a voice. “Who’s there?”

“Oh, god, has someone come to rescue us?” came another voice.

“Please, show yourselves.” A third voice.

The team shared a look.

“I’ll go,” said Superboy. “They’ll recognise my logo.”

“And you’re harder to shoot,” Artemis added.

Superboy didn’t dignify that with a response. Aqualad gave the okay, and he dropped through the hatch.

“Superman?!”

“That’s Superboy, genius. God, I thought you had a PhD.”

“Care to tell me what’s going on here?” Superman said.

“We were kidnapped months ago to work on cybernetic animals.”

“Are there more of you?” asked Superboy.

“Yes! Are you going to get us out?”

“Sure.”

Superboy followed the three people out of earshot, so Superboy narrated through the mind link.

“They’ve taken me to another door. There are dozens of scientists in there. One of them is telling me they have been stuck here for days. They have to swipe identity cards to get back in the elevator, but they stopped working. Someone needs to stay in the elevator to keep it open for us.”

“Can you get to the scientists?” asked Aqualad.

“We should… no. Their cards have stopped working on this door and they don’t know what would happen if I broke it. We need Nightwing.”

Aqualad nodded to Nightwing, who dropped into the elevator with Kid Flash.

This room had even more cages, and the metal tables were covered in fur and stained with blood. Kid Flash shuddered. Superboy and the three scientists were on the other end of the room. Someone inside the room was beating against the glass.

“Hi, everyone,” Nightwing said. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got here.” A scientist offered her key card and Nightwing tested it on the keypad. It didn’t respond at all. “Do the upstairs security features affect these cards?”

“No,” said the scientist. “We have to swipe for all the rooms around here. We can’t do our tests if we can’t get the doors open.”

“Are there any animals left on-site?”

“No,” said another scientist, wiping sweat off his brow. “Soldiers came in and loaded them onto trucks a few days ago.”

“Did they leave us to die in here?” said the third. Nightwing decided against answering, because the answer was absolutely yes.

“We’re here now,” he said instead. “What kind of security measures are down here?” The keypad didn’t accept any codes and had no way to plug in and open it with his computer.

“Not many,” said the first scientist. “We have emergency buttons to shut down everything, but I don’t think anything happens with the keypads.”

“Okay, but just in case, we have to get everyone out quickly,” said Nightwing. “Aqualad, we might have to smash the security measures to get people out of this room. Are we ready for that?”

“This is supposed to be recon only,” said Aqualad.

“I know. Call Batman while I see if we’ve got any other options?”

“I will. One moment.”

“I’m going to see if there’s another way to get this open,” said Nightwing, “but there’s a very good chance I’ll have to ask our muscled friend here to tear it off to get at the wires instead. Do you have any computers you can access?”

The scientists showed him to a few laptops. He saved the research files on there but couldn’t find a way to get into the security system. He hadn’t expected anything, given these scientists were prisoners and possibly geniuses, but it was worth a shot.

“Batman gives his approval to get the scientists out. He is sending backup to take them from there. We are to rendezvous at the front of the facility and then head home.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Nightwing. “Okay, I can’t see any other options. Superboy, could you rip that keypad off the wall for me?”

Superboy tugged it off like a piece of gum from his shoe. The door was still shut, so Nightwing dug around in the wires until he found the right two and tapped the copper ends together to complete the circuit. The door slid open.

“Everyone out, please!” he called. “Go straight to the elevator. No dawdling.”

The trapped scientists flooded out and headed for the elevator. Nightwing nudged their three new friends to join the crowd. Not everyone could fit.

“We’ll take this group up and come back,” said Aqualad. Nightwing relayed that to the people stuck in the room.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he promised. “Our teammates will be back with the elevator in a few—”

A growl erupted from one of the other rooms.

“Um,” said Kid Flash, “didn’t the scientists say those soldiers took all the animals?”

Well, shit.

#birdflash #dick grayson #young justice #fanfiction #my fics #nutrh2