#i thought this would be his only hope at an alt until his new years alt for year of the rabbit

[eye-of-enigmatic-thought]

[Note: Image description is in the alt text of the images due to its length. Let me know if writing them down on the post's description is more preferred!]

Here is Wilt!! My Flower Kid for Smile For Me with a new and improved art ref! I still love this tall goober even if I've never done much with them, lets hope that changes seeing my hyperfixation for Smile For Me STILL isn't over!!

Additional info and their backstory under the cut!

In the middle of nowhere in the US, there was a old reclusive farmer. This farmer took care of everything mostly on his own and didn't allow many people to come onto his property, the reasons varied, but part of it had to do with how he had Shadow abilities that he'd use to 'possess' straw bodies to help him in his work, also part of how he was able to care for his farm on his own as well.

The farmer however, would grow especially attached to a scarecrow he constructed to ward away any pesky birds from his crops. This attachment would prove to be so great, that the shadows from the Farmer would separate and make the scarecrow into their own person, who the Farmer would name 'Wilt' for their droopy appearance and tendency to care for even the most wilted plants.

The farmer and Wilt had a father-child bond, and he took care of them and taught them everything he knew. However even if the farmer tried his best, he was still a recluse and didnt dare step away from his farm, and so neither did Wilt, leading to them to be very unsocialised, things became worse when the Farmer eventually passed from his old age, leaving Wilt alone for many years until when in their early 20s, they finally decided the loneliness was too great for them to bear, and decided to leave it for the nearby town their father would distribute their crops to.

Wilt had a incredibly hard time adjusting to town life, they were not only incredibly clumsy and would get into a lot of accidents, but their social inability made many find them unsettling to be around. Even now surrounded by other people, Wilt was still lonely, and for a while mostly spent time exploring the streets in hopes for someone to interact with, even if briefly.

Eventually, they were found by a friendly couple that ran a flower shop and needed a helping hand. When they saw Wilt's ability to care for flowers that had even wilted greatly, they decided to take them in and help them settle in. Whilst Wilt now had a occupation and friends in the shop owners, they still felt lonely from how many customers would still find them offputting and how the shop owners had a lot of difficulty understanding them. Even now, they were still unhappy.

Eventually, some mysterious fliers would appear around town, talking about a retreat known as the Habitat where sad people go to fix their frowns. Intrigued and feeling that they could use something to fix their frown, Wilt decided to embark to the mysterious Habitat...

Wilt, personality wise, is a very empathetic and kindhearted scarecrow, always wanting to help others and nurse unhealthy plants back to health. Their empathy can be so strong that the thought of stepping on flowers makes them shriek in emotional pain.

Unfortunately Wilt has incredibly poor social skills due to only ever knowing their farmer father, who was also very socially inept. They barely talk and often can only make wheezing sounds or say short one syllabel words at a time due to anxiety. However, this anxiety is a tad eased when Wilt talks with their little crow puppet Root, which was made to initially tell jokes to make their father smile and laugh, and so ends up being more confident (and even sassy) with it.

Despite this overall anxiety, Wilt has at times a mischevious side, and has the habit of sometimes standing completely still like a regular scarecrow before jumping at someone to surprise them as a joke, though they don't always understand why someone wouldn't laugh back at them!

#my art #digital art #krita #smile for me #smile for me game #flower kid #smile for me oc #character design #character reference #character sheet #oc #wilt the flower kid #s4m oc #scarecrow #crow #farmer oc #spooky

[ourwrittenstories]

Closed starter for @wrathfulmercy

Miss Isadora Mary-Anne Meadows, daughter to the esteemed Sheriff Hugo A. Meadows himself, was a lot of things; pretty, kind, confident, an incredible baker, and a quality rancher to name a few. Desperate, however, was not one of them. Never desperate. Back in high-school the boys and girls would line up at her locker hoping for a chance to ask her out. After graduating they started showing up at their front door until her Daddy started threatening them all with one of his guns. It was cute at first, but now she wasn't getting calls or texts and, dammit, she hadn't had an orgasm that wasn't self inflicted in months! If she wasn't desperate, then what was she?

Of course her best friend, and cousin, Poppy decided she was sick of all the whining coming from the 20 year old blonde and hatched up a plan with two of their other friends to go to a bar to pick up men! Only one of them was legally allowed in a bar, but that didn't matter. They were going to a biker bar. It was a sleazy establishments that only roughhousers, bikers, and troublemakers went to. Men that wouldn't care or know who her Daddy was. Sure, it was dangerous, but she had been taught plenty of self defense and, honestly, it was just supposed to be a quick fuck to get it out of her systems. A one time thing. She just hadn't planned to get turned down.....Three times. By the same fucking man! At first she thought he was playing hard to get, maybe even scared because of their obvious age difference, but even after wearing her sexiest outfits and pulling out the best lines she could think of ( Her opening line that first night was "Do I call you Daddy before or after you take my clothes off?") and nothing. It had been 4 weeks now. 3 Fridays in a row of being told no and ignored, It was the 4th Friday since attempting, and she was definitely feeling desperate.

"Ughhh, Izzzz, please, just give up on the guy. He's not even that hot. like, yeah, I see the appeal, but he's probably gay or something." "Says the lady who goes for them tall,thin, sad alt fella's with too much bleach in their hair and skinny jeans. Yer not able to appreciate a fine manly specimen like I do just yet." "Alright bitch- Look, there's plenty of hot men in this bar that have been watching you and waiting for their turn!" "," Izzy sighed, casting her gaze over to the bar where the stranger she had been trying to get with sat with his back turned towards her and the girls. She was already two shots in and trying to decide if she could mentally handle a fourth attempt at getting in this mans pants. Casting her gaze around the bar, her eyes landed on another handsome man, though not as much up to her personal preferences, leering at her like she was a slab of meat. She was pretty sure if she asked him to, he'd take her out back and fuck her against the bar wall. It was reckless, but she was desperate.

"You're right," She sighed, stealing Poppy's obnoxiously pink drink to down half of it despite her cousins complaints as she stood up from her chair. Slamming it down, she winced from the sickeningly sweet strawberry flavor flooding her senses, and tousled her hair before sauntering over to the new, less attractive but still hot, man that had been looking at her for god knows how long.

#wrathfulmercy #Isadora x Rick;; #idk what this is is this trash? tell me if its trash and i'll re write it x-x

[toomanybandstocare]

{I've Got My Mind On You}

Program: Birthdays...no longer come with presents wrapped in a bow or bring your loved ones together for your celebration. Unable to break away from the sadness and loneliness that you've come to associate with a day meant to for fond memories, you drift away and separate yourself from the people who stand by you everyday. Each day, Jesse keeps his eye on you terrified of the person who's taken your place. This is year that everything changes for the better, but that can only happen if you let it.

Pairing: Arc Trooper Jesse x Intelligence officer, GN! Reader

Alt Pairing: Arc Trooper Jesse & Intelligence officer, GN! Reader

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Length: 4584w

Warnings: Overwhelming negative emotions around birthdays and feeling unwanted, Use of "them" as for sentence structure purposes, Barely edited

Camp Resolute Masterlist

ClonexReader Masterlist

Prompt: party For @clonexreaderbingo event hosted by the lovely Ghost.

Counselor Note: Purely self indulgent. I just needed to put my emotions, or as much as I could, onto paper with how my birthday came about this year. Could be read as romantic or as platonic soulmates.

No matter how many times the 501st has stepped foot into the GAR’s barracks on Coruscant, everyone feels uneasy as they begin to slowly unpacked their mud caked and blood stained gear. Even though the battle was a success, an imperative one at that, your shoulders ache from the tension that weighs down on them. It seeps into your fatigued body and finds its home in your tired bones. Everyday you woke up this month, a knot of dread twisted and sank deeper into your core at the distant memory of your approaching birthday.

As you place your datapad on your side table, your gaze locks onto the date displayed alongside the weather and music options on your holo-chronometer. Your heart lurches, and you feel as if you’re going to be sick. Just two more days until you ignore the previous year’s stinging memories. Just two more days until the dash of hope that holds your heart together snaps. Just two more days until you treat your birthday like it’s any other day of the year. Nothing special. Nothing worth celebrating, especially when you’re all alone.

Your lungs constrict, and you force yourself to finish placing the last pieces of clothing and tactical gear in their designated spots before laying down on your bunk. With a groan, you rest your head on your arms and close your eyes as the rest of the 501st begin to plan their nights out on leave.

“Fives, we always go 79s. We’re not saying we don’t want to go, we just want to visit some new spots as well,” Echo exasperatedly explains as he kicks his duffel under the bunk.

“This is the first time that the 212th, 104th, and 501st have been planetside in who knows how long,” Fives exclaims and throws his hands up, “And you want to choose now to go to a new bar? No way - we’re going to 79s as much as we can during this leave”.

“No one’s saying they can’t come, di’kut,” Kix throws one of his black tops at Fives with a grin.

“Who would have thought Fives would be the one to shoot down the possibility of meeting new partners,” Jesse chuckles as he sits on the edge of his bunk. As he leans over to unbuckle his boots, his gaze falls on your bunk. The gnawing concern that’s grown as the month’s progressed overtakes his mind as you seem completely detached from reality. Desperate to pull you away from whatever dark place your mind travels to as of recent, Jesse calls out your name.

Deep in your journey through memories locked away in the back of your mind, a sharp sting of adrenaline causes your eyes to fly open and your heart to race as you shoot up in panic. Your gaze snaps to the pillow sitting in your lap. Forcing yourself to take a deep breath, you shake off the residual nerves settling across your skin as you narrow your gaze to search for the guilty culprit. When you look across from you, it only takes Jesse’s mischievous smile to know who threw the pillow at you. “Not funny,” you breathe out and throw the pillow back at him. You try to let yourself relax, but you can’t find it in yourself to put the mask back on.

Jesse catches the pillow with ease, and his expression softens lightly when he truly sees how solemn you look. “Got any plans we could crash?” he asks with a slight hope in his casual tone. Jesse’s chest stings as watches you practically curl into yourself. What happened to lose the spark he’s come to adore and associate with you?

“Probably just disconnect and hide out at my apartment,” you mumble and shrug your shoulders.

“You can’t do nothing on your time off,” Fives gently protests. His expression hardens into one of worry as the discussion shifts to your plans. Everyone in the company has noticed your change in demeanor and energy, and every member has voiced their concern to Rex who wasn’t able to figure out the root of your change. Even the collected captain keeps a wary eye out for you more than usual lately.

“Come join us,” Kix adds on, “I know you’re probably sick of spending all your time with us, but we promise to be on our best behavior”. He chuckles lightly, but it soon dies as Kix sees your lip wobble.

“I’m not in the party mood,” you firmly state. Your voice wavers as tears sting your lash line. As the last of your walls start to crumble as tears threaten to fall, you jump off your bed and grab your backpack as you hurry for the door. Guilt mixes with sorrow to create a nauseating sensation in the pit of your stomach as you leave the barracks without another word.

As the door hisses shut, the members of the 501st are surrounded by an uncomfortable blanket of silence. One that gnaws at Jesse’s nerves and sends his heart racing. Unable to pull his surprised gaze from the barracks entrance, he chews on the inside of his cheek.

“That’s a completely different person than the one we’re friends with,” Heavy quietly murmurs.

“Regardless,” Jesse says slowly as he snaps his boot buckle, “still our friend. There’s only one person that I can think of that knows them better than us”. Grabbing his comlink, Jesse walks towards the barrack’s entrance while tuning into their assistant medic’s private channel. “Kiva? Where abouts are you?” Only static responds of a second, and Jesse’s lungs constrict as he passes through the door. 

The chances that the medic has already left the base are slim, but still high enough to make Jesse walk faster through the durasteel halls. His heart hammers as his footsteps echo against the metal plated floors. Check the civvie barracks first, then the medic station. Take the slightly longer route to the medbay and check the entry-exit log at the base’s entrance. Jesse’s mind races to figure out how to find the Nautolan medic that he barely hears the call chirp to his comlink. 

“Kriff, Jesse - can’t a guy take a nap in peace. Not even an hour planetside and one of you already needs med attention? Give us a break,” Kiva sighs through the audio channel.

“Kiva,” Jesse breathes out in relief, “Where are you? This isn’t about med attention. I’m worried about-”

“Leave it alone, Jesse,” Kiva swiftly interrupts.

Jesse falters at the medic’s harsh tone. Coming to a stand still, Jesse leans against one of the support pillars. “What do you mean leave it alone? Something’s not right,” he pushes back. Frustration begins to spark in his voice as Jesse scans the hallway to find somewhere more private to take this call. Kiva’s evasiveness causes an uneasy feeling to bite at Jesse’s skin. A moment of silence passes, and just as Jesse goes to check the call connection he hears Kiva sigh.

“It’s like this every year,” Kiva explains, “The month leading up to what’s supposed to be a birthday, it’s like they shut down. Right? I don't know what happened for it to get like this. Each year, they disappear to their apartment and won’t come out until a couple of days later”.

As the medic shares his limited knowledge, Jesse’s expression hardens into one mixed with confusion and worry. With a spark of determination, a plan begins to form in his mind, and a smile tugs at Jesse’s mouth. “Then I’ll need your help if we’re going to pull this off. When’s their birthday?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Jesse,” Kiva hesitates. “We don’t know why-”

“If you felt the same about a day that’s supposed to be about celebrating you and all you’ve achieved this year, wouldn’t you want someone to go the extra mile and celebrate with you? Know that someone loves you so much that they'll celebrate you even when you feel like it’s worthless?”

The comlink falls silent for a moment. All Jesse can hear is air ventilation willing above him and the dull rush of blood to his ears. His body tenses as the seconds come to a stand still, and he balances on the edge of anticipation and false hope.

“Then we’re going to need all the help we can get with only two days to plan and prep,” Kiva states with a determined laugh. “How can I help?”

“I need a key to the apartment, and you need to act as a distraction. Leave the rest to me and the boys,” Jesse rushes to explain. The stoney expression melts into one of relief as Jesse turns on his heel to rejoin the rest of the company.

Kiva’s static laughter echoes against the sterile halls, “I’ll send you the keycode in a little bit. Why do I get the hardest job?”

Jesse’s smile grows as he responds, “Because you’ll draw the least amount of suspicion”. 

The minute you step foot into your cozy, city apartment you feel the last of your walls crumble. As the entrance door hisses shut behind you, you hastily throw your bag to the side of the entryway. Tears flow down your cheek while you furiously rub them away while walking through the dark living room to turn into your bedroom. Your head spins as a mixture of overwhelming emotions causes a dull throb to sear at the back of your forehead. Just a few more days until you could move on from the choke hold that past disappointments have on you. Tugging off your well worn travel clothes, the fabric snags and refuses to slip off your body causing a wave of frustration to crash against your skull alongside your headache. With a defeated sob, you toss your clothing to the side and fall on top of your bed. Unable to hold back your cries as you tug the duvet over your body and tuck yourself away from reality.

The next two days are filled with excited chatter and lethargic depression. Each hour passes, ticking closer and closer to the anticipated birthday. Time blurs as party planning brings together some of the most well respected commanding officers during the day and bleeds into the night when lungs cry out for relief against the chain that wraps around them to lock away a broken heart. 

Late morning sunbeams break past your blinds, and you toss and turn in your blanket cocoon. Unwilling to pull yourself from semi-consciousness, you burrow further into the covers. Your under eyes feel sore and puffy as you press your face into a pillow. Stretching your aching muscles, you faintly hear the alarm disarm with the door opening. Even though that should send you into alertness, the thick blanket of numbness dulls your senses.

“Kriff,” Kiva quietly mutters.

“It’s not usually this bad,” you groan. You wince at the realization that your room is a complete mess, even by your standards. “I thought I told you I wanted to recharge alone. Finally enjoy some peace and quiet,” you mumble into your duvet.

The edge of your bed dips, and your body slides against Kiva’s. A gentle hand comes down to rest on what can only be assumed as your shoulder under the mounds of blankets and sheets. “One of the intelligence officers landed in the medbay,” Kiva sighs, “Captain Rex has requested for you to come in as soon as possible. We just intercepted a new set of Separatist codes”.

The weight of his words sinks into you with a churning unease and defeat. Even though your birthday comes with mixed emotions, you had hoped to at least avoid working on the dreaded day. “I need some time to wake up and get dressed,” you quietly reply, “Might as well put on a pot of caf for us while you wait”.

Minutes crawl by as Jesse keeps a careful eye on the apartment’s entrance. Excitement and nerves bounce around inside him as he waits for the two of you to exit. Every so often, his comlink chirps with someone eagerly asking for an update. 

“How much longer,” Fives complains over the channel frequency.

“Maybe if you grew up a little, you’ll realize it’s normal for people to take their time to get ready. Especially when called into an unexpected shift on shore leave,” Jesse hisses in response. His gaze flickers up from his comlink as the entrance signal chimes, and he steps into the side alley. Peering around the corner, Jesse watches as you and Kiva step into your speeder and a new wave of determination washes over him. 

When your speeder pulls away from the platform and disappears into the flow of traffic, Jesse wastes no time getting to the entrance and punching in the visitor code. “Alright, Fives. Bring everyone in,” Jesse signals his brother as he walks through the lobby. “We don’t have much time until Rex and Kiva bring our ad’ika back in a worse mood than when they left”. Jesse cuts off the call as his brothers shout in excitement, and he steps into the elevator that shoots him up to your apartment level. His gaze stays fixed on the level indicator, and nervous jitters make him tap his foot. There’s no reason for this to go wrong, but the gnawing fear of crossing an unspoken line makes Jesse’s stomach twist. He doesn’t want to become one of the reasons you hate your birthday in the future. The elevator ding jolts him out of his thoughts and causes his heart to pound against his chest. There’s no going back. Determined to show you just how many people care for you, Jesse steps into the hallway and rushes to your apartment.

“You really don’t need to walk me home,” you quietly break the thick silence surrounding you and Rex.

The night sky begins to tuck away the blazing sunset behind the city skyline. Your footsteps fall in time with Rex’s creating a metallic beat as you near your apartment building. After having spent the afternoon decoding messages with dated intel with Rex, you finally shut off your holo-top for the evening. The searing pain that’s throbbed between your eyes for the last few days now drums against your skull. The thought of breaking a cypher only to lead to more disappointment makes your head spiral, so you told Rex you were done as you packed your bag. Concerned with how late it had become, the captain had insisted on walking you home when you found out Kiva already left for the evening.

Evening traffic speeds past you as the two of you walk across the platform from where you parked your speeder to the building’s entrance. Your apartment building looms above you, and you punch in the resident code. The cool temperature eases the burning sensations that stings at your skin as the two of you enter. Even through your emotional fatigue, something hasn’t sat right with you since Kiva first visited this morning.

“It’s not even that late out,” you point out. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Rex stiffen as he shifts his weight from one foot to another. Wariness overcomes you and sharpens your senses from the lethargic haze that you’ve grown used to.

Rex ducks his head and sighs. “You haven’t been yourself lately,” he slowly explains. Without giving you the chance to interrupt, Rex punches the elevator call button.

The sudden noise makes you wince, and your heart speeds up. Why would he care so much? “It’s not healthy to put on a facade. I’ll at least do myself the favor of not bottling up my emotions and pretending like I’m okay when I’m not”. Your voice wavers as he motions for you to enter first. When you move into the small elevator, Rex quickly joins you. Your eyebrows raise, and you press your floor button. The wariness shoots pin pricks at the back of your neck.

“Seems like you’re hiding from the people who actually care about you and want to help you feel like yourself again,” Rex’s words come out harsher than either of you expect. His eyes widen, and his gaze snaps to meet your own. “I’m sorry,” he stammers, “That came out sharper than I meant”. Rex sighs and runs a hand over his face.

Your heartbeat pounds against your chest, and you feel sick from the flush that’s overcome your body. Grateful for the floor chime, you exhale a breath of relief and  step out of the elevator. “It’s fine,” you cooly dismiss his apology. When the sound of his footsteps follow you out into the hall, your face pinches. “Rex, I promise I’m not upset with you,” you practically snap. The firmness in your voice mixes with the frustration that overheats you and the desperation to be finished with this awful day. Heart thundering as you stand in front of your apartment door, you lock your heated gaze onto Rex. Yet, confusion only spurs your temperament further when you catch the faint, sad smile on the captain’s face.

“Maybe not yet, at least. Happy birthday, ad’ika,” Rex softly responds.

Your hand shakes hovering above the keypad. A coldness freezes over your body, and the overwhelming sharp dullness of flush sizzling across your skin makes you dizzy. Unable to meet Rex’s concerned expression, you turn away and hastily punch in your code. As soon as the door hisses open, you dart into your apartment desperate to hide away and allow yourself the comfort to let your emotions out in privacy. Rubbing at your eyes furiously and blinking away threatening tears, you walk through the entryway and throw your bag to the ground. Fleeting memories and a headache pound against your skull, and you feel as if the room’s spinning. With one hand, you press the light panel and a soft mix of colored lights float across the walls.

“Happy birthday!” a chorus of voices call out.

You jump back, tripping on your footing. A careful hand steadies you from behind, and you lean into Rex’s hold as your shocked gaze bounces from troopers to friends to family clustered in your small living room. When you try to speak, only a small noise breaks past your disbelief.

“Alright, alright,” Jesse motions for everyone to relax, “You’ll have a chance to chat with our guest of honor later. Let’s let them get used to this”. When he drops his palms to his sides, his palms feel sweaty. Every breath he takes feels shallow, and his lungs begs for air. Unfortunately for him, the little oxygen circulating through him escapes when Jesse turns to see your glassy eye expression. The way you shy away into Rex’s side as your eyes scan the room makes his heart stutter. Walking over to you, Jesse flexes his fists before hooking his thumbs into his pants’ pockets. “I’m sure this is a lot, but we just wanted to make sure you celebrated yourself,” Jesse softly explains.

Your wide eyes meet Jesse’s compassionate gaze, and you feel as if a weight has been lifted from your shoulders. “Did you plan this? This is too much. You should all be out enjoying your time off,” you rush. Even you hear how watery and strained your voice sounds. Rex’s traces soothing circles into your side, and the tension slowly releases from your body.

One of Jesses’ hands comes up to rub the back of his neck, and he breaks away from your gaze. “Everyone put this together. Rex, Wolffe, and Cody were massive a help in making sure all your friends and family got here. And then your 501st boys got the supplies ready. Really it was Kiva who pulled it off by getting you out of the apartment today,” Jesse rambles on and trips over his words, “Which, I am so sorry you had to do fake work. No one should work on their birthday, especially you. You already do so much for us, but we didn’t know how else to get you to leave so we could set up -”

Your lip wobbles as you listen to Jesse’s stumbling explanation. Without hesitation, you step forward and wrap your arms around his waist. Leaning your head on his chest, you feel his heartbeat quicken under your blushing cheek. 

A hand gently rubs your shoulder, “And to answer your question, Jesse did plan this. Got all of us organized and made sure all your party felt comfortable and relaxed so you wouldn’t feel too overwhelmed”. He squeezes your shoulder, and you hear Rex call out to his batchmates with a chuckle. 

Fully expecting for your cozy apartment to have been turned into a temporary 79s location, you relax as you look around the room to see your closest people lounging and laughing together. Lofi plays softly just above the chatter and occasional laugh. A small collection of gifts sit next to your favorite birthday treat on the center table. Fairy lights twinkle from above, and you’ve never felt more at home than you have at this moment. Normally just a place to find solace and solitude when you’re on shore leave, your apartment finally feels alive as your friends listen to your squad’s stories and your family checks each trooper to make sure they’re well taken care of.

“This is -” your words break off as a sudden sob overcomes you. Your throat tightens, and tears sting at your lash line. The burden of so many difficult memories bubbles up, and you finally allow yourself to let go of them. Tears stream down your cheeks, and your lips feel chapped as they kiss the corner of your mouth. Each droplet leaves a bittersweet taste to your tongue as they melt away. Your heart hammers against your chest, and it feels as if it’s going to break from just how much love has been returned. Lifting your blurry gaze, you faintly make out Jesse’s soft adoring expression as you share a grateful smile with his small one. “Thank you.” you say as firmly as you with a shaky breath.

“I don’t know if I overstepped, so I’m incredibly sorry if I did,” Jesse quietly begins, “I just couldn’t sit and watch you disappear from us. Once I knew what was making you so … broken, I couldn’t let you spend another birthday alone.” Jesse tightens his arms around you, and his hands tremble as he presses you closer to him. His stomach knots from your grateful expression, and it twists as he watches another tear fall across your cheek. With one hand, Jesse carefully wipes it away letting his fingertip gently graze your cheekbone before cupping your jaw. His chest constricts as you lean into his palm. “Even if it meant you didn’t want me in your  life anymore for intruding, I didn’t want you to think that no one didn’t want to celebrate you and your accomplishments. All of your boys have been concerned, and we just wanted to bring back our ad’ika,” Jesse mumbles. 

Fear isn’t an emotion that Jesse’s allowed himself to dwell on many times. Nerves prick his skin at the thought that this could be the last time you ever wanted to see him. That he had only hurt you more than he helped you. Wherever your mind takes you on those dark journeys inward, that you’ll remember tonight alongside the other heartbreaks. That terrifiesJesse most. But this isn’t about him. He would have to learn to go about his day without looking for you in the room, and maybe one day he could forget about how natural it is for his mind to wander to thoughts about you. So when the moment your hands come up to cup his face with a touch so soft, it nearly makes him sigh, Jesse feels all the growing anxiety and gnawing fear dissipate from him.

You shake your head with a watery laugh, “I don’t think I could push you away even if I tried hard enough.”

“I would just keep reaching out to you until I caught you,” Jesse softly agrees, “I’m not letting you slip through my fingers, ad’ika.” Even as Jesse relaxes and pulls the two to lean against the wall as a way to try to keep your conversation away from the others, a concern tugs at the back of his mind. Unable to shake it off, Jesse’s soft expression hardens slightly with worry. “Just tell me if I’m overstepping or if you don’t want to talk about it. What happened that made your birthday something to avoid rather than look forward to?”

Heart plummeting, you feel relieved that he finally asked. You can’t tell if it's a relief that neither of you are walking around it anymore or that you can finally tell someone how you feel about the day. Your hands slip from his face, and you rest them on his chest. The steady rise and fall of his breathing helps ground you as your mind races. “It just … turned into another day,” you admit. “It felt like I was being pushed to the side as other birthdays were planned well in advance while I had to practically beg for one friend to do something with me. It got to a point where it didn’t feel like anyone cared about me. And I had to carry that sadness and grief as I celebrated everyone else’s accomplishments”. Your voice breaks into a sob, and Jesse pulls you as close as the two of you can. Tucking your head into him, you try to take deep breaths to calm yourself but all the emotions of the past month finally catch up and crash down onto you.

Jesse ducks his head so his mouth is close to your ear, and his comforting voice drops so only you can hear him. “I am so incredibly proud of you, ad’ika. This year alone, you’ve been challenged in ways that not many people could overcome with the determination and grace that you have. Everyone in this room sees that, and they absolutely adore you. When they heard it was your birthday, everyone jumped at the chance to celebrate you and show you their love, alright? As long as you let us, we will support you however you need. Just give us the word, and we’ll be there for you. I’ll be there for you”.

Pulling away, Jesse brings both his hands up to wipe away the new wave of tears slipping down your face. His caring expression causes butterflies to tickle your stomach. “‘Thank you,” you choke out.

Jesse shakes his head with a smile, “Anything for you, ad’ika. I am afraid however, I may have kept you to myself a little longer than the rest of the party would have liked”. His eyes twinkle with a mischievous glint. 

Pulling away, Jesse offers his arm with a cheeky wink that causes you to laugh easier than you have in a long while. As the two of you join your friends and family, each person makes it a point to wish you a happier year to come. Surrounded by so many people who went out of their way to celebrate your birthday, you find a small flicker of hope that next year will hold more laughter and love. Especially when you catch Jesse’s eye, and his expression melts into one of admiration only meant for you.

#arc trooper jesse #arc trooper jesse x reader #arc trooper jesse x female reader #arc trooper jesse x male reader #arc trooper jesse x gn! reader #arc trooper jesse x you #arc trooper jesse x yn #arc trooper jesse hurt comfort #clone wars fanfic #arc trooper jesse one shot #arc trooper jesse imagine #arc trooper jesse fic #jesse x reader #clone wars #the clone wars fics #the clone wars fic #clone wars fic #the clone wars fanfiction #clone wars fanfiction #the clone wars fanfic #CFB2023 #counselor mythos post #camp halfwit bulletin post #reader insert

[tenebraevesper]

King Shadow (The Alternate Story)

A while ago, I did an analysis on King Shadow from the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie) comics, King Shadow (The Altered Future & The Altered Character), which is my least favorite take on Shadow the Hedgehog in official media so far. By the end of it, I had said that I might write down my take on King Shadow if you guys want me to, and I got a positive response. So, here is my concept.

Please note that this are my thoughts and if you have your own ideas regarding how you’d write King Shadow, I’d love to hear them.

First, I want to start off with the setting. King Shadow appears in the alternate future called Light Mobius in Ian Flynn’s continuation of Ken Penders supposed “magnum opus”, called Mobius: 25 Years Later... which is probably the worst Sonic story I have ever read. Ian’s attempts at fixing the story and turning it into something good fall flat mainly because the base of the story is really weak and while it has some interesting concepts, it really falls apart in the grand scheme of things.

The gist of Penders!25YL is that absolutely nothing happens until King Sonic is sent back at time to prevent a disaster and the story ends there. Ian!25YL picks the story up where it ended, explaining how King Sonic fixed the future, but it has been altered in such way that Shadow went on conquering the world for basically no reason and crowned himself king.

From what I understood, the reason why Shadow was written as an evil king was because at the time, he was still seen as an antagonist.

Now, thinking about the setting... I feel like we don’t even need it. Honestly, when I started writing this concept, I took a look at 25YL/30YL and decided to just Ctrl+Alt+Delete the whole thing and start with a blank slate. As a matter of fact, this doesn’t even have to take place in Sonic (Archie). It only has to take place in the Sonic Universe.

Next, the biggest issue I had was with was Shadow’s motivation for conquering the world - that being that he apparently had none. Admittedly, this seemed to have been somewhat expanded in Mobius: 30 Years Later...

If I understood correctly, the world had been at a war and Shadow conquered it to bring peace, but he turned into a tyrant in the process, using brute force to keep everyone in line. I think that this isn’t a bad motive, but it still needs to be worked on.

So, with the two main issues I had with this story (there are many more, but let’s focus on just these two for now), here’s my idea how the story might go. Once again, this is just a concept idea and if you don’t like how I wrote King Shadow, you’re free to tell me how you would write him. 

Trigger Warning - It is quite brutal.

Shadow’s descent into becoming a tyrannical King would have its origins in a tragedy (yeah, I like to make the characters I love suffer), with the story starting off with Sonic and his friends being involved in another battle against Eggman. This takes place at a point where Shadow has opened up more to his friends, like Rouge, Omega, Sonic, etc. He has moved on from his past, accepting his new life and managed to forge several close bonds.

This confrontation everyone participates in is on a grand scale, think something akin to the battle during the Metal Virus Saga from Sonic IDW, and is incredibly brutal, with the consequences of it that most of the characters have been either killed or died due to their wounds. Sonic has somehow vanished during the battle, leaving Shadow as one of the few survivors. Having witnessed the demise of his closest friends, Shadow would be deeply affected by this traumatic experience, the memories of his past overwhelming him.

He had lost Maria, and just when he had come to terms with moving on and living life with his new friends, he now lost everyone he cared about. This would lead to him shutting down, or at least becoming closed off once again as he tries to handle the grief and survivor's guilt, with the only hope being that there wouldn't be any conflict because Eggman is also gone. The world is at peace now, isn’t it?

Except, that's not the case. New villains would rise and Shadow would see it as his own responsibility to go to the front lines to fight these new villains, over and over again. He is The Ultimate Lifeform, the strongest being in the universe, and he feels that he needs to soldier on and protect the world as he had not only promised to Maria, but to himself. He also refuses to get close to anyone else, because he doesn’t want to deal with another loss.

Eventually, he is called to deal with another conflict, this one being rather petty. It doesn’t matter what it is, but the point is that this is what finally breaks Shadow. He realizes that no matter how hard he works to protect the world, there would always be new conflicts, even for the most ridiculous reasons and people would continue being ungrateful for the peace he’s trying to create.

So, he decides to take matters in his own hands.

After all, Shadow is the Ultimate Lifeform. He is nearly invulnerable, he is ageless, he is incredibly skilled with Chaos Energy and can use the Chaos Emeralds to turn into Super Shadow. No one can harm him and, more importantly, no one can stop him. 

In order to preserve peace, he takes it upon himself to conquer everything, crowning himself as King Shadow, and makes sure that all wars/conflicts cease. If someone attempts to cause trouble, he'll deal with them swiftly and, if they resist, brutally. Peace is finally brought back to the world.

However, one issue remains. Even though Shadow has achieved his goal of peace, he enforces it with an iron fist. People are living in fear of him and have to walk on eggshells as they believe that even the smallest argument or protest might get them thrown into prison or worse. They see him as a tyrant king, and Shadow knows that.

He knows that people fear him, but because of his immense power, no one would dare to challenge him. He doesn't pay mind to them though, as being ageless, he'll outlive them. His reign is absolute and no one can do anything about it. He is angry though, noting how ungrateful everyone is - they finally are at peace, yet they complain about it. He would, however, acknowledge that they're partially right - he knows that he's a tyrant for enforcing peace with an iron fist, but he doesn't care. It was a necessity.

Shadow is also dealing with loneliness, heavy trauma, survivor's guilt and understands that he twisted his promise to protect the world beyond recognition. He notes that he isn't doing this for Maria, but for himself. He knows that his old friends would be horrified by what he had done, by what he had become, but he saw no other way out of this situation. He knows that he is the villain here, and he has embraced that role fully during the time that had passed.

Then, some time during King Shadow's rule and him dealing with a resistance of some sort, Sonic suddenly appears seemingly out of nowhere.

Now, I haven’t really thought about what would happen to Sonic, but the general idea is that he may have experienced some kind of time travel, which flung him from the past into the King Shadow!Future. He may have even had some help from Silver.

Regardless of what happened to Sonic, he has talked to the leader of this resistance movement and learns not only about the deaths of his friends, but also about Shadow's tyrannical rule and decides to confront him. The resistance members, not really knowing what kind of person Sonic truly is, figure that Sonic is going to remove Shadow by force, possibly even kill him, and support him.

Shadow also hears about Sonic's return, and while he's shocked at first that Sonic has somehow miraculously survived the battle, he decides to prepare for their eventual encounter. Interestingly, he actually welcomes Sonic with open arms, despite being aware that Sonic wants to fight him, and when Sonic attempts to talk things out, he punches his rival.

This escalates into a battle between the two, where Shadow reveals what he had gone through and admits that he knows that he has become a tyrant and that people hate him, but he feels that he was too far gone to change. He had been hoping for that eventually someone would come and put him out of his misery - and Sonic is the only one who can do that. 

So, the two fight, going all out on each other, with the battle ending in Sonic’s victory. However, instead of destroying Shadow, who is laying on the ground, defeated, Sonic offers him his hand, much to everyone’s shock. Sonic explains that he’d rather stay with Shadow and help him deal with his trauma, and the only reason he fought the latter was because he knew they both needed to blow off some steam without putting anyone else in danger.

Sonic explains to Shadow that they both dealt with a heavy loss and he is still grieving the death of his friends, but he isn't going to lose another friend, that being Shadow himself. Sonic wants to help Shadow heal, pointing out that he and Shadow had the same goal in achieving peace, except Shadow went overboard in his grief, and he doesn't consider Shadow a lost case. 

While still in shock, Shadow accepts the proposal, grabbing Sonic’s hand and getting up, but is basically arrested by the resistance. They still want him to be punished for what he had done, and Shadow agrees to it, even if Sonic protests, because he feels Shadow has suffered already enough.

As it turns out, Shadow gets banished from his own kingdom, as they have no means of imprisoning him, and when the court debates on whether they can even do that, since they would have to trust that Shadow wouldn’t return on his own to take back his kingdom, Sonic replies that he’ll keep an eye on his the ebony hedgehog.

Once left alone, both Sonic and Shadow are aware it will take a while to heal from what had happened to both of them, but Sonic is just glad to at least have one friend by his side, suggesting they travel together from one place to another and help those in need or go on adventures. Sonic notes how regardless of everything, he will continue to protect people, with Shadow agreeing - ending the whole thing on a bittersweet, but hopeful note.

Whatever happens afterwards, they will face it together.

EDIT:  

#Isekai'd As My Past Self (Sonic the Hedgehog AU Story) - a spiritual successor to this story idea.

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer (Masterlist)  

#Sonic the Hedgehog Analyzer #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonic archie #sonic idw #mobius 25 years later #mobius 30 years later #sonadow

[thatastrobae]

Ｗａｉｔｉｎｇ ｔｏ Ｅｘｈａｌｅ (Beta) 🌻🪻

I wrote this fic back in September, but I refuse to post on a03 until I have ch 2 written. This might be my next multi-chapter flowerbyte fic after 'Into You' is completed

“I’ve just got so much on my mind y’know…” the sixteen year old mumbled as he carefully steered the car. From the passenger seat, Captain Jeff Morales let out an understanding hum. He peeped that Miles was a bit tense that morning so he extended a listening ear. He always wanted a chance to bond with his son more and the second Miles turned sixteen back in August, he took him to the DMV to get his permit. Driving lessons commenced as soon as the kid got the piece of plastic. They drove around every Saturday and Sunday at 7 a.m. when the streets of Brooklyn 1610B were quiet and empty and neither Jeff or Miles had to put on their uniform/mask to protect the city.  At this specific time, they could simply be Miles and Jeff: father and son. Not Spiderman and Captain Morales. Neither Jeff or Rio were shocked to discover Miles’ secret identity, in fact, it was a missing piece to the intricate puzzle that was their son. They had many discussions regarding their meta human child and ultimately decided two things: Number one being that they’ll continue to love and support him through his dangerous job and number two was that they’ll do everything in their power to keep him grounded (not that kind of grounded). Rio, being the fiercely protective mother she was, would be damned if Miles’ responsibilities as Spiderman stripped him of every ounce of normalcy in his life, so Jeff thought of this because what’s more conventional than a father teaching his son an important life skill such as driving? 

“I hear that, yeah. So tell me what’s going on?” Jeff urged calmly.

“It’s just like…homework, girls…well one girl.” He looked to Miles and smirked. 

‘A girl huh?’  Jeff thought, but then he felt a sense of dêja vu wash over him when he saw a blush coloring the top of Miles’ ears. He remembered having this same conversation over a year ago; back when Miles was falling behind in school and he couldn’t figure out why, back when the then fifteen year old was battling some inner demons and hiding a whole other part of his life from them. It was crazy how so much could change in a year. 

“Another girl, son? I remember the one from last year.” The police chief joked. Miles’ jaw tightened and his Adam’s apple bobbed at the mention. Upon seeing this, Jeff masked his laughter with coughs. It may come off as insensitive, but he knew straight off the back things weren’t gonna last with the previous girl. Jeff knew all too well that at Miles’ age, romantic feelings for someone are strong but fleeting. Him being Spiderman didn’t except from this rule. Obviously ‘Gwanda’ was still a touchy subject. He wasn’t sure if Miles still kept in touch with the girl- last time he saw her was that catastrophic day after he got sworn in as captain. While Jeff wasn’t a fan of the emo? Alt? whatever; Miles seemed to care a lot about her and he felt bad that his son’s first love broke his heart- even though Miles has yet to tell him how. But that was in the past and the only way to help the boy heal was by bringing him to the present and instilling hope for a better future so Jeff opened the conversation again.

“Anyway, this new girl…what’s her name?” 

Miles hesitated at first, the way someone with conflicting thoughts would hesitate. Truth be told, Miles was feeling conflicted, it was just recently that he decided to acknowledge his not-so platonic feelings for the fellow spider person. 

“Margo.” he said, his ears still a deep shade of red.

It’s almost as if she was a genie because every time he says her name out loud, she makes an appearance. As soon as Miles got home from his driving lesson, he began to pack his bag for the week ahead. He shook the habit of waiting til last minute a while ago. It was only a thirty minute task and he was able to spend the rest of his Sunday’s not worrying about. As he gathered his clean laundry and art supplies, the topic of discussion from his earlier talk with Jeff began to materialize from a collection of pixels. The way her avatar was dressed- in a Minecraft midriff t-shirt and cargo pants-indicated that her physical self was dressed in the same attire. The intricate bubble braids on the other hand was most likely CC, still she looked cute as always. Miles smirked at his blue and purple friend.

“Y’know, one of these days you might end up catching me butt ass naked.” he joked.

“With the amount of times I pop up unannounced, I’m surprised that day hasn’t come already. It’s all good though, I’m very patient .” she gave Miles a smirk of her own as she sat knees-crossed on his chair. Upon seeing the pile of clean clothes on his bed, Margo rolled herself closer.

“Mind if I help?” 

Miles gave her a grateful smile and nodded. He hated folding clothes with a passion. Not only was it tedious, but he was never good at it, unlike Margo who folded his white Oxford shirts with precision and ease. 

“So…did you get it?” Margo asked cryptically. He knew what she meant by ‘it’ but the way she whispered her sentence made it sound like he was to obtain a bag of drugs or something so he decided to mess with her. 

“Hmmm..get what?” was his clueless response as he sloppily folded a pair of slacks. When placing them down, he lifted his gaze towards Margo and almost busted out laughing at her narrowed eyes and pursed blue lips. She snatched up the khakis and refolded them.

“The Gotham Nights Deluxe Edition game. Y’know the one I cashapp'd you forty-five dollars for? Ring a bell?”

“Oh you mean this?” He asked reaching into his nightstand and pulling out the mint condition, unwrapped video game case. The gapped tooth grin that always warmed Miles from the inside-out split across her face. 

“Also, I keep tryna send that forty-five back. You really didn’t need to go half with me, I was gonna buy it anyway.”

Even if he wasn’t gonna purchase the game anyway, he probably still would have gotten it for her to enjoy. One of her many favorite things to do in his dimension was play video games with him and Ganke on their shared PS5. Miles thought it adorable and began to chuckle, earning a playfully suspicious glance from her.

“What’s funny?” 

“It’s just that…you come from this super advanced dimension where you have access to a whole entire virtual world…”

“Mhmm..” she urged him to continue, picking up a polo and folding that as well.

“…but you’re geeked about a mundane video game. And not only that, do you not realize that you’re playing a video game through the lens of another video game?”

“That last part is where you’re wrong, Miles.” she said breezily. He raised his an eyebrow, interested in what she would say to correct his perception. 

“Yeah?”

“The VR in my dimension is a whole nother type beat. By putting on our headset, it’s more like we’re…extending our realities. People earn their living, build their craft, fall in love, etc. via virtual reality.”  Even when she was correcting him and being informative, Margo was mellow and soft-spoken. He found himself never missing a word she uttered because as soon as she began speaking, his attention was like a moth to her flame. No one else (especially by voice alone), could put him in a trance like this. 

“Take me being Spider Woman for example. I wish that I had the option to just turn off my system and turn it back on again if I ever screw up, but I can’t. I mean don’t get me wrong, I can’t really die while in avatar form which is pretty sweet. Still though, the safety of my cyberspace depends on Spiderbyte. You feel me?” 

“No…yeah…I feel you. What I said before sounds really dumb now that I think about.” he awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, a habit of his that Margo clocked when they first started hanging out. Normally she’d tell him to stop being so self deprecating, but she couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her.

“Not at all. Even I have trouble wrapping my head around our way of life. It’s definitely not a grounding experience and sometimes I’m scared that…” Margo trailed off. She’d never shared this deep, irrational fear with with anyone, but Miles was intrigued so he used his foot to nudge her into finishing the thought.

“I’m scared that one day we won’t even have the option to go outside and experience real life. Movie theaters and arcades aren’t a thing anymore, game stores will probably be next to go. Our basic needs can be met without even leaving the house and everyone seems ok with that…?” she looked down at her blue, holographic hands.

“I guess I feel like a weirdo for finding an issue with our remote way of living.”

“Nah, I bet there are tons of people in your dimension who feel the same way. Still though, I know how depressing it is to feel so disconnected from everyone so if you ever wanna talk more about it without being judged, I’m always here to listen.” 

The grin returned to Margo’s face and Miles’ gave himself a pat on the back for being the one to put it there. Margo’s voice was timid, but tender as she uttered her next sentence 

“Being able to come and see you is probably the best thing to come from this technology takeover.”  

Her words caused his brain to short circuit. This isn’t anything new though. Margo would often say little things that had him blushing and kicking his feet- internally of course.  They’d gotten close over the past nine months and it all started one random Tuesday evening as Miles attempted to complete an essay. 

There was a sharp rap on his dormitory door, briefly drawing his attention from his laptop. 

“It’s open!” Miles hollered out, not wanting to break focus on the paper due tomorrow afternoon. A few seconds of silence passed and he assumed whoever it was didn’t need anything for real. Then there was another hesitant knock. Miles let out a sigh of frustration before getting up and aggressively opening the door. The breath was immediately knocked out of him for two reasons. Reason number one being that Spiderbyte (who resided in whole other dimension) was one of the last people he expected to pop up out of the blue and speaking of ‘blue’, she wasn’t. She wasn’t glowing or pixilated either, in fact she blended in as a Visions student in this dimension so seamlessly. Dressed in a navy blue sweatshirt with the school’s name across the chest, leggings, and some sneakers — she looked like a classmate visiting another classmate to ask for some Ramen. So instead of pulling her into the privacy of his room as he probably would if she was in her spider suit, he just stared- astounded. 

“Hey.” Margo said casually- too casually if you asked him. She peered behind him into his shared dorm room. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Miles quickly gathered himself and moved to the side, allowing her to enter before closing his door. 

“N-nah…it’s just…you’re actually here right now. In the flesh.”

With his essay almost forgotten, Miles couldn’t take his eyes off of her deep chestnut complexion and neatly plaited hair.  Perplexity flashed across her face before realization took over. 

“Oh no no. I made sure to turn my graphics card up before projecting myself here. I’m still very much…

Margo glitched and a pixelated bubble appeared in thin air in front of him, revealing the teen girl with her VR headset firmly placed on her head, dressed in the same attire as her avatar.

“At home, chilling in my gaming chair and eating Fritos.”

He saw her actual person pop a crunchy corn chip in her mouth before the projection disappeared, allowing her avatar to stand before him once again. A slight smile appeared on Miles’ face, for the similarities between their first meeting and now wasn’t missed upon him. Only difference was that her parent’s weren’t screaming at each other in the background. 

“Oh. It’s just that you look so…” stunning was what the word that instantly came to Miles’ head, but he refused to go down that road. Instead he finished his sentence with “…natural.” An odd save, but a save nonetheless. 

“You’re dimension has Visons Academy too? And you go there?” He asked oh so intelligently. Miles didn’t know why he went with that when there were way more important questions to ask such as why she was here? How was she?  Did they blow anther hole in the multiverse?

“Yes, but it’s nothing like this.” Margo responded, gesturing to his entire room “Once upon time, there were dorms and in-person classes. Now everything is-

“Online.” He finished for her. While Miles would love to attend school virtually, he refrained from voicing his sentiment. Something about the way Margo looked longingly at his and Ganke’s decorations made him feel like she would trade places with him in a heart beat. After a minute, Margo collected herself and focused solely and the boy she came to visit.

“Yeah. But it seems like your style and your roommate’s style don’t clash which is good.”

Now that they got the ‘how’ out of the way, Miles was trying to gather some words together to politely ask ‘why’ she was here- in his dimension- in his dorm. As if she read his mind, Margo chuckled and casted him a look of understanding. 

“I was a little bit hesitant to come, but I really wanted to see how you were.” 

“Are you sure that’s all?” He didn’t mean to sound so wary, but the last time a girl from an alternate universe ‘stopped by to say hey’ she was also on a top secret mission to capture a mephistophelian villain who got more powerful as time progressed. If something similar was happening here, he didn’t wanna waste any precious time. Miles eyed his spider suit hanging from his top drawer, preparing to gear up if need be.

“Aye chill, we not gettin’ active tonight.” she assured placing her hand on his shoulder to refocus his attention on her “It’s just that…it’s been three months since any of us last heard from you. Hobie said to give you your space...so we did. I guess I just came to relay the message that we’re thinking about you and whenever you’re ready, you can put your watch to good use.” 

“All of you still keep in touch.” it wasn’t a question.

“Well it’s not like we host group meetings every week, but I tend check in on Hobie, Pav, or Peni often. Maybe they pop in on each other as well, but that’s about it.”  She also spoke to Gwen before the blonde got super busy a month ago, but she refrained from saying so. 

“That’s very kind of you to do.”

“Look man, you already know how lonely life get's for people like us- especially in an isolating society like mine. And now that we aren’t apart of the task-force any more, we need each other. As allies, supports, friends. My reasons for keeping them close aren’t unselfish.” 

“I still respect you for it and for coming here.” Miles’ leather colored eyes were locked onto her ebony ones, both were unmindful to the fact that they’d inched a bit closer together. The young Spiderman meant what he said, he hadn’t known Margo Kess for long, but taking that kind of initiative aligned with the basis of her character. He didn’t need to know her for long to see that she a was a remarkable individual; who else would defy their psycho boss and extend their loyalty to someone they met for fifteen seconds? It wasn’t Miles’ intentions to neglect his friends/allies though. He and his family needed those three months to recuperate so he locked the watch Hobie had gifted him in a drawer and somewhere over those twelve weeks his friends: Peter, Pav, Hobie, Peni, Ham, even Gwen were stored in the back of his mind. Margo was interesting though, she was the most surreal out of the bunch so she snuck her way into his dreams once in a while. There were times where he would be tempted to draw her and as much as he tried to refrain, he failed. He had a few sketches of the virtual girl, but he told himself repeatedly that as an aspiring artist he had every right to want to draw such an aesthetically pleasing avatar with a bomb ass color scheme. Miles raised his eyebrow curiously when Margo began laughing.

“I was a bit scared coming here, i'm not gonna lie. I felt like I was pushing a boundary by showing up here uninvited... so thank you for that sentiment.”

A thought popped into his head and while he could have internalized it, he wanted to share it with her so she knew how much her being here meant to him . 

“Around this time a year ago, I prayed for one of my cross-dimensional spider friends to show up. Hell, I would’ve even been ecstatic to see Ham.” 

That last part caused them both to chuckle. He thought briefly about how different it would’ve been if Spiderbyte was also displaced to his dimension all those months ago. Would she have come to see him? Probably so, considering that she didn’t need Miguel’s tech to travel dimensions nor did she ever take his theory of canon events with a grain of salt.

“So it actually means a lot..you coming here, helping me out the way you did after the Spider Society…” Miles trailed off and peered out his window, the blatant rejection he experienced at the hands of all those other spider people still stung even after the apology and olive branch was extended. 

“I’d do it again in a heart beat.” The conviction in her tone forced him to look back at her “..for you at least.” 

Her sheer devotion to him had Miles melting like butter on a tender steak straight off the grill. ‘Why am I like this?’ He thought to himself. 

Margo- aware of the serious atmosphere she created- attempted to shift the mood by gesturing to the open document on his laptop. 

“I see I was interrupting something.” She joked “When is this due?” 

Miles blew a raspberry, surprised at himself for allowing the paper to completely slip his mind, even if it was just for a few minutes. 

“Tomorrow afternoon. It’s for AP Psych and I’m short nine pages.”  

Margo sharply inhaled at how stretched thin on time her friend was. Despite being a genius, the girl was no stranger to finishing assignments on a time crunch. Being Spider-woman ensured that would be her new normal. She glanced at the title that was written in bolded sans serif font letters.

“Anxiety and Sleep Paralysis: How Individuals with Anxiety Are Likely to Experience Sleep Disorders” Margo read out loud.  “That’s an interesting topic. I’m sure we can knock this out by midnight.” 

“We?” Miles regarded her with a perplexed look to which she tapped her index finger on her chin as she pretended to think. 

“If only I had the ability to locate and synthesize relevant sources via the internet in less than a minute.” she stated sarcastically before fixing him with a sly grin. 

She did in fact stay with him until 11 p.m., feeding him information that he could stuff his essay with to come up with the required ten pages. He expressed that he wanted to see her again and sure enough, she kept coming back. Now nine months later she still managed to have him wrapped around her virtual finger whenever she said something sweet or flirty and looked at him through those long, feminine eyelashes like she was doing right now. When she says these things, he knows she means them and it’s a clear indication of her not-so platonic feelings for him. It made Miles feel like they could actually fall in love with each other.

And that was a problem. 

Miles wasn’t the same man he was last year or the year before that. His hopeless romantic fourteen year old self would’ve been so receptive to this beautiful girl’s subtle displays of affection, but after everything he went through, he didn’t know if he had it in him to love anyone the same way he loved Gwen Stacy. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to. He knew that hurting him wasn’t Gwen’s intentions and that she was going through a lot personally, but it didn’t soften the sting. His best friend banded together a whole force to save him and apologized within an inch of her life so of course Miles forgave her. He low-key blamed himself as well because in hindsight, he idealized her for a whole year- basically falling in love with a memory of this awesome GhostSpider who understood him. Drawing her every day and getting lost in fantasies was the perfect way to set himself up heartbreak. Miles hadn’t seen her in a year—not because he held any ill will, but because despite all his good memories of her, he couldn’t stop reliving the embarrassing moment that was their last interaction.  It was only thanks to Hobie and Margo— who actually visited her on the regular — did he know that Gwen was safe back at home with her father, taking a hiatus from being Spiderwoman.  Back to the beguiling, blue baddie that was currently flipping through one of his sketchbooks from the eighth grade that he’d granted her access to. Miles was a naïve little boy who lacked self control when Gwen was the object of his affection, but now he knew better. Despite Margo being nothing but loyal to him since he met her, Miles refused to instill all of his trust into the girl. He refused to fall in love with her, giving her the opportunity to break his heart (unintentionally or not). If there was one thing in his life that he could control it was this. Once Miles realized the pure contentment he felt watching her doing something as simple as lounge in his room and look through his art- he knew he had to put an end to it.

“Yo i’m actually heading to the store with my mom in a bit so you should probably…”

Margo’s blue cheeks flushed violet as she shut the book. 

“Oh yeah! Of course. My bad.” 

He felt immense guilt at her innocent response to his frankness. Margo was so precious and he was usually relaxed around her, but lately it’d been getting more difficult  being in her presence without wanting to hold and caress her. She got up from her sitting position and placed his old sketchbook neatly back in the spot she’d retrieved it from. 

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow night?” Margo asked gesturing toward the video game case. 

“6 p.m. sharp, girl. That is if I don’t run into too much trouble during my patrol, of course.” 

Margo gave him a closed-mouthed smile of mild contentment before turning away to leave, but Miles didn’t want to part ways on such a lukewarm note. Worried that his previous abruptness offended her more than she was letting on, Miles called out to the avatar before she could depart.

“Margo, hold up.” he rushed the words out causing her to look back at him with slightly raised eyebrows. 

“Yeah?”

“Your hair looks really good. I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier.”

“Thanks! I actually did it myself…with some help from my mom, but still.” She proudly fiddled with one of the silver cuff decorated strands. 

“Either way it’s fire.” 

Finally, her gapped tooth grin made its appearance at his compliment. Miles considered it a mission completed and pat himself on the back. 

“I’ll see you later.” And with that, she was gone in a blink of an eye. Miles let out a sigh, but it wasn’t one of relief. Quite the opposite actually. You know the feeling pure bliss as the late spring sun shines down on you, providing you with a pleasant warmth and vitality? Then eventually a cloud looms over to block the sun, causing you to feel…deprived and you have no choice but to wait until the cloud passes so you can experience the beaming sunlight again. That’s probably the best way to describe Miles’ discontentment at Margo’s departure. Although to be fair, he did basically shoo her away.

‘I need to get goddamn grip.’ the lovelorn boy scolded himself as he plopped down on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. With his laundry already folded and his plans to go to the store with Rio not til this afternoon, Miles decided to pass some time by sketching a little. He unlocked his nightstand and hidden in plain sight amongst a bunch of miscellaneous objects were the dimensional travel watch Hobie had given him and a sketchbook he’d gotten at Marshals. Miles plucked the sketchbook from the drawer and went to sit at his drafting table. This particular sketchbook was different than his others. It had a silvery, rainbowish holographic cover and when opening the book, one can expect to be met with a portrait of a smiling Margo Kess with her low afro puffs and blue skin. If you turn the page there was another sketch of the avatar…then another…then another and so forth. Miles flipped to the last few pages of the sketch book and picked up his navy blue colored pencil to create the outline of intricate bubble braids. His tendency to put people- specifically girls- on pedestals contributed to his downfall last year and he was too grown to make the same mistakes, but old habits die hard and Miles shamelessly sketched his avatar friend with the rationalization that 

‘As an artist, it’s my right to capture what I find aesthetically pleasing.’

#miles morales #margo kess #miles/margo #flowerbyte #across the spiderverse #spiderman atsv #spider man: across the spider verse #cyberflower #jefferson morales

[awaytobeunshaken]

Angstpril - Day 9: Til Death do us Part (alt)

Essek has visited the Blooming Grove a number of times, and every time it has seemed just a little bit brighter. It really is a wonder what the Clays have achieved here over the years, with the things Caduceus discovered on his journey, some of his and Caleb’s data from Aeor, and the ‘pet’ that came back here to settle after the solstice.  

He’s sure that hasn’t changed, that the darkness is only in his own heart, but he could swear the Wood itself is mourning as well. Everything seems just a bit dimmer, closer, more like the Grove that he’d first visited almost sixty years ago, the Savalirwood that he’d known in his youth.  

Caduceus is waiting near the entrance to the temple, sitting in a chair beside the door. He stands as Essek approaches. “Hey.” Essek nods and lets the firbolg put his arms around him. He feels like he should be crying, wants to, even, but no tears come, only deep, hitching breaths. “I’m sorry. He didn’t want you to know until it was over.”  

“Sounds like him.” Essek lets Caduceus lead him into the house and pours him a cup of the tea that’s been steeping near the fire. “I Sent to him less than a week ago.  He gave no sign that…” And that thought is what brings the tears; the realization that those words would be the last time he would hear that voice, that he didn’t imprint them on his memory the way he’d have liked to.   

ao3

He brings the cup to his lips but doesn’t drink, just lets the steam wash over his face, condensation mixing with the tears until he sets the tea back down and wipes them both from his face. “I knew it would come. I thought I was prepared. It’s not the same as living in the reality of it.” He finally takes a sip. “I suppose nothing is. He is… here, though, yes?”  

Caduceus nods and begins to lead him back outside. “I wondered if he might prefer Blumenthal, but… he has anonymity here, save for those of us who knew him.”  

“He would prefer that, yes. And this is the place?” Caduceus nods again. Bits of green are already starting to sprout from the fresh grave, and Essek thinks of the little garden outside the house in Rexxentrum, and fertilizing the new growth with the old, and the physical cycle of life and death as opposed to the spiritual one. “Already returning to the earth.”  

“I did start things along, as I typically do if there’s no objection. He did ask if I could take some of the soil to Blumenthal, eventually. Figure two or three years, it’ll be ready.”  

He’d accompanied Caleb to the graves on occasion, when he was in a mood for the company. Essek knew the place. “Two or three years. How does a blink of an eye suddenly seem so long.” Essek falls to his knees and spreads his hands over the sparse ground cover. “I— if I could have your assistance, or guidance or… I have not done this before, not without being pressured to, not in any way that has had meaning, but…”  

“You want to pray. For him, or to him?”  

The distinction hadn’t entered Essek’s mind. “Will he hear?”  

“I like to think they do. If not directly, I’m sure she can pass the message along.”  

“I was thinking… hoping… that he will find whatever peace he was still missing, that he can be reunited to those he has lost. And perhaps that is the only message that need be sent to him, that I am thinking of him.”  

“I don’t think he’d ever doubt that. But it might be nice to hear it all the same.” Caduceus sits on the ground facing Essek, then runs his own hands across the ground cover, nodding thoughtfully. Then he takes Essek’s hands in his and they begin to pray.  

#angstpril2023 #critical role #fanfic #day 9 #til death do us part #cr2 #essek thelyss #shadowgast #character death

[zerojpegs]

The Judge, A Husk of a Hero

Once a beloved hero, now a shell of a former friend. The Judge is one of those characters that’s either a simple concept or a complicated mess depending on how you look at them.

For me, it would be the later half of that sentence. Finding out a logical way to explain how my Deputy (Eight) became the thing he tried to destroy has been one of my favorite things recently.

I’ve already got his story established for the most part. Having a scuffed relationship with religion since childhood, recovering dr*g addict, anger issues, stuff I gotta make a post about eventually.

His story follows the canon of the nuke ending, becoming trapped in the bunker with Joseph. Eight’s mental state was definitely at an all time low, considering the fact he kinda sorta ya know,,,felt at fault for his co-workers dying and the possibility of the nuke being HIS fault. (An odd thought but it was his only logical explanation at the time)

Basic run down: Eight lost his shit in the bunker, mentally broken and deranged he was convinced into becoming The Judge (not easily though, it took about a year-two years) Ultimately he took a vow of silence and helped rebuild Eden’s Gate.

Something that I thought would be a neat idea is that NO ONE knows what happened to him UNTIL the events of New Dawn (The Captain coming to Hope County) Eight felt too ashamed to make his presence known to Prosperity, so his true identity was kept secret. Prosperity is aware of The Judge as a concept, but NOT of who’s behind the mask.

Once I finish the game I’ll figure out some more story stuff, so for now, enjoy the art (and lore hopefully lmao)

(THINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BECAUSE I’M INDECISIVE)

Alt. Version :]

#far cry new dawn #far cry new dawn the judge #far cry new dawn art

[thinkingmystic]

Deceived in a different direction – thoughts on Doreen Virtue’s Deceived No More and the search for answers

“He pulled a Doreen Virtue,” someone wrote in the comment section of a tarot reader who posted a Reel about their conversion back to Catholicism, which also served to denounce their former practices as dangerous and sinful.

I’m sure Doreen Virtue is thrilled that she’s become the lingua franca for (relatively) prominent woo people who convert to Christianity and condemn their previous path as demonic/evil/misguided in the process. Doreen Virtue – riding on the success of Sophy Burnham’s A Book of Angels, published in 1990 – was Hay House’s darling during the late 90s up to the late 00s. Then, in 2018, she announced that all that was dangerous and demonic and that she’s found the real deal in evangelical Jesus.

This is not an uncommon trend, and in trying to understand it – and seeing how many parallels there are to my own ‘Doreen Virtuing’ back in 2010 – I thought I’d take a closer look at Virtue’s Christian memoir, Deceived No More, published in 2020.

Why Virtue’s book?

There are two reasons I’m using Virtue’s book.

First, her about-turn is relatively recent, and in my opinion, there is a potentially interesting connection between her conversion and the run-up to the Trumpian era of politics. This might illustrate the growing ‘new age to alt right pipeline’ we’re seeing.

Second, Virtue was big in the new age scene and released dozens of spiritual books and card decks. She also toured the world giving workshops and presentations. Why would she abandon two decades of work? Or, as we’ll see, might this influence (and its waning) factor into her conversion more than she’s admitting?

Let’s get into the book.

Virtue’s main argument against the New Age: ‘Because the Bible says so’

If you were hoping that Deceived No More would blow you out of the water with its astute exegesis, keep dreaming. Throughout this repetitive book, Virtue’s main argument is that the Bible says so. She offers no explanation and leaves no room for any alternate view of the Bible. In chapter 6 she calls it “God-breathed and internally consistent”; in chapter 11, she advises her audience to ask whether spiritual directors or life coaches believe the Bible is God’s inerrant word. In chapter 9, she writes that one of her four revelations upon converting were that “the Bible is inerrant and trustworthy”. “I didn’t need to consult with apologists (people who defend the Christian faith and inerrancy of the Bible), as I knew for certain that the Bible is God’s Word.” How does she back this belief? By saying (later in the eleventh chapter) that the only way to understand the Bible is through the Holy Spirit, and you don’t get that until you are saved.

As for her hermeneutic approach, she – like many biblical ‘literalists’ – don’t believe they have one. They take the ‘God wrote it, I believe it!’ stance. But no one approaches anything without bias or preconceived ideas – not the original authors/scribes of the texts that would eventually be collated into the Bible, and certainly not the scholars who translate these texts into modern languages. We all have lenses through which we view and interact with the world. It is by understanding these lenses and how they influence us that we arrive at greater self-understanding and compassion towards ourselves and others. Pretending that these lenses don’t exist – or being confident that your view is the only view, because the text you’re interacting with appears to tell you so – is a logical fallacy and a spiritual dead-end.

I was surprised to see just how far right Virtue has swung. Her reading of the Bible is extremely legalistic. In chapter 2 she writes, “God can’t overlook our years of using His name is vain, practicing idolatry, slandering our neighbor, having lustful thoughts, dishonouring our parents, and so forth. Sinful behaviour always has consequences. This isn’t an appeal to legalism, however,” she concludes, but then also says: “Instead of hearing the gospel, mockers need to hear the Law” (chapter 6).

Not all biblical literalists are conservative, but most ‘inerrant’ churches lean conservative. So if we were in any doubt about what exactly Virtue converted to (namely evangelical Christianity)…

“He [the devil] tells you that you’re ‘woke’ if you realise ‘the truth’ that God is simply the ‘universe’” (chapter 6)

“New Agers blame politicians and conservatives for the problems in the world, instead of blaming Satan” (chapter 6)

Which brings me to Virtue’s conversion timeline.

2015: On January 14th she listens to Alistair Begg’s sermon, “Itching Ears”. Begg is a Scottish minister pastoring in Cleveland, and Virtue would go on to adopt many of the same doctrinal stances that his Parkside Church espouses. She credits this sermon as the start of her conversion.

2016: She and her husband Michael attend a Pentecostal church and church shop, including a stint in an Episcopal church. She takes pains to emphasise that Michael wasn’t forcing her away from the new age, but that they left it together.

2017: On January 7th, she has a vision* of Jesus; she is baptised in an unnamed protestant church on the 25th of February (probably the Episcopal one); she and her family move to Seattle on November 17th.

2018: Hosts “The One Year Bible” Instagram live Bible study daily. She posts Deuteronomy 18:10-11 on Instagram on October 6th; is “fired” from Hay House “a few weeks” before Christmas; joins a Baptist church sometime during this year or at the end of previous one.

2019: Would this be when she starts her MA at Western Seminary?

2021: Graduates Western Seminary with an MA in Biblical and Theological Studies.

Sometime before their move to Seattle, Virtue gets “sucked into the world of conspiracy theories”. “I became obsessed with ‘the new world order’, ‘chemtrails’, and the Illuminati. I was constantly upset about genetically modified foods and politicians who didn’t vote as I thought they should,” she writes in chapter 7. My theory – and it is just a theory – is that Virtue’s conversion was influenced by booming Q-Anon rhetoric and the political climate leading up to Trump’s election in 2016.

This wouldn’t be surprising; in fact, it’s got its own term: the new age to alt right pipeline. In a Maintenance Phase podcast on the topic, for instance, they talk about how new age adherents can be especially vulnerable to alt right beliefs and talking points. They specifically reference how a distrust of authority coupled with a niche belief that appeals to particular people – new agers may be especially vulnerable to antivaxxer rhetoric, for instance – then segues into right-adjacent conspiracies which segues into the right itself.

Something the podcast doesn’t mention but that I think also applies, especially in Virtue’s case, is the intersection of white supremacy and white privilege in pushing new agers into alt right territory. The new age tends to be very white, very American, very aspirational middle class. Privilege experiences change, diversity and inclusiveness as threatening. In times of change, then, it’s not uncommon for those with certain privilege to revert to conservatism. In the next section we’ll look at how this may have contributed to Virtue’s about-turn.

Little Miss Popular

In chapter 8 of Deceived No More, Virtue writes, “Right before my salvation, I was at the pinnacle of my New Age career.” It’s true that she published with Hay House consistently – sometimes yearly - since the early 00s, but that had slowed down by the early 2010s. Her last book with Hay House, Sweet Dreams Scripture: Bible Verses and Prayers to Calm and Soothe You, was published in 2017.

But were angels, Virtue’s primary selling point, still popular?

According to Google Trends, global interest in angels peaked in 2009, with a steady overall decline up to the present. The search term “Doreen Virtue” peaked in 2016, presumably around the time she became more vocal about her changing beliefs. The drop-off in searches for her (search terms and topics) between August and November of 2017 was steep.

My speculation is that Virtue’s popularity was already tapering off as Hay House expanded into tarot and other aspects of woo. I like angels as much as the next person, but Virtue’s angelology is particularly saccharine, which, as the world spun from the blow landed by Trump’s election, just wasn’t cutting it. Hay House have also been trying to diversify their demographics. I wouldn’t be surprised if Virtue was simply aging out of popular appeal.

Virtue, though, attributes her sales slump wholly to her conversion (and she may very well be telling the truth; I don’t know). In chapter 13 she notes, “[M]y former publisher reported that my conversion was dramatically affecting my book sales… My former publisher’s accountant estimated that my earnings would drop by 70 percent that year.” This is ultimately what prompts them to move to Seattle.

In the book she attributes this move, depression and unhappiness on social media (she calls it spiritual warfare) to her finally breaking completely with her former path. “Soon after we moved [almost a year later, actually], I made a social media post with the verses from Deuteronomy 18:10-12. In the comment of the post, I said that this was the Bible passage that led me to quit the New Age practices. About an hour later, I received an email from the president of my publishing house informing me that I’d crossed the line with this post. He was concerned that I’d offend witches with these Bible verses that condemned divination, fortune-telling, omen interpretation, mediumship, and witchcraft. Since the publisher had newly begun printing witchcraft books, they didn’t want to upset their customers. He told me I was fired” (chapter 14).

She goes on to lament the direction that Hay House was moving in: “I’d been working with that publisher for twenty-five years and was their top-selling author. We’d travelled around the world together, and here I was getting fired by email three weeks before Christmas. I was losing my radio show, my website, and my publishing contracts. When I’d first started with the publisher, they only printed books about health, inspiration, and positive affirmations. They wouldn’t even use the word psychic or other New Age terms in their books. Here they were, twenty-five years later, printing witchcraft books! This showed me the progressive nature of deception.”

This kind of resentment is one of the constants of the book, along with reminiscences about how popular she used to be, and her endless defence of herself for not knowing better at the time. In chapter 14 she writes about how her New Age friends – “many of whom I helped get publishing contracts” – stopped contacting her. Is it any surprise, though? According to those verses in Deuteronomy, the verses that ultimately converted Virtue, God abhors people in the new age.

In chapter 6, Virtue quotes New Zealand-born evangelist Ray Comfort, “The gospel is inherently offensive to most people.” “Don’t be surprised or take it personally if your loved ones become offended by your evangelising.” Later in chapter 8 she adds, “It’s so ironic that before I was saved, I used to judge Christians as being judgmental. The irony was lost on me until the first time I was called a judgmental Christian when I was only trying to help someone.” Yes, the irony does seem to be totally lost on her.  

“My old friends, and some New Age family members, saw my evangelizing work as being ‘unloving’. One family member informed me that Jesus would never talk this way. My relative gave me an ultimatum: either I stop evangelizing against the New Age or I wouldn’t hear from him again.” I’m pretty sure this relative is one of her sons, Charles.

It seems that Virtue’s conversion was shrouded in and accompanied by a lot of anger and lingering resentment, but is it possible that anger/resentment precipitated it? Resentment at a changing market, resentment at a changing publisher, resentment for no longer receiving the “rockstar treatment” she spends so much of Deceived No More talking about? Resentment, even, at a changing world?

Dowdy dressing for Jesus

One of the more bizarre aspects of the book (and there’s plenty; the line “The enemy is a sugar daddy who’ll give you the high life” comes to mind) is Virtue’s attachment to fine clothing and how she thinks Christians are dowdy dressers. In chapter 3 she writes, “I judged them [Christians] as ‘fear-based’, which is a New Age term for someone who operates out of fear, guilt, and negativity. I also thought their manner of dress was boringly conservative.” Oh, you think she mentions it just once?

“Five minutes into the start of each workshop, I’d invariably see two or more conservatively dressed women get up and leave. Looking back, they were probably Christians” (chapter 5).

“[I] donated and sold most of those clothes [the designer dresses] and learned how to wear modest and inexpensive clothing with grace” (chapter 1).

She references her previous lifestyle numerous times, with varying degrees of regret:

“I was seduced by the first-class lifestyle from my New Age teachings… We [her and her husband, Michael] were treated like rock stars on the New Age tours.”

“It all seemed so exotic and exciting!”

“I didn’t realize that I was spending money faster than I was earning it, and after taxes I rarely had much money left over. That kept me in a cycle of continually giving workshops so that I’d have enough money to pay my bills. The devil is an evil genius, y’all. I grieve now thinking of how I could’ve helped impoverished families with that money!” (all from chapter 4)

What I’m driving at is this attitude of Virtue’s that, without using quite as many words, signals she’s a martyr for Christ. She calls it sanctification – chapter 11 is titled “sanctification in the public eye” – but I wonder if there’s an early draft where she used the “m” word. She talks about how she “felt altruistic, like a martyr, denying myself pleasure in order to bring the latest messages to people in my books, audios, videos, seminars, and cards” in the fourth chapter, referring to her new age work. That same attitude persists into her conversion. Her readers are to understand exactly how much she sacrificed to be ‘right’, and she takes much more pain to explain what she’s lost than she does to explain what she’s supposedly found. Which brings me to my next point: what is the goal of this book? Who is it for?

Who is this book for?

The thing that puzzled me most about this book is exactly who its intended audience is supposed to be. You’d expect it to be geared towards new agers, since Virtue apparently regrets her previous teachings so much, but listen to what she has to say about unbelievers:

“Spiritual blindness is a real and pervasive condition. The Bible says that Satan has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe in Jesus, so they’re unable to see the glorious light of the gospel. The devil puts a veil up so that the gospel is hidden and the Bible isn’t understandable to unbelievers… As author Justin Peters recently told me, ‘False teachers are part of God’s judgment upon unbelievers.’ As difficult as it is to fathom, God used my false teachings in His wrath against me and unbelievers” (chapter 6).

For all that Virtue is so regretful about her old teachings and beliefs, she seems curiously uninterested in reaching her old fan base and more interested in defending herself against them and Christians sceptical of her conversion. What she writes in chapter 6, quoted above, reads like a pre-emptive defence for Deceived No More’s inevitable failure to sway her previous audience. As for the sceptical Christians, her primary defence there is ignorance:

“[I] wasn’t a rebellious Christian but a biblically ignorant and foolish unsaved person who didn’t know the true gospel” (introduction)

“[I] was just ignorant of true theology” (chapter 8)

“All those years, I didn’t know I was following a false Christ” (introduction)

Virtue also takes aim at doctrine and teachers she doesn’t approve of, which strikes me as arrogant for someone who at the time of writing the book had only been a Christian Christian for two years (by her own estimation). Joyce Meyers (who I don’t like, either, by the by) is dismissed as a false teacher, and Virtue has a little hitlist of doctrines she considers unbiblical and warns people about. I’ll talk more about this in the next section.

The only time this book stirred any emotion in me is in chapter 11 when Virtue is talking about the Episcopal spiritual director she saw for a short time. “She reassured me that I didn’t need to change anything in terms of deleting cards or crystals from my lifestyle. I simply needed to add Jesus and the Bible, and she said that I should embrace my gifts from God… Now I realize the Holy Spirit was convicting me against following her counsel. The upset I felt was conviction [emphasis hers] from the Holy Spirit, who steers saved people away from sin and back to God’s will. I almost fell for her advice since she seemed wiser and more biblically educated than I was. Ultimately though, it was the author of the Bible—the Holy Spirit—who taught me what was right.”

This was probably the last genuinely kind advice Virtue got before she phased completely into conservative evangelicalism, and she was too defensive, angry, insecure and arrogant to realise that the spiritual director could see which direction she was heading in and trying to help her.  

The New Adventures of Old Doreen

I believe that Doreen Virtue believes she’s changed, but I see little evidence of that in Deceived No More. Mostly I see someone trying to reestablish herself in the publishing world – the Christian one, this time – and having to convince people that she’s no longer who she used to be to do so.

In the previous section I mentioned how Virtue has a hit list of what she considers heresy. I’m less interested in her theology and more interested in how unable she is to resist setting herself up as a spiritual authority even if, by her own admission, she doesn’t believe women should teach or preach (she coyly references 1 Timothy 2:12 in chapter 14).

One of her first projects after coming out of her Christian closet was to start a Bible study/group reading through The One Year Bible. “I wasn’t qualified to teach the Bible then [emphasis mine], but I could share commentaries of each day’s Bible reading…” she writes in chapter 14. “The group was free of charge without any financial compensation, so I was really leaning on God, knowing that I’d be involved in researching and teaching [emphasis mine] daily without pay for the whole year.”

This contradicts what she has to say about herself in chapter 6: “The public outpouring of anger against my conversion was humbling, and I saw that popularity is fickle and conditional. I am also humbled by going to seminary classes, where I’m the oldest person in classrooms filled with twenty-five-year-old future pastors. I’m an invisible person in these classes, which has been humbling in a healthy and necessary way.” Virtue was and still is pursuing spiritual authority; it’s just a different stage and a different audience. This doesn’t really gel with her narrative of being a repentant and humbled sinner, does it? (Also, as far as I can tell, the One Year Bible group predates her enrolling in seminary.)

While Virtue repeatedly professes regret for her previous lifestyle, she seems genuinely confused that her actions hurt people. “[P]eople seemed to interpret my denouncing [the new age] as being ‘hate speech’, when my entire motivation was love. I cared enough to warn people about the New Age leading to hell, and I risked losing everything and everyone to sound this warning,” she writes in her introduction. In chapter 14, she says, “The more I spoke openly about changes that stemmed from my conversion to Christianity, the more confused and upset people who followed my work seemed to become.” For someone who has a MA in counselling psychology and who resisted attempts at being evangelised herself for decades, Virtue has little empathy for her previous audience and seems to resent that her good intentions don’t cover her officiousness.

Leaving the new age

So what did Virtue find in Christianity that she couldn’t find in the new age? As far as I can tell (and as much as she’ll admit to), she felt spiritually unfulfilled. In the first chapter of Deceived No More, Virtue writes: “I was unknowingly hungry for the love that only God can give. I’d followed all the New Age prescriptions for healthy, happy living… The New Age, for all its promises, could not save me. Only Jesus could.”

This sentiment is familiar to me because in 2010, I converted to Christianity after several years as a Pagan. There’s a lot of overlap between modern Paganism and new age practices, (which neither group enjoys admitting). Both are groups that follow a spacious set of doctrines or beliefs, a kind of hodgepodge of different practices under wide, inclusive umbrellas.

I recognise the spiritual hunger Virtue references, but I also recognise – which I’m not sure she does, yet – that that hunger doesn’t occur in a vacuum. In hindsight, for me it was a product of PTSD from cancer treatment and abusive relationships, and as yet unrecognised/misunderstood autism, ADHD, and queerness. I’ve thought a lot about my conversion in the years since I’ve left the church and ministry. Virtue doesn’t doubt the validity or meaningfulness of her conversion experience, nor do I mine. But I understand now that it wasn’t so much Jesus, or just Jesus, that pulled me in: I was, I believed at the time, also converting to acceptance: as a Christian, surely I would never feel like an outsider again.

Was it the same for Virtue? I do wonder if my speculations about political rifts, resentment at power shifts at her previous publisher and in society in general, and general financial stress contributed to an environment in which she, too, was yearning for acceptance – or, at the very least, no further loss of privilege. And if she could no longer find that in the new age…

Deceived in a different direction?

One of the worst things I experienced in my time in church and ministry is that some people genuinely enjoy the thought that God loves them and not whatever ‘other’ they most distrust, resent, envy, or hate. I’ve known Christians who seem especially to resent grace: if they work so hard to prove their faith – put in so much time in Bible study, prayer, church attendance and volunteering – and are ‘sinless’, or at least less sinful that someone else – why should others get a free pass to God?

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in Deceived No More, it appears that Virtue is now one of those Christians. In the first chapter of the book, Virtue writes: “[There] were two desires that drove me toward the New Age. The first was a desire to help people, and the second was a desire for secret wisdom.” It’s hard not to see Virtue’s conversion as a continuation of her previous thinking. As a new age author, speaker, and teacher, she could sell access to her ‘secret knowledge’ – helpfully presenting herself as its arbiter – in book, radio and workshop format. As an evangelical Christian, she does the same thing…via exclusionary doctrine. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that she’s swapped the carrot for the stick: she’s now found the secret knowledge, and if her search is over, then everyone else’s should be, too.

Some concluding thoughts

The converting tarot reader that inspired this reflection recently changed their Instagram handle to something more appropriately Christian. They appear to be setting themselves up to teach their 30k followers “real Catholicism”. Virtue’s social media presence is focused on educating people about the dangers of the new age – especially her YouTube presence – while espousing her ‘biblically inerrant’ Evangelicalism. And of course, both of them believe their brand of Christianity is the correct one. Both of them believe that their faith system has the answer.

I find it so ironic that the reason we generally first turn to religion and the primary thing that drives a wedge into our maturing faith system is ultimately the same thing, namely: expecting answers.

We commit to religion to find answers to life’s questions and reasons for life’s difficulties. It provides us comfort, community, structure: rules to live and die by, context to make sense of ourselves, a place to belong to something greater than ourselves.

But as our faith journey continues – and I do believe this is a universal experience – as we butt up against the limits of religion-as-answers, we enter new territory: religion-as-experience, religion-as-questioning, even religion-as-doubt.

In the tarot we see this transition happening as The Fool navigates three cycles of seven cards in the Major Arcana in a process of self-individuation. In 78 Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack writes:

The division into three allows us to see the Major Arcana as dealing with three distinct areas of experience. Briefly, we can call these: consciousness, the outer concerns of life in society; subconscious, or the search inward to find out who we really are; and superconscious, the development of a spiritual awareness and a release of archetypal energy.

To move away from religion-as-answers is risky business, though. It’s uncomfortable and it frequently brings us not just to the limits of our religious understanding, but also to the limits of our ego and induces us to face our innermost selves. If we can’t stand the tension, if we can’t find a way to cope with dissonance, if we find ourselves faltering when faith is a question mark rather than a full stop, we regress.

While I don’t think we’re judged for this, I do think we miss out on something and we’re poorer for that loss, as are our communities.

Any religion or spiritual persuasion – including the new age, including evangelical and Catholic Christianity – that isn’t elastic enough to hold difficult things in tension and through that tension, birth something new – is brittle enough that it will snap if there’s too much pressure. I think the same is true of its adherents.

If we can’t collectively, regardless of our religion, be elastic enough to hold difficult things in tension and through that tension, birth something new – we will snap if there’s too much pressure.

When someone does a Virtue, rather than seeing it as a challenge to legitimacy of whatever path they were on, I think we’re better served seeing it as an opportunity to hold space for the human condition, in others and in ourselves.

We move through The World as The Fool, happy for every opportunity to step off the cliff from what we were once so certain we knew.

*She has a Jesus vision but goes on to denounce this as demonic, too.

#tarot #Christianity #Doreen Virtue #conversion

[greensparty]

Album Reviews: Hollywood Vampires / Tommy Stinson’s Cowboys In The Campfire / Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

This week I got to review three high-profile rock albums being released this week. No not the new Foo Fighters album (stay tuned for my thoughts on that), but three albums with band member who have quite a few albums in my collection:

Hollywood Vampires Live in Rio

Around 2012, Alice Cooper formed a super group with Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Johnny Depp, the Hollywood Vampires. The name was a clear reference to the 70s group of Hollywood drinking buddies Cooper was a part of. The group released a self-titled album in 2015 filled with mostly cover songs and loads of guest stars. I included it in my Best Albums of the 2010s list. In 2019 they released Rise, which was all originals. Due to the band members busy schedules they don’t tour or record as frequent as one would hope. This week they were supposed to play a rare Boston show and it was postponed to late July. Fortunately to hold me over until that show, they are releasing a CD and DVD live album Live in Rio of a 2015 live concert they did at Rock In Rio for 100,000 fans. The main three are joined by Tommy Henriksen (he’s a frequent collaborator of Cooper’s). Much like the albums, there’s special guest appearances at the concert featuring Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses), Matt Sorum (GNR and Velvet Revolver), Zak Starkey (The Who) and more.

album cover

For this review I got to hear the album, but not the DVD. But even with audio only, you can hear this band holding court for a stadium full of fans. The set is very heavy on covers (from their peers like Jimi Hendrix, The Who, John Lennon and more) and Alice Cooper standards, but it’s worth picking up if you’re not an expert because of how this super-group interprets the covers. It really is a meeting of the minds to hear these three come together and play off each other. I’m a super-huge Joe Perry fan and he it having a ball covering rock classics here, but best of all is the Aerosmith standard “Train Kept a Rollin’” (originally by Tiny Bradshaw). Can’t wait until I get to see this band live now!

For info on Hollywood Vampires: https://www.hollywoodvampires.com/

3.5 out of 5 stars

Tommy Stinson’s Cowboys in the Campfire Wronger

Tommy Stinson has long been a secret weapon in rock and roll! His band The Replacements were one of the all-time great alternative rock bands ever (one could argue they inspired the alt-rock movement of the 90s). After The Replacements (or The Mats for short), he has been in some big and small musical endeavors. He joined Guns N’ Roses from 1998 to 2014, replacing Duff McKagen on bass, for the Chinese Democracy era of GNR. He was also an on-again off-again member of Soul Asylum from 2005 to 2012. He has also had various other musical endeavours included his short-lived band Bash & Pop, who reunited in 2016 (read my review of their 2017 album Anything Could Happen and their 2017 Boston concert). Now Stinson is back with a new project with Chip Roberts, Tommy Stinson’s Cowboys in the Campfire and their debut album Wronger drops today from Cobraside.

album cover

This is kind of different from a lot of Stinson’s previous bands. There’s always been an element of folk, country and Americana sounds in his music, but here it is on full display. Ironically, it reminded me a ton of his former Replacement bandmate Paul Westerberg’s solo work. The name is fitting because in some cases it’s just a few guys playing by a campfire. This might not have the drunken rockers that Stinson is known for with Mats and Bash & Pop, but in terms of flexing his musical muscles and showing his range, he’s more than exceeded expectations. At times it felt like a 50s or 60s pop country album. Way back around 1996, I saw Westerberg in some interview and he said of his Eventually album (paraphrasing) “Pick it up and give it a chance. If you don’t like it, put it away for 5 years and listen again. I’m sure you’ll like it by that time.” That’s kind of my feeling about this Wronger album. It’s good, but with time it might be even better.

For info on Tommy Stinson’s CITC: https://www.tommystinson.com/

3.5 out of 5 stars

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds Council Skies

Since the 2009 break-up of Oasis, there’s been a few releases including the live album Knebworth 1996 and the 25th anniversary edition of Be Here Now. Both of those served as reminders of what a great band Oasis was back in the day. As everyone hopes that the fighting Gallagher brothers Noel and Liam make up and reform the band, that has yet to happen and both have had their own musical endeavors. Liam has actually surprised everyone with some solid albums like As You Were. Noel, who was the chief songwriter and leader of Oasis but not the singer, formed Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Expectations have been high for that band, but their albums have been mixed. The band’s first new album in over 5 years Council Skies drops today from Sour Mash. 

album cover

Up until this point, the High Flying Birds have had moments of greatness, but mostly it’s felt like more of the same from lesser Oasis albums. I am super happy to report that the new album is not only the band’s best album yet but Noel’s best non-Oasis work too. Noel’s brand of Britpop is on full display here and the band really is trying a lot harder than they have on previous albums. While we all hope for an Oasis reunion (well, let me clarify that - a Gallagher brothers reunion since they are the only constants from start to finish of Oasis), this is about the best Noel has delivered since then! Amen!

For info on Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds: https://www.noelgallagher.com/

4 out of 5 stars

#album reviews #hollywood vampires #joe perry #Alice Cooper #johnny depp #tommy henriksen #tommy stinson #tommy stinson's cowboys in the campfire #noel gallagher #noel gallagher's high flying birds #music nerd

[burnedbyshoto]

the bodyguard

— Kirishima gets assigned to be the bodyguard to one of the worlds greatest idols: you. —

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pairing: bodyguard!kirishima eijirou x idol!reader

warnings: nsfw, 18+, brat taming, authority kink, spanking, blowjob, slapping, choking, brat taming, brat!reader, modern!au, no quirks, bodyguard!kirishima, idol!reader, PTSD portrayal, anxiety, war flashbacks, implied minor character death, drugging, alcohol consumption, size difference: kirishima is 2 feet taller than you, regardless of the reader’s original height. If you’re 6 ft congrats he’s 8 ft.

word count: 20,500

a/n: this is for the bnharem collab.... im so sorry, it’s 4:30 am and I have a plane to catch in 2 hours to get back to school. thank you jo for proofreading this for me because lol I am a mess. if the paragraph spacing did not work as I wish it does, please let me know so I can go in and edit in visible paragraph spacers!

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“I’ll be okay.”

The smell of dirt, sweat, and blood clung to the air.

The sun was setting, its blood-red shine illuminating against the destroyed earth, making the already bloodied soil even bloodier. 

There was no telling if the land was quiet, if the reason why the world's silence was because the world just for this moment had gone silent, or if the earlier explosions were still ringing in his ears.

Kirishima sat wounded, his back pressed to the wall, his eyes wide, breathing erratic. He can’t move, can’t bother picking up the gun that lays abandoned by his knee as warm, sticky liquid spills onto his clothed knees and continues to soak the fabric of his jeans.

What had he done?

What in the fucking world had he done?!

BOOM!

Kirishima stills, his eyes stilling on the floor and looking at the clear moisture. He doesn’t need to touch his face to know it’s a combination of both sweat and tears. 

His ears sing with white noise, the erratic beat of his heart, and his pained breathing.

“I’ll be okay,” the ghost taunts his mind.

But I’m not okay, Kirishima tries to speak, but knows with how his tongue is sitting like a thick dried sponge in his mouth, he won’t be able to speak. Pushing off the cold floor, flops onto his back, his arm flinging over his closed, shaken eyes until the ringing in his ear disappears into his alarm clock. 

05:30.

Kirishima lays there for a bit more, his chest still heaving heavily with the weight of lead.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

Better?

No, not yet.

Kirishima runs through breathing exercises, his chest never stopping in it’s hiccuped, broken pants as his memories continue to haunt his mind. If only he was smarter, more observant, better.

“Time to get up, time to get up, time to get up,” his phone screams with his second alarm set at 06:45. The sound does what it’s intended, jolting Kirishima out of his own head. His labored breathing shallowing just enough for his lungs to finally grasp ahold of its required function.

Today was an important day for him; he needed to be on his tiptop game, according to what Toshinori said yesterday.

I’m okay, he convinced himself as he does every morning after having this dream. Kirishima flings his arm off his eyes, the morning purple sun shining softly through his blinds. I’m okay.

Date: 4/2 Time: 08:00 Location: UA Services

“And in other news, music industries princess Y/n has been attacked by yet another round of masked perpetrators. Fortunately for the music idol, she was left unhurt but was clearly rattled. This is but the fourth attack on Y/n since three weeks ago. It’s leaving many of us fans, spectators, and civilians wondering just what is being done to ensure her safety? Y/n is reported to not have a single bodyguard to her name, wanting to quote-on-quote ‘experience her fans to the fullest’, but with these recent attacks, we can’t help but hope something is done. At least until something is done about these attackers—”

Kirishima’s eyes tore away from the screen, his lips pressed into a deep frown as he took in the story. There was deep worry about it, not only because he hated the idea of people getting hurt, but because he was a big fan of yours.

Your debut album had come out during his training camp for the military. Not only was it an instant billboard smasher breaking every standing record, but his commanding officers were obsessed with the album and played it continuously until they graduated. Most of Kirishima’s comrades came to dislike your music solely because they remember throwing up, bleeding, and suffering while you sang about love and whatnot, but Kirishima? Kirishima fell in love.

It was a bright spot in his life, and he was grateful for your music, even if it has been ten years and six albums since the training camp.

“Yo, Kiri!” a voice cheered out happily as a hand clasped onto his shoulder from behind. Kirishima held the flinch that threatened to rip through his bones. Kirishima turned to find Kaminari grinning up at him, a cup of steaming tea in one hand as he grinned brightly at his coworker. “I heard you’re finally getting a good case today!”

Kirishima found himself relaxing at the sight of his rather spontaneous friend, a warm smile easing onto his face as he raised his fist for a greeting fist bump.

“We’ll see, I know Toshi’ said it was going to be important, but he also said escorting the paranoid old lady was important,” Kirishima sighed, his smile softening a bit.

Kaminari laughed, his arm slinging around Kirishima’s shoulders as he remembered that.

The little old lady was sure that the government was out to kill her and wanted protection until her son returned from his vacation. Needless to say, Kirishima had thoroughly enjoyed his time with her, even if she was a bit scary. It was a low-risk job, and he only was paranoid by her cane, which she used to thwack his back many times as she talked about how plums extended your life.

“God, I remember subbing in for you for one hour because of your family emergency, and she was so scary! She still haunts my nightmares!” Kaminari shudders, placing the cup of his tea to his lip and taking a long, slow drink. His eyes shift over to the TV, which is still broadcasting the story of your attack. “What a bunch of bastards,” he growls, eyebrows scrunching as the news reporter ends the segment. “Thinking they can go after such a beautiful and talented idol… I’ll kill them.”

Kirishima was more than well aware of Kaminari’s plentiful budding romances. The blond man fell in love with just about any smiling woman who happened to waltz in front of him. Still, unlike most times, he found himself agreeing with him.

“It sounds really serious. I hope that she really considers some type of security team,” Kirishima inputs too, taking the teacup in his fingers with a nod of thanks. “There’re too many weirdos in Japan and in the world, I wouldn’t want to hear the news the day something bad happens.”

Kaminari hums, his face nearing Kirishima’s as he takes a small sip of the apparently black tea. His eyes scrunch, and Kirishima smiles awkwardly as the blond studies him intently.

“W-Wha—”

“You like Y/n!” Kaminari exclaims (accuses, maybe?), his arm leaving Kirishima’s shoulders as he points a finger accusingly at him. “I thought I was the only one in this department who did!”

“Don’t be an idiot, Denki,” the familiar voice of Sero responds for Kirishima. “Everyone in the world is in love with Y/n; she was voted the favorite artist of the year in our company. Everyone but Bakugou voted for her if I remember correctly.”

Kirishima looks over at his black-haired friend who is rummaging through his locker, his mouth curved into an easy, teasing smile as he looks between the bashful Kaminari and sneering Bakugou, who also seemed to just walk in.

“Her shit is basic and overrated,” Bakugou defended himself. “Nothing special and bad for your brain and ears.”

“Your go-to music playlist is fifty percent death metal and alt. rock. I don’t think you have ground to say that it’s bad for your brain and ears,” Midoriya’s snicker sounded from behind Kirishima, and he looked around to see the freckled man grinning at the snarling ash blond.

“And how does your stalker ass know that, shitnerd?!”

“‘Cause I’m a stalker, duh.”

“Oh, Bakugou-kun, Midoriya-kun! You’re both here! Todoroki-kun is looking for you!”

“I’m just saying that Y/n’s dates to all the award shows and premieres have been blond. She’s into blonds, so she would totally be into me!”

“Deku, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to kill you myself.”

“You wouldn’t even be able to protect Y/n, bro. The only thing you performed well on in the application process was the tasing part. You can’t even tase people repetitively! She’d be dead in a second.”

“Can you believe my client dropped me because I couldn’t cook a five-star meal correctly? Hello, I can make 7-11 into a five-star course; it’s not my fault they’re not refined.”

“Kirishima-kun, are you okay?”

“I deadass got into a dance competition on the way to work. That’s why I’m late, why would I lie? Of course, I had to compete; my reputation was on the line!”

“Kirishima-kun?”

“Yo, he’s not looking too hot?”

“Kirishima?!”

“Can you hear us?!”

Silence.

Kirishima found himself opening his eyes — when had he closed them? For a moment, the air turned coppery, his body feeling weak, and he thought he felt something heavy on his lap. But that wasn’t right; he was standing up, he wasn’t sitting down. Most importantly, he was in Tokyo, Japan. He was alright. He was safe.

The sweat that clung to the back of his neck was cold, clammy, and intrusive. His chest felt tight again, his hands shaking so harshly the tea's warm, dark liquid was sloshing onto the floor.

There were seven pairs of eyes on him, each a different color, each swimming with concern and other emotions. Kirishima knew his ears weren’t working right now, his face unable to meet his brain's screaming demands to smile, and he watched as their mouths moved as they questioned his sanity.

He was okay.

He was okay.

He was okay.

“Kirishima?”

Kirishima looked up, his neck craning to the side to see a tall, skinny man standing at the doorway. 

Toshinori Yagi was an esteemed bodyguard, one of the best in the industry, which was saying something considering that most bodyguards went unknown and unnamed. According to Google, Toshinori gained the nickname All Might after saving multiple political and celebrity lives when the government could not. It was long after his prime, and the man had retired but has since filled as the company’s head — thus why this job was near impossible to get.

Kirishima heaved a breath, realizing that he hadn’t taken a single breath when Toshinori’s bruised eyes narrowed in his concern.

“C-Coming,” Kirishima smiled, the blood rushing to his ears mostly ignorable now, but the scorching concerned gazes of his friends feel like cinders on his shoulder.

He straightens his tie, fingers curling when he feels the cold sweat penetrating through his clothes, but Kirishima doesn’t let it show. Smiling like he does, Kirishima pushed through his friends and followed Toshinori out the door.

They walked down towards the conference rooms, rooms that held their contractors, in complete silence.

“This is an important case,” Toshinori began, his voice gentle and poorly hiding his concern. “I chose you because you are a great asset to have, Kirishima. You are strong and smart, and most importantly, are personable.”

Kirishima looked at the man, his face contorting with his anxiety. He didn’t want to be treated like glass.

“Honestly, you being so personable is why I chose you for this assignment. Todoroki-shounen was a contender at first, but he’s not much of a talker; the same goes for Bakugou-shounen. Midoriya-shounen was probably the best choice, but there’s a new assignment that asked for three, so I gave up those three,” Toshinori explained the current assignments. It both delighted Kirishima to hear that he could keep up with arguably the three most qualified workers here as it did, at times, make him feel lesser. 

“Oh.”

But he was obviously not the first choice still.

“The only reason why you weren’t the first choice is because of what I walked into just now,” Toshinori interrupts Kirishima’s thoughts and words. Kirishima finds his eyes tearing away from the smooth, polished wood floor to see Toshinori stopping in front of Conference Room A, his gaze intense on him. “To be frank, I wasn’t too sure if we should have hired you all that time ago. You are excellent on the field, your skills are phenomenal. Something to be proud of, truly, but you are clearly not completely healed from your time on the force.”

“Toshinori—”

“Kirishima-shonen, I’m not saying that there’s shame in your current struggles,” Toshinori once again interrupts, his hand a soothing warmth on Kirishima’s shoulder. “I’m still not healed from my past injuries, and as many people have undoubtedly told you, it’s okay to not be okay. But you barely passed the psych evaluation and only passed your field training because you scored so phenomenally on the other things your lack of a shooting score passed you.”

Kirishima felt unable to look away from the piercing blue eyes, and the lump in his throat never tasted as bitter, as sad.

He had barely passed the admittance test.

“I just need to know, are you ready to take on this assignment?” Toshinori asks in complete seriousness. “It’s a high stake, big-name client. We do not expect anything untoward to happen, but we never know in these cases. I think highly of you, Kirishima-shonen, and if you are ready to take this on, I’ll believe you, but likewise, if you’re not, I will gladly give this to someone else.”

Kirishima swallowed, his dry tongue passing through his equally dry lips.

Without question, he was not okay, not when he nearly broke down twice in a matter of hours, but it was just a bad day. He wasn’t as shaken as he was two months ago; he was going to his mandated therapy, talking to people who could assist him. Kirishima just didn’t want to be treated like glass anymore; he wasn’t glass; he was an unbreakable force.

Steeling over his nerves and ignoring how his stomach twisted and turned, Kirishima raised his gaze to Toshinori.

“I can do it.”

A smile.

“Good.”

If Kirishima was sweating because he was on a mental slip earlier, he was now sweating because he was beyond petrified and embarrassed. His hands raised up to brush against his red spikey hair, praying to God that it didn’t look dumb. His legs bounced at a speed that was bordering insanity, but he could only hear the sound of his racing heart as he stared at your frowning form from across the table.

It was you — the Y/n, the world's biggest music idol, an absolute legend in the making.

“This is our very own Kirishima Eijirou, age twenty-eight. He has been with U.A.Services for approximately six months now and is without a doubt one of our most capable and well-serviced men,” Toshinori began the introduction to the three people on the other side of the table. Kirishima could feel a blush rising up his neck and settling into his cheeks as what he presumed to be you, your manager, and your lawyer shuffling through paperwork that was very thorough on his background. “He was enlisted in the military before joining our ranks and was honorably discharged at the age of twenty-six as First Sergeant Kirishima Eijirou due to extreme injury. He excels in negotiating, scouting, and is, as you know, a skilled close combatant and was skilled in handguns—”

“I don’t think he’ll need firearms,” you interrupt, a frown on your face in contrast to the bright smile Kirishima was so used to seeing on your face. He tensed in worry.

“Y/l/n!” your manager, Sato Kimiko, scolded.

“What? It’s true! We’ll be around my fans for the majority, if not all the time! How is that right? For him to have a firearm around defenseless, and may I add, harmless individuals?!” you argued, your eyebrows scrunching in your fury.

Kirishima felt frozen in his chair, his eyes seeking Toshinori for guidance, but found himself unable to look away from you. He knew nearly everything about you, he could admit with a proud grin that he was a super mega fan of you, and he might have, at one point, looked your height up to imagine how you would appear beside him. Kirishima had known this entire time that you were two feet shorter than him, but it hadn’t hit what that meant until he was shaking your hand when he first entered.

You were tiny.

His dick and mind really liked that, and seeing your own passion spilling out for your fans was making him fall deeper into this hole he had for you.

“You don’t have a say anymore? Do you understand? You were nearly assaulted yesterday, and we are all done waiting around for something serious to happen!” Kimiko yelled, her face contorted into a look of both frustration and fear. “Either you take this, or we all leave you. I won’t have you murdered in front of me! You’re twenty-six now, stop acting like a damn brat and grow the hell up!”

The words scorched the table, blistering heat filling the conference room as you met Kimiko’s glare.

Kirishima watched with a dropped jaw as your nostrils flared, your lips pursing, and your eyebrows furrowing with unspoken distaste and anger.

“Six months tops.”

“Uh, yes,” Toshinori interjected. “Our contracts only last up to six months for new clients, but if you find yourself wanting to extend your contract after those six months, we are very much open to negotiations.”

You nodded your head, your eyes falling back onto the booklet in your hands that exposed all the information available on Kirishima. From his likes, dislikes, to his allergies and the reason why he was discharged. Each in disturbingly deep detail to make sure all things were up on the table.

“So, you can’t shoot your gun, Kirishima-san?” you speak, your voice tight, a pleased, almost taunting tone.

Kirishima stills, embarrassment bubbling in his chest as you drop the booklet onto the table, exposing his military history to him and you. 

“...no,” Kirishima answers truthfully.

The lawyer shifts from the other side of you, his eyebrows scrunching as he too comes across that piece of information. 

“He won’t use firearms?” the lawyer scoffs, his semi-permanent frown deepening. “How will we know that he will keep Y/n completely safe from any sort of danger that may come her way? We’ll be paying six months for a glorified security guard? We want a bodyguard.”

“And we clearly have one,” you snap back, your eyes narrowing. “If my bodyguard isn’t Kirishima-san, I’m not getting one. I mean, isn’t that what you said earlier?”

“When we were assuming that the person Toshinori was assigning to your case was a well-rounded bodyguard. Not one that was still clearly haunted by his past.”

Fuck, that one hurt.

You scowled, your head tilting as you bared your teeth slightly, “And what? He managed to get into the best agency in all of Japan in spite of that. Sounds like he’s competent. I already told you I won’t take on a team, just one individual. I trust in Toshinori-san’s guidance and his choice in picking Kirishima-san. If you disagree, that’s too bad for you.”

“Y/n! Please stop this! You’re being ridiculous!” Kimiko huffed, slamming her own booklet down, her eyes drowning with her exhaustion. “I’m so sorry, Toshinori-san, Kirishima-san.”

“H-Hey, it’s okay!” Kirishima immediately imputed, his hands raising in a sign of retreat. “I know that Y/n has always enjoyed her independence as a solo star, and how me being involved now is imposing, especially after multiple attacks.”

Kirishima felt that his smile was a bit strained, a bit too forced, especially as your eyes hawked onto him. He felt like you were examining him, like a lab rat going through its initial trial and not knowing just what was to be expected.

“Six months?” you spoke, your gaze not leaving Kirishima’s own.

“Six months,” Kirishima agreed.

You hum, your head nodding. “Fine, six months tops unless the Lieutenant Colonel can apprehend these assholes faster.”

It had been ages since Kirishima had been called by his title, and for some reason, he found himself blushing. His mouth, for the first time this entire meeting, curled into a wolfish grin.

“You got it.”

The lawyer groaned, entirely aggravated and insulted. He stood up, “You’re asking to be murdered, Y/n. Don’t come haunting me when you end up dead and mutilated. You deserve all the shit you’re getting.”

Kirishima watched with his lips parted in a bewildered expression as the lawyer walked out of the room with a loud slam of the door.

You were unfazed, and Kimiko groaned, exhausted and embarrassed as she mumbled a weak, sullen, “I am so, so sorry, Toshinori-kun.”

“Ah, Kimiko-chan, it’s okay!” Toshinori shook his head and smiled knowingly. It wasn’t as if the long time famous bodyguard hadn’t seen his fair share of childish fights between clients. “Thank you for coming as always, and we’ll do our best to make sure that Y/n is in the best of hands.”

“Thank you… and so, the rest of the contract?”

“Ah, yes, let’s continue.”

So, the contract was discussed to full detail.

For six months, Kirishima would be attached to your side. He must always remain at most three meters away from you when there is no one around, and during fan interactions no more than one meter. He had a full say about your safety. If things got rough, you were to follow his every command. Your agency would pay for his room and lodging. He was to wear black pants and a black long-sleeved cotton tee. He would be working with every venue, every hotel, every conventions security team. He would lead them and never leave your side. He was to be awake an hour before you, rest when you were asleep so long as it was safe to do so. He was your guardian angel of sorts, and you would do nothing but adhere to him. 

Most importantly, according to Kimiko, there was one thing they were hoping for: Kirishima's help and discretion. For the next six months, they would be relying on Kirishima’s support to figure out who the group behind the assault was and who the mastermind was behind it all is.

Or so the contract said.

“Y/n!” Kirishima called when the papers were signed, and the day he was set to start was printed. He will begin tomorrow. “Wait!”

You stopped at the door, Kimiko and Toshinori chatting merrily between them as they exited the conference room, Toshinori’s booming voice asking if it was true that Kimiko was attending to a near forty clients to which she bashfully admitted to. You were dressed in a creme knit long-sleeved shirt, faded ripped jeans, and a pair of nude heels. The heels were big, undoubtedly giving you inches, but you still barely got to his shoulder.

“I-I’m looking forward to looking — I mean working with you!”

You looked at him closely, your eyes dragging to the top of his toes to the tallest spike in his hair before your lips pulled into a contemplative pout. You looked back to his eyes, and you steeled over, your head tilting to the side.

“I mean no offense, Sergeant, I thank you for doing your job, but I have no intention of looking forward to working with you. I don’t want you here, so do your best to ignore the contract and realize that I am the most important person, so you will follow my demands.”

Kirishima can do nothing but stare as you turn on your heel and leave.

Well, so much for a good case.

Date: 5/2 Time: 14:00 Location: Tokyo Music Stadium

If you would have told Kirishima Eijirou that he had been working for the grand, the perfect, the fantastic music idol Y/n for a month now, two months ago, he would have laughed so hard he’d cry. Not only would he have not believed it, but he would only think of a million and two scenarios where he would go the entire day flirting.

Now a month into knowing you, of being your bodyguard on a contract for six months, Kirishima could say that of that entire thought, the only thing he had been right about was that he was, in fact, crying. Not only has he never managed to speak an entire conversation with you despite being attached to your hip seven days a week, but despite your much shorter stature, you had managed to get away from him.

You always managed to sneak away from him.

Kirishima could admit that the no more than five meters rule had been wholly and utterly demolished.

And now, Kirishima was crying, not out of joy, but of pure manly fear as he raced through the backstages of the stadium, desperate to find your short-ass anywhere.

“Go, Kirishima!” someone yelled as Kirishima whizzed past him, “Find Y/n!”

“T-Thank you!” Kirishima screamed as he continued onward, the yellow-lit concrete hallway seemingly haunting the further he went into it. The earpiece in his left ear shrilled, the telling sign he was getting a call. Putting a finger to the circle in his ear, he answered the car. “Hello?!”

“Ah, Kirishima-san!” Kimiko’s voice chirped on the other side of the line. “Wonderful to hear your voice again! I’m calling to let you know that the tour bus is parked outside of the venue now. The concert was a smashing success, and she’s come out unharmed for the past month! To make matters even better, since your arrival, there have been no more assault attempts! Oh, um, sorry, where are you guys?”

“We’re just, um!” Kirishima tried not to pant into the microphone; he was still racing ahead, his head peeking into every door and room he passed. “Y/n needed to use the restroom?!”

“Oh, wonderful. Okay! Let me know when you two are on your way over!”

“Ya, okay, bye!”

“By—”

Kirishima hung up as he crashed through the doors at the end of the hallway.

It was night out right now, the full moon reflecting down on the dirty concrete with the same intensity as the streetlamps overhead. And in the middle of a crowd of around twenty people was the person Kirishima was trying to find: you.

You were still dressed in the final costume change of your concert. Even from a distance, Kirishima could see the glitter and highlight on the tip of your nose and the curve of your cheekbones. The crowd around you was clearly not hostile. Each face was bright with broad smiles and sparkling with fresh tears, each voice high and pitchy as if they were talking with some goddess and not you. 

There was a slight longing in Kirishima’s chest at the sight of you interacting with your fans, your smile was so beautiful, and he wished just for a moment that he was the one that it was directed towards. If he had met you as a fan, and only a fan, he wonders if you would look at him as you did the others. Would he see the pure joy in the depths in your eyes, the love, wonder, and pride as they asked you questions and answered your own?

He wanted to be just a fan.

“Y/n, the tour bus is here,” Kirishima finally found his voice, the tenor of his voice spreading through the narrow alleyway. “Say your goodbyes.”

He had to ignore the way you stiffened immediately, the unsolicited joy in your face breaking and becoming bleak as you met his gaze. Kirishima absolutely did not feel pressure behind his eyes when you rolled your eyes and began to say your goodbyes; he did not!

The group of fans waved goodbye as you walked backward toward Kirishima; you didn’t stop waving and continuing your parting conversations with the group until the metal doors of the stadium doors closed behind the two of you. Kirishima let out a sigh, his eyes closing for a brief moment before looking down at you. You were expressionless, eyes cold as you looked dead ahead.

“You’re not supposed to run away like that.”

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t tell me what to do, Sergeant.”

“You know I can’t do that it’s not—”

“Part of your contract. Yeah, I know, but that’s your contract, not mine.”

“Oh, okay. Um, Kimiko? ...yeah, we’re heading out now. Five minutes, till.”

And then there’s only silence.

Neither Kirishima nor you bother talking the entire walk towards the tour bus, and you ignore Kimiko’s call that your lawyer would be meeting briefly before tomorrow's fan signing event. You walk into the bus and go directly to the beds, throwing yourself into the terribly padded bunk and passing out without so much as a sound.

Kirishima sinks into his own bed, it’s too small for him, but there’s nothing he can do about it. Sleep overcomes him easily these days; he’s always way too exhausted in chasing you down like some spoiled toddler you’re behaving like to dream. But that’s okay, he thinks as the comfort of sleep begins to dig its skeleton fingers into his side, at least the exhaustion stops the night terrors.

Date: 5/3 Time: 10:00 Location: Tokyo Music Tower

Now, Kirishima knew that it was a common belief and a nearly proven theory that when you met your idols, you should never ever have your expectations high on who they are as a person. Celebrities were out of touch, cruel, rude, nearly jaded. They weren’t exactly the common folk. With people willing to forget things like them being human beings themselves or the common thread of celebrities being too rich to care, any type of famous person was cold, rude, and ruthless.

He knew that.

He also knew that you weren’t like the nearly proven theory.

You were kind, sweet, a practical angel to anyone who dared to approach you. You were the exception to the rule, an outlier to them all. You spoke politely to all your fans, domestic and foreign, and you treated each fan like the most special person in the world.

You were a good person.

But Kirishima knew, just as you reacted to any cruel person you encountered, you had an edge. Your words were as vicious as your name was known. He genuinely enjoyed watching you put assholes into place, but he sulked, knowing he was always at the receiving end of the sharp, bitter tongue of yours.

For a month and a day now, he had been the number target of your bitter words and scorching hate, but he admitted that he enjoyed it when it wasn’t directed at him, if but a little bit.

“I’m not renegotiating my contract!” you groan, your palms slamming into the depths of your eyes. “I already told you that I don’t need all that money!”

“And I’m telling you that you need to increase the wages that you pay the rest of your team instead of all those charities or else people will begin dropping you!” the lawyer countered with similar fire, his scowl angry enough that Kirishima felt like he had to tear his gaze away from this horrible battle. “You won’t be the best of the best forever, y/n, get over your stupid savior act and look over the changes!”

Kirishima looked over at you, his eyebrows pinching as he watched you fold your arms, your cheeks pushed out to a puff as you looked at the stack of papers with the title page fully covered with the word Contract of Y/n and Co. on it. Well, it seemed that the rumor of you spending your paycheck on things that weren’t you was right, how entirely manly.

“Oh fuck off,” you growl, pushing out of the chair and storming away.

Kirishima glanced over at Kimiko, who was looking pale and exhausted, undoubtedly exhausted from the past thirty-minute battle between the lawyer and the idol that neither made a single step forward nor a step back. How you had the energy to fight so passionately was beyond him. Kimiko nodded minimally, her lips parting in a sigh as Kirishima stood up and followed after her.

“The only way that brat is going to listen is by force,” the lawyer sneered, his voice fading into the room that Kirishima exited. “If that’s how she wants to play, so be it.”

Fortunately for Kirishima, he catches up to you. There are tears of fury dripping down your cheeks, and he feels unable to speak as he discovers a new layer to you.

...how interesting.

“It’s my money,” you speak, but Kirishima is unsure if those words are meant for him or for the void, the earth that you would much rather converse with than him. “I already pay them all a much greater paycheck than they should be getting considering their client pool. Why do I have to bend to their stupid will when I’m the one making the money.”

Kirishima blinks, wondering just what people might want to raise with their contracts. But, he knew you were right. By her account, Kimiko had a client list of many successful individuals, and he may not know anything about the lawyer, but if he worked with Y/n, his name must be good. Guess they weren’t like you.

“People are selfish assholes,” was the only thing that Kirishima could think of, and was something he spoke before he could stop himself.

But you stop in your storm, the anger that clouded you somewhat dissipating, clearing just enough for you to turn to him, your sharp, beautiful eyes for the first time filled with rage that was not pointed at him, and an emotion that made him think of… amusement?

“Yeah,” you agree, a half-smile cracking onto your face, and Kirishima feels his soul begin leaving his very body. “People are selfish assholes, huh?”

“Very much.”

There’s a calm, a snorted chuckle, and Kirishima finds himself stumbling further into the abyss of his feelings for you.

The next ten hours seem to pass in a blur, Kirishima feeling like he was on Cloud Nine as he stood behind you, three meters as he watched fan after fan approach you. Signatures were made, pictures were taken, and Kirishima found that he never once had to approach.

Maybe, he thinks, just perhaps, the two of you can overcome this.

Ten minutes after the official signing is done, Kirishima can’t find you, and he curses loudly into the echoing floor.

So much for change.

Date: 5/17 Time: 23:00 Location: The Parking Lot - Mt. Lady Studios

Kirishima was, for the lack of better words, completely fucking done with you.

Don’t get it wrong, he still was a complete and massive fan of yours. He would never once betray his loyalty to you and your musical career, but he was slowly starting to realize just why the lawyer was set to dying of a heart attack any time soon. Despite your early entrance to stardom and the stuff of legends, you had kept your fiery, stubborn individualism.

Kirishima thought it was absolutely hot and sexy at times, especially the times where you strut around in revealing clothes because ‘this is your body,’ or the lingerie campaign you completed two days ago as part of some fundraising event. There were significant perks to your strong handle and claim to keeping your indestructible personality, but it came back to rub them all back in the worst of ways when once again, you escaped from Kirishima’s side.

To be fair, most of the time, Kirishima was a very level headed individual; he was near impossible to rile up despite popular initial belief. I mean, he was good friends with Bakugou Katsuki, who riled up just about anyone he talked to! He needed to have steel calm emotions, or at the very least portray that he does. But even the unbreakable after tireless attempts can, at times, be broken.

It had been a hard morning.

Kirishima had woken up in a panic, the sweat of his night terror soaking through the sheets of his bed, and his head felt like lead. They had been in the tour bus for the entire day because you were going from the tip of Japan to the bottom of it, thus meaning that you couldn’t run away from him, concluding that when he went to bed that night, he was merely tired, not exhausted.

“K...Kiri...shima?” the voice whispered in his ears when he bolted from his bed and tumbled to the ground, his chest heaving in his panic as he cried.

He only slept for four hours that night, the ghost of his comrade haunting him too much for him to ever drift back to sleep. The only thing he was grateful for when he stumbled down to the hotel lobby for breakfast was that he had an attack while in his own room and not in a tour bus with ten others.

But the lack of sleep and the twisting of his guts from his still unburied memories meant that his exhaustion was dialed up larger than he thought was capable. Today was an interview day plus a miniconcert at said interview.

That meant that for an hour before your interview and two hours afterward, Kirishima lost you and had to hunt you down. You weren’t making it easy on him and had started moving with the crowd you gathered to evade him.

But today, Kirishima was exhausted.

Today, Kirishima wanted to sleep.

Today… Kirishima broke.

“Let’s go,” Kirishima spoke in a low, commanding voice. His eyes were hooded as he looked down at you, the crowd of fans parting like the red sea as he stands behind you, larger than life, imposing.

You ignore him.

“We’re leaving, now.”

“Aw, did you make that just for me?! This beading is gorgeous!”

To be fair, Kirishima isn’t really sure if he’s crying right now or if steam is protruding from his ears like some stupid cartoon. The only thing he knows is that it's been a bit longer than a month, and his client is the most perfect person in the world except to him and some lawyer. All he knows is that he has been continuously mocked, shamed, and disrespected by his client, and at this moment, with his mind and body aching with the memories of the morning, he can no longer stop the tsunami of emotions and thoughts that shove out of him.

He grabs your wrist and begins pulling you away.

“We’re leaving now, sorry to disrupt your time. Come see Y/n another day.”

Kirishima isn’t even aware of your screams, the banging of your small fist against his back as his hand encompasses your bicep easily. He walks and walks and walks until he stops, his mind slightly put back into place.

“—FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?! LET GO OF ME, SERGEANT!”

Oh, right.

He lets go of you immediately and nearly snorts at how you stumble into his back. So small, so delicate, and so completely weak.

“You want to know my problem, y/l/n?” he asks, voice eerily calm, much calmer than he actually is. “My fucking problem is that I signed onto this case with a single rule: keep you in sight and protect you. It’s simple, almost too easy, isn’t it? But easy and simple is everything that this assignment is!”

Your face contorted into a flash of anger and embarrassment, your nose scrunching as you found your footing, “And I told you that I don’t give a crap about that contract! I didn’t want it in the first place, but no one listens to me!”

Kirishima snorts, his body shifting so that he can look at you properly; your face is seething, your teeth bared and eyes wild, but Kirishima has faced worse.

“It’s not in my contract to listen to you, unfortunately,” Kirishima points out, his eyes narrowing. “I would have a better time listening to you, trying to find an agreement that worked if you used that brain of yours and figured out a way to compromise with me.”

“Compromises aren’t—”

“You think I wouldn’t?” Kirishima almost whines, his voice tight with emotions, fingers fisting in his hair, “You really fucking think that after a month and how many days of me spending stupid hours trying to find your ass, most of the time never knowing if you’re dead or not, I wouldn’t want a better solution?!”

“Like hell they’ll kill me! And if they do, I don’t fucking care!” you stubbornly insist, finger buried against the swell of your chest.

“Oh my god,” Kirishima can’t stop the bitter laugh from escaping, “you’re ridiculous.”

“I’m ridiculous?! I’m not the ridiculous one here!” you cry, your eyes bursting with unshed, bitter tears. “So what that I run away from you? Can you imagine living the past ten years of your life trying to be something that the media wants you to be? No! You can’t, Sergeant! Those times where I’m running away isn’t to be some dick, but to give me time to be me!”

“You’re a goddamn idiot!” Kirishima barks, his anger curdling in his chest like a raging fire. “If you had looked at my damn file correctly, instead of focusing on the stupid shit like me not being able to fire my gun correctly, you would be more than aware of the fact that you are one of my favorite artists!”

“Wh-”

“I am one of the best in my company! I am easy to get along with, personal, manageable, flexible even, but from the very first moment you laid eyes on me, you’ve hated me! You talk down on me, you shit on me, my job, the reason I’m here! Listen, I would fucking love to be anywhere but here right now. I have literally never hated my job before, but you just made that a reality. But the worst part of this all is the fact that you seem to think I would have kept you away, prohibited you from doing things that I already know you love! You stand there and tell me that I would try to force you to do shit you don’t want when I have merely been asking for you to take me there with you! I don’t care if I have to stand away and watch, but I want to be there! I’m supposed to be protecting you, but you’re being nothing more than a stubborn brat who refuses to see the efforts I’m trying to make, and frankly, I’m done.”

Kirishima’s chest is burning with the lack of oxygen, his eyes narrowed and filled with raging fire as he stares down at you, his neck craned so that he could be closer, more daunting, intimidating.

“Fuck o-off,” you snap suddenly, a lone tear, your voice tight and shoulders tense as you storm off.

“So predictable,” Kirishima calls after you, but it’s not filled with the previous anger he had but the sinking misery and regret.

And for a moment, it’s quiet.

Until a single name is screamed.

“SERGEANT!”

And then the all too familiar sound of a fist colliding with skin.

The anger in Kirishima’s blood evaporates immediately, and horror sinks in as he turns towards where you had stormed off. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

The parking lot is filled with an ugly yellow light that seems to set the stage for what was to come down. His footsteps crashing down against the black pavement were mute in his ears, and his eyes were focused on your limp body slung over somebody's shoulder. There was one person behind him, the other one already hopping into a van; Kirishima was the devil on their heels.

“Come on! Let’s go!” the one in the van screamed, his voice full of gruff apprehension and fear.

The van turns on.

Kirishima grunts, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he sidesteps the man who was lingering behind the one carrying you and quickly slams his shoulder into the man's sternum, knocking him out the moment he collapses onto the ground. 

He lets out a roar of such, his eyes glowing with anger and a single mind track to take down the person who held you, ready to throw your unconscious body into the back of the van.

Kirishima doesn’t even know when he manages to get to the man's side, one hand on his shoulder, the other on you, and with the strength and anger of a million fighting warriors, he ripped you from his hold and sent him stumbling into the trunk. Your shallow breathing brushes against his neck, and Kirishima is hyper-aware of the cursing men who chose to abandon their unconscious comrade on the floor. 

With his arms filled by your unconscious body, Kirishima can only watch the van scurry out of the lot, the license plate immediately burning into his mind.

T082-23

When the man on the floor finally wakes up, he’s in police custody, and you’re just waking up. There's a bruise on your cheek, and you begin crying immediately.

Kirishima watches from the distance, his heart aching and guilt climbing up his throat as he watches Kimiko hold you close, her arms warm and tight.

Well, shit.

So much for the month of no attacks.

Kirishima sits in a waiting room, his head relaxed against the wall as he waits for your discharge from the hospital. They suspect a concussion, and they’re running some tests right now. The police are there too, trying to get information from you on the failed kidnapping attempt as well as beginning the initial trials of interrogation of the abandoned kidnapper with a broken sternum, ruptured spleen, and three cracked ribs.

He was not surprised when the police officers came to talk to him, and he gave them the license plate.

But they also gave him an essential piece of information.

(“Well, when we asked for a motive, it seemed that it wasn’t his idea,” the detective admitted, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “His boss said that, and I quote, Y/n will end up dead and mutilated as is deserved. She deserves all the shit she has coming her way, end quote. Any ideas of who it could be”

Kirishima rubbed a hand across his face, the words striking a bit too familiarly to him, but from where. He shook his head, his eyes focusing on his bouncing knee.

“Thank you,” Kirishima said, his tone pointed in a clear indicator that this conversation was now over. The detective nodded, his frown slight as he left. The moment he was gone, Kirishima pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “Kimiko? Yeah, I think we might have our first suspect.”)

For now, he was waiting for you.

An hour passed before you shuffled into the waiting room. There was a bandage on your swollen cheek, but besides the obvious attack, your eyes looked strong, and it seemed like there was no concussion.

“I should be fine,” you speak first, your jaw tensing as if it physically pained you to speak (whether it was because you hated talking to him or because of the injury, Kirishima had no idea). “I will be fine; I just need some sleep.”

Kirishima nodded, his body completely exhausted, and his mind filled with nothing but regrets on how he handled his anger earlier. He needed to apologize. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but he had definitely crossed a few too many lines.

“Should we go?”

You chewed on your lip, your eyes looking down at the white tiled floors of the hospital — so bleak, so anxiety driving.

“I actually wanted to talk before we left.”

Oh?

“Of what, if I may ask?”

Your eyes raise back up before looking away again, “the contract.”

Kirishima finds himself nodding, his hand gesturing towards the empty seat in front of him.

“Sure.”

And with a heaving sigh that sounds like you were on the verge of tears, you sit before him.

The contract was then discussed.

It was decided that you could continue to interact with fans as you wish, so long as you took Kirishima with you. He didn’t care about the long hours, the manic fans, or the impending doom of a group of people who meant business. He needed to be there.

Everything else stayed the same, but Kirishima looked at you one last time that night in the hospital, his body leaning towards you as he did his best to keep his face void of emotion and any lingering teasing.

“I’ll only accept this new negotiation on one term.”

“W-What?!” you pause, thinking. “Fine, say it.”

“From here on out, I think we should be friends, yeah? I’m on your side, after all, it’s a bit weird if we stay just acquaintances.”

The tension and horror leave your body, and Kirishima, for the first time ever, bears witness to the most relaxed, meaningful smile he has ever seen you give. It had been one hell of a shitty night, but at that very moment when the seventh turned into the eighth, Kirishima felt a new warmth flood through his chest, his heart racing at the sight of your glorious smile.

“Of course, Kirishima.”

“Oh, and y/n?” 

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry about all that I said. It was unmanly of me and out of line.”

“It’s okay. To be fair, I was a bit of a self-absorbed brat, too.”

The next day, a picture of Kirishima holding you bridal style is trending.

Date: 6/12 Time: 19:00 Location: Hime Onsen

An Interview with Y/n | Vogue Japan 4.5 million views • Premiered 2 hours ago 874k [liked this] 12.3k [disliked this] Timestamp: 05:32 / 10:33

[Interviewer]: Now, Y/n, we must congratulate you on your latest achievement! Your latest self-titled album, ‘Y/N,’ has been nominated for a record high of twelve awards for the upcoming Japan Record Awards, which will be coming up in about a month! Tell us how you feel about this?

[You]: It was quite a surprise actually! I didn’t realize that it would have done so well in the critic's eyes to get this type of award. I am proud of myself and am excited to see all the other amazing artists and musicians who were nominated as well.

[Interviewer]: Now, your album is all about staying true to yourself, whether that be in love or war. It depicts your own highs and lows while also highlighting beautifully universal things many of us face. Without question, you have always been adamant on staying connected with your fans and keeping a simple rule: no bodyguards.

[Y/n]: Oh, (laughs) yes! That is definitely a new thing, huh?

[Interviewer]: A new thing and a beautiful thing at that, too! Look here!

[captioner notes: interviewer displays many photos of Y/n’s bodyguard, including the most famous one where he’s holding y/n after the failed kidnapped attempt]

[Interviewer]: This is a beautiful — don’t giggle! — a beautiful man, Y/n! What do you have to say for yourself?! Did you finally succumb to keeping untrue to yourself for this beautiful man?! If so, it is perfectly acceptable. By chance, is your contract with him done? I would personally love to have this man on my team.

[Y/n]: (laughing) By all means, take him! (Y/n looks behind her, her bodyguard is there) I’m kidding, I’m kidding! (pauses) No, actually, sorry. Kirishima is an outstanding bodyguard, and I have no intentions of leaving him so soon. Uh, while I did say I had no wish or intentions to have a bodyguard, obviously that was not the best solution, so I hired Kirishima. He is a wonderful addition to my team and still allows me to be authentically me, so it’s still all good.

[Interviewer]: Ah, okay, well, Kirishima-kun, if you ever need a new client, call me. But moving on, yes! Would you like to discuss the series of increasingly concerning attacks?

Kirishima stood in the softly lit hallways of a sauna.

Today was one of the last remaining days you had off, and in celebration of your upcoming award season, you had decided that it was mandatory to visit the hot springs. Everyone on your team — the backup dancers, band, and hair and makeup — were ecstatic to learn that they were being involved with it too.

This high-end resort had accommodated your entire team to receive their own private spring with an all-inclusive menu too. 

It was thanks from the owner for the free PR and, of course, because they were some of your biggest fans. So, in thanks, everyone got to enjoy the springs.

Well, everyone but Kirishima, that was.

As of the past month, things between Kirishima and you had improved a lot.

With Kirishima no longer needing to run a marathon daily to find where you were, he would find himself walking at your side. He no longer felt like you hated him. There was respect and actual friendship between the two of you. You joked with him, showed him memes and TikTok, sent him snapchat streaks, and invited him to watch weird shows with you. You even complained to him about the things that annoyed you, namely Kimiko’s attention being stolen by other clients and the rude conversations you would have with the lawyer.

It made Kirishima’s chest warm up knowing that you were friends now.

A stressful month had passed into a friendlier one.

But there were some things that Kirishima would not have expected to… arise.

Namely you growing to be comfortable enough to walk around with nothing but a thin pair of panties and a large shirt. You curling into his side whenever you watched a show together in the bus, the way your lips brushed against his neck when he leaned down to hug you, or the very so not obvious teasing you would do when you changed in front of him. It was as if you were watching his every reaction, enjoying the way that his eyes horribly tore away, or the silent hitch in his throat whenever you speed his heart up.

The biggest surprise arose the night after the failed kidnapping attempt:

You had come to his room, hours after you were supposed to have fallen asleep.

Your eyes were sunken, still a bit tired, and the bruise on your cheek was looking bad. In your arms was a white binder undoubtedly filled with the introductory packet you had received at your initial meeting. Kirishima had opened the door in his sleepy state in nothing but gym shorts. He had barely started dozing off, his mind wouldn’t stop thinking of what could have happened if you hadn’t managed to scream, and so he kept tossing and turning.

Seeing you outside of his room, his head dropped down to look at you properly, and his fist rubbing at his eye fell, “Y/n?”

“Did I wake you?” you asked, your face filled with a shocked, near uncomfortable, and embarrassed expression he doesn’t recall ever seeing on you. “I’m so sorry! I’ll wait until—”

“No,” Kirishima grunts while he shakes his head, his voice raspy and dry from his lack of use. “I’ve been tossing and turning, um, what is it? Do you want to come in?”

“I-If that’s okay?”

Kirishima breathes out a bit, his shoulders relaxing as he smiles softly, “Come on, let’s talk about what’s on your mind.”

The door clicked behind your tentative steps with an echo, and Kirishima watched as you walked into the hotel room with wariness and caution.

“Would you like some tea?” Kirishima offered, picking up a shirt from his dresser and pulling it over his body. The fabric was tight against his chest and shoulders, but felt more appropriate to wear around you.

“No, I’m okay,” you politely decline.

You stood in the center of the room, unsure of where to sit, stand, or lay.

“Go ahead and make the bed,” Kirishima offered, taking the chair by the desk. “I promise it’s still clean.”

You laugh slightly, smile strained but grateful as you sit at the edge of the bed, binder resting on your lap.

“Thanks, I wouldn’t want to sit on a dirty bed,” you joke, but it sounds weak to Kirishima’s ears.

“So, what questions do you have?”

“Hm?”

“You have my portfolio,” he shrugs, leaning forward so that his forearms rest on his knees. “I have a feeling you have some questions.”

“Oh, right,” you whisper, your eyebrows scrunching as you open the binder to the first page, but your eyes are focused on the desk. “What’s the medication for?”

Kirishima turns his head to follow your gaze and comes across the yellow tinted medicine containers.

“My PTSD,” Kirishima answers honestly, his voice soft with emotion, but there was no shame in it. “My service had a difficult end.”

“That’s actually… that’s what I came to talk about,” you rush, your hands slamming the binder closed. “If you don’t want to talk about it, obviously I won’t push it! God, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have—”

“No, it’s okay,” Kirishima interrupted, his smile sad, but he stood up, his body a tower in front of yours as he urged you to sit back down. “It’s okay; I don’t mind talking about it.”

“B-But what if I say something that makes it all worse?”

A pause.

“Then I’ll tell you that it’s too much.”

A nod.

“Are you… are you still experiencing a lot of symptoms?” you ask, your fingers tightening and untightening around the binder.

“Some days are worse than others,” Kirishima admits, his shoulders shrugging. “I don’t experience much anxiety while in crowds anymore; I don’t have many flashbacks to those days anymore, not since February at least. I do still get… I still get night terrors and dream of that day. It’s nowhere near as bad as the first few months after the accident, but it’s still here.”

“What happened?” you asked after a bit, morbidly curious.

The file had all the details that proved Kirishima to be a master of firearms during his entire time on the force. He was a powerful combatist, and his ranking was a clear indicator of the respect and skills he had. Still, it was the quick honorable discharge, the near year-long hospitalization, and the current inability to use a firearm that concerned you.

What had happened?

“I was involved in a grenade explosion on my last day on tour. I was the only one who managed to survive the blast,” Kirishima easily stated, his voice quiet.

“Oh my god, I… holy shit, I’m so sorry.”

“Nah, it’s all good. There were only two others around, and one of them was already dead.”

“Was that um, Major—”

“We called him Crimson Riot, actually,” Kirishima smiled, a chuckle light on his tongue as he leaned back onto the chair, nodding. “Yeah, that was him.”

“Crimson Riot,” you repeat, nodding. “Did you watch him… watch him die?”

Kirishima presses his lips tightly together, and for a moment, you’re unsure if he’s going to cry, answer you, or tell you to leave. There’s a whirlwind of emotions on your optimistic and typically jubilant bodyguard despite your asshole tendencies that make your stomach twist.

“Yes,” Kirishima finally answers, and you nod.

It’s hours into the morning before you finally depart back to your room, the horrors of Kirishima’s past still pounding into your ears. Kirishima wouldn’t notice, and neither would you, but on his shirt and yours, there’s a few drops of tears the both of you shed when you said goodnight.

Sergeant Kirishima Eijirou, while on an active warzone, had accidentally struck and killed his superior officer, his friend, his role model Crimson Riot, thinking that he was nothing more than an enemy target as he sat wounded behind a wall. He died on his lap, and as someone came to help, a grenade landed two meters away before detonating.

“K...Kiri...shima?” Crimson Riot had whispered as he fell to his knees, blood gushing and seeping through his clothes, spilling onto Kirishima’s lap. “I’ll be okay.”

For whatever reason, since that night, Kirishima felt something in him shift. He still took his medication, still had his virtual therapy sessions when he could fit them in, and even had painful night terrors of that moment, but it was becoming less frequent.

He wasn’t made of glass.

There had been more instances after the kidnapping attempt, but unlike the last times, Kirishima was prepared. He had stopped each one, keeping you safe and sound. As of one week ago, he had officially been given a firearm to keep strapped to his thigh at all times now.

It was an unfamiliar weight, one that still twisted his stomach and made him nervous, but he knew the reason why it was needed. Since the gun had been added to his gear, the attacks stopped. He was definitely not ready to be firing it anytime soon, but it had deterred the attackers for the time being.

Kirishima paused when he heard his earpiece ring, and he dropped his phone where he had been watching your interview despite being there himself.

“Talk to me,” Kirishima answered, his finger pressing the accept button.

“Kirishima!” came the distressed voice of Kimiko, “We just got a tip!”

Kirishima stilled, his eyes scanning the empty hallways that stretched throughout the private hot springs.

“I don’t know, but a person with connections with this mastermind said something about how there were two more events he was staging. Today is one of them!”

Kirishima’s eyes widened, his lips parting to answer Kimiko when instead there was a large, loud crash in the water from inside your room. He assumed the worst.

“Y/n!” Kirishima shouted, hands throwing open the sliding door and racing through the storage room, the shower, and exited out into the hot spring.

Steam curled through the wind, the white wisps of steam feeling warm and light against Kirishima’s skin, and Kirishima panicked when he couldn’t see your shadow or figure in the hot springs.

“Where is she?! Is she alright?!” Kimiko panicked, her voice panicking already. “I’ll call the—”

Kirishima turned on his heel, ready to complete a full sweep of the outdoor hot spring when he crashed into something smaller than he was… smaller, softer, and definitely the shape of a woman. Kirishima felt his entire body stiffen when his rough palms felt the undeniable feeling of wet, warm skin.

“Oh my god,” he heard you shriek. “KIRISHIMA!”

“She’s all good, Kimiko,” Kirishima stifled out, his voice tight, his head slamming backward so that his eyes were concentrated on the starry night sky.

“...sorry… uh aha! Another client of mine is calling, goodbye!” Kimiko’s apology was meek and small before she hung up.

Kirishima’s mind was racing a mile a minute, but his body was frozen, unmoving like a rock when he realized that pressing to his stomach was, without a doubt, your breasts.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“What are you doing in here, pervert?!” you splutter, your hands pressing to his stomach as you step away. “Are you a pervert or something?!”

“I, no! No! Of course not! Fuck, shit, I’m so sorry! I’ll go! There was a tip that something was going to happen right now, and there was a crash and—”

“What are you looking at?” you exclaim, squeaky frustration heavy on your tongue. “There’s nothing wrong with the sky! Look me in the eyes? Have you never been to a co-ed hot spring before?!”

“Y-Yes, sorry!” Kirishima apologized, bowing slightly in apology before he peered down. Still, his face bursted in a flame as he watched the way your jaw dropped in disbelief, the dewy wetness of the hot spring clinging to your body. You were, obviously, soaked, and Kirishima bit his tongue as hard as he could to keep the whimper from expelling past his lips when he saw the light gleaming off your breasts. But he watched your face shift between a million emotions, each one appearing too fast for him to read, too fast to register, but he saw the way a single-arm wrap around your breast and the other shoving into his stomach.

“PERVERT!”

“What?!”

“That was a test! This is my private room! I have the right to not be willing to be looked at right now!” you shrieked as Kirishima spun around, allowing you the complete privacy of his gaze.

“You told me to look at you!” he squawked. “Y-You told me, and I listened because of our contract!”

Kirishima could feel his body trembling, his mind reeling in disbelief that he definitely saw you in your entire nakedness, and if the swirling heat in his stomach had anything to say about it, he liked it. Fuck.

There was a soft laugh and the sound of sloshing water as you probably (he wouldn’t know because he wasn’t looking) reentered the spring.

“I know, I was teasing,” you sing, and he can tell the water is gliding around your body. “Turn around, Kiri, let’s talk.”

“Haha, um, I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” Kirishima admits, although sitting in this steam-filled space with just you sounds so very nice. 

“Why not?” you asked, voice sounding a bit upset.

“I’m supposed to be outside, doing my job?”

“Augh, but these private springs are so boring alone,” your voice whines; the water sloshes, and Kirishima winces at the slight throb on his tongue as he continues to look at not your direction. “Turn around, Kiri.”

Not too long ago, you had taken to calling him Kiri, a subtle change, a not unusual nickname people gave him. But just because it was you, his stomach flipped and twisted, and now with the image of your tits in mind, his dick throbbed. 

Gulping, Kirishima turned, his gaze bashfully looking down at you before glancing away. You were chest-deep in the hot springs, tendrils of your wet hair sticking to your neck. Was he dead? Maybe dreaming?

No, his dreams were never like this.

“Do you want to come in?” you continued to ask, your body moving towards him in the water until you reached the edge of the pool, arms testing into the black rocks. “You’re the only one not in one, and since I hate being in these alone, I figured you’d like to join.”

Kirishima wanted to join. More than anything, he wanted to take his clothes off and jump into the springs with you, for you, but that would be unprofessional. Entirely and utterly unprofessional.

“Please?” you ask softly, pleadingly, and Kirishima makes the mistake of locking his gaze with yours. 

“...fine, but I’ll be on the other side of the spring,” he concedes, his steps near clumsy and oafish as he stumbles backward to the shower and closet.

“Such a gentleman pervert,” you tease, fingers curling as you wave at him until Kirishima finally closes the door behind him.

The empty room is nearly deafening in its silence and the future as Kirishima slumps against the sliding door, excited apprehension rippling through every cell of his skin as a smile spreads across his face. He walks to the storage room, and despite it being a private room, there were two closets. The closet not already occupying your clothes had the things needed for him, and thankfully, it fit. 

He undressed slowly, folding his clothes and placing them into the cubbies. Fully naked, he approached the showers, and under the lukewarm showerhead, he cleaned his body of any grime, dirt, and sweat. 

Feeling refreshed and clean, Kirishima began his descent to the hot spring, his heart hammering when his fingers grabbed the handle of the door.

“I’m coming in,” he announced, a healthy amount of fear, excitement, and heat drumming through him.

“I’ll keep my virgin eyes away from your body, don’t worry,” came your slow tease, and Kirishima snorted softly.

Kirishima stepped back out to the hot spring.

Just like the first time, the entrance to the spring was warm, the steam seeming thicker than last time, clouding the outdoor room and his sight. You were at the furthest out part of the pool, your back towards them as you worked your fingers through your scalp.

Discarding his slippers at the edge, Kirishima climbed into the pool.

The pool only went as far as his thigh, and he sank into the warm water. It felt wonderful on his body, relaxing his muscles just enough for him to wonder when was the last time he had managed to visit a hot spring.

“I’m in,” Kirishima said, his arms rising up out of the water, resting onto the black stone. “You can turn around now.”

“God, took you long enough,” you tease, your body twisting so that you were facing him again.

To Kirishima’s complete and utter surprise, you stilled, eyes dragging up and down his exposed chest, eyes locked on the series of tattoos all over his right pectoral, and trailed down his right arm. His lips felt dry as your eyes shifted back to his face, to his arm, and back to him. The smile on your face felt weak, but it sent a spiral of dizzying heat through Kirishima when he noticed the hushed lust.

For a while, the two of you remained at opposite ends of the hot spring. Eyes closed, hummed melodies passing through the song. You asked Kirishima about how he felt, if his medication was due for refills, if therapy was okay (he was doing better, a refill was due in two weeks, and therapy was going the same). He asked you about your relationship with Kimiko, with the lawyer, and if you had any real friends within the music industry (Kimiko was like an older cousin to you, the lawyer was a pain to deal with at times, and surprisingly, you did meet some genuine friends). You questioned how his friends were doing, if he had any contact with them despite their busy schedules. 

So Kirishima found himself retelling stories of his coworkers turned close friends. Each story he told left both of you with sore stomachs from laughter, and tears at the corner of your eyes from laughing too hard. 

“Was the tip story true?” you asked once the quiet overcame and grew old. You shift through the water, getting a bit closer to Kirishima.

Kirishima coughed, suddenly feeling a tad bit shy about his posture, but decided to keep from moving.

“You honestly think I would have barged into here just because I wanted to see you?”

Truthfully, had Kirishima been a man without morals, chivalry, or disrespect for you, he would have. Definitely would have.

“Let a girl dream,” you smile, like a luring siren as you wander closer by just a step. “It would go against everything I know about you, but it’s fun to tease.”

“You’re a bigger brat than I thought you would be,” Kirishima smiles back, trying his best to not show the way goosebumps were bursting against his skin, his eyes locked on yours, trying to not get distracted by the way your wet skin made his mind spin.

“I don’t think I’m a brat,” you counter, getting close enough that he could feel the currents of the water with your movement. But you were far enough that Kirishima felt like pointing out the fact you disregarded his keep apart rule would be a mistake. “How am I a brat?”

The sound of the water rippling through the springs along with the growing noises of the bugs began a melody around the two of you, and all Kirishima could do was stare at the way you blinked your eyes slowly — like a feline stalking a prey.

“A lot of ways, really,” Kirishima breathes, his heart rising up to his throat as he felt your hands gingerly place themselves on his knees.

“Yeah?” you ask, parting through his naked legs, and Kirishima felt his breathing stop when your exposed chest pressed against his. Your lips were ghosting so far from his but tantalizingly close enough that he felt drunk off your sweet breath. “And what are you going to do about it?”

Kirishima sucked in air, his arms resisting movement, and his eyes glanced down at the way your mouth was millimeters from his. His dick was very much interested in what he could do about it, and when your hands grazed up his thigh and onto his chest, Kirishima could feel something rumble in his chest.

He moved to eliminate the space, but there was a crash in the following spring, pushing you away from him long before he could claim your mouth.

“FUCK!” the person in the opposite spring screamed, and Kirishima’s eyes closed in his muted annoyance as you sighed.

His eyes dropped to the water, giving you the privacy to rise out of the water and make your way over to the wall.

“Jenny, are you okay?” you called.

“Give me a warning the next time you try fucking your hot bodyguard in the middle of a private onsen!”

“We weren’t fucking you prude!”

And with that, Kirishima took this as his embarrassed cue to leave.

He stood at the entrance of your private spring for about twenty minutes, entirely uncomfortable with the still hard dick in his pants, rubbing and chaffing against his jeans as he stood there. Eventually, you exited the hot spring, face glowing from the steam and eyes avoiding his gaze as you walked back to your room. Your robe was tight on your body, the hair on the nape of your neck pressed to your skin.

Kirishima sighed as he watched you enter your room, your smile short as you nodded a simple goodnight before letting the door slam shut behind you.

Rubbing his face, Kirishima listened to the voices in his intercom talk about how nothing had happened tonight. An attempted unwelcome visitor tried to get into your room, but they had stopped him. They didn’t fight, but they had run away the moment they caught on to the fact that they weren’t exactly authentic.

Kirishima sighed as he slumped into his room, collapsing on the too small bed as he found himself looking at the ceiling in deep concentration.

What was he going to do now?

That was undeniably sexual, his still semi-hard dick damning evidence to the known fact that he wanted you. By god did he want you. Wanted you beneath him, over him, splitting yourself down onto his cock while you gripped your arms and legs around him, fucking down onto his driving cock. 

Kirishima groaned low in his chest, guilt blooming in the back of his throat as his palm rubbed his pulsing cock.

Bad, Kirishima, bad.

“Kirishima-san?” a voice broke through his earpiece, and Kirishima nearly jumped out of his skin. “Are you there?”

“Hi Kimiko,” Kirishima sighed, his dick deflating instantly. “Everything all right?”

“Ah, yes! Sorry about earlier, the false tip and the sudden abandonment!” Kimiko embarrassingly apologized. “My client was ringing for the fourth time, and while I care deeply for y/n, I had to take it!”

“Mm, no worries, Kimiko,” Kirishima smiled politely despite the lack of visual contact. “How can I help you?”

“Ah, yes,” Kimiko asserted, her tone changing from apology to one of formality. “So, about the visitor incident I’m sure you were brought attention to, it seems that the vehicle they came in was with the driver's plate: T082-23. Does that sound familiar?”

“Not currently,” Kirishima sighed, his body stretching into a sitting up position. “Does it to you?”

“No…” Kimiko admitted, and Kirishima could feel the worried frown on her face. “Well, I just wanted to call and give you that information. It was passed along to me, and they mentioned they hadn’t told you. And since I was going to give you the schedule for the upcoming JRA’s award day, I figured I’d let you know!”

“No problem! Let’s go over the schedule now?”

“Yes! I have a client meeting in America right after this! Can you believe it? An American celebrity wants my help?!”

“That sounds amazing, Kimiko!”

“Okay, so this is how the day’s going to go!”

Date: 7/10 Time: 18:00 Location: Tokyo Hotel Room 101

Kirishima watched as an entire team was getting you dressed up.

Two people were doing your hair, three people doing your nails, one person doing your makeup, and five getting one of your three outfits for the night ready.

According to you, as you had strutted around in these outfits nearly two weeks ago were your red carpet and beginning of the award show outfit, your performance outfit, and of course, the after-party outfit. Each one was different, yet when adorned on your body was a perfect replica of who you were.

Most importantly, the two of you had decided to ignore every single instance of tremendous sexual energy and desire that basically leaked from both of your pores. It was for the best to ignore it. There was no point in pursuing it, especially when there was a known hunt for you, and Kirishima was the last line of defense between you and whoever it was.

Whoever it was, pfft.

Kirishima was willing to bet on who it was already.

Since the night of the initial kidnapping that finally closed the gap between you and Kirishima, there was something that the caught criminal said that stuck with him.

Everything you had coming your way, you deserved, he had said in bitter spite.

The interesting thing was that it was the lawyer who had said that, multiple times at that. The lawyer seemed to have everything to fuel him to rage against you. Everything you said or tried, the lawyer was on your heel, barking at you that it was wrong. Kirishima had also seen the contracts between you and the lawyer, and the amount that he was paid to be your attorney was not large at all.

The mass majority of the funds you earned were always funneled towards charities and organizations you trusted to help people in need — in fact, it was almost 80% of your total earnings. A meek, barely larger than 20% was split between you, your lawyer, Kimiko, your music crew, and any other unforeseen expenses. The lawyer was also in a situation where he was not in demand with clients, and if you weren’t heeding his expensive tag, he needed a new contract with you.

A contract he was always demanding to discuss with you that you denied to change.

Attacks tended to happen days after you and the lawyer tumbled, not enough to rouse suspicion if you weren’t looking, but Kirishima was. He just needed damning evidence now.

Something.

Anything.

And for some reason, his gut was screaming at him that something big was going to happen tonight, that tonight was going to be the last attack—the one to end everything.

So he had told everyone about it. Kimiko, the security at the JRA’s, even you. It made him nervous.

It made his hand sweat, the gun strapped to his thigh feeling like hot iron as he stood about as you laughed with your makeup crew.

Kirishima swore, promised, and vowed he would protect you.

He was going to.

And when the gold dress was tied to your body, fitting you beautifully, Kirishima found himself unable to look away like strands of your hair framed your temples.

“What do you think, Kiri? Will I be on the Best Dressed List?” you asked, tearing Kirishima’s attention away from the bodice and skirt of the dress. Your eyes were bright, hopeful, yearning for a positive reaction from him.

“How could you not be?” Kirishima admitted, his grin toothy, and he shifted against the wall.

“You’ll make me blush,” you grin back, eyes batting just a bit as you clasp your hands together. It takes everything in Kirishima to keep from striding across the space between the two of you and kissing you silly. “Are we ready to go?”

Kirishima wet his lips, unwillingly tearing his gaze from you, and whispers into the intercom.

“Ready to move out?”

“We’re all clear.”

Straightening back up, Kirishima smiled at you, his head motioning towards the door.

“Alright, y/n, let’s see you make some history?”

“Damn right I will.”

Kirishima smiled as he exited first, carving the path for you. 

Paparazzi were on you immediately, the lights flashing and terribly bright as he helped you through the throngs of them. His hand pressed to your back as they screamed demands, most of which you complied with until Kirishima stated that you would be late. You, unfortunately, couldn’t be late to the awards show.

Ushering you into the limousine, Kirishima follows in shortly after you, scrunching up in his seat as he sits opposite of you. However, your typical light and bright demeanor are gone; instead, you seem almost anxious as you open your handbag.

“You okay there?” Kirishima asks as he realizes you pulled out a distinctly obvious metal flask.

“Awards make me nervous,” you painfully admit; you're weakly smiling as you knock back a shot of the drink. “I hate winning and losing; the alcohol makes me less… of a wreck. Do you want some? I think it’s apple soju, I don’t know, a good luck gift from Kimiko.”

Kirishima grins, his eyes rolling as he decides to decline the drink. “Sorry, love, I think that I need to be completely sober for today.”

You scrunch your nose, obviously displeased, “Lame, who shows up to these awards sober?”

“Me,” Kirishima laughed, his head tilting back and scraping against the ceiling of the limousine. 

“Such a prude, sober, pervert,” you sigh, taking yet another swig before putting the flask back into your bag. 

“Such a brat.”

Just like every previous instance, your eyes seem to glow in glee at that name, your lips curling into a pleased smirk as you shrug. It's a sight that makes Kirishima’s mouth dry and heart racing. Fuck, he should not be thinking about fucking you in the limousine right now.

But before the heat in the limousine could simmer to one of undeniable boiling, you had arrived.

Kirishima cleared his throat, sending a quick wink your way as he exited the car first. The first stop was for him to join the lineup to guide you through all the different photo and interview sessions. No one wanted pictures of him emerging from the limo after all. 

There's a moment where after Kirishima closes the door, your eyes filled with worry and excitement as he winked goodbye, that things changed. He stood up, his eyes already scanning the area for anything suspicious, when he saw the all too familiar van.

T082-23.

His eyes widened, his head looking around for anyone else, but there was no one to help. No one could do anything as the car continued to drive away, disappearing from Kirishima’s line of sight. His heart hammered in his chest, and his hands instinctively went to his thigh. He had his firearm… he had it.

With nothing but a quick report to the head of security via his com, Kirishima pushed on ahead, waiting for your descent down the red carpet.

When you eventually emerged from the limousine, Kirishima found that at this moment, the entire world faded away as a gloved hand assisted you out of the vehicle. You were elegant, stunning, a realistic vibrant portrait within his world of greys. As you took photos for the cameras, he was by your side a few strides away as you talked to reporters.

You really came to life right now.

You were beautiful.

“For all the pain in the world that she is, she’s quite charming from a distance, huh?” a voice spoke to his side, and Kirishima froze. His eyes widened completely when he noticed that standing beside him was none other than the lawyer.

The lawyer was dressed in a nice suit, glasses perched on his nose, and for the first time Kirishima had seen, the scowl was not quite so hard.

He was here.

Every warning bell sounded in Kirishima’s head.

This was the man he was so sure was the reason behind your every attack. A man fueled by insufficient funding, a need for a new contract that would never be approved without your signature.

“What are you doing here?” Kirishima asked, subtlety never being something he was ever good with. “I’ve never seen you anywhere except to argue with Y/n about contracts. This doesn’t seem like the appropriate time to be discussing it.”

“Kimiko wanted me to give her a new contract proposal to give to y/n. However, to be fair, it’s quite easy for anything to come down to an argument with y/n,” he shrugs, and Kirishima watches a cloud of emotions pass between the man’s eyes. “At least between her and me, we’ve never gotten along, but I suppose that’s how it is for any type of family who works together.”

Wait.

“What?! Family member?!”

“Yes, I know it’s strange to believe. I am quite ugly, and she is not, but we’re family.”

Kirishima’s mind was racing now. It didn’t make sense. If he was family, why would he be in such pursuit of potentially murdering you? If you were family, he was sure that you would help out? If he needed a raise like he thought, wouldn’t you have helped?

There was no way you wouldn’t.

Was he wrong?

Who was it?

“Kiri!” your voice broke into his mind and tore him back to reality. You waved at him, then passed a stuck-out tongue to the lawyer in a teasing fashion. “Let’s go in?”

Kirishima looked over at the lawyer who greeted a woman, who was also walking down the red carpet, a celebrity he could name no less, with a warm kiss. 

Oh fuck.

He needed to call Kimiko; he was so very wrong.

You had won two awards so far, and at this very moment, Kirishima was being ushered back to his seat in the audience as you were being escorted to the main stage to perform your latest song. You had removed your gold dress for a black, sleek gown. Your lipstick changed to a dark red, and your hands trembled in the white lace gloves you wore.

“Oh, Kiri,” you wheezed almost, your hands shaking as the announcers on stage were announcing the last awards before your performance. “I’m getting nervous. What if I mess up or sing off-key? I’d be the laughing stock!”

Kirishima laughed gently, his hands easily encompassing your waist as he stilled your frantic moves. “Y/l/n y/n, if there is anything I know for sure about you is that you are one hell of a singer and a performer. The awards you’re nominated for tonight speak for themselves! You never fail at your performances, and even if you somehow manage to sing off-key, I’m sure that no one would notice! Your biggest fan in the world won’t notice, at least.”

Not more than seven days ago, when you had cried about the impending nerves of being an artist, Kirishima had come to claim the title of being your biggest fan in the world. It had made you chuckle through your tears before coming near a hysterical laugh as the two of you held each other close.

“You’re a nut, Kirishima Eijirou,” you laugh, hands resting on his lower ribs, but your smile was bright, warm. You paused a bit, fingers pulling at the fabric of his shirt. “I’ll sing just for you then, but I think I should take another swig of that soju.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Could you tell that Takeyama is completely drunk off her ass?”

“...she’s drunk?!”

“Exactly, I’ll be fine,” you breathe, taking a new smaller flask from the purse Kirishima was holding for you and taking the final swig. Your face contorts at the bitter liquid. “Ew, Kimiko really fucked me over with this one. Why is it blue?! Have you ever seen blue apple soju?!”

“No?” Kirishima startled, his eyes looking at the indeed splash of blue liquid tainting a small part of your gloves. “Who gave you that one? What happened with the other flask of yours?”

“Oh, Kimiko sent it along after I lost my other one; it’s her own flask,” you said before the backstage crew whisked you away to begin your set, and without you, Kirishima was sent to the audience.

Kirishima felt trapped as he was ushered into his seat, his eyes scanning the entire audience for something suspicious, a familiar face perhaps. His broad shoulders continued to bump into his neighbors, their disgruntled noises doing nothing to stop his worry.

“And now, Y/n,” came the strong voice of the male announcer, and the light dimmed.

Kirishima watched as the spotlight came down upon you, a golden halo of colors against your darkened gown as the instrumentals began to play in the background. And he saw you take a step forward, the building motifs suddenly silencing when you finally sang the first note.

Despite the panic arising in Kirishima, the unknown of who was behind it all, what was going to happen, he stilled at the unmatched strength and ambiance of your voice.

You sang as you did at every stage, to every audience.

There was a reason why you were considered a legend.

And then, with one last sound, one last melody, and your hand holding your microphone dropped. Your chest heaving, tears falling down your face, and the roar of the audience was silent. You looked through the audience, unable to see, but for some reason, you just knew where Kirishima was.

You smile.

But as the looming sounds begin to fill your ear again, you find that the world is hazy.

You swallow, eyes unfocused as you bowed, hurrying to leave the stage.

Kirishima watched as you took a final stumbling step off the stage, something he felt was going to be written off as you stepped on your dress. But his mind whirled.

The lawyer felt like a setup; the contracts made no sense, the blue soju.

How were they related?

What connected them?

“Oh, fuck,” Kirishima whispered, horrified, and immediately his finger pressed to his earpiece. “Find Y/n! Now!”

Kirishima was racing through the back of the venue, the announcers' voices still ringing through the dirty, bleak hallways. You had just won but was written off as being somewhere backstage; after all, the show must go on.

Voices screamed in his earpiece, each declining to have found you. No one had seen you after you stepped off the stage. No one knew who had taken you.

Kirishima noticed the doors closing at the end of the hallway, and with a dreading sense of doom, Kirishima removed the gun from his harness. And with the devil on his heels, he ran.

Kirishima panted as he looked before him.

You were passed out, draped limp, confused, and woozy against Kimiko’s body, and two men knocked unconscious beside them. To anyone else, it looked as if Kimiko had saved you, some guardian angel within this world, but if Kirishima’s gut meant anything, he knew better.

“Kirishima-san!’ Kimiko squeaked as Kirishima raised his gun, his body tense, unwilling to take a chance on her. “I don’t know what those two were doing! I was saving her, I swear!”

“Don’t do this, Kimiko,” Kirishima whispered, his head shaking. “I figured it out.”

There was a shift in Kimiko’s face at that; the scared unknowing hero melted into one of anger, resentment, one of someone who knew they had been outed.

“So, you figured it out,” she bitterly spoke, her arms that were supporting you from behind revealing to be a firearm of your own. “I didn’t expect you to.”

“I can’t say I figured out your reasoning; honestly, it doesn’t make sense to me, but I felt like it was you,” Kirishima carefully states, his heart roaring at the implied danger of the firearm against your chin. “Don’t do anything stupid, Kimiko.”

Kimiko stares, her lips forming a small o before changing into one of a large, near unattached grin.

“Anything stupid? If anyone is doing anything stupid, it's this selfish prick!” Kimiko spits, her arms tightening around you, making you whimper ever so gently in pain. “She thinks she’s so great, so rich, so smart! Just because she wastes most of her money on stupid shit like charity! Everyone thinks working for her is a dream, but they’re all blind idiots!”

Kirishima’s eyes widen as he notices the glazed, unfocused of your eyes as you shift your attention over to him. Were you listening?

“What’s wrong with the contract?” he asks, a small attempt to diffuse the situation.

“The fact she pays me next to nothing, and yet she works me half to death!”

“You have multiple clients, don’t you?” Kirishima splutters, unsure as to what was wrong. “Why is this one contract so important you wanted to frame her lawyer?!”

Kimiko laughs; it’s pitchy, almost hysterical as she bends over, your body slumping further onto the floor. “That was a lie! All a fucking lie! Do you know that I knew no one when I first started? Y/n is a name everyone wants. I don’t need to do anything to get her things! The world wants her! But the other clients? None of them stayed, none of them wanted me past a month! The salary was okay when she was a snot-nosed brat, but ten years later?! NO! She won’t fucking listen. She never fucking listens to anything but herself! So she has the option to give me the eighty percent, or fucking die here!”

Suddenly the gun in Kirishima’s hand feels like a ton, the skin on the back of his neck crawling and slicking with sweat.

“You know how much those charities mean to her,” Kirishima whispers. “She won’t do it.”

Kimiko trembles for a second, her arm holding the firearm lowering as she looks at the wall, shaking.

“Oh my god… you’re right,” Kimiko realizes, horror and uncertainty flashing across her face. “I guess… she has to die, oh my god, she has to die.”

At that moment, the world slowed down, and Kirishima swore he could see the atoms, the electricity flowing through the space between them. Kimiko’s arm holding the gun raising back up to your temple, her smile detached, horrific yet gleeful.

His body trembled as he doubted himself, his mind unsure if the finger on the trigger was going to be strong enough to fire away. Could he do it?

Was he ready?

Actually ready?

Save her, his past whispered.

Save her, his nightmares screamed.

Save her, his heart yelled.

Kirishima raised his arm, his focus blaring, his past just for a moment, forgotten.

BANG!

“The effects of the rohypnol have already worn out. Thankfully she wasn’t given a whole pill. If she experiences any nausea or throws up, please bring her back, should anything else happen, she’ll be okay.”

The words of the doctor rang in Kirishima’s ears. For tonight, they were going to be discharging you to him. Thankfully, it was all happening in Tokyo, so Kirishima’s apartment was near, and if Bakugou was true to his word, it was clean.

With the help of hospital security, he had managed to get your tuxedo concealed body into a car, and the two of you rode off to his apartment. You’ve been silent the entire time, eyes downcasted as you sit pressed to his side, feeling like a small child compared to him. You knew that he was much larger than you, a near two feet taller, but this felt unmatched. 

Kirishima’s jacket was warm around you, it’s sheer largeness another dress on your body, and despite the horrific turn of events, you were feeling warm. You couldn’t remember much of what transpired after stumbling off stage, but you did remember Kirishima bursting through the doors, a look of anger and fear blistering off his person in such a way that made you whimper when you remembered.

You remembered the onsen basically every night, cursing your stupid makeup team for interrupting a night that definitely would have ended with you fucking Kirishima. You cursed yourself for being a coward and not just saying fuck it and fucking him afterward despite the brief awkwardness.

He wanted you, it was clear as day, and you wanted him as well.

Tonight.

“Sorry about how small my apartment is, or if it’s messy, I don’t actually know if my friends have been keeping up with it,” Kirishima apologized, guiding you into the apartment by the small of your back. “You’ll be safe here tonight, and I promise we can get back to your own place tomorrow!”

“Oh, don’t apologize, it’s okay,” you smile, feeling flushed as you cross the entryway to the apartment. His apartment, despite not being home in so long, is clean. The halls aren’t messy, and a hint of lavender is saturated to the air. The dim hallway lights were barely bright enough to cause you to squint as it was dark out. “Thank you for having me tonight, especially after everything.”

At the hospital, you had been given a pair of sweats and a cotton t-shirt. The change in outfit from your event dress was definitely needed, and even though you were sure your makeup was streaked down your face, you felt good hidden in the depths of Kirishima’s jacket.

“Are you hungry?” Kirishima asked, handing over his guest slippers, which you gratefully accepted. “I might have some microwaveable food leftover.”

“Ramen doesn’t sound too bad,” you admit as Kirishima unbuttons the first few buttons on his white dress shirt. You were instantly captivated by the movement, your eyes shifting back to his face when he began to walk off towards the kitchen.

Kirishima talked warmly, keeping the conversation going merrily and bright throughout the entire time in the kitchen. He undoubtedly knew you weren’t entirely okay, and at moments like this, you were entirely grateful for his sweet personality. 

To be fair, you knew that you had been quite unfair to Kirishima in the beginning. Looking back at the first entire month of knowing him, you were horrified and impressed that Kirishima didn’t demand to be dropped. You had been selfish, stubborn, a bottom line brat, and he took it day after day. It wasn’t that you disliked him back then; hell, you had been in a near state of delirium when he entered the door during your first meeting because you had no idea such huge men existed to the caliber of his hotness.

But you resisted and might have been harsher than needed.

It was okay now; after all, if he was genuinely bitter about that entire month still, the onsen said otherwise.

It didn’t take long for your stomach to be filled with warm broth, soft boiled eggs, and ramen noodles. Kirishima did, in fact, have ramen, fresh eggs, and some vegetables. In a grand act of preparing you the most sufficient dinner he could, Kirishima presented this under budget ramen and laughed when you said it was terrific.

But it was growing late.

The two of you still sat at his table that was full of a card game, your empty ramen bowls, and cups of water. The clock on the oven read 23:38, and the city lights were slowly dying.

“Are you ready for bed?” Kirishima eventually asked you. 

You looked up from your joined hands; your fingers had been playing with his thick and long fingers for some time now. The apartment grew steadily quieter as you studied and attempted to memorize each callous and scar on his hands. They were definitely marked and nicked, the sign of the warrior he once was.

“Depends on the bed,” you tease, lips rising into a small smile as you compare your much tinier hands than his. Your fingertips barely passed the edge of his palm. “What does a big guy like you sleep in? A twin? Tatami mat?”

Kirishima laughed, his hands twisting in yours, wrapping it around so that he raised your hands up to press a kiss to the center of your palms. 

“A futon, brat,” Kirishima explained, his smile small but sharp with his humor. “Let’s get you to bed?”

You frown. 

“Where will you be sleeping then?”

“My couch is just fine.”

“I’m sure your stuffing in a trash bag had holes in it.”

“That’s okay,” Kirishima laughed, standing up and quickly taking you to your feet as well. “It’s just for a night, I’ll live.”

Your face warmed immediately as he guided you down the hallway of his apartment before finally coming into what was definitely his room.

Kirishima’s scent was faint in this room, cinnamon, wood, and warm spices. It made your eyes flutter as you observed his room from the entryway as he began to set up the room. 

His eye for interior decoration was quite… different. You smiled brightly as you glanced around; the diverse and rather boyish decorations around the room warmed your heart. It seemed exactly like what you would think of for Kirishima. 

“Well, that’s all!” Kirishima exclaimed, his hands landing on his hips in triumph as he looked around. “The bathroom is the next door over, and I’ll leave a toothbrush out for you. I also left out a new t-shirt of mine if you want to change!”

You nod some more, watching as Kirishima seems unsure of what to do next. He looks around, coughs a bit before nodding.

“Okay, I’ll be leaving—”

“Um, can we talk?” you interrupt, arms wrapping around your body. “I have some things I want to say.”

“Oh, sure!”

“You can sit,” you say, motioning toward the bed. “I have a few things to get off my chest.”

Kirishima pauses for a bit, his eyes looking you over before he eventually nods, and he sits down. The bed slightly creaks under his weight, and you feel your body warm-up at the sound. You want to hear the bed creak more, to rock under the weight of you and him pressed against the sheets as you cried his name.

“What is it?” he asks gently, observing you.

“I just…” you huff, words failing you, your tongue feeling heavy. “I wanted to say thank you for saving me.”

“It was my job to do that,” Kirishima smiled warmly, his arms crossing again.

He was relaxed.

“I mean, I can’t even begin to believe that it was Kimiko who was behind all that, even though we know it was… I know it was,” you trail off, shivering slightly as you remember your ex-managers demented laugh in your ear. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“Nothing would’ve happened to you,” Kirishima spoke with finality. “I promised to myself at the first meeting I was going to protect you, hell the entire world would. You’re not going to be taken down by pathetic people like that, not you.”

“Really?”

“One hundred percent.”

“I feel like I should repay you in some way, though,” you rub the back of your neck, eyes fluttering just the slightest bit flirtatious. Kirishima looked at you with full mooned eyes, his arms unfolding and his palms resting onto the bedspread.

“You repay me plenty already,” came his whispered answer, so quiet, so pure you almost smiled. “You don’t have to do anything.”

Your tongue pushes past your lip, wetting the drying skin as you take a step toward him. The shoulders of the jacket slowly fall from your own shoulders, pooling just above your elbows as you stop before him, hands resting daintily on his broad shoulders.

“And what if I want something?” you ask, finding yourself stemming with energy as his legs part, allowing you closer access to him. 

You step in closer and closer until your outer thighs are ghosting against the inner part of his.

“I think it’s in our contract for me to do everything that you request if I remember correctly,” Kirishima whispers, his bright clear red eyes turning a burnt shade: dark and ever consuming. 

“And if I want you to finish what you started over at the onsen?” you press, fingers curling against the muscles of his shoulders before locking behind his neck.

His nose was brushing against yours, cold yet burning against your own skin.

“I’ll gladly show you what I wanted to do that night,” he grunts, eyes deadly, and for the first time, his hands held your waist.

You took a second to recover, your skin sparking with the electricity of his touch, and you suppressed a shiver as you opened your eyes.

“Do it,” you cement your fates, “coward.”

And just like that, in a movement so euphoric, Kirishima’s mouth crashed against yours.

His mouth was hot, dangerous against yours -- a live wire sparking with uncontrollable energy and heat as your mouths danced. Hot puffs of air were passed between your mouths, your fingers shaking with an undeniable release of tension and want. 

The kiss was sloppy, desperate, so needy with unspoken frantic determination to fuck each other until the other could no longer move. 

Kirishima’s hand removed the jacket from your arms, letting the expensive material fall onto the floor with a heavy thud. Despite the lack of warmth the clothing provided, the feeling of Kirishima’s hands rubbing against your bare arms sent your mind spiraling.

“Get on the bed,” Kirishima commands against your mouth. “Let me fuck you.”

The words were nearly embarrassingly desperate, but the tone of his voice spoke of the absolute domination he wished to assert on you. He wanted you in one exact way, and you had a feeling you knew what it was. But if he had been paying attention, Kirishima should already know that getting you to listen was not easy.

“No,” you grin against his mouth.

Kirishima pulls away instantly, his lips red and swollen as he replays your word in his head. He looks frazzled, absolutely delirious already at the simple, passion-filled makeout. As soon as his eyes clear away the fog, your grin drops, and instead, you look at him with fierce determination and defiance. 

“No?” he repeats.

“No,” you confirm.

Your chest feels light, your head spinning as the hands on your waist tighten, and his eyes flash dangerously. The tip of his tongue pushes past his lips before quickly disappearing again. 

“Of course, you’re a brat in bed too, such a fucking princess,” Kirishima shakes his head, but his mouth curving into a shark-like grin. 

Menacing, promising, sending chilling shivers down your spine.

The world spins faster than you can keep up, your mouth opening to shriek as Kirishima easily lifts you up, and has you lying against his lap. 

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, princess,” Kirishima begins, his large fingers hooking into the waistband of the sweats you have on and the panties you’re wearing. “My princess gets rewards for being good. If she can behave properly, she gets to be fucked with dick, her pussy gets to be fucked just the way she pleases.”

You can’t help but stifle a moan that threatens to spill out with his words and the way his hands move down the curve of your ass, exposing the naked skin to him. The waistband of both your panties and sweats stay high up your thighs, and it’s almost embarrassing to know you’re still so clothed despite what’s to come.

“And just what does the Sergeant do to bad girls?” you ask, unable to keep your tongue down, your hips rolling against his lap in undeserved friction.

Unexpectedly, abruptly, a hand comes down harshly onto your bare ass.

The contact is rough, stinging against your ass as you cry out in slight pain.

The hand not currently rubbing a warning circle into your ass twists the hair at the top of your head, lifting your head up so that your ear could near his mouth.

“Bad girls get punishments. They get what I want to give them. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Holy shit,” you whimper, heat flaring between your thighs at the thought of Kirishima doing anything to you regardless of if you were good or bad. You rut your ass back against his hand, longing for a heavier touch, a plea for something more.

“What does the princess want?”

“Nothing,” you bite, and the crashing smack of another spank has you moaning loudly at the stinging pleasure-filled pain. 

“You moaning like a whore at a simple spank says otherwise,” Kirishima chuckles darkly, his fingers pinching your stinging ass as your body bucks against him. He spanks you again, again, and again. Each slap is intentful, powerful, wanting to get you to admit what you want, and you cry against your hands each time, your eyes fluttering as the pain feels good. 

“Of course, a slut like you would be getting off on this,” Kirishima seems amused, his thick finger pressing to the slit of your cunt, spreading your dripping essence against your cunt. He presses against your entrance with just the tip of his finger, and you shriek in a sound for more, your hips jerking backward to get his finger into you, to fuck you with those thick fingers to do something about the growing desperate heat. 

“Kirishima!” you scream, your body sweating and twisting on his lap, desperate to find some way to get him to finger fuck you. 

“Ah, there we go,” he sighs in delight as his fingers swirl at your entrance, increasing the teasing and making your mind spin. “Tell me what you want, brat.”

“You!” you wail, two of his fingers carting between your wet, sloppy heated lips. They graze your clit, stimulating you further as you can do nothing but instinctively jerk against his hold, trying to get him to give you the needed pleasure to build up to an orgasm. “I want you to fuck me so good! Please, Sergeant, please, I want you to fuck me until I can’t remember anything but your name.”

“But you haven’t proven to be a good princess,” Kirishima tuts, his hands disappearing from your pussy despite your crying pleas. His hand grabs your ass, though, massaging the abused skin, grasping it tightly.

You moan, embarrassed at the sensation of his massive hand easily cupping your ass cheek, your fingers fisting into the fabric of his pants as you shake your head.

“Are you going to prove that you’re good?” he asks you, his tone like that of a parent chastising a child. “Gonna prove to me that you can be good?”

You shake pathetically against his legs, but you can’t keep yourself from shaking your head. You can’t prove to him that you would be.

“I can’t!” you whimper loudly, your body twisting on his lap to look up at him, your eyes filled with tears and pleading need. Kirishima looked down at you with lust filled eyes and an undeniable need to be followed.

“You can’t?” he repeats, his head tilting, eyes narrowing, and his fingers dug into your ass. “Or you won’t?”

You tremble on top of him, unable to answer because you weren’t ready to hand over the reins just yet. You didn’t want to submit so fast, you wanted to make his own head dizzy with need but the stubbornness to continue punishing you the way he was promising.

“I won’t,” you gasp, eyes fluttering at the way he finally drops your head.

You gasp loudly as you find him shoving you off his lap, and with your panties and sweats sitting so awkwardly high on your legs, you find yourself tumbling off his lap and onto the floor.

“Guess if you don’t want to behave, I’ll treat you like some fucking pussy pocket and dispose of you once I’m done,” Kirishima easily breathes, and you look up at the now standing man as he tears his shirt off.

Your mouth waters, your cunt throbbing at the sight of the rippling muscles and dark lines of his tattoos on his upper body. You watch fascinated, like one does to a masterpiece, as he undresses until he’s in nothing but his socks. And at the sight of his dick, you can feel at once all the blood in your flushed face drop directly into your throbbing cunt.

He was fucking enormous, his girth barely fitting into his hand, and the angry red head spilled its precum against his abs. A black happy trail connecting Kirishima’s abs to his vein throbbing cock.

Holy fuck, he could quickly kill you with that.

Kirishima doesn’t ask any questions as he watches your awkwardly dressed state of a body on the floor. His head is tilted upwards, a small pleased smile on his face as he looks down on you, his hand slowly, leisurely fisting his cock as you can do nothing but stare.

You make some insane noise at the back of your throat at this sight, your thighs trembling with need, and you're pushing off your side, your ass burning, and your balance off as you open your mouth, offering all you could to him.

And thankfully, Kirishima allows it.

He’s much too tall for you to suck him off on your knees, so he sits back down onto the bed, letting you scamper between his legs, mouth open wide like some needy pet.

“Such a good little slut,” Kirishima sighs, sinking his cock into your wet, hot mouth. “Such a fucking cockwhore, all it took was a single glance for you to lose your will.”

You whine against his dick, your jaw tight with the stretch, your tongue lapping so desperately around the cock that was no more than halfway in yet couldn’t go in any further.

“Suck me right, and I’ll reward you by fucking that pretty little pussy of yours,” Kirishima grunts, his fingers pressing into the side of your neck as he ruts his hips up into your mouth, shoving his cock even further into your mouth. “And don’t you dare look away from me while you suck me off.”

It feels like fire.

His cock driving down your throat hurts, the taste of his salty pre-cum slathering all over your tongue and dripping out of your mouth with the saliva you can’t control. His cock hits the back of your throat, and you continue to bob your head, continue to fuck him with your throat as animalistic, praiseworthy noises begin spilling from Kirishima’s mouth.

You whimper at the sight of his head dipping back, and you nearly whine when he shoves the fingers he had gathered your juices on into his mouth. He moans at the contact and with his pleasure with your actions so obvious as you choke against his girth. That was hot, holy fuck, you wanted him to fuck you, please fuck you. 

Your eyes close as he begins to fuck faster into your mouth, his delight in hearing you choke around him his driving force. Tears start pouring from your eyes despite your best efforts, your throat and inner thighs burning with lust and need as Kirishima groans, his cock twitching deep in your throat.

Slap!

“Hey!”

Slap!

You gag harshly as your cheeks sting with his heavy slap, your teeth grazing underneath his cock, right against a thick, twisting vein.

“Did I tell you to close your eyes?” Kirishima practically growls, his hands grasping the back of your neck, the other one slapping you across the face yet again. “No. I said… fuck… I said, keep your eyes on me!”

Tears weep down your face, your eyes struggling to keep focus on him as he continued to fuck deep and intensely into your mouth, shoving himself further into you until you could feel his thighs grazing your chin. Oxygen wasn’t flowing anymore; your gags and chokes the only time the burning element could manage to flow through you, but Kirishima doesn’t seem to care. He seems to delight in the way you are, despite it all, are moaning and looking at him in a pleading way for more.

More, you plead.

And he delivers. 

Kirishima pulls his still hard, not yet cummed, dick out of your mouth and stands. 

You splutter with the sudden intake of oxygen to your lungs, burning you from the inside out as you splutter on the ground.

“W-What’s going on?” you hoarsely stammer, your jaw and throat aching from its prolonged abuse. “E-Ei?”

However, Kirishima seems dead set on getting you naked, and you squeal in flustered excitement as he rips the shirt off of you and his mouth pressing against yours again. His mouth crashes against yours, and you moan into his mouth immediately.

His tongue curls into your mouth and your tongues press and rub against each other. Each passing second growing more desperate, needier, more intense as your clothes are ripped one by one off your body.

“Holy fuck, I’ve wanted you for so long,” Kirishima nearly whines, his mouth trailing down your neck, biting and sucking against every centimeter of skin he passed. “Wanted to fuck you against the wall, in my bed, and now I get to do that.”

“Please, please, fuck me, please,” you beg, your voice bordering a wail as your arms wrap around his neck, letting him lift you up off the floor. Despite you being so much smaller than him that when he held you to him, your cunt wasn’t pressed to his angry leaking cock, you continued to desperately roll your hips against his abs, the friction welcomed and easing the building pressure. It was an action conveying just what you wanted. “I need you in me, Sergeant!”

“Just cuz… holy fuck,” Kirishima breathes ragged, his body twisting around, and you cried when the cold sheets pressed into your back. “Imma fuck you, Imma… god, just fucking watch.”

Your head thrashed back onto the pillow as Kirishima’s teeth sunk into your collarbone, then captured your sensitive nipples, his fingers dancing against your clit and teasing your center. 

“Now!” you cry, fingers digging into his shoulder. “Put it in!”

This time, Kirishima didn’t need to be told twice.

His larger body was suddenly pressed entirely against yours, dwarfing you immediately as your arms wrapped around his back as his cock slammed into you. You screamed at the sudden intrusion, your pussy stretched beyond its typical limits by his girth, his size, his power.

Your cunt throbbed around him, your face buried within his pecs as you, despite the searing pain, shove your hips up towards him. Fucking into him, sucking him further into you.

“Holy shit,” Kirishima groans, “you’re amazing.”

“Talk less, fuck me more!” you screech, your body spasming, twitching so hard from the splitting pleasure and the lava pit in your stomach, and Kirishima does that exactly.

His hips begin to meet yours in equaled power, slamming into you so that the bed creaked beneath you. He fucked you until he had to hold a hand on your hip so you could stay there, and you kept a hand on the wall to continue to push yourself down onto his cock.

You screamed with pleasure, cried for more, Kirishima’s shark-like smirk getting bolder, darker, hotter with every slam of his hips until his tattooed right arm shot down. His hand wrapped around your throat, choking you.

“You’re so loud, princess,” Kirishima moans, clearly liking your loud noises, “but you’re going to wake everyone in Tokyo.”

His hand around your throat is enough to have your legs trembling around his waist, your choked and muffled moans and splutters drowning out even more as he pressed a kiss onto you. He kissed you, licking your mouth, and devouring your every word and thought. Your core twisted, tightened, and burned. It throbbed and clenched with it’s impending orgasm, and your body began to tense to the heavens as his cock throbbed deep within you.

“Who saved you?”

“E-Ei did,” you garble.

“Who’s fucking you?”

“E-Ei is!”

“Who’s going to fucking cum when I tell her to?”

“Me! Fuck, me!”

Kirishima laughs, his arms wrapping around your waist, and in one final, fleeting burst of strength, fucks into you with his own power, needs, and desire, and you can only take it. “Cum, princess,” he whispered almost sweetly against the top of your head, and it was all over. Your teeth sink into his chest as you scream, a blinding white light erupting through your vision as you cum around his cock.

Kirishima whimpers, his cock still pushing deep into your cunt, until you can feel the warm spill of his seed in your womb.

He collapses to the side of you, taking you with him so that you were resting on his sweaty chest.

“Holy shit,” Kirishima whispered after a bit, your body already warm and too lethargic to notice the star-like tone to his voice. “That was fucking… holy shit.”

“Does this mean you like me?” you half tease, half wonder.

There’s a pause, a silence, and you wonder if maybe he had fallen asleep.

But he didn’t.

“I’ve been in love with you for some time now, I think,” he admits, his hand beginning to rub small circles into your back.

You find that despite the exhaustion, warmth floods your cheeks.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I guess we’re going to have to discuss a more… permanent and maybe different contract tomorrow morning, huh?”

Kirishima chuckles, and you find yourself smiling into his chest.

“I think we do.”

#kirishima x reader #kirishima smut #bnha #bnha x reader #mha

[apocalypticgargoyle]

Gene... My baby mama... I need... More alt!dream... Whatever you got fr. I just need more I'm.. I love him (probs not as much as you) but I love him

You're in luck bc I'm running on rip fuel for him. [ALSO I WROTE THIS BEFORE EVERYONE DID THE TECHWEAR STUFF FOR HIM I'M SORRY. I'LL GET IT IN NEXT TIME. I PINKY SWEAR.]

𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐄𝐃. ♘ 𝐚𝐥𝐭!𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 (𝟏𝟖+)

pairing: alt!Dreamwastaken x fm!reader

warnings: smut (18+), language, semi-public sex, light mentions of needles, domination

previous part ♘ fanart that i can't stop crying over

recommended listening: Hi Frequency by Vague002

The bus swayed slightly, your grip on the cool bar tightening to keep you from knocking into Clay as it turned. The dark city outside the windows bustled with sparkling lights, catching your eye every few seconds. As more people filed into the cramped space, Clay grabbed your hand, looping your arms around his waist and smugly grinning as you fought not to blush. He brushed a strand of hair behind your ear. “Will this be your first time in a parlor?” He asked, voice low and raspy as he whispered to you, not wanting to disturb the other members of society who just wanted to get home after a long day of work.

You nodded your head, making him chuckle. You knew it would be a different experience, mainly because it was taking place during the tattoo shops “after hours,” which Clay had only briefly explained the benefits of attending. “What are you getting done again?” You asked, moving so your hands were holding onto his arm instead, fingers brushing against the exposed skin peeking from beneath the cut-up shirt under his dark jacket.

He shrugged. “I couldn’t decide. Why don’t you pick?” He joshed, smirking at the way your eyebrows raised.

“I don’t want to be responsible for a mark on you,” you murmured, making him snort.

He hooked his fingers into the neckline of his shirt, stretching it down enough to reveal the litter of hickeys peppering his skin that you had left the night before. Your eyes widened as you swatted away his hand, looking around carefully in hopes that no one had seen them. He looped an arm around your shoulders, loving the fact that you were so worried about the crowd when all he wanted to do was fluster you.

He pressed his lips to your cheek, the warmth of his body encompassing you. “I love it when you get all blushy,” he teased. “Seriously though, you should pick. I won’t look at it if I don’t like it,” he snarked.

You groaned lightly. “Clay, come on.” He brushed his lips against yours.

“I trust you, sweetheart,” he cooed almost mockingly, his nose moving to press into your hair.

You chewed on the inside of your cheek, trying your best to remember what was already on his body. You thought about the impending reality that whenever he saw the new tattoo, his mind would linger on you, and for some reason, heat traveled to your ears at that thought. “Um… what about a bird?” You asked, voice uneasy as if on eggshells.

His face twisted into a pleased smile. “A bird?” He repeated. You shrugged beneath his arm, making him chuckle. “I like that. George likes doing bird tattoos too, so you might just make his night,” he added, his praise and approval making your stomach fill with confidence. He pulled you closer, his lips brushing against your shoulder. Your mind began to forget what the two of you probably looked like to the other people as his scent invaded your senses. “Will you hold my hand while I’m in the chair?” He joked.

You scoffed. “Are you gonna cry?” You teased, making him chuckle.

“No, I’m just clingy,” he answered without skipping a beat. Your grin was hidden in the soft corduroy of his jacket.

The tattoo parlor was nothing like you had expected. The door was locked behind you after a bouncer let the two of you in, the man leading you two up a staircase and into a dimly lit room. The sound of heavy metal music and the buzz of tattoo guns swirled together, echoing off the dark brick walls. You slipped your hand into Clay’s as he talked to the receptionist, your eyes attempting to focus on one detail instead of letting the atmosphere overwhelm you.

The thick layer of smoke above your heads made you scoff, realizing it was coming from the opposite corner of the shop, a hookah lamp sitting on a coffee table like an outstretched octopus. The people around it seemed to be discussing something rather intense, their haircuts sharp and defining almost as if they stepped out of some kind of alternative fashion magazine. There were three tattoo artists, each with a white lamp focusing on their work as they carried on to the beat of the music.

Clay’s description of the place flashed into your mind, making you realize just how off the cards the parlor actually was. Clay took a toothpick from the receptionist’s desk, taking it between his white teeth before being waved down by a shorter man with dark hair across the floor. You followed closely behind him as Clay greeted the man; you quickly realizing that this was the famous George.

As Clay shrugged out of his jacket, George pulled out a binder, standing beside you as he flipped to a page with scattered drawings of different flight poses of birds. Your eyes drifted away from the page as Clay’s arms came into view. His old t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off was doing wonders for his biceps. Before you knew it, the two of you agreed on a mix of a few designs resembling a crow and Clay was laying on his back with his hand tucked behind his head. The spot he was filling was in the dead center of the flesh of his upper arm; a spot that George had grumbled about being awkward to reach, especially on someone as large as Clay.

You watched closely with curious eyes as George began to tattoo the design on Clay’s arm. Clay’s other hand was wrapped around the back of your elbow as you leaned on the chair at Clay’s side. His finger pads drew circles into your skin as you asked George about how he got into tattooing, making small talk here and there.

You liked George, mainly because he was quiet until he conjured up some kind of relentless backhanded comment. His tattoos revolved around a giant tree stretching from his back and down his arms. You wondered how long he had to sit for it and what the healing process was like. As he worked, his teeth played at his snake bite piercings, his dark eyes focused intently on the work in front of him.

Clay switched his toothpick to the other side of his mouth, his hand tightening around your arm with a small groan as George reached a sensitive spot. “Don’t be such a pussy,” he grumbled, continuing his work. He stopped, cleaning off some of the sprayed ink and filling a new cap with grey. “You have any work, pretty girl?” He asked you, voice low and charming.

You shook your head, earning a small tsk from him. “This is the closest she’s been to a tattoo gun,” Clay prided, making George sarcastically raise his eyes.

“A total virgin, huh?” He joked, winking at you. “Dream’s not corrupting you, is he?”

You chewed the inside of your cheek trying not to blush. “I’m trying,” Clay leered, smirking at you with his smug ego hinting at his lips.

George bit back a laugh. “Don’t get horny in my chair,” he muttered, eyes trained on the lines he was scaring into Clay. “Speaking of, I heard you got busted up by Punz, and by the looks of it… seems right,” he commented, gesturing to Clay’s eye that seemed to have started fading finally.

Clay let out a dry laugh. “His ribs are still healing,” you added, making George smirk with a shake of his head.

“You know what all that’s about right?” George asked you, taking his foot off the pedal to grab more paper towels from his desk. You looked up at Clay whose jaw tense as he chewed on the toothpick. After you shook your head, George continued. “Punz’s sister is stupidly in love with Dream,” he plopped back in his seat, swiveling his chair, and drawing a hand through his locks, revealing the bleached undersection. You had the fleeting mental image of him tying his hair back to reveal it.

He pulled on a new glove. “Madly in love, huh?” You pried, twisting your chair closer to Clay’s shoulder. Clay rolled his eyes at the fact as if he had been bugged about it for years. “You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend, Clay,” you teased, and he looked up at you with a tired expression, making you bite back a giggle.

After George finished, you followed Clay through the door, breathing in the fresh air; or as fresh as it could be in the midst of the city’s industrial square. Clay’s fingers knitted together with yours as he led you down an alleyway, flicking aside the toothpick. You chewed on your lip in anticipation before he pinned you against one of the walls. His devious grin sent shivers down your spine as you looked up at him.

You swallowed. “Shouldn’t you take it easy? Let your arm heal a bit?” You asked, voice coming out in a soft whisper as his lips pressed against your neck. “Won’t it hurt a bit with your ribs, too?” Your heart hammered in your chest at the fact that someone could turn the corner and catch the two of you.

He chuckled against your skin, slipping his hands beneath your skirt to grip your ass. “I like the pain,” he mused, tongue grazing against your skin as he pulled your hips against his. He kissed you hungrily as if not being able to press his body against yours for that hour was too much for him. His hand dropped to wrap around the back of your knee, moving his own leg to prop your thigh up against his hip as your hands dug into his hair.

The friction from his jeans made you moan into his mouth as his hand moved beneath your shirt, fingers fitting beneath your bra to palm your breast. He mumbled praises against your lips at how good you made him feel and how beautiful you were.

He turned you, your hands planting against the coarse brick as he ground his hips against you. You bit your lip, trying not to be loud enough to draw attention to the two of you, which seemed to be the last thing on Clay’s mind as you heard him unbuckle his belt behind you. You could practically picture his cocky grin, controlling eyes set as his hand gripped onto your hips, shoving your underwear to the side. “You were so much fun to show off tonight,” he chided darkly, lips brushing against your shoulder. “Such a good girl.”

As he pushed into you, one of his hands moved to knot into your hair. He moaned at the feeling of you clenching around him, tugging on your hair as he pulled your hips back against his. A low grunt tumbled from his lips as he set his rhythm, basking in the fact that you were secretly ready for him to ruin you as soon as you stepped into the parlor.

His fingers moved to wrap around your neck, the thought of his tattooed hand tightening around your pristine skin sent shivers through your body and heat flushing your cheeks, the tension in your body tightening. As he pressed you closer against the wall, you thought about the power he had over you; his height and build would make it easy for him to break you if he wanted, yet even as he pounded into you like he wanted you to forget your own name, the restraint he showed was enough to send you over the edge if you let yourself divulge in the thought.

Clay pulled out of you, only to turn you, your shoulders hitting the wall again with a soft thump as he hoisted you up ever so slightly, thrusting up into you as his hand dig into your thigh, the other resting against the brick beside your head. Your arms looped beneath his jacket, raking down his skin as you held onto him.

He groaned as your thighs tightened around him, making his hips stutter as if he were trying not to let himself finish too early. He dug is face into the crook of your neck, burying his teeth in your neck to stifle his grunts of your name. Your head tilted back against the brick, hand moving to tighten around the wrist that was beside your head for some kind of anchor.

His hand wrapped around your waist, driving himself deeper into you, brushing the part of you that needed him the most. You moaned, carding your fingers into his hair as he pressed his lips to yours roughly, wanting to taste your pleasure as it washed over you from his movements.

You tugged on his hair, making his cock throb inside of you, him finishing inside you with a low groan, his hips snapping against yours to stimulate a reaction from you. The feeling of his sloppy pleasure as his movements lost their rhythm sent your hips grinding against his, his teeth marking your shoulders as a reminder of his work on you.

Your toes curled, finally reaching your orgasm as he murmured dirty expressions of him ruining your pretty clothes against the wall. As he pulled out of you, your knees felt weak, threatening to buckle beneath you. You tried not to give off how much he had trashed you, but the warmth snaking down your thighs and your bliss-ridden mind proved otherwise.

Long story short, the bus ride home was rather interesting.

Dream Taglist: (follow this link to be added :))

@karlkitten @pluto-dizzz @more-like-reyna @honk-izzie-was-taken @marrymetheonott @froggyy06 @ghoulandghost @savingpluto @marshmallow-babe @drunkpumpkincake @unstableye @tinyegg @behzzyboo @darphobic @twist3dtinkerbell @sparkletash @lindsayhunz @shroomieissmall @mintmochiii @clubfairy @aroyaldarknessblr @camerondiaz48104 @madsbbg @victory-is-here @rat-poisin

#dream x fem!reader #dream x reader #alt!dream #alt!dreamwastaken #dreamwastaken imagine #dreamwastaken smut #dreamwastaken fanfic #dream smut #dream imagine #dream x you #mcyt fanfiction #mcyt x y/n #mcyt x reader #mcyt smut

[signedaiko]

I want to resend one of my previous messages cuz I feel I rambled on that one way too much lol Hope that’s ok. My request is for your HCs for an unaligned bot that’s revealed to have the power to summon and create Energon, and how TFP bots and cons of your choice would react to such a sight. When said bot was found, their stasis pod was encased in Energon crystals. They were told about the war from their rescuers, and the impact of such news caused said bot to anxiously pace around. In doing so they were leaving a trail of Energon crystals that would grow wherever they stepped. However they didn’t notice until after the bots and cons of your choice pointed it out to them. In the past, the unaligned bot was a scientist and they gained their powers from a freak lab accident. As a trade off to such a power however they have no combat experience whatsoever.

Coffee Birb

Ratchet [Prime]

- Ratchet would not mistake who you were, a renowned scientist that dabbled in the medical field - He took significant doubt in your survival, as that would mean you went on for millions of years without being seen - After various scans, checks and a surprising resuscitation from yours truly, it was no doubt the bot that had seemingly perished so long ago - And with you came the only thing the doctor would ever consider a miracle; the power to create energon - Ratchet was careful with you, as you could be all sorts of fragile after such time - He would lecture any bot willing to be reckless in your vicinity - Being such a small team, there were many times you would insist on helping the team - But Ratchet was sure to keep you in base - Not only had you no war experience whatsoever, but you were also a walking combustible - Who knew what one laser could do with whatever trail you lead - Not to mention you were probably the most valuable cybertronian known to the universe - Both because of the energon and because you were a joy to have in the lab - Ratchet would never tell you that

Shockwave [Prime]

- What they found in the mines was at first thought to be a large energon cluster - But upon drilling and cracking through the ginormous crystal, something Cybertronian laid within - Your stasis pod was brought immediately to Shockwave - He took a great time picking each crystal from the device to ensure whoever was inside would not suffer from an explosion - And the scientist was filled with a temporary pride when he managed to salvage what he thought at the time to be a corpse - He was wrong - You burst upwards and smacked right into him moments before he was going to cut into your arm to analyze you further - He wasn't planning on keeping you alive as it would be a waste of energon - But he quickly realized that excuse was most illogical considering you created it - I like to think you both worked together a long while back, but he does not care to remind anyone of such

Soundwave [Prime]

- Your status pod crash-landed right near the Nemesis, so it was all easy to recover and bring on board - Knockout saw to your care when you were pulled from the rubble, and that was when Soundwave's interest piqued - No insignia, no identification node, no alt mode as seen by lack of transformation cog - Among all else, the TIC was an interrogations officer, so it was in his duty to interrogate you - Your designation was unmistakably the same one as the great scientist that fell just before the war had started - He lands you a position among their rank in the labs and has found you produce much more energon when content - Soundwave sees to it that you are protected in the Nemesis, but naturally, he would have seen whether he wanted to or not

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

Authors Note - I kind of went for the 'scientists' of the groups because I felt that opened a big door for possibilities here :)! Less focus on romance or anything here and more lore aspect of this because I realllyyyy like the prompt here!

#transformers #transformers x reader #tfp #transformers prime #soundwave #shockwave #ratchet #headcanons #transformer headcanons

[phoenixyfriend]

Auntie ‘Soka and Little Leia (and Rex)

The counterpart to Uncle Ben and Little Luke (Original Post, Chrono)

Listen. You all knew this was coming.

This got... very long and detailed and I’m going to have to clean it up and post to AO3. As in, this was supposed to be 2-3k and is literally ten times that long. It crossed 25k. And the initial section actually glosses over a bunch, actual fic-style writing starts at “That, of course, is when things get interesting.”

Warnings: discussion of various canon traumas (most relating to being child soldiers), general PTSD, several scenes featuring dissociation or panic attacks upon being triggered, and canon-typical violence.

Rated T, gen.

I still want there to be de-aging nonsense involved so Ahsoka is physically a late teenager despite having a solid two decades of field experience behind her (we’re pulling her from Malachor).

Leia, much like Luke, is now six. She just came from being a rebellion general. She is not happy about being a child. She was already short, this is just mean.  She’s a human espresso.

UNLIKE BEN, Ahsoka is not happy about this turn of events. Being seventeen-ish is not helpful in the outer rim. She’s a female togruta, young and healthy, and in the Outer Rim, caring for a small human child. Sure, she has her lightsabers and plenty of combat experience, and she can keep them safe, but she’s just one person, and a major target for those looking to make some quick cash. It doesn’t matter how good she is; she needs sleep at some point.

It makes my heart happy to treat Ahsoka and Rex as two halves of the same black ops specialist so you know what, he’s there too! He’s physically like... 10-12 in natborn, maybe. They’re not sure, because clones age weird. He’s moderately more useful than Leia (who is very competent but also physically six, and short for that age), but he’s still... very small.

Reminder that none of them have been born yet.

Ahsoka has a harder time explaining WHY she has children with her, since she's barely more than a kid herself, and clearly unrelated by species. She sometimes just says “Oh, my adoptive brother’s kids” since it’s kind of the truth for Leia and she’s not touching the actual truth about Rex with a ten foot pole.

Ahsoka definitely knows about Leia being a Skywalker, or at least has suspicions that Bail never outright confirmed but was conspicuously quiet about. She does tell Leia about it, but it’s not like that means anything, right? Just, you know, your dad was my teacher! I don’t have to tell you he became Va--oh shit, you already knew that part. Well, fuck. What do you mean he had a son? OH SHIT, PADME HAD TWINS.

Alt take for explaining why she’s got kids: She’s my foundling, I know her name as my child (Leia shut up!!!)

(Ahsoka can fake Mandalore. Sometimes.)

That said, there is... significantly less gambling and significantly more theft to get to Coruscant.

As previously stated, Ahsoka is a black ops kinda gal, and more importantly, she looks like a fairly attractive young woman in the Outer Rim, with two children in good health. She’s a target, and also not the kind of person one generally gambles with. If she does gamble, people get upset when she doesn’t lose, in ways they don’t get upset about Ben doing the same, because she’s, again, a cute teenage girl. It’s exhausting.

As things go, she largely ends up stealing from people who deserve it and/or smuggling herself and her charges into someone else’s ship. They’re small, they can hide. Sometimes she can get them all passage by working as a mechanic, she’s good at that.

Once they’ve got a handle on when they are, they have to decide on Names. None of them have been born yet, so technically they could use their own names without anyone Knowing. Rex and Leia might not even be born, depending on how successful they are at, you know, stopping the war and everything. Ahsoka, though, she’s going be born in two years, and there’s no reason to prevent it, so... she doesn’t want to steal baby-her’s name. That would be mean.

Leia is already calling her “Auntie ‘Soka” when she can for reasons like “selling the bit” and “manipulating adults” and “making us both feel better after we had a mutual breakdown about Anakin being Vader.” Ergo, she decides that whatever new name she picks better include that in some way, and decides on “Sokari” because it sounds pretty.

Overall, they don’t... they don’t actually make it very far before there’s an Incident. Again, teenager with small children. They spend a lot of time hiding out in space ports looking for an opportunity.

That, of course, is when things get interesting.

Specifically, Ahsoka spots a Mandalorian.

She doesn’t recognize the armor. She does recognize the sigil, and thinks ‘well, they’re more likely to help than some,’ because from what she’s heard, the Haat Mando’ade are Decent People Overall. Her view is a little biased, mostly on account of the sheer level of grudge she has against Kyr’tsad. It’s fine! The True Mandalorians have the same grudge, right? And Mandalorians like kids and Ahsoka hasn’t slept in five days and it’s fine. It’s fine! IT’S FINE.

“Oh shit,” Rex whispers, before she can suggest anything. “Oh fuck.”

“Stop cursing,” Leia hisses, elbowing him. “People are going to notice.”

“That’s the Prime,” Rex panics, mostly quiet. Ahsoka’s heart drops, because fuck is right. “That’s Fett.”

Leia isn’t impressed. Ahsoka just angles herself between Fett and Rex and hopes that he doesn’t see them. That’s just asking for trouble.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is in fact running on none sleep with left trauma, and doesn’t notice Fett walking up and dropping into a seat across from them until he’s actually done so, removing his helmet to glare a little more efficiently.

“Wanna explain why your kid has my face?”

Ahsoka later tells herself that he’s killed Jedi and that’s why he can sneak up on her, and that she can be forgiven some slip-ups with the exhaustion being what it is, and that she’s obviously going to be dealing with some emotional instability in light of the sudden return of teenage hormones and new forms of anxiety that are markedly different from those she was dealing with a few weeks ago.

What Ahsoka wants to say is “that’s kind of a long story,” or “maybe he’s a cousin,” or “kriff off, I don’t know you,” or maybe even “he’s a clone.”

What Ahsoka actually does is burst into tears, which is embarrassing for her, for Fett, for the kids, and for the entire rest of the bar.

It really is the straw that broke the eopie’s back. Even when she was actually this age, she didn’t exactly cry much. Objectively, Fett quasi-aggressively asking a valid question shouldn’t send her into a panic. She’s been through torture and worse. She shouldn’t be crying.

But she is, sobbing her eyes out with no control, and he’s just sitting across from her and looking uncomfortable while Rex wraps his little arms--oh Force he’s so small--around her, and both ‘children’ glare at Fett.

“So, I’m going to take it she didn’t kidnap you from a loving family or do something illicit with a blood sample,” Fett says, after it becomes obvious that Ahsoka’s not going to be ready to talk any time soon.

“She didn’t,” Rex says stiffly, with just the right emphasis for Fett to catch what’s implied. Ahsoka just keeps her head down, eyes pressed against the heels of her palms, trying to get her body to stop rebelling against her.

Fett’s eyes dart to Leia, who folds her arms and draws herself up, every bit the unimpressed princess. “My father claimed her as a sister, so she’s my Auntie ‘Soka.”

The man dithers a bit, the conversation clearly not going where he’d expected. “Right,” he says. “You--you’re all kids. I thought she was a little older, at least, but I didn’t have a good look at her face before.”

She is older, but actually admitting that is only going to make this worse, both for her pride and for her chances of making it out alive.

“Where are you staying?”

“What?” Leia bites out.

“You’re kids, you’re alone, and you’re clearly not okay if you were trying to hide the one with my face as blatantly as you did, and then... whatever this is, when I confronted you,” Fett explains. Ahsoka lifts her head to glare at him, but it’s probably not doing much with the way her eyes are rimmed with red and still wet. “Don’t give me that look, ad’ika, your kids looked as confused and horrified by that as the bartender did. They obviously didn’t think it was normal either.”

Well, kriff you too, Ahsoka thinks.

“And what do you mean by ‘blatantly,’ here?” Leia challenges. It’s adorable, but Ahsoka watched this tiny girl shoot a man last week, and wonders when people are going to start taking that seriously.

“There’s a lot of people in this galaxy, and I don’t exactly have the clearest memory of what I looked like at that age,” Fett says, slow and careful like he thinks they’re dumb. Ahsoka decides to chalk it up as being because Leia’s visibly six. “I would have thought it was just a coincidence if you hadn’t put in effort to hide him.”

Leia huffs, and Rex glares harder. Fett just sighs, like they’re all going to give him grey hairs.

“You can explain whatever the hell’s going on,” Fett says. “I’ll let you stay on my ship, there’s a spare bunk and you’re small.”

“For free?” Rex demands.

“A night on a bunk in exchange for information,” Fett clarifies. “We can negotiate from there.”

Ahsoka takes a few moments, notes that both of the others are waiting on her for the decision, and cringes. She doesn’t feel steady enough to carry that. She has to anyway.

“Rex?” she asks, voice rasping after the breakdown of the past few minutes.

“Yeah?”

“How much?”

He looks up at her, eyes calculating, and grimaces. “We don’t want Order 66. A warning is better, even if we... share information.”

She nods, and turns to Leia. “Any premonitions, princess?”

Leia glowers, cute and furious. “No.”

“No, don’t tell, or no, you aren’t getting any vibes about sharing info one way or the other?”

“The latter,” Leia clarifies, huffy to the last.

“Right,” Ahsoka says, and then just... hesitates. “Fett...”

“You’ve got conditions,” he guesses.

She bares her teeth in what could have, through a squint and perhaps a few drinks, been called an apologetic smile. “Just one, really.”

“Yeah?”

“No hurting, killing, or turning us in for bounties,” she says. “Any of us.”

“You’re children, I wouldn’t.”

She blinks at him, slow and careful. She hesitates. She reaches down, out of sight, sees him stiffen.

She unclips her sabers from her belt and puts them on the table.

His eyes are fixed on the weapons the second they enter his line of sight, and don’t move as he clearly realizes why she made the condition she did.

“I left years ago, because I couldn’t stay without it ruining me,” she says. Still slow. Still careful. She’s so tired. “But if I want to keep Leia safe, I have to get back to Coruscant.”

His eyes finally lift from the sabers, expression blank. “Just her?”

“Rex doesn’t have the same monsters coming after him,” she says. “If it were just me and him, I’d worry less. Leia’s a different kind of target.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith on the table by telling me that,” Fett says, voice flat and toneless. “Considering my occupation.”

“She’s a child,” Ahsoka says, feeling heavy and boneless. “Even with what I was and will be, even with what money you would get from the right buyer, you wouldn’t.”

“There are other risks.”

“There are.”

They stare at each other for too long, probably, and then Fett jerks as Rex kicks him under the table. The boys glare for a moment, and then Rex says, “If she weren’t good, I’d still be a slave to those who grew me.”

Fett blinks, and then nearly growls the word, “What?”

“She freed me,” Rex reiterates. “While I was trying to shoot her.”

Ahsoka lifts a hand and puts it on his far shoulder, pulling him into her side. She doesn’t meet Fett’s eyes again, because part of her is back on Mandalore, dodging her own soldiers and crying out as her family dies across the galaxy.

Fett breathes in. Breathes out. He puts a hand to his head, visibly frustrated. “Fine. A good Jedi kid, and two smaller kids, one of which is apparently in some way mine.”

Rex makes a face, which is fair, but also not helping.

“To the ship,” Ahsoka says, putting her sabers back on her belt and sliding out of the seat. “I’m... I’m Sokari.”

“You already know my name.”

“I do.”

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

Fett watches her like she’s a predator, which has the benefit of being accurate and slightly flattering. She lets other two take care of most of talking, and then Fett tells her to sleep first, and talk in the morning.

“You’re dead on your feet, jetii,” he snorts. “And that crying jag didn’t do you any favors. Sleep.”

So she does, and Fett doesn’t even wake her. He just lets her sleep. He watches her in the way of a guard. She sees him when she gets up to use the ‘fresher in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t even comment when she collapses right back into the mediocre cot she’s borrowed for the cycle.

Rex and Leia are safe, her hindbrain tells her, even in the depths of sleep. Her mind curls around theirs in the Force, and she trusts that they are here. They are not happy, but they are alive and unharmed, and that has to be enough.

When she stumbles her way to true wakefulness, groggy and loose-limbed, Fett greets her with caf.

“The kids wouldn’t let me near you,” he tells her.

“They’re good,” she says, cupping her hands around the mug. She feels wobbly, in every sense. Her body, her mind, her emotions, her connection to the Force. Nothing is on-kilter right now. “Did they tell you anything?”

“They waited for you,” he says. “But the little miss needed a nap of her own. They’re down in the other bunk.”

“I didn’t notice,” she admits. She should have. She’s Fulcrum. She’s a veteran of the Clone Wars. She’s... she’s supposed to be better than this.

“How long?” he asks, and then when she squints up at him, he clarifies. “How long did you fight?”

“My last fight--”

“No, whatever war you came out of,” he says. Her chest twists cold. “I don’t know if the Jedi sent you into it or if you waded in yourself once you left, but you move like a soldier.”

“I was,” she confirms. “But... but I don’t want to talk about the details. Not until the other two are here.”

He frowns at her. “Is there anything you can talk about?”

She shrugs and looks away, trying to take solace in the warmth of the caff she holds above the table, as if it can hide her, guard her, from the disgraced Mand’alor across the table.

“Jedi?”

“I’m not officially a Jedi,” she says, voice quiet. “Not anymore.”

“Then what do I call you?” he asks. “We’re not exactly close enough for names.”

“Torrent,” she says. “It’s not--I can’t claim my family name anymore. But I can claim Torrent, so I will. And if you want a title, I was a commander.”

“Bit young for that.”

“I got the rank when I was fourteen,” she says, and watches his face do something complicated and unpleasant. “Don’t. I know your own culture puts children on the field that young.”

“Not in command.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, well... the soldiers were technically younger. Adults, but...”

Ahsoka can see the way he casts about to figure out what species grows at that rate. He guesses a few, and she shoots all of it down.

She won’t tell him. Not until Rex is awake.

This part of the story is his.

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

When Leia tries to sit alone, a foot away on the bench like a proper adult, Ahsoka refuses to let it happen. She pulls the younger girl to her side and quells protests with a glance. It’s a decent skill, but she’s not sure how long it’s going to work on her niece-in-spirit.

“Your body needs the chemical release of skinship,” she says, and Leia glares at her. “I spent way too much time with the boys to not know about this. Deal.”

Rex sits close enough to knock their knees together under the table, and his warmth is the old comfort she needs.

“Do you want the story you’ll believe, or the truth?” Ahsoka asks.

“What’s the difference?”

“One of them involves something so impossible that even most Jedi wouldn’t believe it,” she tells him.

Fett folds his arms and leans forward to rest them on the table, challenging but oddly open. “Try me.”

“Time travel.”

He blinks, just once, fully controlled. “That’s a tough one.”

“There were only three Jedi left alive when I died,” she says. “Or... whatever it is that happened to me. I think I died. All I know is that one moment, I was thirty-two and dying, and the next, I was... seventeen again, and had these two with me. All of us younger than we were. None of us have even been born yet.”

She refuses to look him in the eye. “They both outlived me by... six years, maybe. Got caught up while traveling instead of dying. Leia was twenty-two. Rex was thirty-five. I’m not technically the oldest anymore. I mean, physically I am, but that doesn’t mean anything, and it’s not exactly doing us any good, and--”

Rex bumps his shoulder to her arm. “I dunno, Commander. I’ve spent a long time looking older than I should. Nice to look younger for once.”

She shoots him a small, pained grin. “Could be worse, yeah.”

“Let’s say I believe you.”

Her attention snaps back to Fett, who’s looking damnably blank, and is showing even less in the Force.

He waits a second for her to relax back into her seat.

“Let’s say I believe you,” he repeats. “How’s ‘Rex’ connected to me? What’s so special about Leia there? And what war did you fight in that has you acting like a veteran?”

“Three years in the clone wars,” she whispers, glancing to Rex and forcing herself to not go for her sabers to defend against an attack that her paranoia says is coming and the Force says is not. “Then almost all the Jedi were wiped out at once, and I spent a year... drifting. Then black ops for the next fifteen.”

“Black ops,” he repeats, still damnably flat.

“There was a Sith Empire,” she says, and she can hear her own tone growing somehow emptier. “Glassing planets. Enslaving entire species. Committing genocides all over. Of course, there was a rebellion, and of course I joined it. I was one of the only people left with Jedi training. For all that I’d left the Order, I still had a duty to the universe.”

His eyes flit to Leia, who shrugs and tries to look prim. “I was adopted and raised by one of the founders of the rebellion, a movement built on the desire to instate freedom and democracy in a galaxy that had lost even the pretense.”

“That why you’re special?”

Leia smiles, thin and patronizing. It doesn’t fit on her little face. “I’m special because my biological father was one of the most powerful Force users in history, and his Fall to the dark side and choice to become a Sith is why the Emperor’s rise was nearly uncontested. I do not like power, but it’s in my veins and I can’t change that. Force users are... a lucrative trade, and I’m still the size of a child, so I can’t fight back. I’ll be safer in the Jedi Temple, even if I don’t want to be a Jedi.”

Fett looks to Ahsoka, makes to ask a question, and then shakes his head. Not the time, maybe.

“So, that’s all... very complicated and I don’t know how much of it I believe, but it doesn’t explain...” he trails off, and sighs. “My kid, or whatever you are. I heard you mention clones.”

Rex grins. It is not a kind expression.

“Let me tell you about Kamino.”

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

Ahsoka has no idea if Fett believes them. Either he thinks they’re telling the truth, or he thinks their delusional kids. Whatever the case, he offers to take them closer to the Core. Ahsoka quietly offers to take a look at his engine in return, and then pretends not to notice when Fett awkwardly drifts to and away from Rex.

“They put chips in our brains to make us kill the Jedi we respected, cared for, even loved. I tried to shoot ‘Soka, Fett. She was seventeen and risked her life to get that chip out of my head while I was trying to kill her. I have never hated myself more than when I woke up and realized what I’d almost done, and I was one of the few that were able to fight it. I heard the stories of dozens of brothers who woke with their chips having degraded and chose to eat their blaster rather than live with the guilt of the orders they’d followed without question because of a thrice-damned Sith slave chip in their head.”

“So no, I won’t call you father or acknowledge you as clan until you do something to prove you’re worth it, shared blood or not.”

What Ahsoka does get out of the arrangement, for all that Fett’s route mostly takes them on a meandering path that isn’t faster than their previous system, is sleep. She gets to rest. She gets to trust that Fett won’t kill Rex, out of guilt for something he hasn’t done, that he won’t kill Leia out of a worry that she’s just a delusional child, a real child, that he won’t kill ‘Sokari’ because it would ruin any chance of gaining Rex’s favor, ever.

She’s not safe, won’t believe she can be until she’s in the Temple and Sidious is dead dead dead, but she’s safer than she’s been in a long time.

Every night, Ahsoka wakes up and stumbles to the little galley, deaths and torture sparkling behind her eyes with the energy of a thousand lost Jedi, ten thousand mourned brothers and sisters.

She is not the only one of their little group to be a survivor of a near-total genocide, but Rex could not feel his brothers die in the Force, even if his nightmares featured what they heard of suicide missions by the emperor’s favored shock troopers, and Leia had... Alderaan had more off-world survivors than there had been Jedi at all.

It’s not worth comparing their pain. It’s stupid to even think it. Part of her can’t help but do it anyway.

“Caf?”

She feels a lek twitch in response to the voice of the only other person on board who can reach the top shelf. “I probably shouldn’t.”

“Whiskey?”

“That’s a definitely shouldn’t.”

“Hoth chocolate?”

“...please.”

She doesn’t lift her head from her arms until the mug clicks down in front of her, ceramic on plastisteel.

“Do I ask what it was this time?”

She shrugs. “It’s hard to explain to non-sensitives.”

“Try me anyway.”

Ahsoka twists the Hoth chocolate in her hands, takes a sip as she thinks. “The Force isn’t just one thing. It’s... energy and philosophy and spirit, a sense of being that ties the entire universe together. Sentient and inanimate and living and dead, empty space and lush forests and stifled cities. For those of us who are sensitive to it, it’s possible to feel the life of everyone around you, theoretically possible to feel entire systems. If you have a Force bond, like a master and padawan, that can stretch across planets, even systems if one or both are particularly powerful.

“So just... just imagine, for a moment, what it’s like to feel the screaming of all those Jedi in the Force as their trusted men shot them down.

“Some of them were close enough that I could feel them die,” she manages. “I... it’s horrible. It’s horrific. It’s not something I can ever forget, and I want to. I want to forget what that moment was like. Not that it happened, but...”

She can feel the tears. Fuck..

“You want to dull the edges.”

“Don’t we all?” she asks, scrubbing the back of her hand across her eyes. “Leia lost her entire planet, billions of people, and she was forced to watch. Rex... Force, I can barely imagine, and I was there for most of it.”

Fett watches her, measuring. “From what he said, they were as much your brothers as his, by the end.”

“No,” she immediately denies. “They could have been, maybe, but the ones I was closest to died earlier, and then I left, and by the time the Empire rose, all but a handful were... no. Rex, I will claim as a brother in all the ways that matter, but I don’t get to do that with the rest. I don’t have the right.”

“You’re hard on yourself.”

“Fate of the galaxy, my good bitch. Guess who’s got it on her shoulders.”

He snorts at her, and nods at the mug. “Drink your Hoth chocolate. We’re landing in eight hours, and you’ve got kids to look out for.”

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

There’s a twitch in the Force when they land, something pulling at her in a way she barely feels. She’s had her shields up so fully for so long that it’s natural to hide away what she is to the point where she can hardly tell what anyone else is, either. It takes more than a moment to remember how to let herself spread out across the world.

“Auntie ‘Soka? Why’d you stop?”

She doesn’t have an answer to Leia’s prodding question. “I don’t know.”

It’s almost familiar. Old and half-forgotten, not the same as what she remembers, but--

“This way,” she says, and wanders off into the crowd. Leia and Rex follow without question. Fett curses and rushes through the rest of his transaction with the docking attendant. The sound of him jogging after them is almost funny, with the armor, but she can’t focus on that.

Ahsoka slips between people with the ease of a career built on such a habit, children trailing like ducklings. She knows this feeling, she knows this person, what is she missi--

“Oh,” she breathes, going stock still. She knows that face. She knows those braids. She even knows the presence.

Younger than Ahsoka had ever seen her, but unmistakably Master Billaba.

“Torrent, what the hell?” Fett demands, finally catching up. “You can’t just run off like that!”

“It’s Depa,” she says, eyes still fixed on the woman parsing through a datapad with an irritated vendor. She has a padawan braid. It doesn’t feel like Master Windu is on-planet, so this might be a solo mission, a... oh. Senior Padawan, Knight Elect. This is the kind of mission taken to test if she’s ready to be promoted.

Ahsoka feels light-headed.

Fett waits for her to elaborate, but she can’t. This was Kanan’s master. This was a member of the High Council. This was a woman who died and--

“You need to sit down,” Fett says, not a touch gruff. He puts a hand on her shoulder and guides her off the main walkway. “I’m... going to talk to the woman in the Jedi robes. You three just stay there and don’t get kidnapped.”

Ahsoka nods, feeling like she’s not quite inhabiting her own body.

It’s Depa.

Her eyes track Fett without conscious control, and her montrals pick up the sound.

Depa looks up when the armor comes close enough, free hand tensed in a way that says she’s preventing herself from reaching for a saber in reaction to the heavily-armored individual standing several feet away.

“Mando,” the woman says. “May I help you?”

“Are you Depa?”

Depa doesn’t do anything so dramatic as gape or step back, but she does blink rapidly for a moment. She then folds her hands down in front of her, drawing her spine up ramrod straight. “I am Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, yes. May I ask why it is that you need to know?”

Ahsoka imagines Fett grimacing, or rolling his eyes, or maybe dithering. She can’t tell from this angle, and he has a helmet on besides. It turns his awkward silences into judgmental ones.

“I’ve had some Jedi kids on my ship, hitching a ride,” he says at length. “One of them recognized you and then just... froze.”

“You have our younglings in your care,” Depa says, carefully not accusatory, but close enough to be a warning.

“Not quite,” he says. “The one that actually came from the temple is seventeen. One of ‘em isn’t Force Sensitive, and the last one is but hasn’t been to Coruscant before. They’re trying to get the little one to the Temple for her own safety.”

Depa considers that, and then passes the datapad to the vendor. “Lead on.”

It’s surprisingly simple, really. Fett did all the talking.

And then Depa is standing right in front of her.

“Like I said,” Fett sighs. “She froze up.”

“Hello,” Depa says, hands laced together inside her sleeves. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “I know of you. I’ve seen you spar. You’ve never spoken to me.”

All true. A little misleading, but it’s fine, it’s all fine.

Depa waits a moment, and then says, “You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Sokari T-Torrent,” she manages. The words feel clunky in her mouth, the sound abrasive for all that it’s just her own voice, no different from usual. A little shaky, maybe. She can feel a cool breeze on her upper arms. Shouldn’t she have armor? She should have armor. “It... it’s been a long time since I’ve seen another Jedi. I’m having a hard time believing you’re real.”

“I see,” Depa says. “Perhaps we should take this somewhere more private? You seem a little unsteady.”

Ahsoka lets herself be led back to the ship, in the company of Mand’alor Jango Fett, Jedi Padawan Depa Billaba, Princess-General Leia Organa, and good old Captain Rex.

It’s like the start of a sick joke.

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

Fett and Depa talk where she can hear, but they rarely address her directly. Both seem to realize that she’s not particularly useful right now. Leia and Rex are pressing up against her at the little table in the galley, and Ahsoka lets them.

This is real. She can feel Depa in the Force, recognizes her energy even if it’s not quite what it will-was-could-have-been. This is happening.

It’s a textbook Traumatic Stress Response case, one of them says.

Fett has his helmet off. Ahsoka’s sure that’s wrong for some reason. She thinks he might already be on wanted lists. Should she worry about Depa trying to arrest him?

Depa asks about Rex at one point. Fett tells her that someone cloned him without his knowing, but the kid is more comfortable with Ahsoka so they’re still working on what that means for him.

It’s more or less true. Rex squeezes her hand the one time someone suggests separating them. She’s not letting that happen unless Rex wants to leave for whatever reason. They’ve worked apart before. They can do it again.

“Auntie Soka? You’re shivering.”

Is she?

Leia cuddles in closer, and Ahsoka runs a hand over her hair. It’s an absentminded motion, and for all that she knows Leia’s hair is fine as silk, it feels like plastic in the moment.

“I don’t think I’m okay,” Ahsoka announces. The words hang in the air like lead balloons, and she can feel Depa staring at her. “I haven’t been for a very long time.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Fett says. “Do you need to lay down, Torrent?”

Does she?

“No,” she says. “I... I don’t know what I need.”

“The spicy drink,” Rex tells them. “It’s grounding.”

Right. That.

Fett goes to grab it, and Depa continues to watch.

“How long ago did you leave your master?” Depa asks. “Or... did he die?”

Ahsoka closes her eyes and shakes her head. She can feel the shivers now, tremors in her biceps and a shudder she can’t control in the height of her ribcage. Her teeth grind together, jaw like stone.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Depa assures her. “I’m... going to recommend you see a mind healer on Coruscant.”

That was a forgone conclusion.

A cup clinks onto the table. Fett’s back. “Drink.”

She does.

Depa and Fett continue discussing it as “the adults” at the table. She’s older than both of them. Rex is older than all of them. Ahsoka follows about half of what they say. She agrees with most of it. Rex bullies his way into speaking when she doesn’t, without her even asking, because he knows her mind as well as she does. Fett rolls with it. Depa lets him.

She’s going to reach out to the Temple and see about getting them a ride back to Imperial Center Coruscant.

Fett makes Soka go to bed, taking Leia with her.

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

She feels more like a person come morning.

Depa’s sitting at the table, datapad in her hands and caff on the table in front of her.

“Good morning,” Ahsoka says, rough and croaking, and Depa’s eyes flick up to meet hers. She nods a shallow hello.

“Feeling better?”

“Much,” Ahsoka says, and goes about gathering a breakfast. There’s definitely some dried meat in here. She can get something fresh when they stop by the market later.

“I was hoping to speak with you about your options,” Depa tells her, once she’s sat at the table. “Fett and your friend Rex took care of most of the negotiation, and I feel like I have an idea of what would work best for you.”

Ahsoka nods slowly. “Okay.”

“There is a Master-Padawan pair a few planets away,” Depa says. “The Council informed me when I spoke with them about you and your wards. They’d be headed back to the Temple in a few days anyway, and the Council has agreed to extend an offer to Fett to handle the transportation. The presence of a Jedi Master on board will allow for him to get in and out of the Core unmolested, and we’d like for you and yours to have a Jedi escort, given what happened yesterday afternoon.”

Her complete spiral into nonbeing?

“I understand,” she says instead. “I suppose Fett agreed because he’s still trying to get Rex to like him?”

Depa shrugs. “That part isn’t my business.”

Of course it isn’t.

“Rex can stay with me for a while, right?” Ahsoka finally asks. “I know it’s not exactly protocol, but I’m...”

“In need of a support system until you’ve seen a mind healer, and against all odds, the child is part of it,” Depa summarizes. “Yes, I recognized as much. I think the Council will be able to allow some leeway there. I don’t know if he’ll enjoy it, given that all the others his age are Initiates, but we can adjust as necessary. On that note... Do you know Leia’s midichlorian count?”

“No,” Ahsoka says, and hesitantly adds, “But her biological father was my Jedi Master, and I’m told his count broke records even as a child. Given what Leia’s shown so far... it’s why I’ve been in a hurry to get her to the Temple.”

Depa frowns at her, clearly working through the implications of a Jedi having a daughter and still teaching... and then visibly dismisses the situation, eyes closing to breathe in the steam of her caff.

Biological father certainly implies a child that was raised by her mother or adopted out so the Jedi father could remain in their chosen career without a conflict of interest or duty.

She’ll tell the council the truth, or... at least Master Koon. Master Kenobi is still a padawan, but she can tell Master Koon.

She already told Jango Fett, of all people.

“Padawan Torrent?”

Her head snaps up. She hasn’t been a padawan in over fifteen years. It’s weird to hear. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked if you wanted some time to think it over before I presented the offer to Fett,” Depa says.

Ahsoka gets the distinct feeling that Depa is planning a report to the Council that has ‘needs a mind healer’ underlined at least three times.

“No, I’m--I’m fine. That sounds like a good plan.”

“I’ll speak with him, then. Would you like to come with?”

"No, thank you.”

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

Fett agrees. Ahsoka’s pretty sure it’s all to do with Rex and maybe Leia. It’s probably nothing to do with ‘Sokari.’ She’s a Jedi, an adult in mind and in body, or at least close enough to count. She’s a damn sight more ‘enemy’ to Fett than the other two are. Not as much as Depa, maybe, but Fett’s been playing nice with her for Leia’s sake.

He plays nice with Ahsoka for Rex’s. That’s all.

They’re only a few planets over from the meeting point, and they have a few days to hang around before the escort meets them. Depa hadn’t given them a name--apparently it could have compromised the opsec for the Jedi team--but Ahsoka’s pretty sure she’ll be able to identify almost anyone. She gets the feeling that the Force is going to send her a familiar face, just as it did Master Padawan Billaba.

Ahsoka lets herself feel the world around her. It’s dark and dreary, in the sense that the beaten-down port is full of petty crimes and less petty horrors, but it’s still lighter than most of the Empire had been. She sneaks away from the ship at night, ignoring Fett at her back, and performs a bit of vigilante justice while she can. She’ll be banned from doing so as soon as she’s reinstated as a Jedi, probably, but for now... for now, she can look at the drug cartels and ‘they’re not slaves, really’ workers and do something to help.

She doesn’t use her sabers. She doesn’t need to. It’s been a long time since she has, for small fry like these.

“What are you doing?” Fett asks her, landing heavily behind her back.

“Chip removal,” she says, hand pressed to the slave’s leg. Her eyes are closed, but she can hear him shifting. “Let me concentrate, I don’t have a meddroid for this.”

He’s silent until she finishes, and waits until the people she’s helped are on their way to the planet’s freedom routes. He doesn’t ask what she did with the owners.

“You’ve done this before.”

“Regularly,” she confirms. “You?”

He doesn’t answer that, just ambles over to the the chains and stares down at them.

“Fett?”

“You go through this like it’s as easy as breathing,” he says. “It’s... impressive.”

“I guess?” she hesitates to continue. “I’m... I don’t think of it that way. This is the easy stuff. A time-waster that helps people. If I wanted to help for real, I’d been going after Jabba or Sidious or--”

“How old were you?” he asks, turning on his heel to face her dead-on. The vocoder of his helmet pulls the emotion from his voice. “When did this... these missions, the slavery battles, when did that start for you?”

“Fourteen,” she says. She’s not entirely sure, really, what counted as a mission for ending slavery and what counted as just a part of war, but she can round down. “Maybe fifteen. It’s a bit of a blur.”

“And you just kept doing it.”

“Of course,” she says. “If I have the time and the energy, if I need to do something and there’s nothing official on my hands, why not?”

He doesn’t answer her.

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

Rex greets them before she does.

Ahsoka, in her defense, is asleep at the time. It’s a restless sleep, but it’s enough that she doesn’t sense the nearing Force signatures until they’re almost at the ship.

She recognizes one of them.

“Auntie ‘Soka?” Leia questions, when she lurches to her feet and starts pulling on her boots with all the energy of a zombie. “Where are you going?”

“Jedi,” Ahsoka grunts. “Here.”

“I see.”

Leia dresses to follow her, in a little coat that’ll withstand the chill of the outside air, and Ahsoka makes it to the cargo hold just in time to hear Rex saying, “I’m not shaking your hand until you put your gloves on, Vos.”

She laughs to herself, breathless with the knowledge of what she’s about to find. She jumps the railing of the upper walkway, drops down just in front of the Master-Padawan team, and keeps her back to Fett and Rex. “Hello, there.”

One human, one Kiffar. She knows the latter.

“Would you be Sokari Torrent?” the Master asks.

“I am,” she says, with a slight bow. She can tell there’s a bit of judgement for how she’s dressed, but they’re covering it well. A Shadow and his trainee know the value of armor better than most Jedi bother with. “I’m afraid Padawan Billaba didn’t inform me of your names before we met.”

“And yet your friend knew my padawan,” the Master says.

“By reputation,” she says, as smoothly as she can. “I’ve encountered Quinlan Vos before, though I doubt he remembers--”

“I’d remember someone like you,” Quinlan interrupts, with a grin she’s sure is meant to be charming and rogueish.

He’s... very young for her, and not her type. Mostly, she wants to pat him on the head, but that probably wouldn’t go over very well. She still looks like she’s younger than him.

“Anyway,” she says, turning back to the master, “I’m afraid I still don’t know who you are, Master.”

“I am Tholme,” he says, with the bow that a Master gives a Padawan. She feels a little slighted, but it’s fine. She looks the right age, it’s fine.

It’s not like they know.

“It’s nice to meet you, Master Tholme,” she says. “My charges are Rex Torrent, the young man behind me, and currently coming down the ladder is Leia Antilles. I’m sure you’re aware of Jango Fett.”

“The Mand’alor,” Quinlan volunteers, and Ahsoka can almost hear Fett’s teeth grinding.

“Don’t call me that,” he says. She’s sure he’s got a hand drifting for his blaster.

“There isn’t a whole lot of room on the ship,” she says before the men can get into whatever weird contest she’s sure someone might start. Her bet’s on Fett. “But Leia and Rex are small enough to share with me, so I’m sure we can make it work.”

“There’s spare rolls for anyone comfortable with sleeping in the hold,” Fett grunts. “Or on the floor in the passenger room.”

“Well, I guess I could ask for a little help fi--”

“Vos,” Ahsoka snaps, letting her voice take on the kind of ‘obey me or get fresher duty’ irritation that she’d perfected back when the rebellion still had her managing people, before they’d realized she was more use in the field. “Do not.”

There’s a moment’s pause, and Tholme looks unimpressed with that raised eyebrow, but the kind of unimpressed that’s split between his own padawan and the stranger before him.

“Um,” Quinlan says. “I just--”

“No,” she cuts him off. “No flirting.”

It’s weird and uncomfortable and she’d have maybe been okay with it if she was actually the seventeen-or-eighteen-ish(?) that she looked, but she’s not. She’s in her thirties and Vos is... what, twenty? Twenty-one? No.

He stares at her, and she wonders momentarily if she’d gone too far in the direction of judging his intentions in the Force and preempted actual flirtations.

“I’m sorry?” He offers, looking confused, but ashamed. “I, uh, I’ll keep that in mind.”

She definitely preempted the actual flirtation.

Fuck.

Ahsoka closes her eyes and breathes in. Breathes out. Opens her eyes. “Right. That was... I’m not sure how much Padawan Billaba told you about me.”

“Enough,” Tholme says. He moves forward and puts a hand on Quinlan’s shoulder. Ahsoka has no idea if it’s to comfort him or hold him back. “I didn’t share most of it with my padawan, but I have a general understanding of what’s going on.”

Quinlan darts a look at his teacher, but Ahsoka doesn’t acknowledge it. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

“Thank you for your understanding,” she says, and bows, and stiffly turns away to walk to the galley.

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

Leia squirms into the bench seat, shoving her way under Ahsoka’s arm like a particularly wriggly tooka.

“What was that?” Leia demands, the authority of a rebellion general rather useless in the squeaky voice of a child.

“What was what?”

“The whole thing with Padawan Vos,” Leia says. “You blew up at him before he even did anything.”

That’s pretty true.

“I felt the flirtation coming before it happened and reacted inappropriately because I panicked. I’m significantly older than him, but I can’t tell him that, so it’s just awkward and uncomfortable and... I’m not okay, Princess. I haven’t been for a long time.”

“Yeah, we can tell.”

“Leia.”

“What? I need therapy too! Captain Rex needs therapy! I’m pretty sure Fett needs therapy! You, Fulcrum, you really need therapy. None of us are okay.” She huffs, wiggling impossibly closer. “I don’t like it, but it’s true.”

“I know,” Ahsoka groans. “I just... I just need to hold out until the Temple.”

“Will you be able to hold it together if you see someone you actually care about?” Leia demands. “What are you going to do when you see Kenobi?”

“Stop.”

“I’m serious, you--”

“Leia, that’s enough,” she snaps. “I was fighting that war before you were even born, and I’ve dealt with the consequences since. I know the risks and I’ll thank you to remember who taught you to control your own mind.”

Leia stiffens, sucking in a sharp breath. “That was uncalled for.”

“You’re not the child you appear to be,” Ahsoka reminds her, not a little sharply. “You want to dish it out, be ready to take it. What will you do when we see Bail Organa? When we see the toddler that is Anakin Skywalker?”

“I get it.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Ahsoka mutters. She isn’t surprised when Leia ducks out of the embrace and leaves the galley. She lets the girl go, guilt warring with the memory of how Master Kenobi had more than once spoken that way to Anakin at the height of the war. The fact that she’s an adult in the body of a child isn’t an excuse for poking at Ahsoka’s open wounds. It was cruel and unnecessary, and unbecoming of a... not a Jedi. A princess. A politician.

She rests her head on her arms and zones out. She should meditate, but that seems like... too much effort.

She can feel Vos and Tholme setting up in the room they’ve been assigned. Neither seems particularly angry. Most likely, Tholme’s given the absolute shortest explanation of ‘child soldier, dead master, highly traumatized and emotionally unstable’ to Vos to smooth over the incident in the cargo hold. Rex is with Leia; he’s agitated, but less so than Leia herself. Fett’s annoyed, in the cockpit, but he seems annoyed as often as not. There’s a shudder at lift-off, and a few minutes later, they’re in hyperspace, headed for the Core.

Fett finds her, falls into the other bench in full armor, and drops his elbows onto the table. The helmet clunks down a moment later.

She doesn’t lift her head. “What do you want?”

“Do I need to keep Vos away from you?”

“What?”

“Vos. He made you uncomfortable. Was that him being someone that hurt you in the future, or just the interaction being awkward?”

She lifts her head. She stares at him. “What?”

He leans back and crosses his arms. “Do you need me to tell Vos to stay the hell away from you?”

She’s gaping. “You realize I’m thirty-two, right? I can handle my own battles.”

“You’re also traumatized as hell and everyone can see it,” Fett argues back. “If Vos himself is a trigger, I can handle it.”

“He’s not,” she tells him. This is strange. Fett’s being strange. “He was actually a friend of my grandmaster’s. I’m just uncomfortable with the flirting because I’m a lot older than he realizes, and I can’t tell him that.”

He nods sharply, and then looks away. The silence sits.

“Thanks for asking?” Ahsoka says, well aware of how her confusion over the offer turns it into a question. “I mean, thank you for... caring.”

I guess, she finishes in the privacy of her own head. Or at least pretending to.

Fett makes a face, still not facing her. He eyes the galley instead. She can guess where his thoughts are going. The galley is... not very big, especially with six people on board instead of one, but she’s sure they’ve stocked up enough. On the off chance they do go through more than expected, because of how many growing bodies are in residence, they can stop off and buy more. They have those resources now.

Jango never does ask what she did with the slavers.

“Who’s going to cry if I spice things properly?” he asks.

“Probably Leia,” she says immediately. “Vos will try to power through it even though he’s going to be overwhelmed. No idea about Tholme, but I think he’ll keep a straight face whether he likes it or not. Rex and I are fine, ‘hot’ was pretty much the only flavor of seasoning the GAR had.”

“GAR?”

“Grand Army of the Republic.”

He finally looks at her.

“You already knew I was a child soldier, Fett; don’t act surprised.”

“That doesn’t mean I like hearing about it.”

“I was fourteen. That’s old enough by Mando standards, Fett. Just think back, when did you get on the battlefield?”

“I take your point,” he says, lip curling unpleasantly. “It just hits different now that I’m old enough to look back and think of how damned young fourteen really is.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Yeah, well--”

“You said the clones were ten.”

There’s the rub, isn’t it?

Of course it was about the clones.

“...closer to seven, by the end. Kamino was just making speedies at that point. Triple growth on the average instead of double, but averages in that case meant they’d been growing at double rates for six years and then got forced through four growth cycles in a single year to beef up the army when we kept losing men.” She looks down at the table, picking at a scratch in the plastipaint with her nail. “Rex and the rest of the ones from the beginning were basically twenty in mind and body, even if they’d only been decanted ten years earlier. The speedies... I always wondered. They’d gone from functionally twelve to functionally twenty in a year. That’s not... even in Kamino, that can’t have been normal. They didn’t act like adults, not the way the originals did.”

Fett rubs at his face, groaning. He swears under his breath in three different languages.

She pities him, if only because he hasn’t actually done any of this yet. He’s paying for the crimes of a man he likely won’t ever become.

She kicks him under the table. “Wanna make tiingilar and see how long it takes Vos to start crying while he insists it’s fine?”

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

Dinner is when the questions start. Some are relatively easy. Others, not so much.

“My Master was Leia’s biological father,” is an easy truth to share. “She inherited his power, so I need to get her to the temple for her own safety, because home no longer is.”

“Yes, her adoptive parents were unfortunately killed rather recently. We’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“Rex is with me. Where he goes, I go, and vice versa.”

That one gets her an odd look.

“I thought...” Quinlan trails off, gesturing between Rex and Fett.

Fett keeps his face impassive, but his discomfort and guilt leak into the Force. “I didn’t know Rex existed until I ran into these three in a spaceport cantina a few weeks ago.”

Quinlan blinks at him, looks at Rex again, and then turns back to Fett with a grin that might have been described as ‘saucy’ if he were less smug about it. “Wild oats, huh?”

“Are you shitting me right now,” Leia whispers, and Ahsoka elbows her.

“That was inappropriate, padawan.”

Quinlan’s grin fades as Fett just continues to eye him.

“Um, so--”

“How old is the kid?” Fett interrupts.

Darting eyes answer him, as Quinlan tries to gauge Rex. “Ten? Maybe twelve?”

“And how old am I?”

“...early thirties?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

Quinlan’s grin fades further as he does the math.

“I’d have been between fifteen and seventeen when he was born,” Fett says, tone flat. “Between fourteen and sixteen at conception. I know damn well I wasn’t doing anything that could have resulted in a kid at that age.”

Quinlan rallies. “So, brothers?”

Tholme sighs loudly, hand over his eyes.

“I’m a clone,” Rex says, and Ahsoka can feel the amusement he gets out of Quinlan’s confused shock. They’d both had plenty of respect for Master Vos, but Padawan Vos was nothing but trouble. “Harvested genetic material, grown in a tube, inconsistent aging meaning I don’t even know how old I am for sure.”

“I broke him out,” Ahsoka adds, which is half true.

“There was a chip in my head,” Rex adds, with a bright smile. Quinlan’s discomfort grows. “She got it out. Also, lots of brothers. None of them are... around anymore. The creators were trying to make an army.”

Vos and Tholme have no response. Fett looks like he’s been carved out of stone. Leia’s just ignoring them and picking at her food.

Ahsoka lifts a hand and, without looking, Rex high-fives her.

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

“Drop your elbow.”

Ahsoka tries to cover her smile at the dirty look that Leia shoots Fett. Fett remains unimpressed by the glare of royalty, just gestures for the girl to do as he said.

“I know how to fight,” Leia grumbles. “I took lessons. I was good at them.”

“And I’m better,” Fett says, leaving no room for argument. “You want the Torrents to take over?”

The Torrents. Rex and Soka. She likes being referred to that way. Like they’re a team that never got split up.

Force, she wished they’d never gotten split up.

“Again,” Fett orders, and Leia moves through the Mandalorian kata with ill grace in her emotions and all grace in her sweeping limbs.

Well, as much grace as an undersized six-year-old can, at any rate.

“Think he’ll ask me to spar her again?” Rex asks, dropping down into the seat next to Ahsoka and passing her a drink.

“Maybe,” she acknowledges. “I think he’s wondering if it’s worth asking Vos to spar with her, so she gets more experience with size differences.”

“Hm?”

“She flinched at his face again,” she tells him. “The whole... thing with Boba, I guess. She still won’t tell me why Fett triggers her sometimes, but he’s not pressing her to spar with him, and there’s only so much she can get out of fighting me. Asking Tholme would be presumptuous, but Vos is just a padawan. I think it’d work out.”

“And you?”

She looks at him, already feeling a cresting wave of bullshit she doesn’t want to deal with. “What about me?”

“Are you going to spar with the Jedi?”

She should. She hasn’t sparred with a saber since she got tossed back into a body only half-familiar to her. She’s let Leia borrow the shorter one to learn some basic blocking moves, Shii-Cho and then, with hesitance, the first Soresu form. Another time, she loaned it to Rex to practice some attacks; they both know that the next time he picks up her saber in battle, having lost his weapons or she her grip, it will be neither the first or last time he wields a sword of light. None of that, however, is... sparring.

None of that is against someone who knows what they’re doing.

How long has it been since she sparred with anyone other than Kanan and Ezra?

How long has it been since she sparred without the looming specter of Darth Vader in the back of her mind, without fear of the Inquisitors, without the knowledge that any saber held by someone other than her two friends would be red as blood and twice as drenched.

Would she be able to hold back as she fought?

“I should,” she acknowledges, eyes on where Fett is nudging Leia’s feet into position for some kind of leveraging flip. She’s so small. “It would probably be a good idea to spar against a master at some point.”

“Do you think you can?” Rex asks.

“I never knew him,” she says. “And he isn’t Dark. It should be fine.”

Rex nods, taking her word for it. They watch as Leia stumbles on a final move, and Fett gestures for her to sit down and get a drink.

“That man is a terror,” she informs them.

(She’d once described him as a slave-driver. She had not made that mistake twice.)

“Least it’s not Kamino!” Rex tells her cheerfully. When Leia refuses to look impressed, he laughs at her.

Ahsoka has a half-second’s warning before heavy boots thud to the ground next to her. “What’s Kamino?”

“Hello, Vos, it’s nice to see you too,” she drawls. “I’m good, thanks for asking, and yourself?”

The boy-not-quite-man rolls his eyes. “Hi, Torrents; hi, tiny one.”

Leia glares at him next.

“So, Kamino?”

“Planet by Rishi,” Rex says.

“Why were you there?”

“They specialize in cloning.”

Ahsoka covers her mouth as the conversation drops into the same awkward gap that always happens when Quinlan stumbles into a subject he didn’t know to avoid.

“Like... you were made there, or you were researching how it works for your own--”

Ahsoka slaps a hand over his mouth. “Now’s a great time to stop talking.”

He licks her palm.

She bares her teeth and arches her fingers just enough to press nails into his cheek.

He bites at her palm, and she yanks her hand away.

“You’re all children,” Leia accuses, conveniently forgetting that Ahsoka and Rex are both over a decade older than her.

“I can throw you the length of a swimming pool,” Ahsoka tells her. “One of the fancy competition-ready ones that would make a Tatooinian cry. You are absolutely the child here.”

“Using the Force is cheating, sir,” Rex informs her.

“Only if there’s a competition,” Ahsoka shoots back. “And proving that a certain princess is a small child is not a competition. It’s a declarative fact.”

“I’m going to rip open the seams on all your tops except the ugliest one,” Leia decides.

“Try me,” Ahsoka challenges. “Adi’ka.”

A low, rough cough interrupts them. “Are you done?”

Fett has his arms crossed, and an eyebrow raised. He knows they’re all adults here, and is entirely unamused. As the silence drags, the eyebrow climbs a little higher.

“Done with what?” Quinlan finally asks, thereby volunteering himself to spar in hand-to-hand with Jango Fett, as one does.

“Poor, poor Vos,” Rex laughs, watching as Fett barks out orders at Quinlan every five seconds to fix his footwork, to stop dropping his guard, to stop wasting energy on flips instead of just dodging the easy way.

“Throw him!” Ahsoka calls. To her delight, Fett obliges.

The thing is, Quinlan isn’t bad at brawling. He’s got training, endurance, skill. The man knows what he’s doing, objectively. He’s just not a match for Fett, and is used enough to relying on his saber that his hand-to-hand skills are rusty. They are perhaps less rusty than those Jedi who don’t take questionable jobs in the Mid-Outer Rim, and Ahsoka’s got a suspicion that Vos regularly gets into bar fights in his downtime, but none of that is enough for him to actually do more than survive against Fett without his saber.

Even the saber wouldn’t help, if Fett had his armor.

“Whose idea was this?”

Ahsoka cranes her head back and smiles. “Hello, Master Tholme. Vos... volunteered.”

“Did he know he was volunteering?”

“No comment.”

Tholme snorts, crossing his arms and eyeing the spar in front of him. “I thought Fett hated Jedi. Giving us a ride for the sake of you three is one thing, but why is he teaching my padawan?”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Constructive bullying?”

There’s a small twitch of a smile, quickly gone. “He said something wrong, I’m guessing?”

“There was no way he could have known,” she dismisses. “We’re just, like, ninety-percent tragic backstories.”

“You’d think the Force would warn him,” Rex notes.

“That’s not how the Force works,” Leia chides.

“No, no, he’s right,” Ahsoka corrects. “The Force does sometimes step in to stop a person from saying something stupid. However, Padawan Vos is at an age where people think they are very rational while being more irrational than they likely ever will be again.”

“Do I want to ask what you were doing at that age?” Tholme asks.

“Running bla...” she trails off, then whips around to gape at him.

He smiles, bland and unassuming. “Does Fett know?”

“Know... what?” Ahsoka asks.

“That you’re significantly older than you look,” he says, voice just low enough that the sparring duo can’t hear him. “All three of you.”

Ahsoka turns back to the spar, only catching Tholme out of the corner of her eye. “He knows.”

“Mm. Were you planning on telling the Council?”

“Yes.” That part was never in question. “How did you figure it out?”

“I am a good investigator,” he says. “And you rely a little too heavily on your physical forms to obfuscate. Were it just one of you, that wouldn’t be a problem, but the pattern repeated across three is a little easier to discern.”

“I hoped the whole ‘child soldiers’ thing would be a bigger distraction,” Ahsoka mutters. She glances at Leia and Rex. Both of them are used to being in charge to some degree, giving orders and making contingency plans, but in this... in this, Ahsoka is in charge. They’d decided that at the very start. It didn’t matter that Rex had lived longer and had more experience, or that Leia had held the highest Rebellion rank of the three of them. Ahsoka had been agreed as leader, and they were relying on her.

They’re waiting on her orders. Stiff and unhappy, in Leia’s case, but they trust her.

“Will you be telling Vos?” She asks.

“No,” Tholme says. “Your secrets remain your own unless they endanger us, and I’ve a feeling they won’t be.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Rex jokes, smile not reaching his eyes. “I’ve been working with this family for too long to trust that trouble won’t find them around the next corner.”

“This family?” Tholme repeats.

“Sokari was telling the truth about her master being Leia’s biological father,” Rex says. He shrugs. “I worked with him, with his wife, with both of his kids, with his master and his padawan. All of them, to a one, are trouble magnets.”

“Ah, but that’s not the secret that’s putting us in danger,” Tholme points out. “Simply existence as a Jedi.”

Rex shrugs. “Fair enough. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.”

Ahsoka lurches to her feet, turning with a smile and dancing backward into the the stretch of empty cargo hold they used for such things. “A spar, Master Tholme?”

He looks past her, to Quinlan, and raises a brow. “Would you not prefer to spar with someone a little closer to your level first?”

She barks out a laugh. “Master Tholme, I’m afraid I’ve spent more of my life fighting to survive than having normal friendly spars. My style is more lethal than the average, and you’ve already seen what war’s done to my mind. I ask to spar with you because, if I lose control, if I slip in time or react on an instinct that isn’t appropriate, I trust that you’ll be more able to stop me than a senior padawan.”

He smiles. “Yes, I gathered as much. Still, better to ask. Shall we wait for them to finish up?”

Ahsoka shrugs, turns, and yells. “Clear the deck!”

Rex snorts behind her, and lowly mutters, “Sir, yes, sir.”

She smirks at him over her shoulder. “At ease, Captain.”

“That’s ‘Commander’ to you, I got promoted,” he sniffs, chin held high.

Heavy steps herald Fett’s arrival at their little group. “The hells are you doing?”

“I’m going to have a spar with a Jedi Master, and I want you and Vos to not get stabbed.”

“I’m not that easy to injure in an actual fight, let alone by accident,” Fett grouses. He looks up and over at Vos, who is already significantly taller, if a fair shot less built. “This one, on the other hand...”

“Hey!”

Ahsoka laughs and backs into the center of the cargo hold, drawing her sabers. “Don’t worry, Vos, I won’t play dirty. You’ll probably get your master back in one piece.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself there, aren’t you? He’s a Jedi Master and former Watchman. You’re... what, eighteen?”

Ahsoka raises a brow and activates her sabers, tapping the blades together and watching as more than one person winces. “Wanna bet on how long I last?”

“No,” he says immediately, stepping back to join Rex on the bench. “You’ve already blindsided me enough. I’m not dumb enough to fall for whatever you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“I don’t have sleeves.”

“Armwarmers-slash-greaves, then.”

“Greaves go on the legs, these are vambraces.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “I’m just going to stop talking now!”

“Good plan,” Leia snarks, and then literally hisses when Rex ruffles her hair.

Tholme lights his saber and sinks into an opening stance.

Ahsoka mirrors him.

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

She wins, but barely. She's had a few weeks to practice her forms, has sparred hands-only with Rex and Fett, but this is her first real try at using her sabers against a person, instead of a blaster or thin air, since she arrived in the past. She’s only mostly adjusted to her body.

But Tholme is a healer and a watchman, not a duelist. Ahsoka held her own against Ventress, against Grievous, against Maul when she was this age. Still adjusting to her body or not, her lineage is one of battle, and it bled true.

“You’re terrifying,” Quinlan tells her after they’re done, smiling like the sun as he hands her a towel. “Please never turn that on me.”

She laughs at him. “Would you believe that I’m out of practice?”

“Out of practice with what?” he asks, horrified and fascinated. “Fighting Sith Lords?”

“Among other things,” she says, and smirks when he chokes on his drink. “Multiple darkside users who claimed to be Sith, at least. One being a full Lord, one that was disowned by his master, and one that was apprenticed to a Banite apprentice, so she wasn’t technically allowed to be a Darth because of the rule of two.”

Tholme meets her eyes past Quinlan’s shoulder, head tilted and eyes half-shut in consideration. He’s taking her seriously. He knows what she’s not saying.

“How...” Quinlan trails off and shakes his head. “You know what, no. Asking you people questions never ends well.”

“Good plan,” Ahsoka says, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Also, you need to spar with Fett more. Your footwork is shit.”

“It is not,” Quinlan gripes. “You’re all just scary good at this stuff.”

“You mean surviving?” Leia pipes up, and smiles innocently when Quinlan turns to pout at her.

“You’re getting bullied by a six-year-old,” Rex informs him.

“Yeah,” Quinlan sighs. “I know.”

Ahsoka laughs, and it’s fine. It’s all fine. For a week, everything is honestly great. She trains, she laughs, she works through the nightmares.

Then fucking Denon happens.

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

Denon is a city-planet on the intersection of two major hyperlanes. It’s the kind of place where they stop for two things:

Fuel.

Paperwork.

Technically, there’s a whole mess of paperwork they have to fill out to continue along this specific hyperlane, since they aren’t official Republic ships, and don’t have the licenses to just pass along like ships that are pre-registered to the Trade Federation or the like. They could sneak past--literally all of them know smuggler’s routes--but it’s honestly less of a pain to do things legally. They have a Jedi Master. They have cash. Some of that cash wasn’t quite legally acquired, but nobody needs to know that.

It’s supposed to be a pit stop. That’s all.

It’s just a pit stop.

But no, the galaxy isn’t that kind and Ahsoka’s luck is currently being compounded with a Skywalker, two Fetts, and Vos, which means that of course they run into trouble. Of course they do. There was never any other option, was there?

“Motherfucker,” Ahsoka snaps, lifting her head up and slamming her drink on the table.

The glass is empty. That’s good. They’re in a restaurant right now, a little splurging after weeks with only each others’ company, and spilling the sugary child-friendly juice with that move would have drawn way too much attention from the servers.

“Language,” Tholme says, voice idly unconcerned.

“Sir?” Rex asks, kicking Ahsoka under the table. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wr--that jackass,” she hisses, getting to her feet. “Rex, grab a blaster, I’ve got shebs to kick.”

“Okay,” Rex says, grabbing one out of Fett’s holster and scooting out of the booth before anyone can tell him not to. “Whose?”

“I didn’t even know that he was... osik, I don’t have jurisdiction,” she realizes. “I don’t have any record of wrongdoing. I can’t arrest him since we don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing...”

“Are you two going to explain what’s going on?” Vos asks. “Or sit down, maybe?”

Ahsoka makes her decision. She eyes the window--the restaurant in question is a little dingy, but it’s also several dozen stories in the air. “Rex, remember the thing we did on Geonosis that you hated?”

He pauses, and then sighs heavily. “Yes, sir. I remember the... yeeting.”

Hah. That slang doesn’t even exist yet.

“Great. With me!”

It’s a good thing the windows are forcefields instead of transparisteel. A bit of a twist to the energy and they’re gone.

She only hears a little screaming before the wind tears all noises away while they plummet.

They land lightly--of course--and Ahsoka wraps them both in a don’t notice me aura. Nobody even notices that they’ve just come from above. It’s great that she can just Do These Things again, and get brushed off as Weird Jedi Shit, instead of worrying about the Empire. She’s missed being able to jump out of windows without fear.

Rex follows her as she starts running through the city. They don’t have comms, and he’s still so small, which means he can’t keep up with her even if she runs at normal speeds without Force enhancement.

“Should you carry me?” he asks, before she can figure out if it’s worth suggesting. She did it a few times before they joined up with Jango.

“It’s not... urgent, I think,” she says. She hesitates to speak, even as she keeps jogging with Rex at her heels. “Honestly, I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything I can ding him for so we can attack him. It’s all well and good that I can beat him right now, but all the crimes I know about haven’t happened yet, so it wouldn’t be legal...”

“Commander?”

“Hm?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

She scrolls the conversation back mentally, considers, and says, “Oh.”

“Who’s getting steamrolled?”

“Uh, Maul’s here,” Ahsoka admits.

“Ah,” Rex says. He makes a face. “I understand the desire to jump out a window, now. I don’t agree with it, but I understand.”

Ahsoka laughs. “I mean, I just... every time I’ve seen him for almost twenty years, it’s been like... on sight, you know? We’ve never not attacked each other, except when I needed him to cause problems on Mandalore. But I always knew I was in the right, then.”

“So... what do we arrest him for?” Rex prompts.

“Um... carrying a lightsaber without a license?” she hazards. “We’ll need Tholme there. Hopefully I can just shout at him and he’ll attack me, but I think he only went full nutjob after Master Kenobi cut his legs off. He might be too controlled to try to kill me just for yelling at him.”

“...do we have to stalk him?” Rex asks, sounding like he’d most likely sigh if he weren’t mid-run.

She scoops him up and swings him around onto her back before she answers. “I think we have to stalk him, Rex’ika.”

“Don’t call me that.”

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

Maul is... exceptionally sneaky, actually. Either that, or he hasn’t done anything wrong yet. Ahsoka’s betting on the former, because she’s seen this particular skocha kung take over a planet before anyone realized he was the most dangerous person around.

Or maybe he’s just not committing crimes, and is in fact just here to buy groceries.

He’s examining a papaya.

She fantasizes about jumping across the market and greeting him with a heel to the cheekbone.

“Are you imagining a flying kick, Sir?”

“Yeah...”

“He’s examining a papaya, Sir.”

“I know...”

“Does he know we’re here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Do you think I should go hit him?”

“No.”

“Should I hit on him?”

“No, Sir. I would not advise that.”

“He’s looking at the neloms.”

“I can see that.”

“Why does he have to be so bo--did he just fucking bite a nelom?”

“It appears so, Sir.”

“Like... like rind and all. Just bit the little fucker.”

“Seems it.”

A scuff of metal. “What the fuck are you two doing?”

Ahsoka tips her head around to peer through the grate. “We’re spying, Fett, what does it look like we’re doing?”

Rex cranes his head. “We’re hanging upside-down from a fire escape to get a look at a suspected Sith Apprentice that is currently shopping for various fruits, Mand’alor.”

Ahsoka waves. “Hi, Master Tholme.”

“Sokari,” the master greets. “This seems a very conspicuous way to spy.”

She shrugs as well as she can from this angle. “Yes, but you see, this way’s more fun.”

“Is it now.”

Rex shifted. “He’s on the move!”

“To kill someone?!”

“No, to the deli meats.”

“Kriff.”

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

Apparently, Tholme and Fett had told Quinlan to take care of Leia, as Leia had wanted to finish her juice and refused to get involved in the Torrents’ nonsense. According to her, if they couldn’t be bothered to explain the nonsense, they didn’t need her.

This was true and accurate.

Quinlan shows up while they’re still stalking Maul, having moved to a low rooftop for a decent vantage point with less likelihood of being spotted. He’s giving Leia an eopie-back ride, and the pout on her face at needing it is adorable. She pouts harder when she sees them.

“Are you even trying to hide?” Leia scoffs.

“Not really,” Ahsoka admits. She’s got Fett’s binoculars out. “I’m not sure he’s caught wind of the fact that we’re here yet.”

“Or he has and he’s just biding his time to escape while we’re distracted,” Tholme points out.

“Meh,” Ahsoka says, avidly devouring the visual that is a teenage Maul glaring at leafy vegetables. “I just want him to do something so I have an excuse to beat his ass.”

“Do I get to know who?” Quinlan asks, setting Leia down on the roof. “Or are we going to keep being completely unwilling to share information?”

“Baby Sith Lord,” Ahsoka says. “He’s fifteen. A child.”

“A baby,” Rex agrees.

“You’re... that’s... ugh,” Quinlan groans as loudly and as dramatically as he dares, flopping down to the rooftop. “Master Tholme, please tell me this isn’t a real Sith.”

“He’s Dark,” Tholme confirms. “Sith is... up for debate until we have evidence.”

“He’s a bitch is what he is,” Ahsoka mutters. She observes the teenager in question stop to poke at some pink tomatoes. “E chu ta, break the law, already!”

“Does he have a lightsaber?” Quinlan asks. “If he has a lightsaber and no Jedi ID or specialty license, we can probably arrest him.”

“Auntie Soka doesn’t have a license or ID,” Leia points out.

“She’s got a Jedi escort,” Tholme says. “And if our supposed Sith is polite and plays nice, we can probably escort him to the Temple as well.”

Rex snorts derisively.

“Do you know why he’s on Denon?” Fett asks.

“No clue,” Ahsoka admits. “Evil reasons, probably.”

“You’re useless,” Leia tells her.

“Thanks, princess, how’s that attempt to open the jam jar by yourself coming?”

Leia says something very inappropriate for a princess, for a child, and for a lady. It’s fairly appropriate for a soldier, which is admittedly what she’s been for a few years now. Ahsoka sticks her tongue out at the girl like the mature operative she is.

“I wish we could still get him to lose his osik by just showing up and insulting him,” Rex mutters, low enough that Quinlan probably can’t hear.

“I wanna punch him in the face,” Ahsoka confesses. “I want him to try to punch me in the face, and fail.”

“Don’t bully the baby Sith,” Rex admonishes.

“He’s a Sith.”

“He’s fifteen, it’s tacky.”

“But it’s Maul.”

“I know, but you’re tw--significantly older than him.”

“But... but it’s the motherfucker himself.”

“...you can bully him a little, but only because he’s a Sith.”

Fett steals the binoculars. “You can borrow them again when you stop acting like children.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rex says, dry as Ryloth. “I’m ten.”

“Pretty tall for your age,” Ahsoka mutters, and then giggles.

“Don’t steal my jokes,” Rex says. He elbows her, hard.

“You know,” Quinlan says, slow and tired. “Master Tholme and I are trained investigators.”

Ahsoka and Rex look at each other, and then up at him.

“Okay?”

“...do you want me to find actual evidence of this guy doing something criminal?”

“Oh, yes please.”

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

Quinlan, as it turns out, is not overselling his skills. He does catch Maul doing something illegal later that day. It’s a little more ‘stealing corporate secrets in the dead of night’ and less ‘torturing people for kicks,’ but it’s still enough to legally arrest him. Quinlan attempts to do so.

Quinlan does not succeed, and is forced to jump out a window to avoid getting cut in half. Maul follows, steals a passing speeder by throwing out the driver, and takes off. Someone--looks like Tholme--drops back to save the driver, but the rest of them give chase. Ahsoka gleefully takes point on that, of course. She’s the best pilot.

(Rex looks bored, but someone is likely to puke by the end of the night. She hopes it’s not Leia, who insisted on coming for some fucking reason.)

“How the kriff is a teenager that good?!” Quinlan yells, clinging to the edge of the speeder to avoid getting tipped out as Ahsoka swerves around a corner with a wild laugh.

“He’s a Sith!” Leia shouts over the wind. “What do you think?”

Quinlan is not impressed by the claim of Sith.

Ahsoka screeches as she drifts across four lanes of traffic and into an alleyway to pursue Maul. He’s pretty good at dodging cross-building walkways, but she’s better. She bares her teeth, hissing, and tries to pick a plan.

“Vos, how’s your aim with Force throws?” She calls to the backseat.

“Uh, decent?”

“Great! Fett’s the projectile!”

Vos takes a second longer to process that than Jango does.

“I’m wh--”

He cuts off, screaming, and is flung forward by Quinlan to crash headfirst into a teenage Sith.

“Take the wheel!” Ahsoka commands, not waiting to see who follows the order, because Fett and Maul are both getting to their feet, the other speeder is about to crash, and she’s not sure who’s going to win that fight.

She jumps from the speeder they’ve been violently dragging around Denon, and lands feet-first on Maul’s... shoulder.

Hm.

That definitely dislocated something.

“You should wear armor!” she chirps at him, drawing both sabers and grinning as he whirls to face her, eyes wide with hate.

He’s utterly silent.

That’s disturbing. Expected, but disturbing.

“Did you just throw me?” Fett demands, higher pitched than she’d normally expect.

“No, Vos threw you.”

“Because you told him to!”

“Yeah, it’s a good strategy!”

“It is not!”

“Why not? Throwing people was standard practice in the GAR.”

She can’t see his face, but she’s pretty sure he’s about ready to strangle her.

Ahsoka cannot, at that point, continue snarking with the father of her best friend, because there’s a red lightsaber coming for her throat, and she should probably worry about that. Maul’s very good at killing people and she’d like to avoid becoming part of that statistic.

As she is quickly reminded, he is... fifteen. And shorter than she’s used to. And already injured.

It’s really, really easy to take him out, actually.

At some point, the other speeder was safely recovered before it caused property damage, and their own is landing a few meters away with Vos and the kids.

“You have Force-negating cuffs, right?” Ahsoka asks.

“No, Master Tholme has them.”

“Oh,” she says, and grimaces. “I guess I’ll just... keep sitting on him then.”

Maul snarls, and she raps him on the skull. “Stop that, it’s uncivilized.”

Rex snorts.

Jango makes a noise that is incredibly frustrated with the lot of them, and turns on Rex. “Was she telling the truth?”

“About?”

“Throwing people being standard practice for the GAR.”

Rex’s face goes pained. “It was in the five-oh-first. And a few others.”

“What’s the GAR?” Quinlan asks.

“None of your damn business,” Fett snaps.

Quinlan throws his hands up in the air again. “Come on! I just proved I know what I’m doing!”

“And their tragic backstory is none of your business, prudii!”

Quinlan blinks at him, and then glances at Ahsoka. “Um.”

“He called you a shadow since your training, um, seems to be pointing in that direction,” she says as carefully as she can. “We were theorizing.”

“Wh... you actually paid attention?” Quinlan asks, looking horribly confused. “I thought I was just annoying you.”

Ahsoka laughs at him. “Oh, Vos... I’ve been running black ops for... much longer than most would guess. Trust me, I know another spy when I see them.”

She smiles as kindly as she can, because she hadn’t actually meant to make him feel left out or unwanted or... well, she’d been pretty patronizing, especially for someone seemingly younger than him. The smile does not work. Quinlan just looks kind of horrified about how young she just implied she started spy work.

Granted, she’d been sixteen for Zygerria...

Deciding to ignore him for a bit, she shifts on Maul’s back and pats him on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Baby Sith. We’re going to get you lots of nice therapy. Mind healers, no Sith tortures, all that fun stuff. Maybe some plushies.”

“You’re also getting therapy, right?” Quinlan asks. “Please say you are. I’m required for the specifics of my training and if anything you’ve said is true, I feel like you really need it and I’m scared of what’ll happen if you don’t.”

Ahsoka laughs, knowing exactly how empty it sounds. “Oh hell, if I didn’t get therapy, I imagine Kix would rise from the grave to force me into it.”

The name means nothing to anyone except Rex, and... ah, yeah, she told Fett about Kix a few weeks ago.

“No more throwing me without warning,” Fett grumbles, dropping to sit on the ground next to her. “Especially not at baby Sith Lords.”

“I am not a child!” Maul spits.

“He speaks!” Ahsoka cheers. “Aw, I knew you could do it.”

“’Soka, I told you not to bully him,” Rex complains. “It’s tacky. You’re being tacky.”

“I’m allowed to be tacky,” Ahsoka declares. “I’ve died twice, that’s, like, permission from the universe.”

“You’ve died twice?” Quinlan asks, back in ‘fascinated horror’ territory. “Wait, no, I shouldn’t ask--”

“Too late! The first time was on a planet that doesn’t exist and my Master lost his mind, killed a god, and used the good favor of another god to have me brought back to life at her expense. Not in that order.”

“I--what? No, that’s--what?”

Ahsoka smiles brightly. “You asked.”

Tholme finally shows up with the cuffs.

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

“You should eat something.”

He glares at her.

“Baby Sith Lords need to eat.”

He keeps glaring at her.

“Maul, you’ll never get big and strong and ready to kill if you don’t eat your vegetables.”

He bares his teeth.

“No, I don’t eat my veggies, but I’m a Togruta, so if I eat too many vegetables I throw up.”

Rex kicks her thigh, right on the faulds. “What did I say about bullying the Sith Lord?”

“Not to.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Making him eat his vegetables.”

“Soka.”

“Rex’ika.”

He kicks at her again. “Get up, we’re swapping out the watch.”

“But I wanted to hang out with my favorite little criminal mastermind.”

Rex drops to the floor and presses his forehead to her shoulder. “How the hell is being around this guy the first thing to make you cheer up in weeks?”

“I’m allowed to be mean to him.”

“He’s going to bite you.”

“I’ll bite back.”

Rex jabs a finger into her ribs, and she squeaks. “Go get something to eat, Commander.”

“Fine,” she huffs, rolling to her feet and moseying along to the galley. She walks in on Tholme and Fett having an argument about the ways in which Jedi and Mandalorians differ. Quinlan’s on the side, watching with wide eyes, and little Leia’s drinking a juice box at his side, tucked up under his arm and occasionally saying things to fan the flames. Ahsoka assumes she’s enjoying herself.

She opens the cooling unit, looks over the contents, and pulls out a raw leg of eopie mutton. She leans against the counter, bites into the chilled-but-not-frozen meat, and uses the back of one hand to wipe the blood off her chin. The ‘real adults’ don’t notice.

“I’m like ninety percent sure you’re doing this to mess with me but also...” Quinlan trails off, staring at her with horror. “Why?”

“A girl’s gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but all the obligate carnivores I know are like... generally holding to basic rules of courtesy when it comes to not grossing people out,” Quinlan says. “Like, I don’t chew with my mouth open. You don’t... eat in the most intimidating--did you just crack the bone with your teeth?!”

Ahsoka smirks at him, using her free hand to take away the shard of bone so she can suck out the marrow without eating the bones themselves. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t polite society. We’re in a galley on a bounty hunter’s ship, and I’ve been living on the run or in an army for most of my life. Table manners are optional.”

“No, they’re not,” Leia orders. “Fett, it’s your ship, tell her to--”

“--and another thing!” Fett snaps at Tholme, clearly paying less than no attention to the food argument.

Ahsoka keeps on eating, trying to catch wind of where the discussion’s at. Mostly, it seems to be at ‘talking past each other.’ Neither of them seems to have fully grasped more than the absolute most basic parts of the other culture, and that’s only enough to insult each other, not actually have a constructive conversation. She’d have expected more out of Tholme, at least. He’s not exactly young.

“Hey, quick question,” she says, in a moment where both of them have paused for breath and the opportunity to seethe. “Fett, when’s the last time you worked with a Jedi, or any member of a Force-based religion, before I popped into your life?”

His nose scrunches up as he makes a face.

“And Tholme, when’s the last time you worked with anyone from the Mandalorian system?”

Tholme’s reaction isn’t any more gracious than Fett’s.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says. “Vos, were either of them actually interested in that conversation, or just looking for an excuse to yell?”

“Now listen here, jetiika--”

“Fett,” she snaps. “I am not a child.”

“And neither am I,” he growls right back. “This is my ship, and I damn well don’t need you treating me like a misbehaving youngling. You’ve got a problem, you bring it to my face, not get all smug about people’s tempers blowing over.”

Well, then.

She smiles thinly. “Of course.”

He stands with his arms crossed, in full armor save for the helmet. She puts aside the eopie meat and wipes her hands, smiling until she can put her hands on her hips and let it drop to a challenge.

“You know, I’m just--I’m just gonna go,” Quinlan mutters, pulling Leia out with him, the girl hanging from under one of his arms. “This, uh, this looks like a problem for... you folks. Um. Yeah.”

He sidles out.

Tholme doesn’t.

Fett rubs at the bridge of his nose, and then gestures at the table. “Sit.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

He drops his hand and glares at her. “We have another week on this ship together. We are going to have this conversation. Sit.”

She sits, right on the warm spot left behind by Quinlan and Leia. She crosses her arms, lifts a brow, and waits.

Fett takes the seat across from her. Tholme leans against the counter.

“We all know you’re older than you look,” Fett says. “I heard Tholme mention it, I know that much has been shared. You’re acting like an actual teenager, and I’ve... I’ve put up with a lot. I am trying to keep things civil, particularly with you. I’ve tried to be friendly. You’ve been fucked up since we met, fine, everyone’s got trauma. The thing where you’ve started talking shit to our faces for what seems like your own amusement? That has to stop. You’re older than me, Torrent. Fucking act like it.”

She blinks at him, slow and not exactly happy, and turns to Tholme.

The man shrugs. “I was planning to put up with it until we arrived to the temple and handed you over to some mind healers. Fett doesn’t have that kind of time.”

There’s a curdle in her stomach, defensive and angry and guilty.

“You’ve been... a bitch,” Fett finally says. “You know that. I’m not going to mince words. You’ve been holier-than-thou and rude and condescending, and aiming that at Antilles is one thing, when you’ve apparently known her since she was a toddler and taught her things. Aiming at the rest of us isn’t going to fly. We’re all adults trying to share a space. Stop acting like... just like you have been.”

There is no defense to be made that they aren’t both already aware of.

She closes her eyes and tries to strangle the burst of irrational rage.

Their accusations aren’t unfounded.

They deserve an apology.

She is in the wrong.

She’s felt freer than she had in years, and in that freedom allowed herself too much rein, let herself lace her words with barbed wires and poison instead of sparks and spices, comments that were cruel instead of just joking. Too familiar. Too comfortable.

“My behavior’s been inappropriate,” she finally says, the words clumsy and too big in her mouth. “You’re right about that. I’m sorry, and I’ll endeavor to keep a tighter rein on my less pleasant behaviors in the future.”

At least she only lashes out with words. It could be worse.

She opens her eyes, fixes her gaze on the wall behind Fett, wrestles her expression into stiff neutrality. “Am I dismissed?”

“...uh, no, not after that,” Fett says, sounding just a little horrified. “What the hell was that?”

Tholme hisses out a breath. “Let her go.”

“No, this needs to be discussed, that’s not a healthy rea--”

“Fett, let her go,” Tholme insists, low and heavy.

Fett looks between the two for a moment, seems to come to a realization he doesn’t like, and then gestures almost violently towards the door. “Fine. Go.”

She walks out, doesn’t sprint. She’s stiff. She’s controlled. She’s the one that fucked up, so it’s fine if she doesn’t feel great right now. Getting called out on one’s own failings as a person isn’t something to get upset about if the failings are real. The feelings are real and normal, but this was her fault, and so it’s up to her to fix it, and she can’t let them know it hurt her, because this was her mistake.

She goes to the cargo hold.

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

Ahsoka works out her frustrations on Fett’s punching bag. She does not augment herself with the Force, just uses raw strength and technique, ignoring the tears that press at her eyes.

She’s fine.

It’s not weird. It’s not odd. It’s not strange to not notice she’s been kind of a bitch since her mood came up with the whole Depa thing, and then Maul. She’s been mean, mostly to Vos and Fett, and nobody’s confronted her about it until now. They let her have room for her trauma, and she hadn’t reined it in. She’s just gotten worse.

‘Snippy’ she’d always been, but age apparently hadn’t fucking tempered it.

“Um.”

She catches the punching bag, breathing heavily and covered in sweat. She hasn’t worked out all the twitchy, nervous energy yet.

“Vos,” she greets, once she’s caught herself enough that her voice won’t waver. He’s on the other side of the bag, but she knows his voice. “Do you need something?”

“You’re kind of... projecting,” he tells her, drifting to where she can actually see him. “Not self-loathing, but, um, recrimination? You just don’t feel very good and I was hoping to help”

Why in all the Sith hells does he have to be nice.

“I got called out on my behavior and wasn’t ready to face the fact that I’d kriffed up,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine. And I’m... sorry. I haven’t been fair to you and was using you as an easy target for some of my ruder comments.”

“I mean, I kind of figured,” he admits, coming closer. “I’ve been tutored by Shadows before, and a lot of them act like you. I just assumed it was more of that.”

“I still shouldn’t have let myself run loose like that,” she says. “I’m... it wasn’t appropriate. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she says. “Not with... not with you. Or anyone other than Rex and a mind healer, really. Most of it is...”

She trails off, distantly noticing that her eyes are tearing up enough to blur her vision, and her nails are digging into the bag in a way Fett won’t appreciate.

There’s so much that beat her down, never quite breaking her, that she doesn’t even know what made her act the way she does.

“Want to spar?”

She looks over at him, wonders what he sees that makes him want to fight her when she’s visibly unstable.

He smiles, kind and easy, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s genuine in intent, if not in energy. He wants to help. “You all keep saying I could work on my hand-to-hand. Just take off the armor so I don’t break a finger, maybe.”

“You’re serious.”

“No, I’m Quinlan.”

She’s going to wipe the floor with this boy. “You sure you wanna fight me?”

“You won’t be able to meditate until you do,” he says. He’s right, damn him. “The other option is that I go get your... vod, I think? I go get Rex and you two can talk it out since you trust him with more. I don’t want to do that, though, he’s still a kid.”

She eyes him, lips pressed together and mind awhirl with emotions and thoughts she’d tried to beat out of her head and into the bag. “Ever fought someone without the Force?”

“...yes?”

“Was it cuffs?”

“Oh, you meant me not having the Force,” he realizes. “Er, no. Is... is that something you’ve done a lot?”

She smiles at him. “You’re planning on Shadow work. That means getting captured and stripped of everything you are at some point, Force included. Unfortunately, the cuffs are in use on a very annoying Dathomirian right now, so we’ll have to make do with you shielding like your mind’s a Kessel Spice Mine.”

“...do I want to know how often you’ve been captured?”

“No, you don’t.”

When he comes at her, it’s easy to dodge. It’s easy to tap him on target points, little pokes that show she could take him out, but isn’t going to until he’s learned something. He stays grinning throughout, letting her take the lead, and he treats her like... like a knight. Like a teacher. He’s stepped back and gone from trying to impress her as a fellow padawan, to proving himself to a full knight.

She’s not sure when that change happened, or why or how, but it makes things much smoother. She wants to think that it would have even if she hadn’t gotten a wakeup call from Fett.

So she treats him the way she treated Ezra, for the year she’d spent traveling with Kanan. She treats him as a student that’s willing to learn, good but not yet great, competent but not yet ready to survive. She draws him into the kind of chest-heaving exhaustion that tells a fighter just how much energy they waste.

(Ahsoka may have had her own style, but her grandmaster had been the pinnacle of a Soresu user. She’d spent years on the frontlines of a war. She knew the worth of conserving energy, and she’d teach it to any who stepped in to challenge her.)

“Who taught you to fight like this?” He asks, when they’ve taken a handful of moments to circle each other. His steps are heavy, sure, planted. Her own are light and ready.

“Soldiers,” she says. It’s true enough.

“Not your Master?” he asks, just as he tries to kick for her upper arm. It’s a safe question. For anyone else, it would be a safe question.

But for Ahsoka, it’s another chink in the armor, after a maelstrom of emotion, a storm of self-loathing, a dervish of instability.

She doesn’t break right away.

She spirals. She fights Quinlan, but doesn’t quite see him. Her strikes get sloppy, her feet stumble. She can’t make herself meet Quinlan’s eyes, not when the scrape of his heel against the metal sounds like the rasp of a breathing machine. Her shields get fuzzy, she knows, and she leaks what she feels into the air, making it sour and thick. She doesn’t notice, because all she can see, all she can--all she can hear and feel and--

She drops to her knees and grabs at her head, trying to stop it.

“Sokari?”

She breathes. In and out, harsh and jagged but natural in a way that the damned respirator wasn’t.

Her master her teacher her brother the traitor the hound the executioner

Her face is hot. Something prickles. It might be tears.

She tries to say something, tries to say a name or a request, tries to make anything come out of her mouth that isn’t the broken wail of a woman who hasn’t let herself think about how she died.

She feels herself pulled into someone’s arms, and she can’t quite tell who, but they’re bigger than she is, and feel warm and worried. They care. They don’t understand, they’re scared, but they care.

Her hands shake, clutched to her chest and she can’t breathe she can’t make herself take in enough air to do a Force-damned thing the empire is going to feel her her shields are down and broken and her emotions are spilling and the empire is going to find HER ANAKIN IS GOING TO FIND HER AND--

“COMMANDER!”

Rex.

Rex is here.

Her breath is coming so fast that she’s hiccupping more than she’s actually inhaling. She feels small hands in gloves on either side of her face, and then her forehead presses to something warm.

Rex. A Keldabe kiss. Her brother, her partner, her other half. He’s here. He’s calm. If he’s calm, then things are fine.

“What happened?” Light voice, high voice, small and distant. Leia. Little Leia little princess Leia she’s in danger she’s in trouble Anakin will--

“Commander.”

No. Here and now. She needs to focus on here and now. Her throat feels cold. She breathes too fast, still. She can’t stop it.

“I don’t know.” That’s Vos. He was... they were doing something. He was here. Talking to her. “We were sparring, and she just--”

Right, sparring.

“I don’t know if I said something?” He offers, voice pitching up, unsure and worried. Is he the one holding her? He’s the one holding her. That’s embarrassing.

“Commander?” Rex prompts. “Commander, can you open your eyes?”

She tries. She can’t. She shakes her head.

“Soka?” he asks, voice quiet. “Where are you?”

“F-F-Fett,” she manages. It’s enough.

“And where were you?”

His voice is so soft. So worried. She held him the same way after Mandalore, after Order 66, after all his brothers, all her friends...

“Soka.”

Her mind is spinning, and suddenly all she can hear is Anakin Skywalker is dead. I destroyed him.

Her breath hitches, and she wails.

“Commander,” Rex tries again, but her head is a vortex of Then you will die and Perhaps this child and not the Jedi way.

Our long awaited meeting.

I destroyed him.

Then you will die.

She can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can only see that yellow eye that’s too familiar but belongs to a stranger can only hear a voice that shouldn’t exist can only mourn and break and--

“Soka?”

“Malachor,” she manages. “I--h-he--I died.”

“What did you say?” someone asks. A vod. It’s the right voice, almost, rough and business-like, not accusing anyone yet, and... and... no. No. Not one of her boys. It’s Fett.

“Um, right at the end? I asked her who taught her to fight like this,” Quinlan says, nervous. “And she said it was soldiers. And I joked, I asked that it wasn’t her Master, and she didn’t answer that. A couple minutes later, she just started...”

“Oh, Soka,” Rex whispers, pulling her closer. “Commander, just breathe with me.”

“H-h-he, he just--R-Rex, he j-just--and I c-c-couldn’t--”

“I know,” her captain whispers. “I know, just breathe with me.”

“He k-k-k-killed me,” she sobs, falling out of the Keldabe and into too-small arms. “I l-loved--he was my broth-ther and--and he just--he killed me, he didn’t even stop.”

“I know,” Rex whispers. “Soka, I know.”

Of course he does.

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

“It was just bad timing,” Rex says, once they’re in the room she’s been sharing with her little family, curled up under a blanket and watching the floor like it has all the secrets to how she lost her world three times over.

“Is there anything we need to keep in mind?” Fett asks, gruff and uncomfortable. She wonders if he’s angry that she took his necessary confrontation and turned it into this mess.

“Don’t bring up her Jedi Master,” Rex says, and pulls her in when she shivers. Her eyes squeeze shut before she can stop them, tears beading up again. “Just... don’t. It’s too soon.”

“He’s--”

“He Fell,” Ahsoka interrupts. “I thought he died, but he became a Sith. And fifteen years later, we ran into each other, and I refused to join him in the Dark, so he tried to kill me.”

Fett swears, low and muffled. She thinks he has a hand over his mouth.

Quin and Leia aren’t there. She thinks they’re keeping an eye on their Baby Sith prisoner. That’s good.

“Soka,” Rex whispers, and she buries her face in his shoulder. She’s too old to be this kind of mess. She’s thirty-two. She’s Fulcrum. She’s...

She’s in need of a lot of therapy.

“We can avoid the subject unless you bring it up,” Tholme promises. “Definitely until the Temple. Is there anything else we shouldn’t talk about?”

Ahsoka can practically feel Rex’s deadpan look. “Sir, we’re a trio of child soldiers ripped from everything we know. Every other sentence is a risk. We’re just... working our way through.”

There’s a knock at the door. Oh. Quin and Leia.

“Just figured we’d drop this off before we went down to visit Mr. Grumpy-Face,” Quinlan whispers. He still thinks Leia’s a child. He’s trying to make things less terrible for her. That’s nice. “We decided he’ll be less angry if he tries Hoth chocolate, and made some for everyone.”

They definitely made it for Ahsoka herself, and Maul was an afterthought. Still. It’s sweet.

“Commander?” Rex prompts, jostling her a little to try and get her to sit up.

“Gimme a sec,” she manages. It takes longer than it should to push herself away from him, to accept the mug that Leia gives her, too-serious worry in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her soul.

She doesn’t look six. She doesn’t even look twenty-two. This girl was always too old for her skin, forced to grow up in the hostile fear of the Empire.

“Thank you, Princess.”

She sips.

She can barely taste it beyond the ashes she imagines coating her tongue.

I destroyed him, her memory echoes. His slightest hesitation before he made the final move, it haunts her. She almost reached him. If only she’d tried harder, yelled louder, been better...

She shivers.

“Do you need help falling asleep?” Tholme asks. “I’m a regular healer, not a mind healer, but...”

She probably should.

She takes another sip of her drink, willing herself to taste it. It’s good. She likes it. She knows she does.

“Can you make it dreamless?” she whispers.

“It doesn’t always work, but I can try,” he tells her.

She nods. “When I finish the chocolate.”

“Of course.”

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

Everyone’s careful around her for days. The whole decision to be nicer doesn’t mean anything when she’s walking about in a daze of too few emotions, drained of everything she could feel in favor of a grey cloud of fluff in everything she does.

She does forms. Single saber and Jar’kai. Ataru and Djem so and Soresu. Reverse grip, regular grip, partial reverse on either side.

Again. Again. Again.

She loses herself in the motions, not meditating so much as just empty.

Rex worries. Fett worries. Vos worries.

Leia and Tholme keep their shields locked up tight, and she doesn’t know how they feel. She thinks Leia might be judging her. She think Tholme might be pitying.

Maul simply hates. It’s an old and familiar sensation to walk into, and she takes unthinking comfort in his rage. She’s silent instead of snippy, when she plays the role of guard, and they stare at each other in silence. His eyes burn, and she wonders how much he’s heard of her nightmares.

“You need to talk,” Rex tells her, when he finds her with a cold cup of caff, eyes fixed somewhere beyond it all. She lifts her head. “Soka.”

She just stares at him.

He sighs and pulls her into a hug. “Commander, please.”

She can’t.

Ahsoka stares at the wall behind him, resting her chin on his head. Her neck itches under the lek at the back of her head, a little tingle of a feeling that she can’t bring herself to do anything about. The pale light of the galley is sharp against the chipped paint of the metal that surrounds them. It hurts her eyes to look, but it’s not the deep and dark lit only by red--

Then you will die, her memory growls.

She flinches.

“Breathe,” Rex tells her, too-small hands clinging at her back. “Just breathe, ‘Soka.”

She curls in tighter and tries to just breathe.

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

“Tell me something good.”

Ahsoka blinks. She looks at Leia. She doesn’t have the energy to parse that.

Leia chances a look at Rex, who isn’t leaving Ahsoka’s side any more than he has to, and Fett on the other side. Tholme’s asleep and Quin’s on Baby Sith duty. It’s just people who know, right now.

The little girl across the table, the child senator, the spy, purses her lips and huffs in irritation. “You knew my biological father before he became one of the worst people in the galaxy. Both of you did. Tell me something good about him.”

Good things.

About Anakin.

“You fought a war as a Jedi,” Leia prompts. “Surely you must have done some good things with him, or at least thought you were.”

Did they?

Every mission ended in tragedy or was just a ploy of Palpatine’s. Every saved life was just...

Wait.

“He built Threepio,” she finally says. “Your father wi--I mean, Bail wiped Threepio’s memory after the Empire rose, for your safety, but Anakin was the one who built him.”

Leia sits up, eyes brighter. “I didn’t know that. I... was Artoo involved? Did he build R2D2, or...”

“No,” Rex says, “But Artoo was his favorite astromech, and they always pushed each other into stupid stunts. We risked a hell of a lot to save that droid, more than once, and I didn’t find out until you started working with the Rebellion full-time, but Artoo and Threepio were the witnesses for your bio-parents’ wedding.”

Leia gapes at him. So does Ahsoka. (Fett doesn’t know enough to care.)

Rex grins, and if it looks a little forced, that’s fine. “He had a holo recording. I was one of the few people left that knew about the marriage that might have wanted to see, so Artoo offered. It was... sweet.”

He waits, probably for Ahsoka to add something herself, but she has nothing.

“I think that’s when they swapped droids, since Threepio was more useful to a politician and Artoo did his best work when we set him loose on the enemy.”

“He never changed,” Leia muses. “Did he always swear that much?”

“Yes,” Ahsoka answers, as Rex laughs. “Always. All the binary I learned started with the best swears.”

She tries to think of another good memory, something else that Leia might appreciate. Her mind ticks back to saving Stinky, which is just a terrible option, because that mission started with Hutts and ended with the Battle of Teth. That massive loss of life, all for the son of the creature that had put Leia in chains.

She wonders if she has anything in her memory that doesn’t end in blood and graves.

“Soka.” Rex.

“Hm?”

“Remember that time Fives and Echo got lost in the undercity their first time on leave, and we had to get the General to help us find them?”

She does.

He’s right, that’s a good story.

“Okay, so what you have to understand,” Ahsoka says, already digging the faint details out and dusting them off, “is that these boys were ARC troopers, top-notch, terrifyingly competent once they got through specialty training, and loyal as hell. Echo had memorized the reg manuals front to back, and Fives was... well, Fives ended up being the only person to figure out the chips before they went into action. Point is, the Domino twins were good... eventually. Just like everyone else, though, they started out shiny.”

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

“Tholme’s hiding something.”

Ahsoka wonders if Leia will just leave if she ignores her enough. Probably not. This was the girl that got kicked out of boarding school for leading a sit-in at age seven. She’s got patience.

“His job requires him to hide a lot of things,” Ahsoka says instead. “Not as many as Vos will have to, eventually, but a lot.”

“He’s hiding something from us,” Leia insists, visibly frustrated that Ahsoka isn’t as upset about this as she is. “Something important.”

The way she says ‘important’ is clumsy and impacted by the missing baby tooth. She can’t say the r. It comes out as ‘im-poh-ten,’ which is adorable, and if Ahsoka comments on it, she’s probably going to get punched by a six-year-old.

“The Force doesn’t care,” Ahsoka says. “I trust his intentions, if not him as a person.”

“If you don’t trust him, then why trust his intentions?”

“Leia, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I trust one and a half people in the galaxy,” Ahsoka points out. “Me not trusting a person isn’t a sign of anything except my paranoia. The only person I trust fully and without reservation is Rex. Even you, I only mostly trust, because my brain starts screaming if I think too hard. That’s why you’re the half.”

“Okay, whatever, paranoia aside,” Leia barrels on, “He should tell us. Whatever it is that he’s hiding, we deserve to know. We’re not children that he can just hide things from for our own good.”

Ahsoka presses her lips together. “Leia. Princess. I know you’re used to holding all the cards--”

“This isn’t about me being a control freak!”

“It is, though,” Ahsoka soothes, and smiles. “Your mother--the bio one--was the same way. You spent years as one of the leaders of the Rebellion, so obviously you’re used to having all the information, and people reporting to you... but Tholme is a Jedi Master. He reports to the Council and the Republic. Do you know how many people I kept secrets from while I was a padawan? We’re an unknown, Leia. They have no proof that we’re on their side, especially since we’re traveling with Fett.”

Leia crosses her arms and glares as hard as she can.

“I’m not going to bother him,” Ahsoka says. “I’ve already had, like, five unrelated mental breakdowns. I’m putting this on hold until we get to the Temple and I can trust that there’s a healer on hand to sedate me or something.”

“You... want to be sedated?”

“Leia, this... really should be obvious, but a Force-Sensitive losing their osik the way I have been isn’t actually safe. I know I broke a weapons rack last week.” Ahsoka gestures vaguely. “If the Jedi Master isn’t telling me something for reasons that might relate to my clear and obvious mental instability, I’m going to assume he’s got a point.”

“So he should tell me or Rex.”

“We’ll be on Coruscant in four days,” Ahsoka soothes. “Just... let it be. They won’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that.”

Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t have to. The Force leads me in all things, including this.”

Leia isn’t impressed by that, but Leia isn’t impressed by much in the first place.

She strides off in a fit that is, perhaps, more influenced by her six-year-old emotional control than she’d like to admit. Ahsoka lets her. It’s not worth the argument.

It’s only a few minutes later that Fett strides in, takes the seat Leia was just in, and asks, “What would it take for you to teach me how to use a jetii’kad?”

She blinks at him. “You want to learn how to use a lightsaber?”

“Yes.”

“...why?”

“Viszla.”

“I see.”

She does.

Ahsoka taps her fingers against the table, eyeing him with the kind of interest she copied from Master Kenobi, years ago. Fett doesn’t fidget, but she thinks he might want to. He just looks back, waiting for her judgement.

“You’ll need to justify it,” she finally says. “It’s a significant difference from what you actually did, so I need to know your reasoning for doing it, and your plans for once it’s done.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s step one,” she corrects. She tilts her head, considering. “My standards for you aren’t built in a vacuum, and you know that. Explain to me what you plan to do and how you plan to do it, and if I approve...”

“You’ll help me achieve it.”

“Maybe,” she allows. “A lot of that depends on Rex.”

“I expected as much,” Fett says. “He is... an admittedly large part of the reason.”

“He would be,” she says. She gives the silence a few more seconds to sit awkwardly between them, and then stands up. “I’d guess you’ve been brainstorming already. Do you have it written down or is it mostly just in your head so far?”

“I’m still... debating options, so to speak.”

She grins, and the shape of the predator’s smile, the baring of teeth... that almost makes him step back. She can see it in the twitch of his muscles. Smart man.

“Follow me,” she says, and doesn’t wait for him to stand. She strides out with tooka-light steps, hears the heavy beskar tread behind her, and goes to the cargo hold. Fett’s confusion grows tangibly behind her, especially when she tosses him a wooden quarterstaff. She picks up the other and spins it in one hand.

“You’re going to fight me,” she tells him, stretching and letting the staff help with the process. “And while we fight, you’re going to tell me what your plans for Mandalore are.”

He mimics her, but there’s a frown on his face. “And why staffs?”

“You and I, we’ve only sparred bare-handed,” she says. “I need a feel for how you fight with a weapon anyway. These are a good start.”

“Not the beskad?”

She grins, and the twitch is back. “No. That can wait. We start with the staffs.”

He takes a stance, and she mirrors him. She lets him strike first with a weapon, but she’s the one that asks all the questions.

(He is the only one on the ship that can fight her one-on-one right now, and he can win. Still, she makes him work for every inch, and what she doesn’t win in bruises, she wins in words.)

(Fett might yet be a proper Mand’alor, but Ahsoka learned war from her brothers, negotiation at the knee of a general and in the shadow of a prince, and government at the side of duchesses and queens.)

(If he wants her help uniting his people, he needs to prove that he can hold them together once she’s gone.)

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

Ahsoka’s interrogation of Jango’s plans is thorough, and she’s not the only one involved. She brings Leia in, and has her join in on the grilling. She maybe laughs as the twenty-seven-year-old survivor of Galidraan, the Mand’alor, a man who has killed Master Jedi with his bare hands, gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly.

Still, Leia knows this better than any of the rest of them do. The girl might have grown up heir to a monarchy, but she got a classical education and was drilled on democracy and all associated forms of government. Where Ahsoka knows military protocol and law enforcement, intersystem relations and defensive measures, Leia knows agricultural subsidies and welfare programs, infrastructure and education.

Ahsoka may know how to find out if someone’s breaking a zoning law, but Leia knows why it exists in the first place.

“And I grew up in a cult,” Rex says, when an argument on that topic breaks out. Everyone that hasn’t heard the joke-that-isn’t-a-joke stares at him. “The Jedi grew up in a religious meritocracy; Leia grew up in a monarchy; and I grew up in a cult.”

Ahsoka elbows him. He’s not wrong, but still.

Unfortunately, Ahsoka is about forty-seven percent sure that Leia will put her foot in her mouth when it comes to Mandalorian culture, blunt as the girl is. That prefrontal cortex isn’t anywhere near as developed as it should be, either, so impulse control for the princess isn’t great. Ahsoka refuses to let Leia and Fett talk about ways to mend the breaks between tradition and the pacifism of the New Mandalorians without either Rex or Ahsoka herself as a mediating presence. Tholme sits in a few times, but while he knows that Leia isn’t really six--though not about the time-travel, yet--Quinlan doesn’t.

They admittedly end up doing this while he’s on Maul-sitting duty.

“It’s like he doesn’t even care about making nice with the people that, at this point, make up the majority of his people!” Leia grumbles one night, as Ahsoka kicks over a step stool so the girl can brush her teeth. “He may not like the New Mandalorians, but from what I understand, it’s still early enough to prevent the majority of the cultural bleaching you brought up. If he stays this stubborn--”

“Leia,” Ahsoka says, and the girl’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m aware of your reasons for not trusting his intentions. But if I may say? Chill.”

“He’s not even trying!”

“He’s trying a hell of a lot harder than he did in the original timeline,” Ahsoka reminds her. “Brush your teeth.”

“I’m not a--”

“Teeth.”

It’s a little worrying, how the child’s brain affects Leia, but... well. That’ll pass in time, hopefully. Until then, Ahsoka gets to be the aunt she should have been. This includes tucking Leia in, which the girl grumbles about despite the fond waves of comfort that enter the Force around her. Ahsoka doesn’t call her out on it, just brushes back wisps of hair to plant a kiss on Leia’s forehead, and then does the same once Rex stumbles in, grumbling about the limitations of a cadet’s body, but far more ready to follow the protocol that is bedtime.

Rex doesn’t pretend to not like getting tucked in, for all that he’s sharing with a grumbly, already-asleep princess. He smiles up at Ahsoka, lets her hug him, and pretends they can be a normal family for five seconds.

Quinlan’s making a late night snack for himself in the galley. Tholme is guarding the Baby Sith. Fett...

Ahsoka goes to the cockpit, takes the copilot’s seat, and watches hyperspace pass them by.

It takes long minutes before either of them say anything.

“Do Jedi believe in souls?”

His shields are up, locked up tighter than the innermost chambers of the Imperial Palace. She has no idea where he’s taking this question. She has to cast about for an answer.

“That depends on how you define a soul,” she finally says. “Leia told me about Force Ghosts. A Jedi Master who underwent the right meditations and training could pass into the Force upon their death without losing their sense of self. They could remain themselves, to an extent, and interact with force-sensitive individuals. I don’t know if they could last that way indefinitely, but depending on your definition, I could argue those ghosts were evidence of a form of soul.”

“So you believe that the dead pass into the Force, but that what passes could be a soul. Something must exist for a sense of self to disappear at death in a way that impacts the Force as you understand it, and many would use the word ‘soul’ for that something.”

“Mm,” Ahsoka considers it. “I’d say that’s pretty accurate. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“What about those not yet born?”

Her fingers feel cold, and she finds herself no longer able to watch the passage of hyperspace as passively as she had, and her eyes catch on streaks and motes of what is not dust, her vision unable to keep any more still than her heart.

“Oh,” she hears herself say. “The clones.”

It’s a long time before he answers, but the walls come down. He carries a confused sort of grief with him, guilty and a mite resentful. His questions have been building for longer than she’d thought. His voice is rough. “I’ve taken plenty of lives, but I’ve never known the name of someone I erased from existence before they were even born.”

“The stories we told Leia about the brothers.”

There’s a grunt of agreement from Fett, so those dots at least connect.

“I take it my answer wasn’t helpful,” she manages to say.

“Will they still exist?” Fett asks. “Will they be born elsewhere? Or is... is a soul something that only comes into existence after the body does?”

“I have no idea,” Ahsoka admits. “I want... I want to think that I’d be able to find them eventually, to recognize them, if their souls are still born into this world elsewhere.”

“And if your Sith finds someone else to build his army out of?”

Ahsoka looks at him, sharp and pointed. “You wouldn’t.”

“They’ll be doing it anyway, if their plans are as ironclad as you say.”

“You’re already associating with Jedi,” Ahsoka says, fighting the urge to break his nose. “They wouldn’t approach you, not now. They can’t leverage your anger against you. They won’t know everything, but they’ll know that you have friends among the Jedi.”

“You think they can’t come up with better lies?”

He has a point. He has more than one point and she hate hate hates it.

A Jedi does not hate.

I am no Jedi.

“You’re going to have to convince me,” she says. “Especially if you want to somehow balance this with the darksaber thing. I won’t teach you how to fight with it if you’re not planning to retake Mandalore.”

“That’s how they’d sell it,” he says. “Retaking Mandalore. An army ostensibly for the Jedi, and ultimately...”

“You’d build an army of slaves.”

“No, I’d be the inside man for when they build that army anyway.”

She holds his gaze. She looks away first.

“Torrent?”

“I’m thinking.”

He lets her.

“I’ll need to talk to Rex. Probably Leia.”

“Understandable.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I’m only just considering it. It’s an idea, not a plan.”

“That’s the only reason I haven’t ripped your throat out with my teeth.”

“Hyperbole doesn’t suit you.”

She glares at him, and leaves, her mind chopping up and laying out every possible angle on Fett volunteering to do the exact same thing as last time, but somehow worse.

Great. Just what she needed.

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

Ahsoka isn’t there for the shouting match between Rex and Fett, but she doesn’t have to be. She can hear it form clear across the ship, and Rex comes to her afterwars. He’s been crying, which isn’t as surprising as it could be. These bodies are still prone to such things, and will be for years. She doesn’t comment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“We need to take out Sidious before he starts anything on Kamino.”

“Agreed,” she says. “It’ll be hard, though.”

“I don’t care.”

“What did Fett say?”

“That if it wasn’t going to be my brothers, it would be someone else’s. Either we stopped the cloning from happening at all, or we mitigated damage by being there.”

“I don’t think Sidious is going to tap him for it,” Ahsoka admits. “Not unless you’re willing to stage that kind of fight publicly enough for Fett to claim the Jedi poisoned you, family, against him. It could work, but it’s a gamble.”

He knows all of this.

“I miss them,” he says, and she cards her fingers though the curls he’s managed to grow in the past weeks. “I just... even at the end, I had Wolffe. I knew Boba was out there; I wouldn’t be surprised if the beskar let him survive a Sarlacc. I had brothers. Not as many as I used to, but there was always someone. I miss them all, so much it hurts.”

“It wouldn’t be them,” she reminds him. She pulls him closer, puts her cheek to his head. “It would be the same process, the same faces, the same training, even, but the boys themselves...”

He clings to her and shudders.

“Rex?”

“I can’t force them to grow up the way I did. I want them back. Sidious is going to make the army no matter what. Someone’s going to suffer, and I don’t want it to be my brothers, but they won’t exist otherwise, and...”

“And it’s an impossible choice,” she summarizes. “And it sucks.”

“It’s sucks Gungan balls, ‘Soka.”

She laughs, and feels him smile against her shoulder. Good. He needs to smile more.

“He’s still trying to get me to like him,” Rex says. "He’s still making an effort, and he never did that for anyone except Boba, and it’s weird. I don’t know what to do with any of that.”

“Gain a brother,” Ahsoka whispers, and she feels him jerk against her. “If that’s what you want.”

“He’s not vod.”

“Same blood as all the rest, and you’re older than him, so he’s not really in a position to be a parent to you like he was to Boba,” she says carefully. “You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to, but... I think he’s trying. I think this means a lot to him, and that he isn’t any more sure of what to do than you are. You don’t have to forgive him for what he did in the future, you don’t have to accept when he reaches out, you don’t have to ever talk to him again after we reach Coruscant if you don’t want, but I think... I think it’s worth at least considering what you have to gain. I think it’s worth looking at what he’s trying to give you.”

Rex huffs. “Why couldn’t he just be the shabuir I knew in training?”

“Something happened between now and then?” she offers. “I don’t know. I never met him in the original timeline. I just know the guy that keeps trying to get on my good side so you’ll like him.”

He outright scoffs. “Soka, that’s not the only reason he’s trying to get on your good side.”

“...I’m a former Jedi who talks trash to his face,” she says slowly. “And I cried on him. There is no reason for him to be nice to me, other than you.”

“He thinks you’re cool and a good person and wants you to be his friend.”

“Bantha poodoo.”

Rex grins in a way that goes straight to smirking. “Soka, I’m not joking. Jango Fett wants you to be his friend.”

“Kriffing why?” she asks, more than a little horrified. “I’m a mess, look like I’m ten years younger than him, have gleefully kicked his ass in front of an audience; I even told Vos to throw him at a baby Sith Lord. Putting up with me is one thing, but I’m... I’m only barely not a Jedi. I’m a historical enemy of Mandalore, and part of the community he hates more than anything, and--”

“And his reaction to you kicking his ass was pure Mando,” Rex says. “In that he now thinks you’re a badass, and thus worth being friends with.”

“I can’t believe that. I physically cannot.”

“Soka, just accept it. The Mand’alor wants to be friends with you.” He scratches at his scalp. “I mean, he met you while you were protecting what appeared to be children, and it’s apparently still early enough for him to care about that.”

She leans back in her seat, eyes on the wall ahead of her and back against the cool metal of the other side. Rex falls back with her. She wonders if Rex changed the subject so they didn’t have to talk about deciding how many of his brothers get to exist, and whether or not he can swallow the bitterness of his history to have a connection with at least one member of his blood. She doesn’t ask. If he wants to change the subject, that’s his right.

“I don’t... no.” She denies it as well as she can, and then the implications dig a little deeper. “Is this me accidentally signing up to be the Jedi Order’s official liaison to the Mand’alor?”

“I mean, this point in time... they’ve got Kenobi for the Duchess, yeah?” Rex shrugs. “Good relations with the system are probably a good thing, and you’ve got a stronger connection than Tholme and Vos.”

“Ugh,” she says. She rubs a hand against her head, and then lurches to her feet. “Fine! Fine. If it’ll get him to retake Mandalore before the Sith decide to bribe him with an army he doesn’t get to keep, I’ll teach him how to fight for the kriffin’ Darksaber.”

“That’s what makes the decision for you?”

“Well something had to!”

They only get one lesson in before Coruscant, but the lesson lasts a full day, and Ahsoka’s got his comm number. Fett’s a quick learner anyway, and Tholme was there to give pointers where Ahsoka couldn’t.

He won’t measure up to a Jedi in saber-to-saber combat, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to learn enough to turn all those skills with a beskad to something that works with a jetii’kad.

(The balance of a saber is wrong to those used to a physical weapon. The inertia doesn’t work the way anyone expects. There’s no need to worry about damaging the blade.)

(Fett is good. Ahsoka is better. And, bless his heart, he knows it.)

(She will mold him into the shape of someone who not only can, but should rule a system with a history like that, and he damn well knows that too.)

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

“Dropping out of hyperspace in T-minus twenty seconds.”

The Slave I is not, in fact, a Venator-class starship, or anything else near the size and smoothness of the ships that Ahsoka grew up on. This is a bounty hunter’s vessel, and the drop to real space jolts like nothing else. Ahsoka’s in the copilot seat for the return, but Tholme’s going to swap with her as soon as they’ve got confirmation that there were no problems with exiting hyperspace, and nobody’s shooting at them.

“We’re not going to get shot at,” Tholme had assured her.

“I always get shot at,” she’d told him.

“I have our clearance,” he reminded her, seeming more amused than frustrated. “There’s no need to worry about getting shot at.”

“I also always get shot at,” Jango had thrown in.

“Okay,” Tholme had allowed, after several minutes of his trust in the Temple warring against Ahsoka and Jango’s learned paranoia. The looks Quinlan had darted around the room when Leia and Rex also claimed ‘chronic getting-shot-at disease’ had been a treat. The paranoia of a Watchman and a future Shadow was great, but the paranoia of three revolutionaries and a galaxy-wide criminal was greater. “You can take us in close enough to get in radio contact, but the second we have to ask for clearance and a vector, I’m in the seat.”

She’d agreed, of course. She was paranoid, not inexperienced.

“We’re much less likely to get shot down by ground control if you tell them we’re with you,” she’d said, to his hilariously apparent metaphysical exhaustion. “Obviously.”

“Good enough,” he’d sighed.

What that means is mostly just that Ahsoka gets to watch the distant star at the center of Coruscant’s system grow rapidly brighter. She can pick out the constellations she’d grown up with, the stars the creche had projected on the ceiling every night, the ones that she may not have seen from the surface, but had greeted her and then sent her on her way every time she left on yet another campaign that lost her men their lives for a Sith Lord's wretched plans. These were the shapes and stories she’d never seen again as Fulcrum, a woman so hunted that to come within a dozen subsectors of the planet was to court her death.

For sixteen years, she hadn’t ventured closer than Alderaan, save for a single trip to Chandrila.

And now, maybe twenty minutes away at this speed, was the Temple. It was home.

A home that didn’t know her, that had sentenced her to death, that had hosted the rampage of her former master... but home nonetheless.

“Stable?” Fett grunts.

“Thrusters are good,” she confirms.

“I meant you.”

Ah. “I’m... fine. As good as I could be, anyway.”

She hesitates, but manages to speak before he does. “You?”

“I’m not the one walking into an entire building of triggers.”

“Only because you’re not entering it,” she says. “It’s the home of your ancestral enemies who, bad info or no, killed off a whole lot of your friends.”

“I get to leave,” he says. “You don’t.”

She plans to needle him a bit more, maybe on something a little less based in both their traumas. She needs to talk, if only to fill up the silence and keep herself from reaching out to all the lights in the Force. It’ll be too much, she knows.

Tholme enters the cockpit. “Change of plans.”

“Better be a good reason,” Jango says, voice flat.

“Leia’s crying.”

Ahsoka’s unbuckling herself before she can process the words fully. “What?”

Leia doesn’t cry for no reason. Her emotional control is as difficult as the body makes it, but she doesn’t just cry. There’s always a cause.

“I don’t know. Rex said to get you,” Tholme explains. “She was saying a name. He seemed to recognize it.”

Not good not good not good. If Leia was feeling the Emper--No. She cuts the thought off there. No catastrophizing. Information first.

“What name.”

“Luke. Mean anything to--and she’s gone.”

Ahsoka ignores him, just sprints to where she knows the ‘young ones’ are. They’re all in Maul’s room, because nobody wants to be alone with him now, but it’s the worst time to leave him without supervision. It’s not the worst option; he mostly refuses to talk, still.

This holds true, because he definitely isn’t talking when she bursts in. He’s sitting on the bench, in a corner, hugging his knees and watching Quinlan try to calm Leia down.

“Captain, sitrep.”

“Vos and Tholme attempted to show Leia how to reach out to feel the Temple from a distance. They felt that it would be a good use of the time, and an interesting exercise at this distance. She attempted to do so, struggled for several minutes, and then reacted with shock. She has repeated the name ‘Luke’ several times since then, and we’ve been unable to fully calm her down. I asked Tholme to get you, as you are the only Force-Sensitive on board that understands the situation in full.”

“Understood.” She nods to him, and then goes to nudge at Quinlan. “Vos, move.”

“Torre--”

“You can sit behind her, hold her in your lap like you did when we had lunch the other day, but I need to get in her face.” She waits for him to comply, and then drops to her knees and takes Leia’s hands in her own. She radiates calm and assurance, even though she knows Quinlan’s probably been doing the same since this started. She dips her head enough to get in the girl’s line of sight, waits for her to meet eyes.

“Princess,” she says, and meets Leia’s eyes. “What did you feel?”

“Luke.”

From this distance... they’ve got half the system to go, at least, and Leia’s training shouldn’t reach that far for anything more than the fact that the Temple is there. Ahsoka could feel unshielded individuals from here, if she focused, but she’s also been doing this much, much longer. The twins theory holds more water than ever.

“Can you show me?” Ahsoka asks, instead of asking for more clarification. She squeezes Leia’s hands and smiles. “In the Force?”

Leia nods, and closes her eyes. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, but it’s the first time in a while that Leia’s needed Ahsoka to guide her through.

Luke’s light, for all that it’s unfamiliar to Ahsoka, is brilliant among the rest of the signatures in Coruscant. Like Anakin and Leia, he’s a star in his own right, but he’s brighter. He doesn’t have Anakin’s bitterness or Leia’s righteous anger, just... light. Ahsoka had asked Leia to show her instead of looking for herself because she’d expected to not recognize the boy, but she needn’t have. He’s unmistakable.

He’s so bright that she almost misses the other signature that she does recognize. She shies away, knowing that it would be there, but... but it’s almost twinned with another nearby. Not identical, but different in a way that comes with age, with trauma, with... death.

Leia hadn’t arrived alone, after all.

Why would Luke?

Her eyes snap open, her hand coming up not-quite-fast enough to clap over her mouth as she gasps. She feels a shudder, one that starts in her shoulders and reaches deep into her ribcage, finds a home in her chest and doesn’t stop.

“Oh fuck,” Quinlan whispers. “Torrent? Um, Sokari?”

Rex steps closer. “Commander?”

“That shabuir faked his death again,” she manages. “Three times, Rex!”

He blinks at her. “...I know way too many people who fit that description, Soka.”

“Master Ke--” she cuts herself off. He might have changed his name, just like she had. There’s already an Obi-Wan here. Rex seems to be figuring it out, but she needs to give him another hint.

“He pulled a Hardeen,” she stresses, and Rex’s eyes snap shut with a tired groan.

“Who?” Leia asks, her own tumult of emotion paused in the wake of Ahsoka’s shock. There’s a hope and relief to her, and Ahsoka belatedly realizes that her main worry had been that she’d misidentified what was going on, that she’d given herself a false hope. Ahsoka’s internal reaction, her approval and awe at Luke’s presence, had trickled over enough to give Leia the reassurance she’d needed.

Unintentional as it was, Ahsoka was glad that she’d succeeded in helping her charge.

“Er...” she trails off. “I don’t know what name he’s going by, right now. We’ve spent so long in hiding...”

“The man Luke knew as Crazy Old Ben,” Rex says, and Leia’s eyes light up.

“Oh,” she breathes. “General O--no, names. The High General, then.”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka says, not a little soft. “Yeah, I guess death didn’t stop him any more than it stopped me.”

“I could have told you that,” Leia says, smiling far too widely. She squirms where she still sits on Quinlan’s lap. “He was... he taught you, right?”

“As much my master as the official one,” Ahsoka says. She glances as Quinlan, feels Maul’s gaze on the back of her head. “Your f... my official master was very young when I was assigned to him. He wasn’t ready to teach, wasn’t even ready to be a knight, entirely, so my training was split between him and his master.”

Quinlan pops in at that moment, “Your grandmaster was military, too?”

We all were, she thinks. Even you, in your own way.

“I landed in their care mid-battle,” she says carefully. “It was a complicated situation.”

He nods, and she vaguely notes that he’s got his arms wrapped around Leia, and his chin tucked on top of her head. She isn’t sure if Leia’s noticed, but Quinlan’s picked up ‘baby’-sitting duty so often recently that she’s fairly certain he’s all but declared her ‘little-sister shaped.’ It doesn’t matter that Leia’s older--she’s still taking the juice boxes and gummy snacks that Quinlan shoves at her every single snacktime.

“Do you think...” Rex trails off, something uncomfortable twisting in the Force, even though his face keeps it mostly hidden. “My brothers. If the General survived and... and made it back...”

“I didn’t feel any,” Ahsoka says, because she knows she’d have noticed if it was anyone she’d met, and likely any clone at all. They all felt different in the Force, but they all held a spark that made her know it was one of them. “I’m sorry, Rex’ika.”

“A long shot,” he says, that dash of hope shriveling up. He must see something in her face, because there’s a curl of warmth in him, even if his smile is brittle. “It’s fine, really. I have you, ‘Soka.”

Rex and Ahsoka. Two halves of one whole.

She can’t wait to hear the lectures on attachment, the way people who haven’t seen her wars try to criticize her for clinging to any chance at still having a will to live. She can’t wait to see them justify telling her that it’s selfish to hold her sanity in her hands and refuse to let the grief take it away. She can’t wait to stare someone down for asking her to ‘learn to let go’ after she’s lost her family, her life, her universe three times over.

Most of the Jedi are more sensible than that, are reasonable enough to see those shades of grey and how to approach rules in the spirit they are meant instead of the rigid letter, but there will be some.

There will be more than enough telling her she is wrong to hold her oldest, closest, best friend as dear as she can.

Attachment, they’ll say.

What they’ll mean is ‘codepedence.’

They won’t be entirely wrong.

She reaches out for him, lets him fall into her side and stay there, closes her eyes and reaches out for the man she’d long called father, when they’d still been in each other’s lives.

This time, past the deafening flare of surprise-love-hope of the little star next to him, she can feel him reach back.

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

The second the ship has landed, even before Tholme and Fett are done with the checks, Ahsoka’s waiting at the exit. She strains her hearing so she’ll know the second the system will let her open the massive door of the cargo hold.

Leia clings to her side, and the boys stand to her back.

Quinlan’s stressed enough that she can feel it like a cloud. She is very much not trying to feel that stress. Quinlan’s stress levels, back where he’s got Maul so he can keep an eye on Ahsoka and the Baby Sith at the same time, are so low on her priorities list that it’s a a little sad.

It doesn’t take long for her to be able to punch the button and open the damn door.

It opens slowly. She bounces on her toes, because there’s a beacon of light and a steady, familiar glow on the other side, and she’s so, so close. She can’t see through the crack yet, because it’s day in this part of Coruscant, and the sunlight is blinding against the dark of the hold. So close. She’s so close.

“The hell’s wrong with you?”

Fett? Fett. He’s already here to get off? This door’s slow.

She doesn’t answer him, because the door is finally open enough to let her out, and she leaps through the gap.

She lands on a pourstone floor, feels pebbles and grit compress under her boots, frantically looks around as her eyes adjust to light and--

The High General, the Negotiator, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, looking just as he did when she first met him, if a little less armored and a little more fed. The hair, the beard, the crinkle in the corner of his eyes. His spirit is a little older, his smile a little more strained, his posture a little more tired, but it’s him.

He spreads his arms, low enough that she could have dismissed it if she’d cared less for hugs, except she’s almost as small as she was when they met.

And every other hug she’d given back then had been, functionally, her being a living missile aiming her montrals for someone’s organs.

She’s a little more aware of how to avoid stabbing her friends in the intestine now.

“Master!”

She sprints for him, collides and sobs, feels him stumble back and then sink to his knees on the too-hard floor, and can feel the tears pouring out of her already. Her breath hitches, and she wails like a child, and that last part of her that couldn’t even grasp at safety shreds itself. His arms are tight around her, warm and strong and Master Kenobi don’t you dare leave again.

It doesn’t matter that Sidious is out there, that the Republic’s been building towards war for a century, that even now someone’s kicking up the Trade Federation. Her dad is here.

“I’ve missed you too, my dear,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, the bristles of his beard scratching along the skin of her forehead. Off to the side, the binary suns that are Luke and Leia grow brighter in proximity, so bright she can barely bear it.

(“Fett, why the kriff are you reaching for your blaster?!”)

(“Torrent said her master tried to kill her.”)

(“Different guy, that was a different guy, put the blaster away.”)

(“You could have just warned me.”)

(“I didn’t expect you to go for a shot on sight!”)

(”Calm down, Jetiika, if I was going to shoot on sight, we’d already be in a firefight.”)

She ignores everything.

“If you fake your death one more time, I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

He tries to pull away to talk to her more directly. She does not let him. He apparently resigns himself to this, because he just adjusts how he’s sitting and pulls her in closer.

“In my defense, I was far from the only one presumed dead that took advantage of that status, by the end,” he says, letting her slump into his lap and cry herself dry. “I’m proud of you. You know that, I hope.”

She nods against his chest, smearing tears and snot across the linen and wool. She doesn’t care that they’ll need a thorough washing. She can have her public breakdown and it’s fine because Master Kenobi is here.

He doesn’t even know what she’s spent the past fifteen years doing. Luke wouldn’t have known. He doesn’t know she’s thirty-two and broken, beyond a shadow and cut down by her own master. There’s so much he doesn’t know but the Force rings with the truth of it: he’s proud of her anyway.

“I’m going by Ben, now,” he mutters against her montral. “There’s already an Obi-Wan here, after all. Still, I remain a Kenobi.”

She can’t make the words come out of her mouth. She’s overwhelmed, so much so that speech is a mite bit beyond her.

Sokari Torrent, she presses along the frayed bond that’s knitting itself back to life with every breath they take. Leia was already calling me Auntie Soka, and Rex and I both took Torrent, for...

“For the men you lost,” he mutters. “Yes, that’s fitting.”

He smells like sapir tea and a spiced beard oil.

There’s a whirl of activity about her, greetings and ‘a Sith apprentice?’ and introductions. She distantly notes when Fett almost shoots Dooku before Rex shuts that down and advises the Master to leave the area before things spiral out of control. She feels Ben stand, and she stands with him, clings to his side like a child and trusts that whatever happens, whatever needs to happen, he’ll take care of it until she can stand on her own two feet without swaying.

Rex grabs her free hand, and she feels herself settle back into her skin, bit by bit.

She’s back at the Temple. The twins are safe. Her grandmaster is here. She has her other half.

They can save the galaxy this time.

She’s alive she’s home she’s okay.

She’s okay.

Everything’s going to be okay.

#Ahsoka Tano #Captain Rex #Leia Organa #Jango Fett #rex and ahsoka #Quinlan Vos #Tholme #Depa Billaba #Obi Wan Kenobi #Ben Kenobi #Maul #Darth Maul #time travel #de aging #ptsd #trauma #child soldiers #Phoenix Files #Uncle Ben and Little Luke #Auntie Soka and Little Leia #disaster lineage

[a-reader-and-a-writer]

Time to Wake Up

Febuwhump 2022: Alt 4. "I dreamt you were alive." (for day #14)

Fandom: Marvel, Bucky Barnes x Reader, Steve Rogers

Word Count: 1331

Note: Set between Infinity War and Endgame

Sequel to Nightmares (but can be read independently from it)

@febuwhump, @loverhymeswith, @babblydrabbly

As you walked through the cemetery for what seemed like the thousandth time, you can’t help but note how much more crowded it used to be when you first started coming here five years ago. Back then, you had to carefully push your way past large groups of mourners to make it to your destination. Today, it seems like you are the only one here. But you guessed after so long, people move on, they forget. But not you. And that is the problem.

As you reached your desired headstone, you brushed off a few leaves from the top before placing a light kiss on the stone. Then, as you crouched down and stared at the inscription, you whispered with a small smile, “Hey, Buck. I’m sorry I haven’t been by to see you for a while. Things are….they’re not great. The world has kinda fallen apart since everyone disappeared. I thought things would have gotten better by now, but I guess when half the world’s population just vanishes into thin air, it takes a while to adjust. But I’ve told you all of this before.”

Your smile dropped from your face and was replaced by a teary-eyed expression instead. “I need to talk to you about something and I’m not sure how to start. But maybe if you understand how I’m feeling, you’ll understand why I’ve made the choice I have.” You looked down sadly at the flowers that were still clutched in your hands. “I dreamt you were alive last night. Well, that’s kind of misleading. I dream you’re alive every night. That you hold me in your arms, you pull me tight against your chest, and you make all the pain go away. And for those few hours, it’s the only time I feel at home. But as soon as I wake up, that hurt is fresh all over again. I lose you once more every morning. And for a while, it was worth it. The new heartbreak over and over for a few hours in your arms.

“But here’s the thing Bucky….I can’t do it anymore. It hurts too bad, and I have to find a way to get past it, past you. Because as much as I keep trying to tell myself there may be a way to bring you back, I don’t think I really believe that anymore. I lost you five years ago, and I just need to accept that. And the first thing I need to do is stop coming here, at least for a while. Being here, talking to you, it’s not good for me. I know that, I’ve always known that. Only it’s been too hard to stay away.

“But there are people who are still here who need my help and I can’t do that if I am still grieving you all over again every single day. I hope, wherever you are, you can hear me and you understand. This doesn’t mean I don’t still love you, that I won’t still love you for the rest of my life. Because I will. But I need to move on. It's time for me to stop living in the dream. It's time for me to finally wake up. So, I think this is goodbye. Maybe someday, I can come back and it won’t hurt as much. But for now, I won’t be returning. Hopefully, one day in the future when my time is up, we will meet again. But until that time…” You leaned over and placed another, longer kiss to the headstone. Though it was made of granite and not metal, the cold, hard surface reminded you of his arm and for a brief moment, you let yourself have the illusion that that was what you were kissing instead. But then, you pulled away, laid the flowers down, and walked out of the cemetery without looking back.

As you approached your car, you saw a familiar figure leaning against the passenger door with his arms folded across his chest, waiting for you. Ducking your head slightly and pulling your coat tighter around you, you walked past him and over to the driver’s side door. He pushed off the door and followed you over to the other side of the car.

With a deep sigh, you muttered. “What are you doing here, Steve? I thought you promised not to come by when I was here.”

“I’m sorry, but I needed to talk to you, and I figured this would be the only place I’d be able to track you down. Nat refused to give me your home address.”

“Good. She promised me she wouldn’t. I told you before, I don’t want anything else to do with you.”

“Listen, I shouldn’t have said those things. I was just as upset as you were, and they just slipped out. I didn’t mean it.”

You chuckled humorlessly. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘Pay attention to what people say out of anger, they've been dying to tell you that’? And I’m pretty sure you had been dying to tell me what you really thought of me for a long time.” You tried snatching the car door open, but Steve held it shut.

“Fine. Maybe I do think you’ve been wallowing in self-pity too long and shirking your responsibilities to the team and, quite frankly, the world. We all lost people but the rest of us have pulled ourselves together enough to try and make the best out of this situation. For everyone, not just us. But I had no right to say you weren’t worthy of him. He loved you more than I have ever seen him love someone and I know you loved him just the same. And as much as I miss him, I can’t imagine the pain you’re going through. So, for that, I am sorry.”

You stared down at your feet, trying to hide the tears that were threatening to fall. “Fine. Whatever. Just tell me what you want so we can both be on our way.”

Steve took a deep breath. “We think we found a way to bring everyone back.”

Your head jerked up sharply and you scanned his face for any sign that he was lying. However, he looked completely sincere. “When did you figure this out? How?”

“Scott Lang.”

Your face furrowed in confusion. “Ant-Man? But he disappeared in the snap.”

“That’s what we thought too…. Until he showed up at the compound last week. He’s been trapped in what he calls the Quantum Zone. It’s really complicated and scientific but, based on the information he gave us, Bruce and Tony think they found a way to retrieve the stones from the past and fix everything. Everyone could come back.”

“Wait…are you suggesting time travel?” When he nodded, you scoffed and shoved him out of the way, finally gaining access to your car. You climbed in and started to shut the door, but Steve’s superhuman strength held it open with ease.

“This will work. But we need your help. You are one of, if not the, top-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent left. If we are going to try to steal the stones right from under S.H.I.E.L.D.’s noses, we are going to need some inside help.” He saw you hesitate, your refusal of support starting to waiver. “Please, we can’t do this without you.”

You ran your hands over your face before glancing at your old friend. “Steve…I can’t do this unless you promise me this will work. I just got to a place where I think I can finally move on. If you drag me back there, you give me hope, and it doesn’t work….I won’t be able to survive that.”

Steve’s clear, blue eyes bore into yours, once again filled with complete sincerity. “We will bring them back, whatever it takes.”

You looked up at him and, after a moment, nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

#febuwhump #febuwhump2022 #febuwhumpday14 #can't go home #febuwhumpalt4 #i dreamt you were alive #fic #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #sebastian stan #winter soldier #winter soldier x reader #steve rogers #captain america #chris evans #endgame #infinity war #marvel x reader #marvel #angst

[the-iceni-bitch]

Merry Christmas, Bucky

Pairing: Nomad!Steve / Fem!Reader / Bucky (Stucky)

Words: 5114

Summary: You and Steve are worried about Bucky and don’t know how to fix things.

Warnings: Angst, Explicit language, explicit sexual content (threesomes (MMF), vaginal sex, unprotected sex, oral sex (M and F receiving), anal sex, double penetration), explicit descriptions of consensual violence, age appropriate alcohol consumption, SMUT!!!, 18+!!!

A/N: Merry Christmas and hoe hoe hoe! My promised filthy treat for you all: my very first Stucky fic! This was a lot of fun to write but ended up way different than I had originally imagined. The smut is actually pretty fluffy (as fluffy as you can get with a threesome I guess). This is technically a continuation of my original “Birthday Gift” Nomad!Steve fic, though it takes place like a year later. I hope you all enjoy and have a very merry holiday!

“How’s that feel, Buck?” You asked, setting the arc-welder back on the tool bench as you sat back.

He flexed his fingers, testing the repairs you made to the neural link. “Good. You know you didn’t have to stay with me. I could’ve handled it on my own.”

The rest of the team was out on a rescue mission in Sri Lanka while the two of you hung back at your compound. His new arm had been on the fritz for the past few days, and he didn’t want to risk it crapping out on him in the middle of an op. He hadn’t planned on you staying, too, though you’d never joined the team on any of the other missions so he didn’t know why he was surprised.

“Right, you’re the one with years of experience with Wakandan tech. I’m sure Shuri would love to have a little conference with you about the intricacies of vibranium based neural networks.” You scoffed at him, rolling your eyes.

“Well, you don’t have to be mean about it.” He pouted, half-heartedly. It’d been a while since the two of you had some alone time, and he missed the banter.

You grinned at him. “Aww, Barnes, that’s nothing! Let’s test it out. C’mon, up.”

His smile disappeared quickly. “No, Y/N, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Jesus, Barnes. I’m not some little doll. We both need a workout. Besides, none of the other idiots ever wanna play knives with me. I know you miss it.”

You were right. Steve didn’t like relying on anything other than his fists since he gave up the shield and Nat and Sam definitely preferred guns if they were going to use any sort of weapon. But you and Bucky had a shared appreciation for the weight of a good blade in your hand.

“Fine.” He sighed. He knew you wouldn’t let up until he gave in, so he resigned himself to his fate.

He dragged his feet as he followed you to the gym. He’d been doing his best to avoid any close contact with you for the past few months. They’d been with you a little over a year now, ever since Siberia. When they found out about your history, Bucky bonded with you quickly over your shared tragedies.

But that only mattered so much, because you had Steve. And that was slowly killing Bucky.

He didn’t know how many more nights he could listen to the two of you. Granted, you managed to keep it down enough that the rest of the team didn’t notice anything, but his damn super soldier hearing made it seem like you were right next to him. The sounds of your wanton whimpers and low moans kept him up all night, his cock aching as he writhed in his sweat soaked sheets. He always had trouble looking at the two of you the morning after, and he could tell that things were slowly starting to get strained, but it was just too goddamn hard to be around you when he couldn’t have you, not that he would ever try. Steve was his best friend.

Of course, you had noticed how strange Barnes had been acting over the past few months, and you and Steve were starting to get worried. You were hoping that having some time, just the two of you, would help him loosen up and let you back in.

He arrived in the gym a few steps behind you and found you bouncing a sparring blade off the palm of your hand. You shot him a grin over your shoulder and tossed it to him, and he plucked it out of the air easily, giving a sigh at the familiar feeling as he spun it through his fingers. It would be nice to lose himself in a good spar.

“One or two, Buck?”

“One is good.” He said as he started to stretch himself out.

“Great.” You murmured, unzipping your hoodie and setting it aside before picking up a blade of your own and tossing it quickly between your hands, acclimating yourself to its weight. “Music ok?”

“Fine.” He didn’t know why you insisted on listening to music during your spar sessions, but he could admit it lent your fighting style a certain artistic flair.

The sounds of alt-J’s “Left Hand Free” came over the speakers and you let out a small sound of satisfaction. “Ahh, perfect. Alright, Barnes, I promise I’ll go easy on you.” You grinned at him as you tucked your blade against your wrist and dropped into a fighting stance.

He snorted at you as he headed to his corner. “Right, we’ll s… fuck!”

You barely gave him a chance to turn around before you were on him, your knee driving towards his midsection before you extended it at the last second to try to kick the knife out of his hand. He dodged at the last second but you were already ducking to sweep his legs out from under him. He dropped the knife in surprise as he went down and you caught it before it hit the ground and pounced on his chest, pressing both of your blades to his throat.

“Ha, that’s one for me!” You grinned down at him as you dropped his knife onto his chest before standing back up and heading back to your corner.

“You’re a cheater, Y/N.” He growled at you as he gained his feet, pissed he let you catch him off guard.

“Just preparing you for the real world, darling.” You shot him a wink as you shifted your weight back and forth, waiting for him to signal he was ready, this time.

His gut clenched when you called him that, and he had to steel himself. He was determined to not let you get under his skin today. He didn’t want things to get any more awkward.

You let him make the first move this time, and he ran at you full force, whipping his arm around to try to ram the blade into the side of your ribs. You blocked him with your forearm and he dropped the blade to catch it in his opposite hand and deliver a backhand blow to your side, which you just barely dodged. He brought his now empty fist up and drove it into your elbow and you dropped your blade with a grunt. He scooped it out of the air with the same hand as he sank to a kneeling position and brought the flat of the blade to rest at the juncture of your inner thigh on instinct, where your femoral artery would run. When he realized where his hand had landed, he drew it back with a hiss, dropping your knife at your feet.

“One for me.” He murmured, trying to cover the flush creeping over his face.

You didn’t notice, you were enjoying yourself too much. You flipped your blade up into the air with your toe and caught it before charging Bucky.

He barely had a second to prepare before you were flying off the mat towards his face. You looped one knee over his shoulder and the other around his upper back as you clenched your abdominal muscles then released them, whipping yourself back and flipping him over you until you landed on the mat with a slap and were straddling his chest. You started flipping your knife through your fingers when he brought his metal arm up and wrapped it around your waist, flinging you off him as he brought his knees to his chest and whipped himself into a crouching position.

You windmilled your legs until you were in a crouch of your own; chest bent low over one bent knee, your other leg extended to your side, holding your balance with one hand on the mat. He dove at you, trying to drive his blade towards your throat but you managed to wrap your thighs around his arm and your shins around his neck as you extended your legs and gripped his wrist, keeping in a hold. He brought his free hand around and punched you in the hip, knocking the air out of you as you buckled.

You managed to roll out from underneath him before he could bring the blunted blade to your chest and got him in a partial arm bar with your blade at his ribs at the same time he pressed his blade to your throat.

“Draw?” You asked after the two of you had stayed in that position for a beat.

“Draw.” He agreed as you released each other, rolling to his feet with a groan as you stayed on your back, breathing heavily. “Let’s take a quick break.”

“Yeah.” You sighed at him as you slowly climbed back to your feet and went to towel yourself off.

He grabbed a cold water bottle from the fridge and tossed one to you before he started to chug. You held yours to your neck before taking a drink.

He watched you hungrily. You were damp with sweat and he was mesmerized by a stray bead of condensation that was traveling down the line of your neck to the valley between your breasts. Your hair was plastered to your scalp and your chest was still heaving. He imagined this was what you must look like after sex and had to school his thoughts immediately before they headed further down that path. He splashed himself in the face with some of his water to try to cool down.

You breathing had started to return to normal and you shot him a small smile, failing to notice how uncomfortable he was. “What d’you say, Barnes, one more round?”

He knew he should say no. He was having a hard time keeping his thoughts tamped down and was worried how his body would react if he had anymore close contact with you, but it was hard to care about that at this point. How much could one more round really hurt?

He tossed his empty bottle into the recycling bin and stalked back to his corner, not taking his eyes off you as you tossed your towel over the back of a bench and walked opposite him.

The two of you prowled around each other like a couple of cats, eyeing the other’s movements and trying to determine what your moves were going to be.

Bucky saw your eyes flick to the window for just a second, distracted by something outside, and he took his chance. He pounced on you, rolling the two of you over each other as he gripped the hand holding your knife and bent your wrist back until you dropped the blade. You wrenched your head back and connected with his face at the same time you drove your elbow into his diaphragm, causing him to release you.

You twisted your torso around and flipped yourself forward, bringing your knees to his shoulders and carrying your momentum forward to bring him to the mat with you kneeling on his chest.

He dropped his knife in the exchange but managed to bring a hand under your thigh and roll you until he had you in a half-nelson with top scissors, his upper body curled around yours as he pinned you to the mat.

His face was buried in your hair and he was inhaling your scent deeply before he could help himself. You were still struggling to get out of the hold when he tightened his grip around you with a growl. He could feel his cock hardening as it was pinned against the swell of your ass, but for the moment he didn’t care. He didn’t even feel you stop struggling, he just continued holding you in that position.

“Um, Barnes.” You murmured, your face pressed into the mat.

“Mmmm…”

“Bucky.” You said, more firmly this time.

“Shit.” He hissed as he released you and scrabbled backwards on the mat, holding one hand out to keep you away from him. “I’m so sorry.”

“Buck, it’s ok. It happens.” You said softly, a look of concern coming over your face when you saw how distressed he was.

“No, it’s not fucking ok. Goddamn it!” He drove his metal fist into the mat hard, making you jump. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Wait, Bucky…”

“No, just, leave me alone.” He said over his shoulder as he rushed out of the gym, determined to seclude himself in his room for the foreseeable future.

“Hey, Buck, how’s the new arm… whoa. Something happen?” The rest of the team had arrived back at the compound and Steve had come to check on the two of you. Bucky just charged past him without acknowledgement. “Everything ok, sweetheart?” He turned his intense blue eyes to you with concern. He had hoped you two might be able to get to the root of the awkwardness that had seemed to be growing between you three, but things sure seemed to be worse now that he was back.

He wrapped a massive arm around your waist to help you up from the mat and gave you a soft kiss on the forehead.

“I dunno, baby. I’m pretty sure I figured out what the issue is. We should set aside some time tonight to talk. I think we should also lay off the PDA for a bit.”

He scoffed at that before taking a good look at you. “You’re serious.”

“Yeah, we’ll talk about it later.”

It took Bucky almost two days to come out of his room and when he did, he did his best to avoid you and Steve. Tensions in the house were high and it seemed everyone was walking on eggshells. You were hoping that a little Christmas celebration might help everyone loosen up.

It barely helped. Buck just sulked in a corner, nursing a glass of vodka and glowering at everything. At least everyone else seemed pretty cheery. He was at least grateful that he hadn’t had to listen to you and Steve fucking each other like animals for the past week. He had actually been able to get some sleep. But now the two of you were acting cagey. You kept giving each other longing looks before glancing furtively in his direction and he was pretty sure his restful nights were over. Everyone else started drunkenly up to bed once the early morning hours hit and it was eventually just the three of you sitting there in awkward silence.

You kept looking at him like you wanted to say something but didn’t know what, and all he could feel was a hollow ache in his chest every time you made eye contact.

“Well, I’ll leave you two alone now. I’m sure you have your own celebrations you want to get to.” He said bitterly when Steve came to stand behind you and rested his hand on your shoulder.

“Shit, Buck, just wait.” You pleaded as he turned to go.

“No, Y/N it’s fine.”

“It’s not, Bucky.” Steve rumbled, his brow furrowed with worry.

“God, not you too, Rogers.” He said, exasperated.

“Bucky, please.” The catch in your voice startled him, and he turned back to you. “Just, come with us.” You whispered, extending a hand to him.

He wasn’t entirely sure he had heard you right, but then you were standing in front of him, brushing your mouth along the hollow of his throat as your hands rested against his chest.

He looked at Steve questioningly and was just met with a small smile as he started heading down the hall to your room. You drew Bucky along with you, softly kissing his neck as your hands wandered under his shirt to explore the plains of his back. He felt like he was in a dream state, his mind wrapped in a warm cocoon as he let you pull him along.

You reached your room and he felt you close the door behind you. He only had a moment to register Steve resting on a chair in the corner before your mouth was on his and all his other senses abandoned him.

You tongue moved past his lips softly and massaged his, drawing a moan from his chest. He wrapped his hands around your shoulders and buried his hands in your hair, holding your face to his like you were giving him oxygen.

He was drunk from the taste of you as he reluctantly pulled away to draw in a breath. Your scent filled his lungs as he sucked down air and he moved his hands to the front of your blouse as he ripped it open and slid it down your shoulders, exposing your breasts and making you sigh. His hands moved to swell of your chest as he ran his thumbs softly over the slope of your breasts, brushing them over your nipples and raising them to sensitive buds as he gazed at you.

He pressed his mouth to yours once more, running his tongue along the cushion of your bottom lip before his lips started traveling down your neck. His hands pressed against the small of your back as he guided you onto the bed. Once he had lain you down, they slipped down to your hips, following the band of your jeans to unbutton them and slide them down your thighs with your panties as his tongue laved over your nipple and you gave him one of those whimpers he had only heard through the walls before. The sound of it made him groan against your chest as he nuzzled you softly before kissing down the flat plain of your abdomen.

His hands brushed against the insides of your thighs as he worked his mouth lower and when they reached their apex he found you soaked with your arousal.

“God, you’re beautiful.”

“Mmm, Bucky.” You sighed as his tongue brushed against the folds of your sex.

“Sshh, pretty girl.” He murmured as his fingers pulled you apart and exposed the small bud at the peak of your slit. He pressed his tongue against it softly before wrapping it in his lips and sucking.

“Oh, god.” Your breath rushed out of you as you arched yourself into him and you wound your fingers in his hair. His tongue massaged your clit languorously as he drew a single finger through the arousal at your entrance before inserting it into you and curling it. You gasped as he stretched you from the inside and bit your lip, fluttering your eyelids closed in absolute bliss.

He added another finger and you let out a soft cry, wrapping your thighs around his neck and begging him for more as his tongue increased its pressure and speed. The taste of you was like a drug on his tongue. He felt heady with pleasure as he drew more soft sounds from you. You clenched around him when he added a third finger and he eagerly lapped up the evidence of your continued arousal that seeped out around them as he fucked them into you.

You felt your desire coiling in your core as he curled his fingers against that sweet, secret spot over and over and when he wrapped his lips around you again and sucked, hard, you were finished. You let out a thin wail as your muscles seized with pleasure before trembling in your release. He felt your release seep over his fingers and coat his chin as you came down, slowly relaxing the muscles leading to your core. He slowly drew himself up to gaze down at you as he removed his own clothes, watching you twitch as he drew his shirt over his head as your release continued to pulse out of your cunt. He tossed his shirt to the side and dragged his jeans and briefs down his legs before kneeling between your thighs on the bed.

He tucked one hand under your neck and the other under your hips and drew you up until you were cradled in his lap. You felt the length of his cock sliding through the slick that was coating your pussy and you screwed your eyes shut with a moan, pressing your forehead to Bucky’s.

“Hey, open your eyes.” He whispered before nipping at your bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth with his thumb on your chin. “I wanna look at you.”

You dragged your heavy lids open and stared into his eyes. His pupils were lust-blown and just left a thin ring of ice around endless pools of black. You felt him guiding himself to your entrance and he slipped himself in slowly, sliding you down on his length until he was fully sheathed in you. You let out a gasp when you were full of him, loving the feel of being stretched around his full length.

He started moving his hips slowly, grinding them against you as he brushed his lips against yours, never breaking eye contact. You matched his delicious, slow rhythm and sucked his bottom lip between your teeth, nipping it softly.

“I love you, Bucky.” You sighed into his mouth.

“Oh, sweet girl.” He pressed his mouth to yours hungrily, his tongue tangling with yours for just a moment before he broke away. “I love you too. You ok with me moving?”

You nodded your head and sucked in a breath as he moved a hand to your hip and fucked up into you suddenly. He picked up the pace quickly, rutting up into you and making you gasp. He fought to maintain eye contact as he felt your breasts bouncing against his chest each time his hips moved, but he wanted to watch you as you came apart around him.

One of his thrusts had his tip kissing your cervix and you let out a hiss at the sensation. He felt you clench around him as you neared another orgasm and moved his hand from your hip to strum at your clit. Your breath started hitching as he brought you closer and closer, the muscles in your abdomen twitching as you neared the brink. One hard drive of his thumb was all it took to send you over the edge and you collapsed against his chest, screaming his name as your torso rolled with the waves of pleasure that were wracking you.

Once he felt you relax he drew your head up for one more kiss before laying you back against the bed as he moved his hands to your hips and pulled you into him over an over. He gave Steve a nod and turned his attention back to you, mesmerized as he watched your perfect tits bounce with each thrust of his hips.

You gazed at Steve through heavy lids as he stood from his seat. He was already undressed and had been watching intently as Bucky fucked you, stroking his length as he watched him take you apart. Now he stalked over to you like a cat. He knelt down and pressed a hungry kiss to your lips as your head hung over the edge of the bed.

“You ready for me baby?” He asked, cupping your cheek in one massive palm as he stared into your eyes.

You nodded eagerly and bit your lip, not trusting your voice at the moment after all your screaming.

He gave you a quick peck before standing back up and bringing the tip of his cock to your lips, swirling the precum that had collected there around before he pressed it into your mouth.

You drew his into your mouth eagerly, swirling your tongue around his tip and moaning at the taste of him before he pressed himself into you a little further. Bucky hit you at a new angle suddenly and you let out a thin whine around Steve’s cock, making him hiss.

“Shit, I don’t think I can go as slow as I thought, sweetheart, get ready.”

You took a deep breath through your nose as he shoved himself all the way into your mouth. You hollowed out your cheeks as he started fucking your throat in earnest and tears started to leak from your eyes. You did your best not to inhale the drool that was running from your mouth as he rutted into you faster. Bucky had picked up his pace too and you felt yourself winding up for another massive orgasm. You were worried the combination of rhythms and lack of oxygen was going to make you pass out.

As you drew closer, you felt your two soldiers starting to twitch.

“Fuck, baby, I’m close. Buck?”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Do you need us to pull out, honey?”

You absolutely did not. You wrapped your legs around Bucky and your arms around Steve as another orgasm took you and you almost choked on the pleasure, your body writhing between the two men as they picked up their paces. They were seconds behind you. Bucky came first with a feral growl and you felt his spend spurting inside you, warming you from the inside as your cunt drew it all from him. Steve was last and caught himself on his left arm as his release ran down your throat, his cock twitching as you swallowed around his length.

Bucky collapsed beside you to your left, flinging an arm across your abdomen and pressing his face into your neck. Steve sat down heavily beside your face before twisting himself to lay on your right side, wrapping one of his massive legs in yours and placing a soft kiss on you lips before laying beside you.

You gave Steve a smile before turning over your shoulder to Bucky and nuzzling your nose against his, running a hand through his hair.

He pressed himself into your back and brought his metal hand up to cup your cheek as he kissed you deeply. His other arm wound itself underneath you and pressed you closer to him, splaying over your abdomen.

Steve started brushing his lips across your chest as he brought a hand to cup one of your breasts. You felt arousal starting to pool between you legs again at the gentle attention they were giving you. You brought your hands down to palm their cocks and felt them begin to harden in your hands.

“God sweetheart, you’re insatiable.” Steve chuckled against your neck. “Good thing we have Buck here now or you’d wear me out.”

You felt Bucky laughing against your hair as he started grinding his cock into your ass. You felt his hand move between your ass cheeks and gasped as his fingers brushed against your puckered hole before running through your arousal. “Where do you want us, love?” He whispered as he pressed one soaked finger at the tight ring of muscle before inserting it quickly, making you gasp. “I think she’s good with where we are Rogers.” He grinned at his friend over your shoulder as he stretched you slowly, waiting for you to relax before he inserted another finger.

“You sure, baby?” Steve asked after pressing a soft kiss to your lips.

“Fuck, yes.” You hissed at him as Bucky inserted another finger and you felt a fresh rush of arousal seep down your legs.

“Alright, beautiful.” He said around a grin as the three of you moved into a seated position.

Bucky was planting soft kisses over your shoulders as he dragged his erection through your folds, coating himself in your release before he pressed the head of his cock against your anus, and suddenly you were drawing him into you until he was bottomed out.

“Shit, sweetheart.” He hissed in your ear, his fingers digging into your hips as you moaned at the sensation of being filled with him and leaned your head back against his shoulder.

Steve brushed his tip against your clit before sheathing himself in your sex and your brain short-circuited for a second, your eyes rolling up into your head.

“Fuck, Y/N. Stay with me.” Steve hissed at you, concern coming over his face.

“I’m good, baby. Just needed a second.” You grinned at him once you came back to yourself.

“Alright, honey, we’re going to move.” Bucky warned you as his hips drew back before thrusting forward.

“Oh, God.” You could tell this was going to be short work. The contrasting rhythms they were setting was driving you to your breaking point faster than you thought possible and their mouths tracing your chest and shoulders was only adding to the sensation. You felt yourself already clenching around them and came suddenly, digging your fingers into Steve’s biceps as every muscle in your body seized and you vibrated with your release between the two of them.

They started picking up the pace then, humming as their lips brushed against your skin and you went into sensory overload. Your skin felt like it was on fire and every nerve was singing. Wherever their fingers touched you felt like you had been shocked with electricity. It was getting to be too much and you started to mewl unintelligibly as they moved inside of you.

Bucky nodded at Steve as you felt them starting to twitch inside you. “Almost done pretty girl, where do you want it?”

“Mmmm, inside me.” You whispered, completely fucked out as another orgasm wracked you.

Bucky pressed a kiss behind your ear and Steve pressed one to your lips as their hips suddenly stilled and they came inside you at the same time. You sighed as you felt their release leaking out of you and down your thighs and you let yourself collapse backward against Bucky’s chest. He carried you backwards until you were laying on top of him while Steve headed to the bathroom.

Bucky murmured soft praises against your hair as he rolled you over until he was spooning you, his metal arm wrapped around you as his other hand ran up and down the outside of your thigh. You sighed against the pillow when Steve returned with a damp cloth and ran it over the inside of your thighs to clean you off before he crawled into the bed with the two of you, pressing the front of his body to yours and pulling the sheets up over the three of you as you nuzzled yourself into his chest.

“Love you sweetheart.” He whispered, planting a kiss on the top of your head as you started to doze off.

“Mmm, love you Steve. Love you Bucky. Merry Christmas, boys.” You murmured before falling asleep between your two super soldiers, absolutely content wrapped in their warmth.

“Merry Christmas Barnes.”

“You too Rogers”

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[marauderundercover]

Taking Chances Ch. 12: Resting at Home (Alt Prompt: Baking)

AO3

Prev

Waking up at five in the morning, feeling like you’re surrounded is disorienting. Waking up with a sore throat and shooting pain in her shoulder was also disorienting. Until she remembered everything from the night before. Adrien was not going to be happy. He’d begged her to tell him if she ended up going on patrol with her father, wanting her to be safe. She didn’t tell him, and now she was certain he was going to be angry. Unless she could get back to the hotel before he woke up. But it was still unlikely that he wouldn’t know. Plagg was a tattle tale. Sighing, she carefully gets out of the bed, maneuvering around her brothers’ sleeping forms on the floor. Walking out of the room, she instantly feels anxious. Deciding a glass of water might calm her down, she heads towards the kitchen. 

“I believe you should be resting, Miss Marinette.” Alfred says, making her jump. She winces as her shoulder jostles, trying not to frown at the way Alfred’s lips purse. She knew he was worried. And she knew her family was going to be unbelievably overprotective for the next six months. Or maybe, six years. She’s not exactly sure how protective they actually are. 

“I was going to get a glass of water.” She says softly, pointing to her throat. “I was also feeling a little anxious.” 

“Very well. I was about to start the preparations for breakfast. If you promise to sit and refrain from straining yourself, you may come with.” He says. She grins, immediately falling into step with the man. 

“Could we bake something for everyone for breakfast?” She asks, glancing up at him. “It doesn’t have to be anything too difficult. I mean, I’d prefer to make croissants the first time I bake for them, but there’s not exactly time to do that for breakfast.” She rambles as they walk into the kitchen. Alfred immediately walks over to a cabinet and grabs a glass, filling it with water before handing it to her and raising an eyebrow. She smiles gratefully and sips on the water, relishing in the coolness on her throat. 

“I believe our agreement was that you would sit and refrain from straining yourself.” Alfred says, moving around the kitchen with ease. Marinette huffs but plops onto one of the stools. 

“It doesn’t have to be anything difficult! It could even be….muffins! Muffins are popular for breakfast here, right?” She suggests, flailing her arms, wincing as she does so. It was going to be annoying remembering that her injury was there this time around. There was no Miraculous Cure when her opponent was just a bad guy, not a Miraculous holder. 

“If I allow you to turn on the mixer and place the liners in the tin, will you be satisfied?” Alfred asks with a sigh. Marinette grins and nods. There’s comfortable silence as Alfred moves about the kitchen, measuring out the ingredients. 

“Alfred?” She finally asks, glancing at the man who only hums in acknowledgement. “Who is Slade?” She asks. He pauses, the measuring cup positioned over the bowl. He takes a deep breath and dumps the ingredient in before straightening even more. 

“He was part of the organization that Master Damian grew up in. He’s always hated both Master Bruce and Master Damian. And now, I imagine, you’re also on his list.” He says calmly, clearly looking at her for some type of reaction. 

“So now another villain is after my Miraculous? Joy.” She says sarcastically, pouting as she slumps in her seat. “I was kinda hoping he was just some random guy. Not a legitimate villain.” She adds. Alfred simply shakes his head, sliding the muffin tin and liners towards her. 

“I can assure you, Miss Marinette. Between your father and brothers, this man will not succeed in taking your Miraculous. Marinette frowns, hoping the man is right. 

---

Sitting straight up in bed, Damian tenses. This was not his bed. Blinking, he looks around the room and lets his shoulders relax slightly. He was in Dupain Cheng’s room, of course. She had been attacked last night- He pauses. He frowns as he looks at her pillows, no sight of her. Leaping over his brothers, he knocks on the door for the bathroom attached to her room. 

“Dupain Cheng?” He says lowly, frowning at the lack of a response. He pushes the door open. Empty. So she was missing. She could not have gotten far. And she had to have left of her own volition. No one could have made it past all of his siblings. Leaving the room, he decides his first course of action should be to ask Pennyworth. Judging by the time, he should be in the kitchen. Making his way into the kitchen (his technical ban should not be an issue since he was actively looking for Dupain Cheng), he pauses when he sees the girl he was looking for, slumped onto the island. 

“Ah, Master Damian. Breakfast should be ready soon. Would you care to fetch the rest of your siblings?” He asks. Damian frowns, glancing at Dupain Cheng. Was she okay? Should she really be up and running around after yesterday? She might be one of Paris’ heroes, but surely she wasn’t used to being stabbed?

“Very well.” He says, instead of arguing. He would just have to monitor Dupain Cheng from afar. After all, she did take a sword meant for him. 

---

Marinette sighs, pushing herself off the counter. She wasn’t sure how serious breakfast was for the family, but she certainly didn’t want to scare anyone with her bedhead. Hopping off the stool, she winces slightly. 

“Miss Marinette, I do wish you would refrain from jostling your wounds so much.” Alfred says, a small frown on his face. Mari grins awkwardly. 

“Sorry Alfred.” She apologizes before rushing back up the stairs. She glances into several open doors, suddenly wishing she’d counted earlier to know which was hers. She huffs, prepared to give up, when someone clears their throat. She whirls around, raising an eyebrow at Damian. 

“That room is yours.” He says simply, pointing at a door. “Everyone has vacated your room in order to get dressed in their own.” He adds, turning around and walking into a room. Well that’s new, she thinks, surprised that he’s still talking to her. Sure they talked briefly last night, but she honestly thought it was a fluke. Not that she minded. She really did want a relationship with all of her siblings. After being an only child for fourteen years, it was amazing to have so many siblings. Sure they didn’t grow up together, but she was certain that they could all become close. Walking into her room, Marinette quickly gets dressed in clothes that had obviously been left in there by Cass, since they were much smaller than anything the boys could have worn. Smiling, she ducks into the bathroom to deal with her bedhead, squeaking in surprise as something flies into her face.

“Tikki?” She says, shocked at the way the Kwami flies at her. 

“You could have died! You silly, silly girl! I could have lost you last night, Marinette.” She cries, flying at Marinette’s face and patting her with her tiny paws. And in that moment, Marinette swears her heart breaks. 

“Oh, Tikki.” She says softly, bringing her hands up to cradle the trembling Kwami. “I’m okay, I promise. Don’t worry, I was with my family. They wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I’m right here.” She reassures her small friend, wincing as she continues shaking. 

“I couldn’t have saved you, Marinette. It wasn’t magic. There would have been no cure. I healed your shoulder as much as I can without disrupting the balance, but it’s still going to take weeks to fully heal.” Tikki says, her big eyes watery. 

“I know, Tikki. But I couldn’t just let Damian get hurt. He’s my little brother, whether he likes it or not.” She says, patting her friend’s head gently before moving to her brush. 

“But-” Tikki starts, pausing when Marinette turns her full attention back to her. 

“But nothing Tikki. I’m okay, you’re okay, and my family is okay. That’s all we can ask for.” She says, going back to her attempts to tame her hair. Her phone, which she had set on the side of the sink, starts buzzing incessantly. Without glancing at the caller ID, she answers. 

“Marinette Dupain Cheng, where the hell are you? Plagg says you left late last night and didn’t come back!” The worried voice of Adrien Agreste leaks through the speakers. Oh, right. She forgot to text him. Oops.

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