#not even as a child did I have that sort of blind optimism | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

journalxxx · 3 years

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By Hook or by Crook (4)

Oh God, there’s another one.

The thought came unbidden to Toshinori’s mind, and it engulfed him in the closest thing to pure dread he had felt in years. It had taken two centuries, the sacrifice of seven One For All users, and two of his own major organs to take down a single All For One wielder, and now a brand new one had somehow sprouted right in front of him.

Now. Now that he had finally decided to tackle the hurdle of entrusting a relatively stable Japan to a successor, now that he was weaker and less capable than ever of defending it from a new threat. Now that the deadline of Nighteye’s prophecy was drawing closer and closer. His own gruesome death on the battlefield, and the sudden reappearance of All For One’s quirk. The unavoidable connection between the two facts almost robbed him of his breath.

Toshinori couldn’t tear his eyes away from the boy’s hand. It looked diminutive in comparison to his own, and completely inoffensive. It had the soft, unblemished appearance that suited someone who had never hit anything bigger than a fly, whereas the hero’s skin had long since been roughened by calluses, and his joints slightly thwarted by the occasional fracture. Yet, that single, unassuming dimple in the middle of its palm made it more potentially destructive than a hundred of Smashes combined.

A sort of choked whimper made Toshinori finally raise his gaze. He realized he had stopped trying to school his expression only when he saw his own strung-out stupor mirrored in Midoriya’s features.

“I-I… Sorry, I r-really have t-to…” The boy took a step back, his hand slipping from the man’s grasp, then he suddenly turned on his heels and motioned to sprint away.

“Hey, hey!” Toshinori reached forward, grabbing Midoriya’s wrist by sheer reflex. He had already wasted enough time and energy chasing slimy villains and rash teenagers all over the town that day, thank you very much. “Where are you going?”

Midoriya froze on the spot, as if shocked by an electric current. His arm was rigid in Toshinori’s grasp, pulling away from it but without any real conviction. His head turned slowly towards the hero but not fully, letting him see only half of the boy’s face. The unmistakable terror etched in those wide eyes made something constrict in Toshinori’s chest.

“I-I’m… I’m so sorry…” The boy’s voice was down a trembling, barely audible whisper.“I didn’t mean to d-do that… I’ve never… I won’t do it again, I swear, j-just…”

Midoriya’s free hand hovered over the hero’s, maybe having half a mind of prying it open, but he didn’t even dare to touch it. Toshinori let go of him immediately. The kid wasn’t expecting it, judging by his flabbergasted expression, and all he did with his regained freedom was backing away from him with a couple of uncertain steps, bumping into a nearby electric pole with his backpack and just standing there, pretty much like a cornered mouse cowering before a lion.

The sight jolted Toshinori back to reality with brutal efficiency. God, what was wrong with him today? He was handling this abysmally. That was no two-hundred-year-old manipulative slaughterer, that was a child. A child rapidly working himself into a panic, if his onsetting tremors were of any indication. Ironically, the realization grounded Toshinori even more. Frightened victims and distraught relatives were a daily occurrence in his line of work, and his professional composure slipped back in place almost subconsciously.

“You don’t need to apologize. Quite the opposite. You saved everyone. The hostage, the bystanders… even me. I’m not sure I’d have had the energy to keep up appearances after another smash.” He put up his hands and showed his palms with slow movements, keeping his voice low and level. “You did nothing wrong back there.”

Midoriya slowly slumped down the pole, his limbs huddled in a distressed heap. He blinked quickly as his eyes shied away from Toshinori’s, hands bunching up the fabric of his trousers nervously. “...I-I can give it back. The quirk. I want to give it back to its owner.”

“That can be easily arranged.” Something about the whole situation was nagging at Toshinori, but he pushed that feeling aside for the moment. The boy wasn’t holding himself in any way that hinted at specific injuries, but fear could be one hell of an anesthetic. He gazed up and down the road, finding it completely deserted. He still felt slightly abuzz with the adrenaline rush caused by his second encounter with the sludge villain and the recent revelation of Midoriya’s quirk. He gauged that he could probably (possibly, maybe, hopefully) abuse One For All for another twenty seconds or so if need be, just the time to scoop up the boy in his arms and power run back to the ambulances at the site of the accident. That was likely to cause even more distress to the poor kid though, so he’d rather hold off on it unless clearly necessary. “Are you sure you aren’t in any pain?”

“I-I’m f-fine.” The boy wiggled the backpack off his shoulders and rummaged through it shakily, a few tears rolling down his cheeks and his hiccups becoming harder to contain. “I’m fine…”

“Hey, kid. Look at me. Deep breaths.” Toshinori finally ventured a step and a half towards Midoriya, squatting at a reasonable distance to his side instead of right in front of him, to make sure he wouldn’t feel too crowded. Toshinori offered him a couple of tissues (always plentiful in his pockets) while the boy tried to regain a semblance of calm. “It’s all right. I am here.”

That got the boy’s attention. The catchphrase had slipped out of him automatically, without his trademark panache or blinding smile or overflowing optimism, but Midoriya looked at him like he’d been thrown a lifeline nonetheless. The dam broke and big, shiny tears erupted from his eyes as he accepted the tissues and buried his sobs in them. They remained like that for a while, the kid quietly working through his sniffles while Toshinori sat cross-legged on the dusty asphalt, reminding him to take his time whenever he got a little fidgety.

“Sorry if I spooked you.“ Toshinori eventually offered with a small smile, after Midoriya had finally settled down. “I’m a little out of it myself, today. Not the most auspicious first day in my new neighborhood, but what can you do?”

“Uh? Do you mean you’re moving here?” Midoriya asked while he accepted the fourth tissue and wiped away the remaining dampness from his face.

“Mh-hm.” After the debacle on the rooftop, this didn’t feel like too much of a sensitive bit of information to share. Besides, the kid was a fan, so maybe throwing him a bone would help him relax a little more.

“Why? Isn’t it inconvenient for you? I thought you lived in a penthouse above Might Tower, in Tokyo’s Minato Ward, Roppongi 6-12-”

...Ah, he was that kind of fan. Obviously. “Indeed, but I’ve decided to move to… broaden my professional horizons, so to speak.”

“Oh! Are you planning to open a branch of your agency here? Or are you joining some local long-term operation?“ That spark of morbid curiosity in the boy’s eyes made Toshinori regret bringing up the topic in two seconds flat.

“I’m afraid that’s all I can say on the matter, everything’s still under tight wraps. You’ll hear all about it from the news, eventually.” He stood up and patted some dirt off his hands and pants. “Do you live far from here? I’ll walk you home if you’re feeling better.”

“Oh, uh…” The boy gaped at him in surprise. “Thank you, but there’s no need for you to go out of your way! I’m fine, really!”

“Think nothing of it.” Toshinori hooked three fingers under the strap of the boy’s backpack and hauled it over his own shoulder. It hit his back with unexpected oomph. What did kids even put in those things, weren’t textbooks all digital these days? “Clearly this isn’t your lucky day either. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that you reached your house safely without being run over by a truck or abducted by aliens.”

The joke got a half-smile out of Midoriya, at long last. He held out his hand to the boy to help him back on his feet. The obvious hesitation and near disbelief he couldn’t hide before gingerly accepting the proffered hand gave Toshinori another small wave of unease. There was definitely something strange about all this, aside from the obvious. He gestured for the kid to lead the way, and they set off towards their new destination.

Toshinori granted him a few minutes of silence before breaching the pivotal subject. “So… you have quite the interesting quirk.”

“...Mh.” Midoriya visibly stiffened. So it had been the quirk talk to give him cold feet, rather than a generic reaction to the day’s stress...

“Why didn’t you use it against the villain the first time he attacked you?” Toshinori asked, opting for a more roundabout approach.

“Ah… I’m sorry. I really should have. You wouldn’t have had to waste your power if I’d-”

“Forget about me! Why didn’t you use it to defend yourself? Did you panic?”

“Uh, well, not too much.” The kid shoved his hands in his pockets and dropped his gaze to the ground, his voice lowering to a droning mutter. “I can take quirks, but I don’t automatically learn how to use them. The villain’s quirk looked like it may be difficult to handle. What if I couldn’t maintain a solid form and just turned myself into a puddle of goo? What if some parts of my slime got detached from the main body during the scuffle, and I found myself missing chunks of flesh upon turning back human? What if the sludge was only an outer layer over my body, and without fine control I ended up drowning in it? Stuff like that… I should have just taken the villain’s quirk without activating it, but I was afraid that he’d get even angrier and he’d just beat me up anyway. I’m not, uh, strong. Or fast. At all. I didn’t consider that he might freak out long enough for me to run away…”

Toshinori blinked. “...Sorry, how long had that guy been harassing you before I showed up?”

“Oh, not long at all. Twenty or thirty seconds, I think.”

“And you went through all of that in twenty seconds. While being ambushed and choked.”

Midoriya just shrugged.

“That is… some quick thinking, all right.” Toshinori commented. He omitted the fact that it was a brand of quick thinking that was more likely to get you killed rather than saving your skin during an emergency. Apparently Midoriya would hesitate to protect himself from a violent attacker, but he’d run for the hills the moment the Symbol of Peace gave him a bit of an odd look. The kid’s fight-or-flight response was all over the place.

“I would have used my quirk to fight back eventually, if you hadn’t arrived so soon… probably…”

“...But?” Toshinori encouraged, sensing the unspoken addition.

“But… not many people know about my quirk. Very few, actually. And I’d like to keep it that way. If it’s possible.”

“Why?”

“...It’s not a good quirk.” Midoriya frowned, hunching his shoulders a bit. “One could do really bad things with it.”

“I could squash a man’s skull with my thumb and level a city block with a punch.” Toshinori countered plainly. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

“It’s… it’s different. You can choose to use your quirk only for good, but mine requires…” The boy trailed off, then hazarded a glance at the hero. “You know what I mean. You understood as soon as I told you, I saw it.”

Toshinori couldn’t argue on that point, unfortunately. Still…

There could be a perfectly innocent explanation for Midoriya to wield All For One. For one, it could be a different quirk altogether, one that simply mimicked Toshinori’s nemesis’, but that wasn’t quite the same, maybe with some unmentioned limitations (although the palm marks made for quite the uncanny similarity). Moreover, much like look-alikes, duplicate quirks between unrelated people weren’t unheard of, although said quirks were usually quite simple ones, like basic physical enhancers or elemental emitters.

What really bothered Toshinori were the boy’s evident sense of guilt and fear of exposure. Virtually any moderately powerful quirk could be employed to ‘do really bad things’, but hardly any children grew up to be so blatantly scared and ashamed of their own abilities. Family and school usually nurtured a degree of confidence and trust in their own capabilities. Toshinori’s knee-jerk reaction was a byproduct of specific knowledge and experience, but Midoriya’s? If only few people knew about his quirk, it must mean he hadn’t used it much, if at all, in the past, ruling out peer pressure as well. What explanation, what innocent explanation could there be for such a strong negative bias, aside from knowledge and experience he wasn’t supposed to have?

“At least your parents know about your quirk, I hope?”

“My mother doesn’t. My father… isn’t really around.” Toshinori couldn’t decide if that last bit of information was a good or a bad sign.

“So… who did you tell?”

“Just one friend and my father.” Ah, we had one likely culprit then. A father that was around but not really. Suspicious. “And now you, I guess. And… everyone who saw what I did to that villain… including the police…” Midoriya looked just about ready to dig a ditch and roll in it.

“Well, as I said, everyone seemed to think I took care of the matter, so-”

Midoriya shook his head, utterly demoralized. “Kacchan will tell them.”

“Kacchan?”

“Ah, the hostage. He’s my friend, the one who knows about my quirk. I don’t think he’ll lie to the police for my sake.”

“Ah, I see. I hadn’t realized you two were acquainted.” Toshinori offered him a supportive smile. “I guess that explains your burst of heroism.”

“...No one else was doing anything. I saw you among the crowd, but… I thought you couldn’t help.”

The boy had an almost tortured expression, which reignited the deep-seated guilt that had plagued Toshinori in those harrowing minutes. “...I thought I couldn’t help either.”

“But you did jump in though. Even though… it hurts you?” Midoriya scanned him from head to toe in concern, as if looking for unnoticed signs of damage. “Why?”

“Why did you decide to intervene, despite your fear?”

“I… I just couldn’t let my friend suffer because I messed up.”

“Well, there you have it.” Toshinori simply said. The boy stared at him thoughtfully, apparently weighing his words carefully, before nodding slowly and resuming his perusal of the ground. Toshinori let the silence stretch for a minute. There was still plenty he wanted to ask, especially regarding Midoriya’s father, but-

“I really do want to give the quirk back.” The kid mumbled. “Should I just… go to the police and ask them? They’ll come looking for me anyway, I guess, but…”

Toshinori pondered the issue for a moment, then he pulled his phone out of his pocket. The least he could do was make this whole ordeal as smooth as possible for the kid. “I think I can help with that. Give me your number. I’ll text you to let you know when we can visit the villain. If we’re lucky, it may be as early as tomorrow.”

Toshinori registered the boy’s contact information as they entered a quaint residential area with neat little rows of numbered buildings, pleasantly tinged with the warm hues of the sunset.

“Ah, that’s where I live.” Midoriya said afterwards, pointing at a nearby apartment complex. “Thank you for everything, All-”

Toshinori shushed him with a sharp gesture as he gazed around the street nervously. “Please, don’t call me that when I’m in this form.”

Midoriya froze, then bowed respectfully. “R-Right! Thank you, sir! I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble, and taking so much of your time, and-”

Toshinori waved the upcoming barrage of apologies off and bid him a good evening, waiting for the boy to leave. Which he didn’t do.

“Uhm.” Midoriya pointed at Toshinori’s shoulder with an awkward smile. “I need that…”

Oh, right, backpack. “Whoops, there you go.” He tossed Midoriya’s belongings to their owner and watched the kid bustle up the stairs of the building and into one of the apartments. Then he fetched his phone and picked the third number on speed-dial.

“Tsukauchi? Do you have a moment? ….Ah, fine, thank you. Listen, can I drop by your place this evening? Something’s come up and I’d rather not discuss it on the phone… No, but definitely worth looking into sooner rather than later…”

He hung up a couple of exchanges later, after agreeing on the time for the meeting. Toshinori decided he had enough time to make his way back home, shower and have some sort of passable dinner before ruining his friend’s evening. And then he would head back home and he would sleep, even if he had to repeatedly bash his head against a wall to achieve that. He inhaled deeply and let out a long-overdue, exhausted sigh.

What a day.

Hopefully tomorrow wouldn’t be quite as taxing.

“THIEF”

Izuku was stuck on the spot, his feet and ankles wrapped in a thick layer of sludge that stretched on the ground as far as the eye could see. The faint light filtering from both ends of the underpass gave it flickering, changing hues, now green like bile, now brown like vomit, now black like tar. It smelled like sewer and dirty toilets.

“BASTARD”

The slime clung to the walls of the underpass, climbing on them as if endowed with its own will. It crawled up higher and higher, and then went on to expand onto the ceiling. Its surface boiled and squirmed producing disgusting squelching sounds. Izuku looked away from the revolting goo-coated structure he was boxed in, he looked towards the exit, hoping that something, someone would show up to drag him out of that hell.

“GIVE IT BACK”

Someone emerged from the sludge, a few meters ahead of him. A man. A flabby, hairless, mucky man, with haunted eyes and a mouth open in a silent scream. He sweated slime, cried slime, drooled slime, from every orifice and every pore of his body. He waded towards Izuku slowly, an arm extended before him as if to grab him. Izuku couldn’t stand that sight either. He aimed his gaze at the ceiling, right when a huge bubble of gunk popped right above him, and chunky dollops of filth splashed on his face, into his nose and mouth.

“OR I’LL RIP IT OUT OF YOU”

Izuku coughed and heaved, trying to expel the repulsive substance from his pipes, but two cold, slick hands clamped around his throat, trapping it in his body. He could feel the ooze drip down into his lungs, his stomach- he could feel it wiggle and push, like a living parasite trying to break free from the flesh constraining it. Izuku scrambled to tear the man’s hands off him, but those too melted under his fingers like the same fluid that was everywhere, closing down on him, choking him, pulling him apart from the inside-

Izuku woke up with a whole-body lurch that nearly sent him rolling off the bed, sweaty and breathless. He took in the familiar shadows of his room, and the red numbers of his alarm clock floating in the darkness at his eye level.

6:20 AM.

Izuku turned on his belly with a frustrated groan, sinking his face into the pillow. Sure, he’d had a pretty harrowing day yesterday. It was bound to leave him a little shaken and maybe disturb his sleep for a while. But seven nightmares in the span of as many hours seemed slightly excessive. Especially seven instances of the exact same nightmare, sentient goo and Munch-like villain and all. The boy fumbled blindly for his phone to check if he’d received any new messages in the last fifty-five minutes. He hadn’t, of course. He prayed that All Might would contact him soon, it didn’t take a degree in psychology to guess the nature of the ‘unfinished business’ his subconscious was so keen on grilling him about.

He stared at the screen blankly, wondering, for roughly the hundredth time, if he should call his father. On one hand, he very probably should. If the man had deemed that little scuffle with Kacchan emergency-worthy, surely a mess this humongous in size warranted a call as well. On the other hand… Izuku didn’t really want to.

The previous night’s news broadcast had covered the sludge villain incident rather haphazardly, it being a relatively contained accident with no serious consequences or injuries. Izuku was sure they had bothered to touch on the fact in the first place just because All Might had been involved, and the number one hero would receive prime time coverage even for something as trivial as being spotted buying soda at a convenience store. Curiously, Izuku hadn’t been mentioned at all, not even indirectly. Kacchan had been named and shown as the victim, the other heroes had been acknowledged, but All Might had been appointed as the sole person responsible for the resolution of the mishap. Not a word about any irresponsible middle schoolers joining the fray.

Izuku had taken it as a promising sign. All Might had likely interceded for him with the police and obtained a modicum of discretion about his involvement, at least in regards to the media. The hero had been so very understanding the previous day - just thinking about it made the boy almost tear up anew. He had barely reacted to the shocking revelation of his quirk, he had tolerated his unseemly outburst, he had spoken to him as if… as if Izuku was just another innocent victim caught up in a bad situation, rather than a potential menace. He hadn’t hesitated even for a second to offer him his hand, despite knowing the threat that Izuku’s own hands posed. He had… he had made him feel safe, and trusted. He had allowed Izuku to hope that maybe, just maybe, this whole thing could be fixed, that Izuku could handle it with his help, even without subjecting his father to undue sniveling.

And, objectively speaking, what could Izuku’s father do at this point? Izuku doubted that, regardless of his governmental position, the man could prevent the truth from spreading once it had reached both the police and the number one hero. Izuku could make an educated guess about his reaction too, and it wasn’t all that encouraging. It was too late for stern recommendations about secrecy, or for disappointed sighs and gratuitous snark about Izuku’s blind faith in All Might’s mediation skills. And, to be perfectly honest, Izuku dreaded the possibility of finally and completely alienating the sympathy of the one person that had supported and advised him for his whole life, in his own peculiar way. Yes, it was childish of him. Yes, he would have to tell his father anyway, eventually. But he’d rather do it after the matter had been settled, hopefully for the best, and after he’d had a little more time to gather his thoughts and figure out how to word it a little less unfavorably for himself. So, there. It was the 28th of April too, he could wait another day or two, at least. No biggie.

By breakfast time, Izuku had reviewed the issue three more times, had another nightmare, and accepted the fact that this was going to be a long day.

School went by in that typical hazy fashion that was the result of intellectual activities synergizing poorly with a sleep-deprived brain. Izuku kept eyeing Kacchan warily throughout the first three classes, harboring the half-baked notion of addressing yesterday’s events. He regretted doing it the very moment he opened his mouth to greet him during recess.

“What?” Kacchan growled without sparing him a single glance.

“Uh, ah, I…” How are you was one possible conversation starter. A bad one, for sure. Worrying about Kacchan’s well-being implied that he may not be okay, which implied weakness, which invited aggression as a counter-argument. Did you tell anyone else about what I did yesterday was downright rude, as if Izuku’s quirk was more important than his friend being almost murdered. In fact, any reference to the villain incident was a minefield. Braver classmates than Izuku had already made their inquiries during homeroom, and Kacchan hadn’t taken kindly to their snooping. This really was a bad-

“WHAT?” Kacchan barked, turning sharply towards Izuku and banging his fist on his desk for emphasis.

“Uh, nothing! Just saying hello! Hi! Bye!” Izuku fled the classroom without looking back before Kacchan decided to force-feed him his own shoes.

The first bit of good news of the day reached him during lunch, under the guise of a text.

Hey kid! We can drop by the police station this afternoon at 5 if you’re free

Izuku brought up the virtual keyboard to reply, but he stopped with his finger poised over the screen. He blinked at the unlabeled string of digits identifying the sender.

He had All Might’s phone number. One of many, probably. Definitely one of the lowest priority lines. Or maybe just some sort of burner phone for communications with civilians only. Still. He had All Might’s phone number. All Might was texting him. The realization made him half-choke on his rice.

Should he save it? Would that be a breach of confidentiality? Even if he used a not-too-obvious handle? N1? SP? AM? Ante Meridiem? ...That would just make it more suspicious, wouldn’t it? He’d just… commit it to memory for now. In case he ever needed it again. For purely altruistic reasons.

Sure, I’m free! Thank you very much for the help!

Izuku’s phone chimed again a couple of minutes later.

We’ll come pick you up at your place

That ‘we’ raised a small wave of anxiety in Izuku, but he willed himself to suppress it. He couldn’t expect All Might to shield him from any and all interactions with the force. It’d be fine. He could handle this.

The perspective of visiting the villain revived Izuku’s attention for the remaining lessons, only for him to crash back into fidgety inactivity as soon as he got home and found himself without anything to do for almost two hours before the agreed time. Homework was out of the question, he was too distracted. He figured a nap would be the most inoffensive way to while away the time while also recovering some higher brain functions. And so it was only with a mild heart attack that Izuku was roused by the ringing of the doorbell at 4.50 PM.

“Young Midoriya! Good afternoon!” Even at a glance, Izuku could tell that All Might was in better shape than the previous day. He stood a bit straighter, his smile was a bit wider, his hair was slightly less chaotic. He was also wearing slacks and a button up shirt that, while still dramatically oversized, made him look a bit less like a phthisic hospital runaway. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes! Thank you so much for going out of your way to take care of me!” Izuku declared with a rigid bow to All Might and to the other man standing by his side - definitely a detective, judging by his stereotypical trench coat.

All Might patted the man on the back with an even bigger grin. “This is Naomasa Tsukauchi, my favorite detective on the force! You may speak freely before him, you won’t find anyone more trustworthy in the whole of Japan!”

“A pleasure to meet you, Midoriya.” Tsukauchi politely removed his hat and shook the boy’s hand with an amused smirk, a sign that he was probably familiar with the hero’s odd choice of an introduction. He then peeked behind Izuku’s shoulders towards the inside of the house. “Isn’t your mother going to join us?”

“Ah no, she had a doctor’s appointment booked for today. It’s fine though, I’ll just send her a text to let her know where I’m going.” Izuku had warned his mother that he may have to visit the precinct soon. He had had to justify his singed and grimy school uniform the day before, so he had told her that he’d been marginally involved in the sludge villain incident, and the police was likely to want to collect his statement on the matter. It was only by pure chance that the news broadcast hadn’t outed his abridgment of the facts.

“Ah… We were hoping to have a few words with her too, actually.” Tsukauchi glanced at All Might, whose eyes darted briefly between the detective and the boy.

“I… may have forgotten to mention that.” All Might scratched the back of his neck with an apologetic grimace. “Well, I guess it can’t be helped. We’ll catch up with her another time, if necessary.”

Izuku had the sneaking suspicion that being All Might’s favorite detective came at a price. Tsukauchi just sighed, before regarding him with a gentle smile. “Well, if you are sure you don’t mind coming with us all by yourself…”

“I don’t mind at all!” Izuku hurried to reassure them.

A minute later he was in the backseat of Tsukauchi’s speeding car, typing a message to his mother and struggling to suppress a monstrous yawn, courtesy of his interrupted nap.

“Tired?” All Might asked, intercepting his gaze in the rearview mirror.

“A bit. I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Ah, I know that feeling.” The hero’s expression mellowed in sympathy. “I’m sure you’ll rest more easily once this is over and done with.”

“I hope so.” Izuku pocketed his phone and gazed at the moving buildings out of the car window, mostly just to break eye contact. Somehow All Might’s open kindness felt undeserved, especially for something as trivial as a bunch of spooky dreams. He focused on more urgent matters. “So, uh… how are we going to do this? Does the villain know I’m coming, will I explain things to him? Will you, uh, keep an eye on things from outside or accompany me...?”

“Well, we were thinking of throwing you into his cell, locking the door and letting the two of you fight for dominance and ownership over the quirk- “ All Might grinned widely in response to Izuku’s exasperated gape.

“Yagi!” The detective reprimanded him, only mildly scandalized. The name bounced a few times around Izuku’s brain, plain and mystifying at the same time.

“Sorry, just trying to lift his spirits.”

“You have nothing to worry about, it’ll be perfectly safe.” Tsukauchi provided, clearly having a much better understanding of the state of Izuku’s spirits despite knowing him for a scant ten minutes. “The villain will be in his cell and we will escort you inside, of course. You won’t really interact with each other, as he’ll likely be deeply asleep.”

“Asleep?”

“Yes. The apparent loss of his quirk has upset him greatly. He’s barely spoken since we took him into custody, and he’s spent the whole night in severe emotional distress. We would have transferred him to a hospital this morning if you hadn’t agreed to help so promptly. As things stood, we simply had a doctor prescribe him a strong sedative. Hopefully he’ll settle down spontaneously after you return his quirk.”

The man’s words weighed on Izuku’s heart like a ton of bricks. Damn, that was… horrible. He’d been holding onto someone else’s quirk for barely a day, and it had already caused that much sorrow. That wasn’t how Izuku’s power was supposed to be used. It would never be, as far as he was concerned.

“I’m sure he will.” All Might commented, all traces of humour vanished from his demeanor. “Don’t worry, kid. It’ll be a matter of a minute.”

Izuku nodded, and didn’t speak again for the rest of the trip. When they reached their destination, he let All Might guide him towards the detention area of the complex while Tsukauchi wandered off somewhere else, probably taking care of the bureaucratic side of things. He reappeared relatively soon, and they entered one of the cells all together.

The cell was small and mostly barren, furnished with only the most essential goods and surfaces for a relatively short stay. Idly, Izuku wondered what systems they had in place to prevent a… slippery criminal such as the current occupant from escaping from toilets or sinks. Surely they were prepared to- he realized he was spacing out. He should just get on with it.

The villain was indeed sleeping, huddled in a small foldable bedding on the floor. Izuku had barely caught a glimpse of the man’s human form the previous day, yet he was identical to how he’d envisioned him in his dreams. His subconscious was just that observant, apparently. It suddenly occurred to Izuku that he hadn’t even asked for the man’s name yet. The news broadcast hadn’t reported- he was procrastinating again. Just do it, Izuku.

The boy glanced questioningly at the detective, who made a small gesture to indicate that he was free to proceed. He approached his assailant and crouched beside him. The villain’s hand was sticking out from under the blanket, next to his head. Izuku rested his palm against the back of it, and simply willed the quirk out.

Just like that, it was done. Izuku stood up and stepped back as the man’s body swiftly changed its texture and color, morphing and rearranging itself until a vaguely man-shaped, green heap of goo had replaced the slumbering human. The villain remained dead to the world throughout the entire process.

“...I’m done.” Izuku whispered, quite redundantly. He peered back at the two men at the opposite side of the room, and he didn’t miss the quick, sharp side-glance they’d just quietly exchanged.

“Thank you very much for your cooperation.” Tsukauchi said with the utmost honesty once they were again in the hallway. “While you’re here, would you mind if I collected your statement about the incident? It won’t take long, we already have a clear picture of the situation thanks to All Might.”

“Uh… Okay.” Izuku had hoped, rather optimistically, to skip that part, but he had no reasonable excuse to refuse. Tsukauchi led them to an empty room a couple of corridors further ahead, and held the door open for them. All Might lingered on the threshold.

“May I sit in?” His question was aimed at Izuku for some reason, rather than at his friend.

“Of course!” Izuku confirmed, when both adults just stared at him in silence, clearly waiting for his permission. The hero thanked him with a small nod and an equally small smile.

They all sat around the desk in the middle of the room, Tsukauchi on one side, and Izuku and All Might on the other. It struck Izuku as a little strange, automatically expecting the two upholders of the law to face him side by side. He wondered if it may be a setup for some sort of good-cop-bad-cop routine. Not that either of them seemed especially suited to the latter role. Tsukauchi was very much the embodiment of professionalism, and All Might… All Might looked especially non-threatening in that moment, almost meek. He was sitting very tidily, big hands folded in his lap and long legs pressed against each other, occupying a remarkably small space considering the size of his frame. It made Izuku straighten his back and sit more neatly by reflex.

The questioning did proceed very smoothly at first. Tsukauchi let Izuku narrate his version of the events without interrupting at all, just humming and jotting down a few lines in his notepad now and then. All Might was just as unobtrusive, volunteering a sentence or two when Izuku happened to stumble on his words, or when he openly allowed him to recount the little scene on the rooftop, since the detective was already in on the big secret. Smooth sailing all round, until the point when Izuku had to bring up his quirk.

“On the subject of your quirk… when did it first manifest, exactly?” Tsukauchi asked.

“A little less than two years ago.”

“Ah, you’re quite the late bloomer! And you’ve only shared that fact with your friend Bakugo and your father, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And your father is one... Hisashi Midoriya, right?” Tsukauchi fished out a sheet of paper from the folder he’d retrieved before beginning the interrogation. He slid it across the table so that the boy could read it.

“Yes.” Izuku blinked, an undefined sense of unease gripping him all of a sudden. “...Why did you bother printing his personal details?”

“You’ve been filed as quirkless in the national registry after a routine medical examination when you were four years old. Your registration hasn’t been updated since then, as far as I could ascertain.” Tsukauchi explained calmly.

“Y-Yeah. I know.”

“...That is a punishable offense, I’m afraid. An accurate quirk registration is mandatory for all citizens.” Tsukauchi’s expression softened when Izuku utterly failed to hide his dismay. “This has no consequence on you, as minors aren’t expected to take care of these things by themselves, especially since quirk recording is often carried out when they’re extremely young. Your mother bears no blame either if, as you say, she’s as clueless about it as the rest of the world. But if your father knew and neglected to sort out the necessary paperwork for so long-”

“Oh.” Oh. Oh crap. Izuku had never thought of that. Why on earth had he never thought of that? Why, in almost two years, had he never considered the legal implications of all that secrecy? Why hadn’t his father? “Are you going to press charges against him?”

“Not yet. We’re at least going to get in touch with him and hear him out before taking any further steps.” The detective gave him a genuinely reassuring smile. “But even if we did, there is no cause for concern. These bureaucratic hitches are usually settled with a small fine.”

“I-I see.” Izuku gulped. He wasn’t going to wait until May. He was going to call his father as soon as he was alone. This probably wasn’t going to snowball into a lengthy legal conundrum, but still…

“What’s his occupation? I’m reading ‘administrative assistant’ here, which is a bit generic…”

“I don’t know much about that. He works for the government, I think, and he always says that all his activities are classified, so I try not to pry... Too much…”

“That is very judicious of you. I wish you could teach some of that tact to my sister…” Tsukauchi sighed, only half-jokingly. All Might let out a low chuckle at that. “Does your father know that you’ve been so reserved about your quirk so far?”

“Yes.”

“And he didn’t find it odd in the slightest?”

“...No.”

“Why do you think that is?” Izuku was suddenly very aware of both adults observing him quite intently. He really didn’t want to make things look any worse for his father. He could… slightly reframe the truth, maybe.

“I, uhm… Mine is a bit of a unique quirk. Difficult to use without, uh, stepping on other people’s toes. And I’ve been quirkless for most of my life, and… it’s no mystery that I envied other kids a lot because of that. I was worried that my schoolmates could be wary of me if they knew that I could… act on that envy now.”

Tsukauchi hummed, twirling his pen slowly between his fingers. “I can understand your concern. But quirk counselling is specifically designed to help children cope with such issues, and you’ve been missing out on it because of this extreme discretion. Your father should have realized he was doing you more harm than good by letting these fears fester in your mind.”

Izuku dropped his gaze on his father’s profile sheet. Detective Tsukauchi had a point, but… the matter was more complicated than that, as well as intricately intertwined with his father’s job and the troubled history of their quirk, and… Izuku didn’t want to delve into any of that at the moment.

“We’ll definitely schedule some counselling sessions for you in the future, I’m sure you’ll find them beneficial.” Tsukauchi hesitated. “...Did something catch your attention?”

Something did, in fact. Izuku was idly skimming through the content of his father’s profile, and a couple of details were giving him pause. The first was, unsurprisingly, his father’s listed quirk. Fire Breathing.

...nor do I have it printed in bold letters in my personal documents…

Yeah, Izuku wasn’t going to bring that up. The other thing, a little more surprisingly, was his photo.

“Oh, it’s nothing, just… I haven’t seen any photos of my father in a long time.”

“You haven’t seen ‘any photos’ of him?” Tsukauchi cocked his head curiously.

“Yeah… I’ve never met him in person, he travels a lot because of his job and he never has enough time to stop by. I only know what he looks like because of an old photo my mother showed me. I haven’t seen it in years too, so…”

“Only a single photo, uh? And this picture here doesn’t strike you as familiar?”

Izuku observed it more closely... No, he was surely mistaken. “No no, there’s… there’s definitely a resemblance. Mine was a very old photo, taken before I was born. And it wasn’t even a photo of him specifically, he just happened to be in it, at an odd angle and in the middle of a crowd… I’m sure this one is more accurate.”

“Are you still in possession of that photo, by any chance?” All Might chimed in unexpectedly, his bright eyes narrowing slightly.

“Yes, I think so… Hang on, let me check.” Izuku fetched his phone, opened the internet browser… Crap, it really had been a long time since he’d looked at the thing. Back then, he’d saved the file his mother had passed him on a free online storage site that… hopefully still existed? He hadn’t used it in at least four years. Was his account still active? Could he even retrieve the credentials with his current email address? “Uh… Actually, I don’t think I can get it right away. But I printed a copy of it once, it should be at home… somewhere…” Stashed in one of those boxes of old notebooks and magazines on top of his wardrobe, right? Or had it been thrown away when they had moved to their current apartment…? He fiddled with his phone with growing discomfort, acutely aware of the utter unhelpfulness of his babbling.

“We’d certainly be grateful if you could retrieve that photo for us, when you have a minute.” All Might finally conceded, taking pity on Izuku's floundering.

“Sure! I’ll try to find it as soon as I get home.”

“Much obliged.” Tsukauchi flipped quickly through his folder. Izuku was about to ask why the mention of that photo had sparked their interest so much, when Tsukauchi put Hisashi's file back into the folder and closed it with a snap. “Well, I think we’ve covered everything. Again, you’ve been immensely valuable to us, Midoriya.”

Izuku let out a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. All Might positively beamed at him and flashed him a thumbs up, which was its own, heart-warming reward. They all stood up and made to leave, when Izuku remembered he owed the two men a proper thanks.

“Ah, I really appreciate that you used your influence to… to get the papers off my back. It was… unreasonable of me to ask, but I really appreciate you humoring my hope for discretion anyway. I hope that it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.”

Tsukauchi and All Might traded a puzzled glance.

“We did nothing of the sort, kid. What makes you-” All Might stopped, as if struck by a sudden thought. “Ah! You did mention it yesterday, didn’t you? That you were expecting your friend to expose your quirk…”

“Yes. I… I imagine Kacchan told the journalists, and you took care of, uh, correcting his version?”

“No, no, there was no need to.” All Might waved his hand dismissively. “Your friend didn’t mention you at all. He was on the verge of fainting when you rushed in, he’d been strenuously fighting back against the villain for a while by that time. He was too exhausted to notice your intervention, and you bolted immediately afterwards. He never realized you were there.”

Izuku’s jaw dropped half-way open, but he shut it immediately with an audible click.

“...Ah.” Kacchan hadn’t realized. The bystanders hadn’t realized. The police hadn’t realized. All Might hadn’t really realized. That meant that no one, no one, would know about his quirk right now… if he hadn’t gone and spilled the beans about it himself. If he hadn’t dumped an unnecessary confession to the number one hero out of sheer, emotional anxiety.

...Boy, that next phone call was going to be one for the ages.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #deku #izuku midoriya #All Might #Toshinori Yagi #naomasa tsukauchi

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sprawa-przybyszewskiej · 3 years

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I would like to present (extremely briefly; it's more of an invitation to their thoughts rather than anything else) two approaches that touch on a creative technique used by Przybyszewska, which has been spotted by some of her scholars, albeit each in its own way. Ewa Graczyk maintains that Przybyszewska did not write a historical drama in any way, but rather described a completely different reality, an universum in which the same events happen, but which doesn't take place on Earth, with us in it. She describes, then, something which I call The French Revolution', taking after mathematics' nomenclature. Kazimiera Ingdahl, on the other hand, spots traces of gnostic and manichean ideologies in Przybyszewska's writing, which, as we all know, are based solidly on the contrast between Heaven and Hell, knowledge and numbness, soul and mind. I mention them here solely to point out there is a dualism in her works, it is important and easily recognizable.

I have nowhere near the amount of erudition these scholars do, so I will constrict myself to some more visible matters. In my previous post about Antoine, I've made a remark that stuck with me for far longer than I had expected, and so I decided to elaborate on it.

The passage I'm talking about is this: because it could potentially reveal Saint-Just as another Danton-like minded individual, looking for power for himself through sacrifices of others. I want to explore whether Przybyszewska really did construct both of them alike?

To me it appears very probable, as crazy as it sounds. First of all, ALL of the personages are created in some reference to Robespierre. He is the only singular, original mind amongst them all, not to mentoin an axis around which other revolve, and so all of them, whether we like it or not, are somewhat similar to each other. Second of all, she clearly went in the direction of mirroring certain scenes, ideas, expressions (which I personally love to track down and compare them later), and it's exactly the same when talking about certain individuals. The two pairs (Robespierre – Saint-Just and Danton – Desmoulins) come to mind right away. They are constructed as parallels at least in some aspects and at least to some extent.

Wouldn't that, however, put Saint-Just and Desmoulins on the same/similar level, aren't they the ones who creat a parallel pair? Well, yes and no. I think they are a unit when it comes to personal matters, for rather obvious reasons. But I also think they are both put in similar situations, and yet their thinking is polar opposite of each other. They are both allowed to Robespierre's most personal sphere, and yet their reactions are completely different, which is one among the reasons as to why one of them meets a sad end by all accounts, and the other can die somewhat happy (as I will always mantain: if Przybyszewska managed to finish Thermidor, I am one hundred percent sure she would depict Antoine as one dying boldly and proudly, if only beause he died for a great cause and alongside Robespierre). On the other hand, spiritually and mentally, Camille resembles Maxime way, way more than Danton. They are both... maybe not exactly soft, but emotional. The main difference between them is Maxime is able to rein his feelings in when necessary (again, not always, not completely; vide his late night visit at Desmoulins', vide his attempt and saving him from the Luxembourg Palace), but as far as differences go, this one is actually minor. They are put in different positions, but their reactions are similar.

I would also wager to say Saint-Just and Robespierre don't have that much in common with each other in the plays, leaving out their political stances and their relationship. They are very different in terms of character traits: Maxime is more forgiving, calmer, quieter in all aspects. Antoine is more of a quicksilver, and also is regarded more as a tool in Maxime's hands, which I mean in the best way possible. While he has his own opinions, sometimes quite different to that of Robespierre's, he only entertains them in Maxime's presence, so that no one can put a splinter between them and turn them against each other. When they are turned against each other (during their quarrels, yes, but also during Thermidor, which is a beautiful study of such a case), he defers to Maximilien humbly and holds no grudges against him. This is pretty much the only soft side he ever presents to the audience, for when facing any other characters, he is sarcastic if not downright hostile, the only exception I can think of being Eleonore. He's not gentle, not even with Robespierre whom he respects so much. (I cannot get over how badly Wajda interpreted this in his movie, where in his very first scene Antoine brings Maxime an apple-tree branch in full blossom; while a sweet gesture, it made little sense, for the director not only didn't establish their special bond in any way, cutting their very important scene in Act II and a lot of their exchange of words in Act V out, but completely ignored the fact that in the play they did talk about trees blossming, but it was Maxime who pointed this out to Antoine. Honestly, it would make much more sense if in the movie he was the one giving Antoine flowers; altough I don't trust it would be executed well, so perhaps the best scenario would be to drop it altogether.)

This leaves Antoine and Danton as the unlikely pair. Here I wouldn't necessarily say they are put in different positions (following my train of comparison), because – depending on if you believe the confrontation between Danton and Robespierre to be honest or not – there is enough evidence in the play to mantain both of them want to establish power over nation through Robespierre. Danton is the villain of the play, but he isn't blind, he too wants to use Maximilien as a face of the dictature, as a tool to obtain more "normal" power for himself (normal power here would equal to money, respect, high office; the "abnormal" power is what Robespierre sort-of-dreams-of, an influence over people to direct them into doing what is necessary for the good of the whole of the nation, or better yet, the world). And Antoine wants more or less the same thing, the exception being he doesn't care at all for personal gains. He doesn't necessarily believe in Robespierre's visions of the future, one could even argue he doesn't understand them (this is clearly shown in Thermidor, where he reacts with a headache once Robespierre unfolds his plan in front of him: Stop it, Maxime. I can't keep up with you anymore.); he does, however, see the neccesity of establishing the dictature or some other extraordinary mean to obtain the total power over the state. Both he and Danton are blessed with a far-fetching political vision, the only thing differentiating them from Robespierre is that he's a much more brilliant chess player than any of them, when they can see few moves forward, he's already seen all the possible outcomes of the match. And all of these outcomes are bad, for Maxime is characterised as a pessimist, while Antoine and Danton are, generally speaking, optimistically inclined. Youthful foolishness indeed, except Antoine is not foolish! He's just optimistic. In Danton, the optimism takes a form of boldness and bravado, in Saint-Just it manifests as an unwavering faith in the one he considers to be so much more superior to himself, and also a certain amount of contempt for the ones he considers to be inferior. This is another trait he shares with Danton, and we have to admit, Przybyszewska did a really good job at presenting the same trait in them both in such different ways, that we like one, hate the other.

There is also the matter of how they treat Camille and what they think of him. Here, both are jealous, I think. Jealous of the special place Camille has in Robespierre's heart, scornful of his abilities as a politician and a journalist, disinclined to him as a person. Danton cares for him as far as his utility in being a leverage on Robespierre goes, but I don't think he hoards any warm feelings for him personally, and I don't say it only because he was willing to sacrifice Camille purely out of spite. A much better example to show what I mean is that Danton seems to have a much better functioning, more honest and professional relationship with Delacroix than with Camille, whom he keeps in the dark about absolutely everything from start to finish. I don't know if it was meant to be a symbol or not, but in their very last scene in the jail cell, Camille has to beg Danton not to snuff out the candle, which Danton does, albeit very reluctantly. In turn, Saint-Just talks about Camille in language dripping with contempt and jealousy of purely personal kind, offending him left and right, right to Robespierre's face – not to hurt Maxime, but to "open his eyes", so to speak. In one particularly harsh sentence he compares Camille to a dog, a child and a prostitue all in one breath. He not only doesn't regard him as an opponent, but barely recognizes him as a human being worth respect, in which he is sadly very similar to Danton.

Weirdly enough, they both regard Maximilien as human, which I think is interesting to notice. It would be really easy to write them in such a style that leaves way for them to see Robespierre as something more, something almost extraterrestrial, somebody who posseses abilites greater than normal humans do. And yet:

The first image is from The Last Nights of Ventose, my own translation, and it's directly from Antoine's compassionate speech. I didn't include Robespierre's response, because he just deflected, but deflection does mean he doesn't fully agree, so it's yet another similarity.

One more thing that comes to mind in a comparison like this is that Danton threatens Robespierre with the ultimate power. He doesn't think that Maxime will be able to live with it, with himself, if he ever decides to go this one step futher and become a dictator. Is this is because he wouldn't be able to live with himself, or does he truly underestimate Maxime, or he simply wants to make sure Maxime would not go in this direction precisley because he knows he would then be ustoppable? How very telling then, that in Antoine's mouth the very same thing is not a threat, but a promise! This ultimate power is born out of necessity, and it's a grace for the whole nation, because no other person could bear the weight of this "crown", but Maxime.

The main difference between Saint-Just and Danton, I think, is something which we have to believe, it's not written clearly anywhere, and this is also the thing I briefly touched uppon in the aforementioned post: we have to believe that Antoine has pure intentions, because we sure know Danton does not. These were the embers fueling the suspiscion in Maxime when he couldn't understand why Antoine would possibly push for the dictature so much – is his heart pure? This sounds overly dramatic, perhaps, but I think this dramaticism aligns perfectly with Maxime's overall characterisation. I think all readers believe in his good intentions, and the parallels constructing the characters help immensely in this judgement, for if Danton is rotten to the core, Antoine is as steady and pure as a marble column. Robespierre even calls one a pig, while the other deserves to be named an Apostle of liberty.

There is, however, another similarity between them, too. Both Antoine and Danton are willing to be dishonest in order to achieve their goals. This is this one thing that's hard for Robespierre to swallow, for he – like Camille – values honesty really highly and if he could, he'd always act honestly. Saint-Just, not to mention Danton, has no such scrupules. He sees the greater necessity as something erasing all other circumstances, and for this greater picture he is willing to sacrifice some of his integrity as a human being. With Danton, the situation is even less complex, for I don't believe he would be sacrificing his integrity in any way – this dishonesty lays at his very core and comes natural to him.

The arguments Saint-Just presents, and which differs from Robespierre's point of view, are also different from that of Danton's. Danton's vision of the present is filled with contempt for the people, for the masses who are less brilliant than him and few others are. It is worth noting that Przybyszewska really did think like this, this is something she believed in and while reading Danton's speeches in Act II Scene 3, what we actually hear is her own train of thoughts. The only difference is that she didn't disdain the people they way he did. She thought that being a mass, an unnamed pulp of flesh is not a bad thing (it was perhaps unfortunate, and I am sure thinking she was a genius like Robespierre helped her in maintainign this view). Base material is a nourishment for those who will lead these masses. We – the lesser people – are absolutely necessary for them – the greater ones – so that they can lead us out of the night and into the new epoch of enlightement, and there is nothing humiliating in being this nourishment/tool/base. Danton understood it only partially, for he wasn't ready for the greatest sacrifice of all: to be a genius, one has to get rid of everything personal, all needs and desires must be kept aside, and never again spoken of. Robespierre understood it, and I think Antoine did too. I think the best evidence for it is that he said, that he doesn't consider himself to be Robespierre's equal. Recently I hoped to prove it was a silent declaration of love; now I want to point out it is one because it showed Robespierre that Antoine understood this great sacrifice one has to make in order to be a leader, and in his own way, he has already done this. He has brushed aside personal vain and glory, his amour-propre, he degraded himself in order to magnify Maxime's importance. Danton may say: It's you whom I adore, but it is Antoine who shows it through his actions as well as his words.

#do you think they are constructed as parallels or am i delirious?#sprawa dantona #the danton case #L'Affaire Danton #Stanisława Przybyszewska #stanislawa przybyszewska #Maximilien Robespierre #maksymilian robespierre #antoine saint just #Antoni saint just #georges danton #jerzy danton #frev #french revolution #literary analysis

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desidarling123 · 3 years

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FATWS Episode 4: A Definitive* Rank Ordering of Most Interesting Character Arcs, from Yours Truly

(*And by definitive I mean completely subjective, but yanno.)

IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT BY NOW: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR FATWS. SCROLL AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT EM.

Now let's get into it:

1. John Walker

Let me start by saying -- the near-universal John Walker hate from fandom has always been largely undeserved, and that's a hill I'll die on. It comes out of, I think, a visceral sort of need to slot him into an easily understood black-or-white binary when, truthfully, he is neither, and I think this episode was the BEST example of that. The sheer range he exhibits in such a short time -- a handful of character moments and action sequences in the larger fifty minute episode -- serve to humanize him in a way that's messy and intense and very, very real.

Because MAN. Whether you were already sympathetic to John's plight or not, the death of his partner, Lemar Hoskins, is viscerally disturbing. There's no other way to put it. FATWS has not shied away from some pretty crazy onscreen kills, but this one was arguably the worst in how brutally mundane it was. Lemar was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- a man fighting amongst a whole room of super soldiers. He never stood a chance -- and yet, he still jumped in harm's way to save his best friend, a man in whom he saw indisputable goodness, even when the man could not see it himself. There's an obvious Steve/Bucky parallel here, but with a much darker and more realistic twist -- not all of us, after all, can be lucky enough to receive super strength that could save our lives. Lemar was always a regular mortal -- and for that transgression, he pays the ultimate price.

And then. What happens after. Oh. My. God. I felt Walker's rage and hopelessness through the screen. The death of that Flag Smasher -- at the hands of Captain America, no less, a man he'd admitted to admiring as a child not ten minutes earlier -- was brilliantly executed.

With the final shot of the townspeople recording the brutal murder it becomes overwhelmingly clear -- we are witnessing the tragic fall of a man who was, for all his previous missteps, trying to be a hero. But John's moral compass just died a meaningless, horrible death -- and without him by his side, Walker has become a man unhinged.

2. Bucky Barnes and Ayo

I debated putting this one at number two because I'd argue there were some weird elements to the writing choices made (more on that in a sec), but, nevertheless. Bucky and Ayo get slot #2.

That flashback to Wakanda got me excited, but I didn't expect my heart to get shattered almost right away. Oh. My. God. His interactions with Ayo BROKE ME. There's so much nuance in a scene that’s incredibly well-acted by both Sebastian and Florence — you see both of them in a moment that is incredibly pivotal for the former’s character, and we see the latter reacting with sympathy, strength, and enormous grace. I had expected a scene like this to be with Shuri (given that we last saw her with Bucky in the post credits of Black Panther) but, given the context of what was being performed (a final test of the trigger words) having Ayo there made a lot of sense. She could take him down if need be — but as the scene so wonderfully shows, thankfully, she doesn’t have to. Instead, she’s there to let him know that for the first time in almost a century, he’s free again.

Now, let’s get into some of the unevenness. I had hoped, at the end of the last episode, that Bucky had at least informed the Dora Milaje of his liaison with Zemo — that, perhaps, it had been Bucky’s intent to hand him over all along. Alas, that was not the case — Bucky, it seems, had broken Zemo out with little thought to — or perhaps simply silent acceptance of — the consequences that would come with it.

This is the part, again, where the writing felt a bit weak. We know from the opening shots of the episode that Bucky cares enormously for Ayo — they’re not simply soldiers in arms, but they’ve shared a moment of immense vulnerability together. We ALSO know that he cares enormously for T’Challa, for Shuri, and for Wakanda as a country (see Infinity War, where he says “I love this place” in reference to his new home).

So that begs the question — why? Why did he betray them in that way, besides sheer desperation for a lead? And it’s not one, I’d argue, that we are given a satisfying answer to. Bucky has been reckless to an alarming degree in the last few episodes, but not informing Wakanda of his intention to liaise with the man who killed their king feels like a MAJOR tactical oversight. Is he willing to burn everything down to win this battle against the Flag Smashers? Are these his self destructive tendencies kicking in? OR, is he just truly so blinded by his emotions surrounding his past that he’s willing to throw away what could very well be his future? Only time will tell. But I hope he’ll do right by Ayo and Wakanda, as he clearly has a LOT to make up for.

3. Baron Helmut Zemo

God. I love Zemo’s psychotic, problematic ass. Say what you want, but the man is the most efficient of them all and he isn't a super soldier or an Avenger. Over and over, he shows that he's truly smarter than them and always has been.

He doesn't get personal. He doesn’t get distracted. He knows exactly what his goal is, and he executes on it. Mans didn’t hesitate to unload several bullets into Karli, and as soon as he figured out what the vials were, he destroyed all except one. Like I said, the most efficient person on the team. Has arguably done more to forward the cause against the Flag Smashers/continued existence of super soldiers than anyone else and it’s only been a few days. Between that, his god-awful dancing skills and him shooting the eugenicist scientist without so much as a blink of an eye, I think he's a man after my own heart. I’m almost sad to see him get what’s coming for him come next episode. (Because y’all, he did still kill King T’Chaka, and there’s no way the Dora leave here without taking him out on a silver platter and an apple stuffed in his mouth). But again, let’s see how that pans out.

4. Sam Wilson

WHAT are the writers doing to Sam, I swear to God? We didn't get too much introspection into where his head's at during this episode, and when we did the treatment felt uneven at best. I think, in trying to have him create a rapport with Karli, the writers have created some areas of commonality that didn’t always translate as they’d like. It was also weird to see Sam swinging from the well-earned cynicism of the previous two episodes to the sort of wide-eyed optimism Steve used to portray. Perhaps that was simply to try and show Karli an alternative, but as the episode showed, she clearly wasn't buying (though, in Sam’s defense, he came pretty close).

Something about Sam’s characterization in this episode didn’t really do it for me — I would argue episode one and two were both stronger in that regard. Nevertheless, I’m hopeful that they’ll correct it in the next one.

5. Karli Morgenthau

Her treatment is arguably the worst of them all. She is young, yeah, but she oscillates at an alarming rate between spouting class discourse that, by this episode, feels largely derivative (like someone scrolled on Twitter and put a bunch of keywords together in hopes of evoking an emotional audience response) and homicidal tendencies that show a brutal yet fundamentally messy underpinning. Unlike Zemo, she is still too easily confounded, and that will come to bite her in the ass sooner rather than later. (See: The Power Broker)

Perhaps I'm meant to be rooting for her on some degree but I really can't -- she's cruel and sloppy, which I cannot forgive.

Oh, and she killed Lemar Hoskins and threatened Sarah Wilson. Yikes.

Overall Episode Takeaway: A lot of shocking moments and great acting beats for everyone involved (arguably some of the best of the series thus far), but the weakness of the writing does crop up in parts. Whether they'll be corrected for going forward is to be determined...

UP NEXT: Meta pieces for Sam, Bucky, John, and Zemo all in the works!

#fatws #tfatws #sam wilson #bucky barnes #john walker #fatws spoilers #tfatws spoilers #tfatws meta #karli morgenthau

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tazzytypes · 3 years

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Apocalypse: Sanctuary -- Chap 18

Hey guys! Still working on my professional writing endeavors, getting past some BETA reading stages atm. However, I had this unfinished chapter in my WIP pile, so I thought I'd add more to it to work past some writer's block. Thank you guys for all the continued support both for this story and my professional writing career! I'm hoping to respond to some of y'all's comments soon!

Read More on AO3 or see MASTERPOST for more chapters!

Michael let out a sigh as he entered his room, the smile he had been wearing all day finally leaving his lips. He could handle the attention if he didn’t need to smile at every moment. It was annoying, their pride. As if they were the ones who had descended into hell. As if they had seen the river Styx and spoken to the devil himself. Michael had known they would treat him like a puppet, but he hadn’t expected it to be so annoying.

Ariel tried his patience the most. The blond boy could barely get in a word when he was around, hand on his shoulder and speaking for him. If not for Miss Mead, Michael wouldn’t be able to bear it. Who did the man think he was? His father? Then again… the two weren’t as different, he supposed.

He let his bag fall off his shoulder and onto the floor. Why he even bothered with classes anymore was a mystery. What little friends he had — if he could call them that — shrank away from him. Such was the cost of power. That’s what Mead always said.

He missed her.

Pulling off his tie, he settled into his desk chair. Taking a book from the collection in his room, he set to reading. That girl had been looking at it while the witches and warlocks discussed the semantics of the Seven Wonders. He could still feel the way his finger burned, the way her green eyes bugged from her head before she tossed the book back on the shelf.

The last thing he needed was some inexperienced witch accidentally putting a hex on him. What sort of fool read magic spells aloud without considering the consequences? Had she not seen a single horror movie?

Michael remembered her eyes, the milky film that came to them in hell and the fire that burned in them when she faced that demon. If she were a fool, she was certainly a competent one.

Written mainly in Latin, Michael did his best to translate the words of the tome, some of them lost to water damage or tears. Speaking Latin, which had slowly become a synonym for the devil’s language, was simple for him to master. He thanked Satan for that ability. It was the only thing that could have put him behind his fellow warlocks. Ariel and the others had to think the blond boy was perfect. Anything less would ruin his plans.

Even so, perfection wasn’t easy. Mead assured him he was, but perfections seemed more impossible than hell itself.

He tutted at himself. So, this is what the girl had been talking about.

With a sigh, Michael moved to ready himself for bed. Passing the Seven Wonders only ensured him more work during the day. Ariel may not be a demon, but he certainly worked to possess the boy day and night. Nothing would satisfy the man until Michael moved like him, sounded like him, ruled like him. A perfect replica.

It was pathetic, really.

He tossed his tie onto the bed and slowly went to work unbuttoning his shirt. There was not a moment in the day where he wasn’t deep in thought, planning, re-planning, checking the chessboard to see how his pawns moved in his absence. The only time his mind was silent was when he dreamed. Even then, they felt like fevered visions, quickly forgotten when his alarm rang in his ear.

Unbuttoning his sleeve, Michael was startled by a flurry of pages. He jumped and his eyes were wide for only a moment before they hardened into an unreadable mask. When he turned, the pages of the tome were moving on their own, the force behind it frantically searching for something.

“Finis venit, ante initium.” A chilling breeze whispered.

The end comes before the beginning.

Slowly, Michael moved closer, body tense and on alert. He half expected the book to fling itself from the desk. His father was always impatient.

Finally, the pages settled. Craning his desk light closer, Michael saw the layout of a summoning circle. The spell, its components and the words to be spoken, were laid out in perfect detail. What it was to summon, however, was but a blur of intelligible ink.

The faint voice continued to whisper, “Mulieres gladius tuus sic recensetur. Tempus belli.”

Your sword has awoken. It is time for war.

Emily stood in a field, a sea of green reaching out for miles around her, no sign of ever stopping. She spun like a dog chasing its tail, hunting for something familiar. There were no wildflowers, no clouds in the sky. The air was not too warm nor too cool. It was, in all ways, perfect.

She didn’t know tranquility could be so suffocating.

Panic rose in her bell. In hell, at least she had Michael, but here she was alone. Emily ran towards the horizon even though she knew it would never end, tall grass catching at her legs like a million tiny hands. They whispered as she pushed on.

Alone.

The mere thought was enough to make her breath catch in her throat. If she had any need to breathe, that is. Dreams were peculiar that way. You could be strangled even when your body needed no air.

“You’re back!” A voice cried. Emily turned to the familiar figure, tripping over her own feet before righting herself. Her chest heaved and her eyes were dilated in alarm. A dark figure stood in long robes, unaware of the heat. How long had the heat been there? “They said it would take longer, but I knew you’d get Cordelia’s help.”

“Nan?”

Emily’s mouth had opened to say the name, but it was not her voice that spoke. Instead, another’s passed her lips. It was an unpleasant feeling — as if someone had reached down her throat and pulled out her tongue.

Her head turned as if someone were doing it for her. The brunette’s resistance only made it worse. Behind her, Cordelia stood almost swallowed by the verdant grass. Each step she took was careful and calculated. If she ran, the pair would only get further away… or so she believed.

Nan.

Then she was by Emily’s side, placing a hand on her shoulder. They felt like talons instead of flesh, digging into her shoulder; a breath away from being painful. She did not want to look. Looking made it real.

“What are you doing here?” Cordelia asked.

“I was asked to be here,” Nan replied, then nodded to Emily, “to meet a friend.”

The younger witch spared a glance to her Supreme, brown eyes meeting green for a fraction of a second. Those brown eyes quickly flicked back to Nan, unwilling to give anything else her attention. Emily opened her mouth to speak, to ask Nan all the questions that had been plaguing her since Hawthorne — What voice had spoken to her? Why had it spoken to her? What did it all mean? Why her?

Why?

Once again, she was spoken over. The words caught in her throat by something she could not see. Green eyes narrowed and grew dark, annoyed as Cordelia spoke once more.

“Nan, where are you?”

Emily’s heart fell. This was her Supreme’s true intention. She shouldn’t have been surprised. When Cordelia had said the spell would unleash the true potential of her powers, Emily had expected something different. Optimism had made her foolish.

The sky turned dark, gray clouds replacing azure skies. Emily did not notice, far too consumed by her doubts and fears. Why were her dreams always subverted? Why did they always get torn out and turned into another’s designs?

Why?

Nan’s eyes dashed from Cordelia, eyes narrowing as she observed the changing sky. She did not have time for this. Cordelia was a side effect and the spell would only last so long. There was work to do, work Cordelia would never comprehend or appreciate. Nan walked towards Emily, shuffling through the tall grass, her hand reaching into her cloak to pull out a bright, shining orb from the void and shadow.

Emily was nice. Her thoughts were nice. Overcast skies peeled away into bright blue once more. Nan’s eyes flickered towards her former Supreme whose brown eyes looked upwards in silent awe. Her thoughts were less nice. Then again, they had always been that way. She blamed Fiona.

With a flourish of her robe, Nan’s face lit up with a proud grin she couldn’t control.

“I believe this is yours.”

Confusion laid wake to slow joy which reminded Nan of a child on Christmas. It flickered in and out, but never disappeared, her mind warring between blinded optimism and pessimistic doubt.

It was beautiful, more than beautiful; opalescent and scattering light like the brightest star in the sky. Blue skies and the bright sun paled in its wake. A rainbow of refracted light scattered colors here and there.

Dainty hands hovered over the orb as if the smallest touch would burst it like a bubble. It was warm, magnetic — like a fire on a cold day.

The dead witch held the orb out even further, nodding to Emily with enthusiasm. Cordelia should appreciate the girl more, Nan thought. Perhaps, after this, she would. There were so many plans for the girl. More plans than a mortal mind could comprehend.

Emily cradled the orb like a child, her chest thrumming. A buzz filled her body. She looked between Nan and the object in her arms, unsure which she should focus on.

“What is it?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper, “is it—”

Nan smiled, “Exactly!”

Emily stared at her. Reading her thoughts, Nan smiled and nodded, giving the girl time to process.

“Your power,” Cordelia said.

Her eyes fixated on the orb as if it were a star held in Emily’s arm. “I’ve never seen—”

“I tried to give it to you last time,” Nan said, leaning in to whisper, “but you weren’t ready for it yet.”

“Ready?”

She looked to Cordelia, but the woman held no answers for her. When Emily turned back to Nan, the girl was gone, carried away by the breeze.

Cordelia looked to Emily only to stumble back and fall to the grass. Swallowed whole by verdant green. There was no pain. No sense of impact. Even if there were, she would not have noticed. All she could do was stare.

Emily’s green eyes had become a solid, glowing white that matched the glow of the orb in her hand. The girl looked ethereal — skin as clear as marble, hair swaying as if it were in water instead of air. When Emily knitted her brows and cocked her head in confusion, she didn’t look human at all. She looked… more.

Her gaze quickly returned to the orb, curling around it like a content cat. The smile on her face was that of relief, of a mother holding a newborn babe. Her hand gently brushed over the orb, trying to convince herself it was real.

“I’m afraid it will disappear as soon as I awake,” Emily said, a faint laugh leaving her as she said the words and looked back to Cordelia. “No matter how hard I try to pull it into the physical realm.”

Even her speech sounded different. Cordelia, at that moment, realized why Emily was so different than her other girls. With a power rooted in the limbo world — the world of visions, dreams, and hellish realms — Emily belonged more there than she did in the physical plane. The strain, the spark not quite a flame, was not her power trapped in this plane, but her body trapped in theirs.

Emily watched Cordelia, a flicker of anxiety and fear breaking past the overwhelming joy, “What must I do?”

The Supreme sputtered. She and Myrtle had worked tirelessly to create this spell, to get them into this limbo, but the next steps were lost to her. The blissful smile left the girl’s lips, Cordelia’s doubt hanging in the air like suffocating humidity. Why? Why did she torment her like this — with intangible possibilities and crushing hope?

The brunette’s voice caught in her throat. The sound startled the Supreme. “Please.”

For a moment, it seemed golden tears would pour from eyes of pure light. “I have missed it so much.”

One moment Cordelia was sprawled in the grass. The next she was standing. She had not moved to stand. It just, quite simply, was a fact. Something in her hand threw her off balance, hard and cool — A dagger, sharp enough to cut stone and polished so well she could see the conflict dancing in her eyes. Those eyes looked to the weapon with furrowed brows. Then, they looked at the girl before her.

What was this power? If she looked in her own soul, would her eyes be consumed by the same light? She thought of the dream Emily had told her, the child witch nearly burned to cinders. Was this the force that saved her that day?

Would this be a force that could save them?

But why was Nan there? Was it even Nan or was it a spirit playing pretend? You could never trust anything in a dream.

Emily stood, enamored by the orb, wanting to commit it to memory before it was lost for good.

Cordelia spared one last glance to the shining beacon in her student’s arms. The knife felt heavy. That heaviness only grew as the moments passed. It was divine, that light. She didn’t want to move. She wanted to bask in its light till the world stopped spinning.

But she was the supreme.

She was a leader.

She had lives to protect.

She had no choice.

In the end, it took little force to strike. Weight was but a concept in this realm. Cordelia’s ears rung as blinding light burst forth, a bomb of magic. Its comforting warmth burned with the heat of a thousand suns.

She had no choice.

The good of the coven had to come before all else.

“Delia? Delia, are you alright?”

Cordelia was pulled from her dream by an urgent voice. A blur of red was all she could see of Myrtle, a blur that refused to go away. Her hands shook over her face as she tried to rub her sight back into existence. Was she blind again? What had she done? She couldn’t be blind. Not now. There was far too much work to do. Far too much—

The Supreme swayed ever slightly and steadying hands tightened around her arms.

“Get me a chair,” Myrtle ordered.

“I’m fine,” Cordelia insisted, “Did we get it right? Did we—”

“Calm yourself, Delia. Getting worked up won’t help anyone.”

Cordelia felt a stood hit the back of her leg. With shaking hands, she reached back and lowered herself upon it. She couldn’t do this again. The girls could not see her fading. The warlocks could not see her fading. Not now. Not like this.

“Emily?” Cordelia called out, “Emily?”

Misty came beside her Supreme, brows knit with worry and hands reaching out for hers, “Miss Cordelia—”

Words were torn from her mouth as a loud gasp filled the room followed by a gust of wind that those of the inner circle could not shield themselves from. Queenie ducked to the ground, Myrtle to the table, and Madison to Zoe. If not for Misty, Cordelia would have been thrown to the ground. They shielded their eyes from the dust and debris that had accumulated over decades and when the wind stopped all they could do was stare with open mouths.

The greenhouse had always been well-loved. It had been attended to over the years by many a witch, creating a chaotic accumulation of plants, dirt, and tools. Cordelia herself had spent many an hour inside those walls. However, with her role as Supreme, she had found herself there less and less. The plants that did continue to grow were stubborn and dry, the colorful petals of flowers muted and wilting.

Cordelia rubbed her eyes and the blur receded from her sight, details coming into focus. First her fingers, then the table, and finally beyond.

“Oh, my god,” Zoe said, hardly louder than a whisper. Cordelia’s vision continued to clear, but she did not need sight to know the look upon the young woman’s face.

Queenie looked to her friend, muttering out, “holy fucking shit.”

Every brown, dry, and twisted stem now grew a verdant green. The flowers were brighter than any they had ever seen. Vines curled and moved before their eyes, curling up the table and around Emily’s arms.

She was still panting, covered in a cold sweat as if she had woken from a nightmare, but she could feel the vines slowly creeping up her hand. She held it up before her, eyes wide as the vine continued to advance up her arm. Her body was buzzing. The vine seemed to be a part of her, yet entirely separate from her being, a phantom limb or a tail that moved in instinct. It reached towards her wrist and settled in the palm of her hand, blooming a single small wisteria flower.

“Behold,” Myrtle spoke, “our oracle has awoken.”

Emily’s green eyes danced around her. Her heart drummed in her ears and nearly burst from her chest.

“Did I — Did I do this?”

Misty left Cordelia’s side, content now that the perceived danger had passed. A smile came to her lips as she came to Emily’s side, a spring in her step. She regarded Emily’s wide-eyed awe with amusement.

“I’m going to teach you about Louisiana mud now.”

“O— ok.”

“I don’t think she needs Louisiana mud,” Queenie noted, pulling off a few plants that had rooted themselves around her leg.

Misty frowned, “A little mud never hurt nobody.”

“Say that to my neck,” Madison scoffed, “I still have to use a bottle of perfume to mask the smell of shit.”

“I think that’s just you,” Zoe said.

“Whatever.”

Queenie moved closer to Emily as the two began to bicker.

“Did you see Nan again?” she asked.

Emily regarded her expression, the grief in her eyes and the heavy weight which pressed upon her shoulders. She nodded.

“Did she say anything?”

The expression on the brunette’s face spoke louder than her words. “Nothing beyond the circumstances.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you done being a killjoy?” Madison snapped from across the table.

Queenie’s grief quickly melded to annoyance, “You done being a bitch?”

“You say that like a bad thing.”

“Because it is.”

“Whatever.”

Flicking some dust off her shirt, Madison sauntered to the door only to turn back at the last moment.

“Welcome to the coven, bitch.” She said, “You’re our new Sabrina.”

When Emily stepped out of the greenhouse, the sky was scattered with stars. Time was different in the other. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but her mind was still buzzing, her ears still ringing.

She was a witch.

She was powerful.

She was something.

“Someone looks happy,” Misty noted, linking their arms together. Emily wasn’t even put off by the contact. All she could do was beam until her cheeks hurt. Words were intangible. Not a single one could describe the elation that beat in her chest with every step. If she could, she would soar.

“Careful there!”

Cordelia��s voice cut through the night, the songs of crickets and frogs stopping in their tracks. A hand latched on to the back of Emily’s shirt, pulling her back like a toddler on a leash. Her feet sink into the grass… or, should she say, back on the grass. The light from the house was enough for her to see Cordelia’s expression turn from that of surprise into one of amusement.

“Let’s save the levitation for later.”

“…my bad.”

The Supreme couldn’t quite place the look Emily gave her. It felt like she was looking past her… into her. She didn’t move, a deer caught in headlights. Her hand remained balled around a piece of Emily’s shirt until another voice broke the silence.

“Don’t worry, Miss Cordelia,” Misty assured, tightening her hold on the girl as the Supreme fell back into pace with her red-haired mentor, “I won’t let her float away.”

Queenie bumped Emily’s shoulder. “What else you got? Besides that, Airbender, Earthbender shit.”

“I… have no idea,” Emily said, “What else is there?”

Cordelia’s voice rang out behind them once more.

“Perhaps we should leave the experimentation for later.”

“You’re the one who keeps telling us to push ourselves.” Queenie reminded, reaching into her pockets and presenting a coin. “Here. Take it.”

Emily did as she was told, plucking the coin from her hand.

“Not like that, idiot. With your mind.”

“Oh.”

Holding the coin in her palm, Emily focused on her hand. Her fingers curled around the coin as if she were holding an apple instead. A picture of the coin pushed into her mind, she imagined plucking it up with her fingers, turning it in her hand.

The coin rose, fell, then rose again. Twisting her hand, it began to travel towards the girl before dropping in her empty palm. Emily shook her hand free of the buzzing, cracking her fingers for good measure.

“Smart-ass,” Queenie muttered.

“But you said—”

“I’m teasing, girl. Relax.”

“At least now you can actually participate during lessons,” Zoe noted, stepping aside to let Emily up the back steps of the mansion.

The brunette frowned, reaching for the handle of the back door, “I participate.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Look—”

One moment she was opening the door and the next she was in the hall. The breath left her lungs as she fell face-first onto the hardwood floors.

Zoe’s voice came from down the hall, “Emily?!”

“I’m fine,” the girl groaned, rolling over and laying on her back. When she looked up, the inner circle was coming around the corner. Queenie and Misty were snickering at the sight. She frowned.

“Oh. shut up.”

“At least you weren’t impaled,” Zoe offered, moving to help the girl to her feet.

“At least I wasn’t what now?”

“Don’t worry. Misty would make you good as new. You’ll smell like shit for a while, though — Louisiana Mud and all that.”

“Okay. Wait. Hold on.” Emily said, pushing up her glasses just so her hands had something to do, “Let’s go back for a second. You were way too calm about that. How often does this shit happen?”

“What was it?” Queenie asked, looking to Misty as she counted on her hand, “Madison died twice, Zoe died and came back, you died and came back and died again. Plus Nan, then me. So… seven times?”

“Don’t forget Myrtle.”

“Oh shit, you’re right. That’s two more deaths — so nine?”

“She died twice?”

“You were dead the second time,” Zoe interjected. Misty simply nodded in acknowledgment. “And don’t forget Fiona.”

“Fiona doesn’t count. She was a bitch.”

“So is Madison.”

Madison, who had been regarding the interaction quietly, frowned. “Hey!”

“Fair point. So that’s a total of ten.”

Emily looked to the three women with an expression of concern — like watching the village idiot run into a wall over and over and over.

“Only one impalement, though,” Misty reassured.

Emily sighed, “This place really needs to come with a liability warning.”

Zoe shrugged, “Just don’t use it to play tag and you should be good.”

“Well damn, that ruins all my plans for tomorrow.”

Zoe smiled and shook her head, “I think all that power is going to your head.”

“… maybe a little.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“One question: How do I stop the spontaneous…” Emily said, gesturing about her, “y’know?”

“Only by training and hard work, my dear” Myrtle spoke. “Which is why my dear Cordelia made you this.”

From her hands, a necklace hung. It wasn’t fancy or ornate. A simple thing, really. It looked like something you might find in a thrift store. At the end of the leather chain was a gold coin with a singular line carved in the center.

“It’s —”

Emily interrupted before she could finish, “The Isa rune.”

Myrtle smiled and nodded. Good. The girl was prepared. She would need that knowledge in the coming conflict.

“Simple, but effective,” The red-head said, “It should help you channel your power properly until you can do so yourself.”

The brunette looked at the amulet for a moment, turning it this way and that. Had runes always felt so… alive? The closest way she could describe magic was the buzzing of bees in your body mixed with a magnetic pull. Her eyes flickered between Myrtle and the coin.

“Thank you,” She finally spoke, moving to place the object around her neck. It weighed more than she thought it would and rested right under her heart.

“Think of it as insurance,” Myrtle said, “we’ve got enough destruction with our younger girls.”

“At least now I can keep up with them.”

“Or join them,” Madison said, pushing herself around the small crowd they had formed in the center of the hall, “now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more important things to do… like sleep.”

Emily listened to the sound of footsteps on the stairs behind her. Then, she turned.

“Madison.”

The woman sighed and turned around, “What?”

“Thank you.”

The former starlet was silent for a moment, then turned around and kept walking. “… Whatever.”

Emily smiled ever slightly and turned to the other girls. “You guys, too.”

“You know what they say:” Myrtle said with a knowing smile, “blood of the coven is thicker than the water of the womb.”

Her words echoed in Emily’s mind as she prepared for bed; rosewater for her face, rosemary for her hair. Before, they were household remedies. Rose was an anti-inflammatory that helped with redness. Rosemary promoted hair growth. There was something more to them now — her skin glowed and freckles danced across her face like stars, her hair was soft under her fingers and shone in the bathroom light.

Misty was already snoring when she made it back to her room, curled up on a thin mattress set up beside Emily’s bed. The brunette tip-toed across the floor, avoiding the creaky floorboard she had come to know by heart.

Heavy eyes pulled her towards the realm of dreams. The bed was warm, the sheets just heavy enough to sink her into the bed. Her thoughts began to slip into white noise, echoes of words that could not be recalled.

“Finis venit, ante initium.” A voice whispered, just as she was about to doze off. She hummed in annoyance, turning over on her side.

A cry made her blood turn to ice. She shot up in her bed, looking around for the source. She had nieces and nephews. She knew the sound of a baby’s cry. Footsteps paced the floor above and the cry continued — the attic.

“Misty,” She hissed, “Misty!”

Silence consumed the room, only broken by the baby’s cries. Emily climbed across her bed and reached to shake the woman awake.

“Misty! Do you hear that?”

The woman groaned and swatted at the hand that shook her. Her words came out low and slurred. “’Is jus’ a bird. Go t’ sleep.”

Emily looked to Misty, then back at the ceiling. Footsteps came from above once more. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the crying stopped. She regarded the ceiling with narrowed eyes, then slowly lowered herself back in the bed. Someone must have taken care of it. One of the younger girls probably had a nightmare.

With a sigh, she turned on her side, willing sleep to return to her. Her hair continued to stand on edge and an intense need to move plagued her limbs. With the grace of a mouse, she scampered over to the door, locked it, and threw herself into the covers once more.

The moon cast the room in a pale glow. Emily had lucked out, the room facing the back of the house where she was free from the obnoxious yellow lights from the street lamps. She looked at the plant on her bedside, wilted flowers now proudly blooming. She reached out a hand, picturing water crawling up the stem. Yellow petals turned blue, the color sweeping across them like an ink stain. Even when she pulled back, the color proudly stood. One minute, two minutes, three — the color remained.

Emily stared at it with pride. Something had awoken inside her, something she had yearned for since the moment she was born.

Power.

She finally had power.

#michael langdon #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x you #michael langdon x oc #michael langdon imagine

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wexhappyxfew · 3 years

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i’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time now and the time hit me later this evening and bam! this is for @mercurygray ‘s challenge she had set for valentine’s day and the time never really came for me during that portion of the month and so i decided to do it a bit later on and yay the time finally arrived lol! so, this is my take on a new oc + a blind date idea with my favorite boy! :) enjoy!!

introducing minnie thomas of whitley, england!

The Primrose by the Riverbed

London, England - December, 1943

London had always been her dream as a child.

To walk the cobblestone streets, sit on the wooden benches of the parks, feed the birds that flew through the sky, and visit the pubs late into the night.

Yet dreams were always fleeting in her time.

Living in the town of Whitley, she spent her days in the fields by the South Brook, picking flowers from the ground and running up the mud covered banks, while racing through fields of soft, sun-kissed grass; her youth had been bred for her there.

But with the food shortages and the high unemployment rates, dinner some nights had been nothing more than bread that had to be portioned out throughout the week for a family of 6, and a stick of weekly butter that had to spare the family for just long enough.

Of course, they had the two cows in the wooden farm on the plot of land her father had in his family for generations, and they provided just a meager amount of milk for breakfast in the morning. The chickens didn't produce enough eggs anymore, but Minnie almost always forgave the little things, they were old girls anyway - she didn't blame them. When the war had come, the war effort picked up, stock increased, the factories were moving ahead in production well enough, and suddenly there was an air of a willingness to fight, to continue to grow as a nation and unite, and finally come together as one.

That's when Harvey and Chester had been drafted for the war and communication had dwindled to letters that drew even more rare as the modern slew of war took its affect.

Little Vivian had watched them go off, and her optimism had stayed for a few days before disappearing when she realized her brothers might never come home.

And so Minnie did what she could for her younger sister along with her parents - working odd jobs throughout the day, traveling to surrounding towns at night to work jobs at the local pubs, just to bring in a spare bit of money to place in the jar on the wooden counter by the kitchen sink window.

London became a reality once she had taken a chance at singing in Swindon in early 1941 on a cold evening in March.

The Old Thameside Inn had been her residence for that evening in December, sitting at the bar, drumming her fingers against the glass of water in front of her, listening to the gentle thrum of one of the singers, sing the sad, soulful tune, which squeezed just a bit tighter at her heart than normal.

The chatter amongst the crowd in the pub danced through the ear drums and the sweet scent of perfumes and flowers that dusted the tables settled about the place.

The jingle of the bell that rung at the entrance where little off-white lights were currently lit, dinged a little tune and Minnie glanced over her shoulder the slightest bit to find a group of American men sauntering in.

They seemed to swagger, moving from side to side, their voices breaking through the low chatter of the London townsfolk. Minnie curiously tilted her head to the side and watched them, if what she could suggest was, playfully smack the other with a brother-like affection, before sharing the cigarette rolled in between their finger tips.

Minnie turned around again, snuggling a bit into her pale green dress, the Mary-Janes strapped to her feet with the little white-lace socks, hanging just above the ground. It was quiet again.

" Hey there." a voice said from her left and Minnie felt her cheeks warm the slightest bit as she, quite innocently, glanced to her left, peaking a brow upwards towards whoever was now seated beside her.

They were American and their accent, though not terribly thick, she could tell they were American. His hair was quite gelled, hanging in his eyes a little bit, but they were bright, the soft brown glowing in the irises, and a boyish smile drawn on his lips. His uniform was a little disheveled but if anything, it made the dimple in her cheek appear from the nervous smile that had appeared on her lips.

" Hello." she said quietly, nervously tapping the side of the glass of water in front of her. Minnie watched the man smile at the sound of her voice and sat upright quite proudly beside her. 

" All alone?" Minnie watched him - quite the greeting, she suspected it were an American thing - and as if in a joking tone, mimicked him in sitting upright beside him. She watched him smirk.

" Maybe." she said, attempting to elegantly shrug her shoulders, smiling again beside him as she looked upwards towards him. The man beside her let out a chuckle, which made her stomach flip a bit inside, like a rupture of butterflies had been let go.

" Any suggestions then?" the man asked her," For a good drink?" Minnie let out a small laugh, feeling a soft glow of pink dust upon her cheeks as she met his gaze.

" Well...I've heard they have fantastic fresh-brewed beer." she said, nodding up towards him with a wide smile," Some of the best in all of London." The soldier smiled a gentle smile.

" You seem to know the place well then." he said and she smiled, before shyly looking towards him.

" Minnie Thomas." she said, holding her hand out towards him. The man smirked gently before bringing his hand forward to shake her own. 

" Joe Liebgott," he said, before leaning forward a bit, “ Joseph - if we wanna get fancy." Minnie laughed at his teasing tone as they retracted hands and returned to occupying their individual pub seats.

" It's nice to meet you then, Joseph Liebgott." she said and Joe chuckled as he glanced at her.

" The pleasure's mine, Minnie Thomas." he said and Minnie grinned, before clearing her throat. 

" What brings you to London?" she asked quietly, tapping her fingers against the edge of her glass of water," Besides the war." Joe smiled.

" A few of my buddies and I wanted some time out here before training really picked up here. Don over there thought this was the place to be. Saw it in a paper." Joe explained and Minnie couldn't help but feel a smile grow on her face at the thought of the little Inn where her first gig had been, finally growing.

" Then I welcome you to London." Minnie said, sitting up straight again, a little mimic of the man," Just outside you have the Thames River, London Bridge just beyond that and King's College just a bit deeper inward, shops along the side, parks residing on many corners and newspaper shops just nearby. And a few secret pubs that I could possibly gain you access to if you are so inclined." She smiled wide towards him as she sipped her water, watching a chuckle arise again.

" You grew up here then?" Minnie felt her shoulders drop a bit as she clasped her hands together in front of her.

" It was always my dream." she said, smiling softly towards him as a round of cheers for the singer on the stage finished their song. Joe glanced over her shoulder, but then softly found her eyes again.

" You didn't...?" Minnie giggled, shaking her head.

" I'm afraid not." she said as Joe laughed.

" Man, who would've thought, you know the place so well." he said and Minnie laughed lightly.

" Whitley was my home and I feel it always will be." she said, smiling at the thought of the little home by the South Brook with the wildflowers and the rocks and the mudbanks. She smiled wider again and looked towards him.

" It was beautiful. Just a cottage, by a brook, 2 cows, a few chickens. It was....peaceful. Somedays, especially today I just wish I could just go back, forget the war, forget it all." Minnie said, and Joe grinned. 

" Peace sounds nice." he said and Minnie giggled at his slightly nervous laughter that emitted in his words," Maybe that's a dream that'll come true too." Minnie glanced at him softly, watching him in the soft light of the pub, his dark eyes watching her form, such a gentle aura radiating from his being as he said there watching her.

" For both of us." she said quietly and Joe watched her, leaned up against the pub table quietly, with his gaze resting on hers.

“ I hope you get that some day, Joe.” she said quietly to him, gently reaching her hands forward to take one of his warm hands in her own, his soft skin, paired with his calloused palms clasped in her own as he softly glanced up towards her, feeling as she cradled his hand so carefully within her own.

Joe watched her softly, this young woman who could’ve been no older than 20, stand there as if she were some sort of primrose by the river, an ethereal being or even a gentle doe in the mist of an early morn where the sun rays were nearly blinding but to the point where it was a soft comfort in those hours.

Joe took her hands this time within his own and held them, watching them softly, feeling the want to just hold them and never let go. Yet, in this sleepy pub by the London Bridge and the Thames river, it was almost as if on a whim the two knew they’d never cross paths again. Maybe in another life where young love rekindled the tiny spark that was made this cold December eve, maybe a time where war and an ocean didn’t separate the two souls alike, and there wasn’t an enemy in their path.

Maybe.

Brushing his lips against the tender skin of her sweet-smelling hands, like a hint of rosemary almost, he pressed a soft kiss there. As if a hope that she’d find the peace she had always wanted and that he would someday do the same. Maybe not tonight but in the future that called their name.

Minnie watched Joe as he softly pulled back and held her hands in his own for a fleeting moment after.

Just a boy and a girl, sat in the dimly lit pub that smelled of winter air and the sad, soulful song of the singer on stage, warped by war and an ocean apart, yet held together by that string of hope for a possible sprinkle of peace in both their futures.

Just maybe.

#merc’s oc challenge!#minnie thomas #joe liebgott #the primrose by the riverbed #oc challenge #this was super fun and cute #i really liked how this turned out!!! :)#band of brothers #bob fic

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 3 years

Text

From Chin To Yon Rah (Chapter 35)

It was late winter, almost spring when she began to suspect and early spring when she knew for sure. The first flowers were beginning to peek through the snow and dot the meadow and the sky had been constantly threatening rain when the nausea began. And then came the fatigue and the cramps without blood. She thinks that she should have known for sure when spices became less tolerable and tears began to come easier.

She thinks that she may have been in some state of denial then. Truth be told, she was scared. She is still scared despite Hajime’s reassurances. She is a small woman and pregnancy isn’t easy on women with bigger builds. Moreover, the thought of sharing her body with another for nine months…

Truthfully she denied it until she couldn’t. She liked to pass nausea and food aversions off as allergies and aches and pains as the product of hard work with Ojihara. And emotional days were just her mind relapsing. With each excuse and brush off, Hajime would roll his eyes, “how many coincidences are going to happen before they aren’t coincidences?”

Apparently two more months worth. By early spring, her belly had swollen enough for her to know with certainty that she was going to bring a child into the world. Even then, she was still much redier to admit that she had put on several pounds before accepting that she was pregnant. That would have been less daunting. She could control that. But the baby quicked with the world around her. A life blossoming with the springtime daisies. She just hopes that it will treat the baby more kindly than it has treated her. Granted, the bar is low.

She sits in the grass and stares at her hands, a warm breeze caresses her cheeks and carries sweet fragrances to her nose. Sometimes, the smell of resin can be overwhelming these days.

She hears the padding of his feet before she sees Hajime drop down next to her. “Lemon tea?” He offers her a cup. “It’s fresh.”

She takes it in her hands. “Thank you.”

“How are you feeling?”

She holds her hand over the bump and stares off, she isn’t sure how to answer him. “Apprehensive.” She settles on. Though there is a very healthy tickle of hope and optimism. A strange sense of warmth.

“You’ll do great.” He hooks his hand around her torso. “You’re an amazing mother to Atsu.”

She nods, though that isn’t exactly what worries her. Sometimes it does, despite working well with Atsu. But mostly she is worried about the changes. The changes in her mood and body. She wasn’t ready for the ones that have happened already and she certainly isn’t ready for the larger ones to come. She doesn’t like sharing her body. She isn’t entirely pleased with how pregnancy looks on her either.

Hajime tucks her bangs behind her ears and kisses her cheeks. “Your hair is growing really fast now.” He remarks.

She hums to herself. She supposes that, that is one perk. She inspects her nails--another perk--they are longer as well. She takes a sip from her cup and leans back into Hajime. They watch the clouds until she drifts off.

The thoughts that follow her into her nap are rather kind. Decidedly, she will just have to get used to changes. She knows that Hajime will shower her with compliments regardless of whatever changes will happen to her. It is quite nice to have that sort of reassurance.

That day she learns that imperfections have a charm of their own.

.oOo.

Azula recognizes the man as soon as he enters the door. His stocky frame takes up much of the doorway and his ample eyebrows are pinched with dissatisfaction. His eyes meet hers and long enough for recognition of his own to set in.

“I’ve made something of myself.” She bites out before she can stop herself. Sokka massages her shoulders, it is perhaps the only thing that keeps Ji-Zhang from a vicious berating. To have manhandled and insulted her like that…

The man clears his throat. “Apologies, princess. I hadn’t recognized you. You were…”

She folds her arms. “I don’t have time for groveling, Ji-Zhang. What did you intrude for?”

He clears his throat a second time, “Quinn and I have questioned the slave trader, as per your request.”

“And?”

“He gave us some names and locations after some...ahem...pushing.” He waits for a verbal cue to continue and when she gives him none he cautiously and nervously continues, “the man’s name is Jitsung. He is a rogue soldier in the Earth Kingdom with a fondness for pillaging and trading his finds--both human and object--for Fire Nation wealth.”

The statement puts an ominous tickle in her belly, a deplorable sense of unease. “And where is he now?”

“He has been hiding out in Yon Rah but has moved to the outskirts of the capital.”

“You, Quinn, and a small team will accompany me to pay a visit to this Jitsung.”

“Of course, princess.” He dips his head.

“Dismissed.”

Ji-Zhang lingers in the doorway.

“Dismissed.” She repeats herself.

“I just thought that...we have captured a dangerous outlaw…”

“Are you expecting a pat on the back for doing the bare minimum of your job?” She quirks a brow. “Dismissed.”

The man swallows and retreats. She thinks that he is aware that he has pushed his luck too far. Granted, she isn’t sure that she would have actually done anything to the man anyhow. She doesn’t think that there is a point, really.

“That was kind of cold, Azula.” Sokka rubs the back of his head.

“You weren’t there, Sokka. You don’t know what he did to me…” but it was less about action and plenty more about words, “how he made me feel.”

“How did he make you feel.”

Insignificant. Useless. Foolish. Just the way father always had. She shrugs, “nothing particularly pleasant, Sokka.”

“You can talk about these things, you know that, right?”

“I am aware. But I don’t need to talk about it. It doesn’t bother me anyhow.”

Sokka quirks a brow, “if it doesn’t bother you anymore then…”

“I needed to remind Ji-Zhang of who he is talking to. Just so he doesn’t forget that disrespect won’t be tolerated.” She folds her arms across her chest.

And Sokka laughs, “if you say so.”

.oOo.

As it turns out, she doesn’t have to embark on a small journey away from the palace after all. Ji-Zhang and Quinn have taken it upon themselves to bring Jitsung to her. She supposes that this might earn the both of them the pat on the back that Ji-Zhang had been seeking.

“I’d like to speak alone with the man.”

“Alone? Princess…” Quinn protests.

She lifts a hand, “I’m not delicate, Quinn. Given that I’m well slept, fed, and hydrated, I can handle my own.”

“Of course, princess. We just don’t want anything to happen to…”

She cuts Ji-Zhang off too, “many things have already happened to me and you personally let several of them happen. What’s one more?”

Sokka gives her a little nudge. “C’mon Azula, I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“You knew who you were getting with. If you can’t handle this part of me…”

This time it is she who is interrupted. “That’s not what I meant. I know that you have this...this side but it usually only comes out when you’re upset.” He pauses to study her face and she swallows. “I don’t like seeing you upset, I like seeing you happy.”

She sighs, “I’m fine, Sokka. I’m just going to talk to the man.”

And she truly did plan on simply talking to him. If only she hadn’t seen his face. It is a face she has seen persistently in her nightmares. A face that appears in all of her darkest, cruelest fantasies.

And there is only fear, fear and a potent awareness when she looks him in his eyes--one vivid green and the other blind.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #Azula #Sokka #Sokkla #Fanfiction

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masterofmagnetism · 3 years

Text

a prayer like a war cry

WHO: Erik Lehnsherr, Scott Summers @firstxman, Jean Grey-Summers @jeaniegreysummers, Maddie Pryor @rxdqueens, and Lorna Dane @mistressxfmagnetism WHERE: Genosha. Erik’s house and the missile silo. WHEN: 14 days after training with Jean and Lorna went sideways. WHAT: Erik has a plan. The kids aren’t on board, this time. WARNINGS: Literally so many TWs. Major character death, abuse, alcoholism, addiction, plane crash mention, lots and lots of mentions of murder, fire, suicidal ideation, assorted mental health issues, grief, ptsd, manipulation, probably more that I can’t think to tag rn. Proceed! With! Caution! WORDS: 12k

ERIK: Lorna's pulse thumped steadily beneath his fingertips, her chest rising and falling shallowly on the bed. The wound to her chest was well-bound; the bandages that had been wrapped around her head for a few days had been removed since then. Erik had been careful to delicately clean the stitches on the back of her head every night since they were removed.

She never made a sound. She hadn't woken up since Ric carried her back from New York, no matter how much Erik talked to her. No matter how much he begged, or apologized.

He hadn't cried since the night he brought her back to his home from the hospital, since he managed to finagle the nurses into agreeing to come tend her here rather than in a hospital bed. The sterility of the hospital room made him queasy every time he visited; he'd never liked them, and Lorna hadn't either. She'd be happier waking up at home.

If she woke up.

The doctors had told him that she should. Not would, because there were some promises that just couldn't be made, but they'd sounded optimistic. Told him that she'd been through a lot. She needed time. Her body needed time. It made sense, he knew it made sense, but that didn't shake the tightness in his own chest, the fear that sat in his throat that another child was going to slip through his fingers and end up six feet under.

He had cried, after the nurses left for the night, after he'd gone through the checklist they gave him, and he had fallen asleep sitting against the side of the bed, fingers twisted in hers. And he'd fallen asleep praying. He didn't do that much, anymore, had learned along with the rest of his contemporaries during the War that g-d could not be relied on to intercede. The rabbis had tried to rationalize it afterwards, of course. In Israel, across Europe. They had come up with myriad reasons why His 'Chosen People' were left to be exterminated in the most horrific ways possible, tried to salvage their faith.

Erik had never found any of the excuses satisfactory, but that was the thing about faith, wasn’t it? Blind trust. Optimism. Hope. And he’d held onto it, or at least something like it, even as he decided that he would not wait for His hand to do anything for him that his own two hands could not, one way or another.

Lorna had been in His hands, and she was alive. Not awake, but alive, and that was something. That was more than he’d gotten for her sister. Lorna hadn’t died, and that meant something.

Her waking up would mean something, too, if Erik had anything to say about it. The idea of retaliation had been on his mind since she’d come back cold and almost dead, as Ric could attest to, but his thinking had evolved that first night. He had the means, nestled in their quickly-built silos on the coast. It’d be something swift, something clean, something that wouldn’t require anyone else to get their hands dirty as the siege had, something that wouldn’t run the risk of another Raven. It would, quite literally, be as easy as a push of the button. As easy as sitting on the coast watching the sun set behind New York, and clearing the buildings and people out of the way for the sun to shine unimpeded on Genosha.

He’d had a week to do it, and yet something had sat uneasy in his chest, something that screamed that it was as wrong as the way Lorna’s heart had stutter-stopped across the bay. There was another voice that was louder than that, too. ‘They deserve it. You’ve always known they do. Always known this would end only one way. You’ve tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, time and time and time again, and what do you have to show for it? Loss after loss after loss. Betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. The kids will understand, when it’s all over. Just like they did with the siege.’

That niggling feeling in the back of his mind had stilled his action, until now. Instead, for the first time in a long time, Erik had decided to put his next move in His hands, too.

If she wakes up, I won’t do it. If she wakes up, I will let this pass. Just let her wake up. Let her wake up.

He’d given it seven days, and Lorna’s eyes still hadn’t opened.

That was his answer, then. Erik closed his eyes, leaned forward in his chair to press Lorna’s knuckles against his forehead, letting out a slow breath through his nose and squeezing her hand.

Once more, he asked. And once more, she didn’t stir. Something steady and quiet and assured settled across his shoulders, and Erik pressed his lips to the back of Lorna’s hand before he pushed up to his feet. He set her arm gently on the bed, and brushed back a loose strand of her hair, fingers running along her cheek for just a moment.

She would wake when this was finished. He was sure of it.

Erik picked his helmet up from next to him and settled it over his head before stepping out of the room, closing the door silently behind him.

The walk to the silo building passed in the blink of an eye, and by the time Erik snapped back to himself, his hands were trailing along the shells of the missiles. He could feel the energy contained inside, a heady sensation up so close. His fingers were halfway to the first manual switch when he heard the door open behind him, and three sets of footsteps in the wake of the click. Erik’s lips thinned, and he turned, eyes almost fever-bright. “She hasn’t woken up.”

SCOTT: Erik was planning something.

Only a few months ago, the concept had been one that sparked hope in Scott’s chest, bright and hot and unfamiliar. Erik had had a plan then, and Scott had been on board. He’d been excited, he’d been ready. They had stormed the U.N., they had done what they needed to do. They had taken Erik’s plan and they had made a home of it. They had turned it into safety, into security, and for the first time in his life, Scott had been blessed with a warmth that didn’t slip through his fingers. Only a few months ago, Erik had been planning something and Scott had been behind him without hesitation.

But things were different now.

Rictor had been uncharacteristically quiet, the few times Scott had seen him around the island. He looked angrier than usual, which was saying something for Ric. He looked tense, looked over his shoulder at every turn like he was worried he might find someone he didn’t want to see standing there, and Scott knew who he was searching for. He knew that Rictor looked very much like he had looked at fourteen, with Jack looming over his shoulder and bruises hidden beneath his sweatshirt. Erik, Scott feared, had become exactly the sort of man he’d dedicated his life to fighting against. He’d become Jack Winters, become Nathaniel Essex, become Sebastian Shaw. He’d become the monster under the bed, the thing their people feared.

And Scott couldn’t let it go on any longer.

Erik would be glad for it, if he were himself. Scott knew that. Jean could attest to as much in the way she’d asked Zatanna to kill her back when she knew she’d gone too far, in the way she’d begged her family to stop her before she became the thing she desperately wanted not to be. When the people you loved turned to their own demons, when they became the vengeful spirit making the walls of their own homes drip blood, exorcism was a kindness. It was a necessity.

The Hendersons lived near the silos, and when Scott had asked them to let him know if Erik passed by their apartment, they hadn’t questioned the request. They trusted him. They asked if he was worried about Erik, looked concerned with the question. ’He’s so torn up over poor Lorna,’ Michelle had sighed, glancing mournfully out the window as if she could see Erik from there. Maybe she could --- he wasn’t sure about the limits on her ability to peer through solid surfaces. ’Hasn’t left the hospital much, from what I hear. If he’s out this way, I’ll let you know. We should all keep an eye on him together. A show of support.’ Scott had tasted bile in his throat when he’d nodded, had felt like a villain when he’d smiled. A show of support. It made his stomach clench.

He wished he were more surprised when, seven days after he’d stopped Erik from murdering Rictor in a hospital lobby, Michelle Henderson texted him with a grainy photo of Erik passing by her window with his hands in his pockets. ’He looks sad,’ was the accompanying message, and Scott tried to look hard enough to see the expression on Erik’s face in the photo, tried to determine if the set of his shoulders was grief or anger or determination or some combination of the three. Maddie and Jean were both in the kitchen when he exited the bedroom, twin expressions of grim determination on their faces. They knew what needed to be done here. They knew.

The trek to the silos was a silent one. Even their minds were quiet, like they were all terrified of thinking the thought, all nervous to be the one to put words to the act they were about to commit. None of them wanted to do it, Scott knew. None of them wanted to be here. But Erik was planning something, and the thought wasn’t supposed to fill them all with dread. It wasn’t supposed to make their blood run cold.

Erik didn’t seem surprised when they entered the silo building. It was almost like he’d been expecting them. The helmet on his head made the thought a much scarier one, the idea that he was actively hiding things from them instead of doing it passively enough to make Scott freeze in the doorway. Erik spoke, and he sounded like Winters, like Sinister. He sounded like a madman. Scott closed his eyes behind his visor, chest tight.

“She will,” he said, voice bouncing off the walls around them, echoing to fill the empty space. “Don’t you want to be there when she does? Go home, Erik. Don’t do this tonight.” Don’t do this at all. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t let Erik know that they weren’t on the same page anymore, that they hadn’t been for a while now. He told himself there was pleading left to be done. He told himself there was hope of saving this, of saving Erik. He told himself that, if Erik left this building without doing what he’d come here to do, it might mean there was hope.

He’d gotten good at lying to himself, over the years.

JEAN: When you loved someone, you ignored their worst parts. You adored them in spite of the characteristics and opinions you would hate in a stranger, that would drive you to war with an enemy. Jean ignored Scott’s tendency towards violence (the hypocrisy of that uncomfortable stone in her stomach wasn’t lost on her, either. She was capable of ripping the world apart just as often). She ignored the fact that Maddie was fashioned from fibres of the Phoenix, delivered to her doorstep as a manifestation of best intentions. She ignored how Erik walked out that door, leaving her with tear tracks running down her face and worlds they’d created crashing around her, ignored the years they’d been on opposite sides of battles.

(It went both ways, Jean knew. Kara ignored her tendency to run from problems, to box them firmly in specified areas of her brain to think about sometime close to never. Scott ignored the fact that Jean was, as she was slowly coming to admit, absolutely fucking insane. The X-Men ignored Jean burning to ashes on the front lawn of the home that was supposed to represent safety and comfort, ignored that she brought a vicious, angry entity into their lives through nothing but ignorance and naivety and a desperate clutch towards being unafraid.)

She had to make it convincing. Erik would see through her in an instant. He’d tracked her expressions since she was little more than ten years old. He knew her inside and out, knew her better than most, knew her angry and vengeful as much as he did happy and, on rare occasions, calm. He knew her -- and that meant it had to be believable. She had to be warm, had to be compassionate, had to be Jean Grey.

And that meant ignoring it. It meant remembering why she’d adored him so thoroughly. It meant putting this cold rage into a box, and bringing the flickering fire back into front and centre.

It meant flicking through photo albums, seeing the letters he wrote her as a child, reading through books they’d enjoyed. It meant practising what he’d told her, exploring her powers and feeling proud to be a mutant for the first time, not feeling as if she was passing for anything other than what she was, totally in tune with the world around her. It meant looking at Lorna, feeling that desperate pull in her chest, and remembering that this girl who she loved so completely was half of him, so at least fifty percent must be worth taking another breath.

It meant telling herself she wasn’t the monster she was becoming, that she would shed a tear when he was dead. In the back of her mind, Jean simply resented the fact that she wasn’t the one to deliver the final blow -- but she had to make it believable. She had to be his friend, his daughter. She had to be another half of him out there in the world.

Did Maddie know what they were going into? Did she know why they moved under the cover of darkness, why Jean asked her to mask their movements from the other citizens and even those they considered family? Had Scott told her -- had they talked in the kitchen when Jean was pretending to sleep, staring at the ceiling and counting how many days until she killed another piece of her own soul? Did she know, or was she following them out of love, because when you adored someone you ignored their murderous inclinations?

(It was almost funny. It was almost ironic. The Phoenix was flickering, and if she wanted this to stop, she would’ve told Erik. She might’ve already. She might have been manipulating them all, just waiting for them to get together and laugh at the cataclysmic explosion that was sure to follow. The Phoenix was life itself -- she knew what was about to happen, and she let it happen anyway. The true manifestation of evil, Jean thought to herself. All those things you ignored because you loved me, the Phoenix provided. Jean pretended it was her own mind.)

She’d been quiet with him. Nothing explosive like usual -- no arguments that led to raised voices and smashed plates. He would know she had shifted, know she had changed, but there were other things she could blame it on, other griefs. Her family were dead. He was the closest to a father she had left. She was simply protecting her own heart, or scared that she would lose someone else close -- it was a matter of preserving his life, worried for what the Shi’ar would do when they saw what he meant to her.

Any number of arguments came to mind, but Jean didn’t go for any of them. Her hand slipped out of Maddie’s (she’d held it on the way without realising, without noticing the pulling need to share her energy in that moment). Instead she stepped forward, Scott’s words still ringing in the silence between them, and reached her hand for Erik’s.

“Talk to me,” she said, voice thin (she was desperately holding it in. She wanted to scream how could you? She wanted to crack the Earth beneath him. She wanted to say Lorna was hurt because of him -- but they were both guilty of so much, the words got caught almost naturally in her throat). “We can talk with words, or we can talk in our minds. We can do anything you want, Erik, but don’t do it alone.” Her composure cracked, but it made it sound more like a plea than a threat. “Don’t block me out, please. I can’t lose someone else.”

MADDIE: There was a point when someone was faced with a decision, a scarily huge one, and were at a crossroads. Which path to take, the unknowns daunting over either option making it that much harder to make a choice. Then there were times where the decision was made for you, something so impactful it shoves you down the pathway before you can even try to think what pros and cons the other pathway brings you. Scott, Jean, and Maddie had been pushed down this path and were racing down it at a fast speed, slowing down enough to mask what impact was incoming for Erik. It had felt like since the incident at Jean’s family home they had been hurtling down a path that was set for them, dominoes falling and setting off a chain of events that fate had in mind for them, no matter how painful.

Initially, Maddie hadn’t even been aware of the plan. Her mind whirling over her own struggles with where exactly she fit into everything. There were no photos in Jean’s family home of her, it was like she was a ghost. Someone who passed through the unseen to walk among those who were tangible. It scared her, left her with entirely too many questions rather than answers. Naturally, she shoved these worries far away from the reach of Jean. Jean could find them if she dug, went searching, but Maddie knew she wouldn’t. Not unless she gave her a reason to, so she had to keep silent. Scott approaching her while Maddie took to having tea on a sleepless night was easy enough to focus on instead.

It was almost too easy to agree, to simply nod and ask when they were to move forward, to sit on standy for the inevitable. It had to be done, Maddie wondered what it said about her to be so willing to go along with a murderous plan without so much of a flinch.

(Did sinister feelings already exist in her and were simply waiting for the excuse to finally seep out like a poison to infect her? Was it really sinister if she was doing this and it was ultimately for the best? When did she start rationalizing the lack of feeling truly anything but understanding to a murder?)

The day came, the air changed in the kitchen upon Scott entering. A grim realization dawned that there was stepping out now, no backing down. The voice in the back of her mind was silent, too silent, she didn’t know if that was a good thing. It felt ominous in itself as Maddie cloaked their movements through the night, undetected to anyone and everyone, even those she wouldn’t normally. Those she loved, but Erik was among those, the ones she loved and despite the rationalizing of it all there was a quiet ache in her chest along the fire that normally simmered there. Her fingers curled around her sister’s, grounding her as much as she was sure it was doing for the other as well. There was no going back.

Maddie wasn’t sure if the cold seeping down to her bones was from the silo or the ice that was breaching the canyon between Erik and the three of them. Her tongue bled from how hard she bit it, keeping in far too many words that threatened to flow. Not now. (She wasn’t even sure if she had a right to say them. A new addition to the family, sliding in like she had always belonged, but entirely unsure if she belonged. After all, what did it say that everyone, Erik included, initially thought her to be Jean?) .

“We’re not going to leave you alone,” Maddie finally spoke, in space of the angry words that were a threat to bleed into her tone despite her masking it all. “She’ll wake up, because she will wake up, and will want you firstmost. This can wait.” Her tone was careful, even as she could manage.

Looking at Jean, Maddie’s frown was genuine. There was a flash of the way her sister crumbled as she saw her parents lying far too still before the house was set aflame by Derry. It had stayed with her and was sure it would for a very long time. The grief had been palpable, an ache that could be felt even after they had left the home. The only difference in this moment they were all grieving for the living, for the person before them.

ERIK: When you lived your whole life on a precipice, that looming drop became something familiar, something that settled in your blood, in your bones. Mind your step, always, and Erik did. He had survived where countless others hadn’t, instincts always on, always making sure his footsteps were sure, always ready to fight off anything that might knock him off balance.

Here, in a room with three of his four living children, Erik felt for the first time in a long time like the ground wasn’t quite steady under his feet.

It was hard to put a finger on what, exactly, the problem was—perhaps Scott’s pause in the doorway, perhaps the way Jean was suddenly in his arms after two weeks of avoidance, perhaps the way Maddie held her tongue and sounded calm in a way he’d rarely seen from her.

Individually, excusable.

Together? That creep of unease that had him put on the helmet before he left coiled itself around his spine, wound down to where Jean had taken his hands.

For all their fights, he’d never killed one of the X-Men. Not because he couldn’t; he had a mental file of the known powerset of whatever the current roster was, all the ways to get to them if need be. Not because of Charles, either—if the man saw fit to send children to fight him, well, he should be damned ready to face the consequences. Not because they were children; Erik had first taken a life (had taken three) when he was fourteen years old. No, Erik hadn’t held back on principle.

Erik had held back for Jean, who loved her team as much as she loved him.

Jean was in his arms, asking him to talk to her after two weeks of the silent treatment, taking his hands after avoiding his presence for just as long, and Erik knew something was wrong, even as badly as he wanted to believe it. Self-deception was an easy trap to fall into, for the ones you loved.

One he’d already fallen into. That was why he was here, after all. To fix what weakness had wrought him.

He couldn’t let them stop him. But maybe, maybe, he could make them understand what was so crystal clear in his mind, now.

(Charles had told him once that there was something clean to the way his mind handled plans. Setting them up involved a tangle of ideas, red strings on pinboards, but once they were finalized? It was something crisp, pure. A silver thread from problem to solution. This one had been there for a long time, behind locked doors. Had been there since that day Charles had found out Shaw’s plans from Emma and looked so horrified while Erik had quietly weighed its odds of success.)

“I know she’ll wake up,” Erik said, glancing between Scott and Maddie. “I know. But not now. Not until I do what I should’ve done a long time ago.” Alone, or with his family at his side, it would be done. “It’s been seven days. This is what needs to happen.”

And if they get in your way….

“You were right about Ric, Scott. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have taken my frustration out on him. He did what he knows how to do. He tried to help with her anger the same way I would have, and he saved her life by bringing her back here. Killing all those men. My anger should never have been leveled at him. No, it’s the people who pulled the trigger who are the problem. The humans.”

Erik’s fingers wrapped tightly around Jean’s hands, and his expression was determined but earnest. He could convince her. Needed to convince her. “It’s been long enough, hasn’t it? I’ve tried, again and again and again, to give them the benefit of the doubt. For your sake. And every time, we lose someone else. Anya, you, Scott, Raven. How many more of us need to die? Lorna is pulling through this time, but what about next time? If it’s Maddie? If it’s your daughter?” he said, gaze flicking from Jean’s gaze to Scott’s. “Because it will be Rachel, eventually. It’ll be all of us.”

That much was clear, now. So clear, he wondered how he hadn’t seen it before, how he’d settled for the siege when there was so much more to be done. “This island is a target on our backs. Why should we huddle here, waiting for the inevitable to happen? Why should we settle for this little spit of land when we could have more, when we deserve more? What is this, really? A glorified containment cell, one they will grow weary of sooner or later.”

No, his children deserved the world. And they would have it, even if it meant taking it on their behalf.

Erik’s hands in Jean’s pulled her close, twisted just slightly so that she was between him and Scott as he wrapped her in an embrace, pressed his lips to her hair.

He loved them, but he didn’t trust them.

Jean’s weakness was Scott, and Scott’s weakness was Jean, as it had been since they were teenagers. Scott might be willing to risk bystanders in a hospital, but he would never risk his wife.

The switches on the missiles flipped to ‘on,’ coordinate screens lighting up at once.

“You told me that the Phoenix shows you the truth, Jean,” he murmured against the top of her head. “This is the truth. One I’ve tried very hard to ignore for a very long time. Do you remember what I showed you of Cuba?” The reactor room. I'd like you to know that I agree with every word you said. We are the future.

“I tried the other ways, for you. But it’s time to stop lying to ourselves, schatzi. It was always going to go this way. If you don’t want to help me, go home. Let me take care of this the way I should have long ago.”

SCOTT: Jean told him once, in the cold chill of winter, that the Phoenix took everything you had and made it bigger. It amplified all the things you were, all the things you felt. For me, she’d said, the Phoenix found expression through my emotions. It made them so huge that there was no room under the sky for my joy, my grief, my love for you. When he opened his eyes in that graveyard, when he stood in front of his tombstone and realized the burning in his chest was more than just the restarting of his heart, he’d waited for it. He’d spent days with bated breath, waiting for the Phoenix to amplify his emotions the way they amplified Jean’s, waiting to feel everything so big that there was no room left for anything else.

It never came.

Instead of an onslaught of emotion, instead of joy and grief and love too large to ever be contained, Scott felt empty. He felt nothing. And it wasn’t just for current events, wasn’t just for the things as they happened in real time --- Scott felt nothing so intensely that he could hardly remember ever having felt anything at all. If he had, if he had felt the things he’d been through with the same intensity as he was meant to, he wouldn’t have been able to stomach what they did to Derry at all. It made him uneasy now, made him uncomfortable, but if he were himself? Scott would have fought harder against it. He would have refused to let it come to be. If Scott felt everything instead of nothing, it would be better. It would be preferable.

(He thought of his mother. He thought of the locked door, of the blackout curtains over her bedroom window, of the way she got out of bed so rarely that there were days Scott did everything for Alex, changed his diapers and warmed his bottles and put him to bed. He thought of how depression was often synonymous with numbness. He thought of how he’d spent so much of his childhood longing to become his father, of how he might have become his mother instead, of how neither option was a good one in the end. He thought of how this, too, should make him feel something, and of how it didn’t.)

Of course, there were some situations where the numbness was useful. Right now, standing in this room with the silos and controls laid out in front of them, Scott saw how it could be used as an advantage. The old Scott Summers, the one who existed with no spark of the Phoenix in his soul, wouldn’t have been able to do what he planned to do here. Even when Erik was his enemy, that version of Scott could never shoot to kill. He kept his blasts controlled. He kept himself from unleashing his full potential. He kept Erik alive. And maybe, in the end, this made the entire situation his own fault. Maybe if that old version of Scott had done what needed to be done ten years ago, he wouldn’t be faced with this now.

But the past was the past. Scott hadn’t been strong enough to do what needed to be done then, but he was now. He was. He would do what he always did, what he had done since he was sixteen years old --- what was best for his people. And what was best for his people, today, meant getting rid of one of them. For the greater good. If Erik were in his right mind, he’d understand that.

Jean’s voice was soft, was gentle, was an act. They knew what they had come here to do. They knew talking was not the end goal. As much as Scott wanted Erik to come out and agree with them, he doubted that would be the end result. Magneto had always been steadfast in his beliefs, always had a mind impossible to change. (Mr. Sinister wouldn’t have been able to shape it, to mold it as he had Scott’s. If Scott were more like Erik-) Even Charles couldn’t manage it, with their history. Even Jean didn’t stand a chance. This, Scott knew, eliminated any shot he might have had. Maddie spoke next, tones a twin lie standing side by side with Jean’s, hand-in-hand. They were good actors, the two of them. Scott almost believed they had some intention of letting Erik redeem himself.

And then it was Erik’s voice, flat and steady and determined. He looked to Scott, he said you were right, and for a moment, the dull, emotionless version of hope sparked in his chest. But then Erik kept talking. He continued, he went on about what needed to be done, and it was too late. It had been too late for a long time now.

In the back of his mind, the Phoenix whispered. ’Maybe he’s right,’ the bird said. ’Maybe this is the only way. It would be easier, wouldn’t it? It would be simpler.’ And Scott shut his eyes behind his visor, drew a breath. He thought of Jean. Of how she looked at him on their wedding day, fingers intertwined with his. Of Colleen out in the chairs spread in the grass, grinning. Of Cassie, the way her hair tangled into hopeless knots when she fell asleep on their sofa. Of Zatanna and the horrible favor she’d done for Jean, saving her and ending her all at once. Of Kara when she’d landed behind him in Genosha, of the pain in her voice that he’d ignored because it wasn’t a convenient thing for him to notice. If Erik did what he wanted to do, they would all be caught in the crossfire.

If Scott let Erik do what he wanted to do, his daughter would never look him in the eyes again.

It was Rachel’s name that tore his eyes open, Rachel’s name that settled like determination in his chest. Rachel thought highly of him. She thought he was a hero. If he let the Phoenix convince him that Erik was right the same way he had let it convince him that Derry’s memories needed to fade, she would change her mind. Erik brought up Scott’s daughter in hopes of swaying him one way, but her name pushed him in the other direction. If Scott Summers had ever been a good man, it was only for the people he loved. If Scott Summers had ever been a hero, it was only thanks to his desperation to live up to their expectations. Loving them was what made him decent. Nothing else ever really came close.

Erik knew what they were here to do. Scott had no doubt. It was why he’d shifted Jean, why he’d placed her strategically between them. It was why his tone sounded as close to begging as Scott had ever heard it. He wasn’t begging for his own life --- he wasn’t begging to be allowed to live. He was begging to be allowed to destroy. Maybe that said the only thing worth saying in this entire ordeal. Maybe the truth came not in the words, but in the implications between them.

Do you remember what I showed you of Cuba? The words were meant for Jean, but Scott felt them too. He understood, remembered Jean sharing it with him. He understood what it meant.

He understood that it was too late.

“We won’t be a part of this,” he said flatly. “Jean, let’s go home.” And he reached out across the bond, touched his mind to hers. When you step away from him, he said, I’ll do it. Be ready to contain the blast. I’m going to take out the controls along with him. No one finishes what he started.

(He didn’t say what he feared --- that, if the controls were left untarnished, the one who was in the most danger of deciding to finish what Erik had started was him.)

JEAN: History repeated itself. It was a lesson that Jean learned a long time ago, perhaps sometime around the thirtieth battle between X-Men and Brotherhood. No matter what they did, no matter how they fought or what they sacrificed, the world would treat them just the same. No matter how long it had been, no matter how many Christmases she arrived on the doorstep and felt like a stranger, the Greys would never be a home like the Institute became — like the Institute had been with both of them in those offices.

If Charles was here now, would he say Jean had failed to learn from his mistakes? Would he say this felt like Cuba, like a moment where metal was flying for a beach and then into a spine? Would he tell the story with the same regret as had flooded through Jean’s mind when Erik showed her the memory — and would there be the same determination as there was with Erik, the same certainty that if the situation was repeated, he would make the same choices?

Erik had been right, of course. Sebastian Shaw deserved a coin through his head more than almost anyone else Jean had ever met — the exception being Jack Winters. It was all in the execution. It was all in the not knowing when to stop, all in Erik pushing it just that little bit too far.

Then again, couldn’t the same be said of Jean herself?

Of course, Jean knew that already. Jean knew that, and she put a contingency plan in place. She called Zatanna to her home, befriended her, trusted her, made Zatanna trust in her — and then she asked a veritable stranger to kill her, believing that she would if push came to shove. Better to lose a single life than to destroy a world. Erik would think with the same pragmatism, if he wasn’t the one being killed.

But he was. He was, and the cool tone of his voice, the way his grip tightened only slightly, the drop in his words as he spoke — Jean almost could’ve sworn he knew it would happen. She was almost positive that it was like that moment out on the lawn right before she took her final breath, when she was capable of fighting back but didn’t, because something deep down inside of her said, this needs to happen. This always needed to happen. Erik would want this.

Erik would want this, and with Lorna and Kara fresh in her mind, Jean very much wanted this too. The darkest parts of her had raised their ugly heads, and Maddie could hear them, she knew. Maddie could feel them long before they clasped hands.

And Scott could feel it too.

We can help you, Jean told Scott, letting the thought bleed through to Maddie’s psyche at the same time. We can sharpen you. I’ve been training — I can give us all the roadmap to make us stronger.

To unlock their true potential. To destroy as they were intended to destroy. To put Erik’s hours of teaching to good use. Almost ironic. Almost tragic.

Jean wished she could feel anything but anger.

She lifted her hand, pulling back only slightly to touch against Erik’s cheek. “I really do love you,” she said, “but I can’t love this.”

Now.

A step back, and Jean closed her eyes, focusing everything on that burning core at the forefront of Scott’s mind, the flames he’d always tried to contain.

SCOTT: Ever since he was young, Scott had learned to hide pieces of himself. It was something that started in his parents’ house, when his father was a retreating back and his mother was a locked door and he had learned to push down the parts of him that needed things in order to make himself easier to love. This tendency grew as he did, and he began burying more and more of himself. When he was trying to impress prospective adoptive parents, he was a chameleon. A woman wearing a cross necklace approached him holding the hand of a man in a suit and Scott found religion in the time it took them to cross the room, spoke of church as if it were a place he had been more than once in order to make himself wanted. A man with glasses and a collared shirt who Essex told him was a teacher saw him carefully reading library books and trying to look intelligent. Every person who walked through the orphanage door met a different version of Scott Summers, and they all left him just the same.

It became natural, of course, to hide his mutation as best he could when it came along, too. At first, when it was just headaches and the occasional blackout that he later discovered were due to Sinister’s experiments, this was simple. Scott could go into his bedroom and lock the door, could throw the blanket over his head and turn out the lights. The other kids thought he was weird, but only in the way kids always thought each other odd. Only in the way schoolyard bullies teased about. It wasn’t until he took out a wall that they realized there was something dangerous there, wasn’t until he was fitted with ruby quartz glasses that hiding became harder. But he tried. Lord, did he try. He pretended the glasses were a fashion choice, prayed for sunny days so he wouldn’t look different, used them as a mask to hide more and more of himself. His powers, he had learned in the beginning, were a part of him, too. And the glasses hid that. It was a familiar sort of comfort.

But now… Now, the person he loved most in the world was telling him to stop hiding. The person he loved so much that she had taught him what love was to begin with was telling him to let go, to open his eyes and let that piece of himself free. And there would be consequences. There were always consequences, when the truth came out. His parents grew more distant when they realized he was a child, full of wants and needs and a selfish desire to be loved. Those families who might have adopted him lost all interest when he dropped the act, even if only for a second. The other kids at the orphanage started treating him more like a bomb than a person when the walls came down. And if he took off his glasses...

If he took off his glasses, Erik would die. Scott knew this. Scott had known this since the beginning, since the three of them headed here, since before that. If he took off his glasses, there would be broken controls and a body and if there was anything left of his soul, that would be done away with, too. War made everyone a murderer in the end, but Scott had never imagined it would lead him here. If he took off his glasses, he would be killing someone he loved more than anything.

And saving the rest.

Life was full of terrible choices. It was full of plane crashes where there were four people and one parachute, full of mothers putting that salvation on their childrens’ backs and pushing them out of planes with their baby brothers in their arms and firm instructions not to let go. It was full of scientists who wanted to pick you apart but swore they loved you while they were doing it. It was full of men who found you in the streets and beat you, who told you to be grateful for their fists bruising your ribs because at least it meant someone cared enough about you to make contact. It was full of silos with bombs tucked safely inside and people you loved standing at the controls. It was full of the woman you loved begging you without words to kill her father, full of knowing she might hate you when it was over. If Scott killed Erik, he’d never forgive himself. If he didn’t, he’d hate himself just the same.

Glancing to Jean, Scott set his jaw before looking back to Erik. They locked eyes, even if only for a moment. Neither of them had the telepathy Jean or Maddie boasted and, even if they had, Erik’s helmet would have prevented any kind of connection. Scott offered a silent apology all the same.

The glasses came off. The world was red.

The world was always red.

ERIK: Death wasn’t something that was ever far from Erik’s mind.

The how of it had always been up in the air. When he’d been a child, he’d been certain it’d come at the guns of the Schutzstaffel, or in one of the many arsons that plagued Jewish neighborhoods. He’d thought it might come at the end of Shaw’s pistol, as it had for his mother, or under the man’s knife while he was strapped down for another experiment. Maybe it would come in a workplace accident at the manufacturing plant. Perhaps it would reach him while he was lapping the globe meting out his revenge on ex-Nazis. Or with Sebastian Shaw’s hand around his throat in the reactor room. Or with a bullet he was too slow to stop on a beach a thousand miles from home. Of late, he’d considered that it might come at the hands of the humans, and he’d been prepared despite best-laid plans to die for his people during the siege if that was what it took.

He’d die fighting, though. Always.

(Almost always. There’s another way, one that creeps on him on the bad nights, when alcohol and nicotine and sex or adrenaline aren’t enough to keep the worst thoughts at bay. He wouldn’t die naturally, he’d discovered decades ago when his aging had slowed to nothing more than the scarcest crawl; no, his death, like most of the defining events of his life, was going to be something traumatic. Unless.)

Erik was a survivor, even when those he cared for didn’t make it along with him.

That didn’t mean death was ever very far from reach. The constant little voice reminding him of that fact kept him constantly on edge, constantly paranoid, constantly ready to identify and destroy whatever threat was coming to finish the job so many others had failed.

He’d imagined death many times, but he’d never imagined it coming from his family. Dying to protect his family was one thing, something he would accept in a heartbeat. But dying at their hands was another story entirely. .

(Shaw laughs, somewhere, and grins that poisonous, condescending grin and chides him for being so soft. You knew better than that, didn’t you? )

Maybe he should have. Maybe this was history repeating itself, and Erik blinding himself to it because he’d never known how to care with only half a heart. Maybe love was a far more fickle thing for everyone else than he’d ever really given it credit for.

Magda, twirling with him in the cabin he’d built them with his own two hands as music crackled out of their record player, Anya standing on his toes between them, had looked every bit as in love as he was. Until she wasn’t. Until a circle of humans who had attacked their home, murdered their daughter, lay at his feet, and there was no amount of love he could’ve given that would’ve stilled her feet as she ran.

Suzanna, constantly casting her eyes at the door, murmuring how much more she enjoyed his presence than that of her husband, how much she wished she could stay. Until the clock ticked past eleven. Until she got up, issuing apology after apology, and left to return to the human man who finger-shaped bruises on her arms and throat, who left her flinching at loud noises and still was worth more.

Charles, grinning at him over a chessboard or laughing as they tossed flour at each other in the kitchen, who had told him that the Institute was his home as long as he wanted it. Until it wasn’t. Until there was a sea of humans firing missiles at his family, and suddenly his usefulness as a weapon wasn’t quite so appreciated when it was turning those very missiles at the humans. Suddenly it was we don’t want the same thing and disappointed eyes and a gentle push until Erik let his place be taken by the human who seconds before had tried to end his life.

It was all love, until it came to humans on the receiving end of Erik’s fire, and then this. And then it was Jean, looking him in the eyes and saying ’I really do love you, but.’

But.

She said it, but those words didn’t reach her eyes. There was no love there, no warmth, nothing recognizable as the little girl he’d come to think of as a daughter at the Institute or the woman he’d danced with at her wedding just a few months ago. Her mouth said ‘I love you,’ but everything else in her posture, in her face, in her eyes, said but.

’I can’t love this.’

Erik would laugh if his chest didn’t feel like it’d been cracked open at the cold expression, so incongruent with the hand brushing his cheek but perfectly aligned with the words falling from her lips. Because of course. Of course.

“Just like your father.” The words tasted like ash.

Erik wasn’t sure what line everyone else seemed to see, between the Erik they loved and this. Between whatever they always thought he was, and what they inevitably saw in the moment before everything fell apart. It didn’t matter how honest he was about his beliefs, about his intentions, about any of it. He’d tried; g-d, how he’d tried.

He loved so much, but. I can’t love this. Something in him was clearly broken, clearly unlovable, and Erik wasn’t sure when Jean had seen it. How much of the love he’d thought he saw before was an act and how much was real. Pathetic.

(How could it have been real? Why would it have been? Love didn’t just disappear, and if it wasn’t there now, it hadn’t been there at all. Had he simply been a matter of convenience? A weapon useful to avenge Scott, but not once it had a mind of its own. Useful until he wasn’t.)

She stepped back, and Erik’s gaze skipped across her and Maddie, until finally his eyes caught Scott’s, through the quartz.

He knew what was going to happen. Scott’s fingers had already slid up to the visor, and it was a pantomime of that scene in the hospital waiting room last week. A moment where Erik had to weigh his chances. .

He could stop Scott, if he tried. Simply turn off the man’s synapses, and he’d be dead before he hit the floor. He could do it to Jean too, quite probably. Maddie.

He could do it, and he could fire the missiles, and he could walk away from this silo with the life he’d managed to sustain against all odds for over ninety years. He could return to Lorna’s bedside and watch her wake up, ensure that she wouldn’t wake up alone. There would be no more human problems, and his daughter would be awake and at his side, wouldn’t be left an orphan when she woke up, and it was a possibility close enough to taste.

But love didn’t disappear, and Erik loved Jean Grey. He loved her, loved Scott, loved Maddie, despite her relative novelty and incessant annoyances, and there was no force in the universe that was going to make him murder his own children. Certainly not to save his own skin.

I’m sorry, Lorna.

Scott flipped his visor.

The world went red, pain slammed into his chest, and the red slipped into black. Erik was dead before he hit the floor.

JEAN: Just like your father.

There was one part of Jean that she knew was her own. The Phoenix came to her at eighteen, sunk its talons into her shoulders and remained an occasionally silent, oftentimes loud companion for decades after. For a long time, she thought that was a blessing — thought its influence prevented death, inspired life, protected her family. Now, she knew better. She knew she was a passenger in her own body, a prisoner to her own impulses. The Phoenix took her anger and made it bigger than compassion, bigger than logic, bigger than love. But there was one part, a part Erik had facilitated, a part that had grown in her since she was barely ten years old.

Jean Grey was a soldier. Like her husband, like her best friends, like the only true parents she’d ever known. She was a soldier, and that meant when something needed done, she could compartmentalise. She could bury emotions, could get the deed done. She could appear in Charles’ office covered in blood, could stomach his disappointment, could understand that it needed to be done regardless.

Did he know this was the outcome, all those years the X-Men faced off against the Brotherhood? Was it the Phoenix, or merely an inevitability? After all, the bird brought truth — it painted Jean as the villain she must’ve been, showed the parts of her she tried so desperately to hide. Did Charles know Erik had to die? Was that why he sent their daughter, instead of facing off on the battleline himself?

Did Charles know just how much this would hurt?

Anger, bitter and curling in her gut, had a brief flash of vindication as the silo filled with red — and then it was like the air was knocked from her lungs. She heard a screeching, loud and desperate and animalistic, felt something pulled from her chest and saw it in the centre of their circle like a flickering candle, like a flame that never went out.

A flame that could be injured. A flame that wasn’t running through her veins, wasn’t blocking her emotions, wasn’t feeding that fire of rage that had been building since Kara, since Lorna’s revelation, since she walked in and saw weapons of mass destruction pointed towards the very people they promised to co-exist peacefully with.

This was Jean Grey. Authentic. Unchanged. She sucked in a breath of charged air, blinked to remove the specks of light from her vision, and saw Erik lying before her.

Jean Grey. Authentic, unchanged, alone for the first time since she was eighteen years old. Devastated.

The power left her legs, and the skin on her knees tore as she scrambled towards him, hands bunching in the front of Erik’s shirt.

(There was dancing around his office. There were kisses pressed to the top of her head, whispered promises of safety. There were lessons of self acceptance, lessons he’d never been able to finish before they splintered. There was that absence, huge, gaping, constantly a source of pain and desperation that fuelled their confrontations. There was relief when he smiled at her in that restaurant, in the hundreds of conversations since.

She would miss him until her dying day.)

Jean’s shaking hands moved to hover over his chest, telekinesis knitting the wound that burned red together. A medic’s instinct — a trained propensity towards healing, towards fixing problems that appeared before her. A daughter’s last act, because Jean knew Erik Lehnsherr needed to die. She knew that.

It just hadn’t occurred to her that he needed to be dead.

(Death wasn’t peaceful. Jean knew this. Death meant being alone in a white, hot room, watching the rest of the world carry on in your absence. Death meant constructing visions, knowing there was no tangibility to them. Death meant being alone, and she never wanted him to be alone. There was a screeching, and this time it was her.)

Jean leaned down, trembling fingers touching against his face. He wasn’t cold, but he would be soon. He would be cold and covered in dirt, and there would be no fight or fury or argument or pounding hearts. There would be no handcrafted music boxes or father to dance with on her wedding anniversary.

A tear dripped onto his cheek, and Jean rested her forehead against his. “I’ll keep you warm,” she whispered, voice barely more than a breath. He could hear her, though. She had to believe that. (She had to be good enough, had to be loud enough, for him to hear her just one more time.) “You’re just asleep, Dad. It won’t be too long, and I’ll come. Promise.”

Soldiers didn’t die of old age. Erik always knew that.

She wrapped her arms around him just as the Force returned to her, body bracing for impact and still being taken off guard. Cracks appeared in her skin, exposed arms and hands glowing orange, and she heard the whisper.

Pray to me, Jean Grey. We can bring him back.

She was so much stronger than she had been, no longer in pieces. Through tear-filled eyes, Jean looked up at Scott, heart thudding hard when she saw he was still standing — and the same with her sister. Her sister, the machination, still alive. Maddie was real.

And Erik was dead.

Jean lay down by his side, arm around his waist. The embers flickered against his still body, but they didn’t enter. They didn’t raise him.

“I can’t use her,” Jean whispered, again to Erik. (He couldn’t hear her. Her abilities showed no aura, no pulse in his neck. He was gone, but she talked regardless. He was in the dark, and in all the times Jean had died she’d never been able to see Annie again, never been able to find her. But she wouldn’t stop trying.) “This one is on me.”

The Phoenix moved for her grief, for the guilt, and Jean turned her away. She wanted to feel it all.

He feels nothing now. Why must you suffer?

The bird still had so much to learn. (That was exactly why.)(edited)

MADDIE: Red bled into Maddie’s vision, a bright light that filled the silo and painted a picture that was inevitable, but no one wanted to see. Red turned to spotty blackness as all air was zapped from the woman’s lungs. There was an almost peacefulness to the quiet nothingness that washed over Maddie for a long moment. She couldn’t explain it, why she felt like something had splintered, cracks in the foundation that were spidering out. She didn’t know what was happening; why she felt like she had died alongside Erik.

There was nothing, inky blackness wrapping around her like a shock blanket and leaving her numb.

Was this grief? Was this nothingness to protect herself or something entirely else, wrong and foreign? Alongside a screeching that Maddie swore was so, so close but so very far away at the same time.

There was nothing to feel in this vast empty Maddie could feel herself in. No bitterness at how she knew she should be feeling a certain way, a regret or a trickle of grief to follow what had happened. There was nothing. She should feel something. Erik was a good man despite it all, a great man even. The closest thing to a dad Maddie could call, accepting her as the rest of the family had without too many questions. .

On the other hand, Maddie was filled with entirely too many of them. Was the emptiness because of the growing disconnect from those she was calling family? That when they were in the same room as her she felt like there was a silent, but clear divide between them and her? Was she the one who had put that line there or had it manifested itself? She had too many questions and no answers, a craving to find as many answers as she could without fracturing what fragile balance existed between them all.

There wasn’t much longer Maddie could linger on it in the darkness when she was forced back to the present with a rush of something slamming back into her. Air filled her lungs as her fingers twitched and she saw fiery cracks in her skin slowly fade away. Her eyes flickered over to Erik on the floor and Jean moving to lay down beside him. The quietness in the room felt deafening.

“Jean…” Maddie said softly, unsure even what she wanted to say, what she could say. Her heart should be breaking, should be filled with the grief that she saw painted over her sister’s own face. Instead, she felt nothing.

Moving towards the pair, Maddie carefully sat down on the floor behind Jean. Her fingers brushed over red hair, carefully stroking over the strands and staying silent amongst the grief. Comfort she could try, despite the pain she knew was filling every inch of the room.

SCOTT: There was a split second, when tragedy struck, where nothing happened at all. It was the moment after you jumped from the plane but before the parachute caught you, the moment after the blood blossomed over the stomach of the girl you loved but before she hit the ground, the moment after the bullet tore through your chest but before the pain struck you. The moment after you opened your eyes, but before that red blast faded. It was too late to turn back, in that moment. The terrible thing had already happened. There was no stopping it, no pulling it back in. You couldn’t go back to the plane, couldn’t force a heart to beat, couldn’t stop the blood from filling up your lungs. You couldn’t stop the blast from landing. You couldn’t make that moment last. In that split second, things were okay, but that split second always ended. The tragedy always clawed its way to the surface.

And this was no different.

Erik fell. There was no grace to it, no beauty. It was quick and unceremonious and violent, because death always was. No one ever looked pretty when they died. No one ever looked at ease. Death was a tsunami, a hurricane, a horrible and dreadful thing that put a pit in your stomach and filled you with a cold unease. Erik fell, and Scott sucked a breath. It felt like there was something hot was in his chest. When he exhaled, he pushed it out. He didn’t mean to, didn’t intend to. He might wonder, later, if he would have exhaled had he known what he would lose. He might wonder if he could have held it inside of him forever if he’d only held his breath. He might wonder if he’d wanted to. But wondering, in the end, rarely did anyone any good.

Scott exhaled. Erik’s body hit the ground. Jean fell to her knees. And everything slammed into him at once. .

The heat left him, like a forest fire exiting his lungs. He gasped a breath, desperate and drowning, and when he exhaled the fire he inhaled the smoke. Everything came rushing back to him all at once. There was no more cold voice in his head whispering to him about what needed to be done. There was no more strange disconnect from how he felt. There was no more icy anger chilling his veins. There was no more Phoenix. Instead, there was Scott. There was Scott, in a room with three people he loved and one of them was on the ground. There was Scott, with his eyes still burning red. There was Scott, feeling everything all at once.

Grief, when it was thick enough, became a tangible thing. It thickened the air around it, made it heavy and hot. It settled onto your chest, curled its hands around your throat. It suffocated you. It shoved your head underwater, held you there until your kicking stopped and the bubbles ceased to escape to the surface. It killed you piece by bloody piece, and Scott hadn’t had many pieces left. He’d already been shattered. But now…

Erik’s body was in the floor, and Scott had put it there. Jean was crouched over him with Maddie at her side, their grief as tangible as his own. In New York, there were graves with the Greys names all lined up side by side, and they had hated him but there had been a time when they hadn’t. There had been a time where they’d invited him to dinner, where they had accepted him. Derry was in a house in Genosha, and she didn’t know who he was. Lorna was in a hospital bed, fighting for her life. Scott had died, had been buried, had come back wrong. Erik was dead. Erik was dead, Erik was dead. And Scott was feeling it all at once. He was underwater, he was drowning, and he didn’t know if he wanted to make it to the surface. He didn’t know if he deserved to. .

His legs didn’t give out underneath him, and this felt wrong. It felt unnatural, like the tree in the forest that grew sideways, parallel to the ground. There shouldn’t be anything holding it up. Gravity should have an easy task pushing it the rest of the way down, but it stood. It stood still and unnatural and wrong, and you kept thinking that someone was going to take an axe to it one day just to finish the goddamn job but no one ever did and it stayed there. Scott stayed on his feet but he shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have.

He thought Jean might have been talking. He thought Maddie might have been, too. He didn’t think either of them were speaking to him, and he didn’t know how to tune back into the world to find out. The grief was so heavy, and without the Phoenix’s cold rage in his veins, there was nothing to distract from it. There was nothing to turn to. There was grief and there was nothing else. There was no room for anything else.

(He remembered, again, the way Jean spoke of the Phoenix. He remembered how she’d told him it maximized your emotions, made them so big that the world couldn’t expand to hold them. He wondered how his felt bigger without it. He wondered how the world could possibly be vast enough to fit this much anguish, how the weight of it hadn’t knocked the planet off its axis, how the world could still turn when Erik was dead and Scott had killed him. He wondered how anything would ever move passed this moment. He wondered if they might just stay like this forever.)

The world was somehow both quieter and louder with the Phoenix gone, contradiction waiting around every bend, and Scott didn’t recognize the presence of another person in the room until the door slammed shut. He didn’t feel her approach, didn’t sense her coming, didn’t notice anything but his grief and Jean’s grief and Maddie’s grief and the way it all flowed through the bond like a river trying to go in three directions at once. .

(And had he been in a better frame of mind, he might have recognized something different about that third stream. Had he been able to focus on anything but his head underwater, he might have wondered why the things coming from Maddie felt so different than the rest.)

He turned back when he felt her, used all the strength he had just to tear his gaze away from the floor, from Jean, from Maddie, from Erik. His heart seized in his chest, and that tsunami, that hurricane, it hit him all over again. “Lorna.”

(He choked on her name. It felt more like an apology than a word, more like guilt than a person. Like her name was the closest thing to sorry his voice could manage.)

LORNA: She was drowning. Her limbs as heavy as lead, useless to her as she sank like a stone, but the pain in her chest had far less to do with the water she’d gasped in and more to do with the hole that had been punched through her. And then she’d thought it was over. Lorna had thought about death before. How she’d die, when she’d die. If she wanted to. There had been times when she’d imagined it would be something like this, taken out by hateful humans she’d picked a fight with. Or who’d picked a fight with her. She hadn’t thought it would be tonight.

And then it wasn’t. Then there was that brief moment of air before darkness swallowed her back up again like it had under the water. But her heart beat on, struggling at first but beating nonetheless. Lorna, none the wiser.

Until now.

Darkness and pain were the last things she remembered. Only fitting that darkness and pain be the first things she was aware of now. The pain was far more dulled now, no longer consuming her as it had been. She lay there, in the darkness, for a few moments, as she slowly rose out of unconsciousness. Finally, a week after they’d closed, her eyes blinked open.

As soon as she did, it was like her other senses flipped a switch. The beeping of the heart monitor and the humming of the oxygen machine filled her ears. She could smell the antiseptics used to keep her wounds clean overlaying the smells of Erik’s house and her room here. While the blankets were familiar and reassuring–far more so than a hospital would’ve been–the mask on her face and the drip in her arm suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Lorna turned her head to find an empty chair. One that was not usually placed by this bed. A vigil left empty?

She struggled to sit up, inhaling sharply at the pain that any movement in her chest caused. Never one to not be stubborn, Lorna still managed, and pulled the oxygen mask from her face. She could breathe without it now. The drip, she was a little more hesitant to touch. Better to wait for Jean. Lorna trusted that Jean wouldn’t force her to keep it if it wasn’t needed. The heart monitor didn’t like when she tried to take that off her finger and Lorna didn’t know how to turn it off–bar simply using her powers to knock it out–so that stayed too. Instead, Lorna leant back against pillows, wondering how long she would lie here before anyone would know she was awake.

No more than a minute could have passed before she felt it. A shock wave washed through her, one of magnetic energy. Magnetic energy that was far too familiar. Something was wrong. She knew it in her gut. It startled her back up, ignoring the pain. Lorna had to find out what had happened. She pulled the heart monitor from her finger and the IV from her arm, paying no mind to the bleeding nor the way the monitor protested. Her bare feet hit the carpet, and by all accounts she should have not felt as steady on them as she did. Something fueled her, filling her with a strength she should not yet have back. The thought crossed her mind for a moment, but the siren call of that magnetic pulse was too much to ignore.

It screamed wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Something was wrong.

That feeling carried her out of the house, pulling her like a compass to north. Neither the shock of cool air on her skin nor the damp grass beneath her bare feet even slowed her down. Her powers reached out ahead of her, trying to search for what it was that felt like the world was turning upside down. And why it felt so familiar. Like she’d been here before. Like she’d felt this before.

Later, Lorna would come to realise she had known before she even got to the silos what she would find. Not the specifics, but her powers let her view the world as electromagnetic signals. People gave off their own energies, energies she mostly tried to ignore for the sake of her sanity living in a city as massive as New York. Some people’s energies were stronger and more familiar to her.

One was practically just an inversion of her own.

It was that one she had felt from her bedroom, echoing out like a shock wave. Like the aftershocks of an explosion. And if she had stopped to reach for it now, she would have known. She would have felt nothing. Well, not nothing. Even dead bodies felt like something. Lorna knew that all too well. But not the energy she needed to find.

She came to the door of the silo, footsteps practically silent. Her voice was stolen from her chest as she finally found the source of the explosion.

Lorna stood in shock. She could barely see the way Jean grieved or Maddie comforted her or Scott stood still. All she could see was him. Erik. Dead. Not dying as she had been when Rictor brought her back, not an avenging force as he had been when he found her in the forest twenty years ago. Dead. If she could even notice anything else, she would’ve felt how that strength that had carried her here seemed to grow amongst the grief. If that grief had not been so overwhelming.

Without speaking, she reached a hand out. Metal scraped against the concrete ground, echoing in the quiet. Erik’s helmet flew from his body to her outstretched hand, where Lorna clutched it tight. The door slammed shut behind her, echoing in the heavy silence.

Her eyes finally moved from Erik to find Maddie, then Jean, then Scott. Her eyes stayed on him, the smoking gun that was Erik’s body giving her all the evidence she needed.

“Scott. What the fuck have you done?”

#c: scott summers #c: jean grey #c: maddie pryor #c: lorna dane #f: discord #tw: major character death #tw: murder #tw: violence #tw: ptsd #tw: addiction #tw: alcoholism #tw: suicidal ideation #tw: abuse #tw: plane crash #tw: fire #tw: manipulation #tw: grief #d: a prayer like a war cry

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isobel-thorm · 4 years

Note

Robb - “I’ve missed this.”

Like Father Like Daughter

Selene Kenobi watches her daughter grow up and forge her own path. More technical character study than anything but who’s really paying attention anyway.

Selene knew the moment she had found out she was expecting that her and Obi-Wan’s child was due for a lonely life. The Jedi were in the throes of recovery. There had been barely a handful left after the Purge. Not only that, but Obi-Wan had felt responsible for the Twins’ safety. She knew Obi-Wan trusted Bail with his life but knew next to nothing about the Lars, so she knew wherever Luke was, they would never be far behind. But most of Tatooine was just next to no life. It was perfect for their exile, their rebuilding from the shadows. But it wouldn’t be much of a life for a child.

Still, they made do. Once little Raza was born - their little hope, the first years of her life had gone smoothly, but mostly because she didn’t know any better.

Raza was full of life, delighted at anything and was eager to learn anything and everything from her parents. Anywhere they went, she would follow.

She was barely six when Obi-Wan suggested that they should see where she stood with the Force. They had sought out Yoda then, and after a few tests, she was found to be Sensitive - though Yoda was weary of proceeding with actual training.

Obi-Wan could barely blame him. He had taken after Qui-Gonn then, promising that he’d keep her on the right path, he wouldn’t fail, but he wouldn’t push, either.

Selene had wondered if it was a dangerous line for him to walk, but he had a point, and the Jedi needed to survive, so she had gone with it.

And so they had trained her in the ways of the Force. One of Selene’s fondest memories was watching Obi-Wan weave part of the girl’s hair into a braid behind her ear ‘just like old times.’ Raza had been delighted, beaming away, and wore the braid with pride. But time changed all things. She had developed some skill, but whereas Anakin had the desire to learn, Raza had the desire to branch out and try other things- that were decidedly not the Force. She was often distracted and would much rather spend her time watching wildlife run around than do any more Jedi studies.

It was the Summer of her tenth birthday that she had met Luke and his friend Biggs. Selene and Obi-Wan had been torn about it. They wanted her to make friends, needed her to make friends, but that particular friendship was complicated at best.

Once had gone off to play with Luke and Biggs once and had ended up catching Obi-Wan’s uneasy look, and then when he had instructed her to stay home for the day, she had pouted, going out of her way to make sure he saw her doing it.

And Obi-Wan, ever wrapped around her finger, had relented at that and told her to go play with them. The rules were simple: play with them, be their friend, but no Force.

She had agreed to that, and stuck to her word.

Until Fate had other plans when the trio were fifteen years old. On one of their usual adventures they had gotten close to a wraid nest and one had come after them. Raza had jumped between it and her friends, thrust out her hand and had tried to quiet its temper. It had worked, but it had been such a shift in energy her parents had sensed it a mile away - literally.

They had sat her down and explained things that next night after being assured that Luke and Biggs had just written it off as her usual skill with having a way with animals. They had explained things then… within reason. Luke was the child of an ‘old friend’ who had gotten too close to the Dark Side, they were there to keep an eye on him and look after him from a distance. She had been skeptical, but felt used, but thankfully after they had promised her finding him had been completely by chance, she had accepted it, and agreed to be sworn to secrecy about knowing the details.

And she had stuck to her word.

A couple of years passed, and Biggs had left Luke and Raza for greener pastures. Luke had withdrawn from her after that, and it had clearly hurt Raza. She had been outright depressed for a while, but managed to pull herself out of it. She chose to throw herself back into Jedi training to distract herself.

Another year passed. One day, Selene had been surprised to find Luke trailing behind Obi-Wan, and once she had heard him babbling about, ‘Obi-Wan, I thought your name was Ben’, ‘Resistance’, ‘only hope’, she had known things were about to change. Obi-Wan had glanced up at her, and she had stood and left the house to give them the room for whatever tale he was about to weave for the young man. She had called Raza to her side, and they waited.

Hours later, they had seen a fire rising up from the Lars’ homestead sometime hours after that, and Selene knew things had gone far from ‘changing’ - they wouldn’t be the same.

When Obi-Wan had returned with an utterly-defeated looking Luke in tow, Raza, ever the bleeding heart, even after everything he had done to her in the last year, had gotten up and locked Luke into a tight hug. No words were exchanged at all, but Luke had held on for dear life for a while.

That night, Obi-Wan had gone over more details about the Jedi for Luke - and had decided to honor Luke’s request to become one.

The next day, Obi-Wan had said his goodbyes to them, saying that he would be back soon. But even Selene could hear that he wasn’t certain. And it killed her inside knowing that the blind optimism was probably for her and Raza’s benefit.

Weeks passed. The Force had been restless, keeping her awake, and then suddenly there was horrible, horrible pain in her gut, and then heart, and she knew Obi-Wan wasn’t coming home from their mission.

Worse yet, Raza had felt it too. For a girl content with just being adept with the Force, whose skills were affected by that mindset, the Force Bond between father and daughter being ripped away had been brutal for her. It had knocked her to her knees, and she had sobbed, a mix of both understanding and confusion.

She had barely left her room for days after that. She only if it was necessary - or she had heard her mother mourning and come to check on her.

Later, Luke had returned to Tatooine a hero of the galaxy. He had gone to their house, shown up at their door, and upon seeing Raza he immediately pulled her into a hug, just as she did for him what felt like ages ago.

Witnessing the act was a small comfort in all the madness. The first night they had met Luke, Obi-Wan had told her he believed in Luke’s heart more than he ever did with Anakin. Yes, they had practically raised Anakin together, but he felt that Luke could be better, would be better - and that put a Hell of a lot of weight into that idea.

Luke had told them that he was going to find Yoda after that. Once he had learned that Raza had also been trained in the Force, he had been ecstatic and just short of begged her to go to Dagobah with him to train in the ways of the Force.

Selene had been skeptical about that. She had known Yoda had taken his own new life as a hermit living in the middle of nowhere a little too seriously, but she had kept her mouth shut. It was time for Raza to carve out her own path.

Still, when Raza had declined the offer, choosing to stay on Tatooine- with her, she was conflicted.

Shortly after, they moved a few hours away to the outskirts of a mining town. There had been rumors of the Empire hunting down the remnants of the Jedi, and if they were true, being outside a major city wouldn’t do them any favors. Mos Pelgo, however, had been perfect. It was brand new, not even on the map, there was a population of about twenty at the time, though it was due to change. She had still urged Raza to leave and put some distance between them. She had claimed it was safer- and it was, but she had refused again.

And so another year passed. Raza had started off as dreadfully lonely as she had felt at age seventeen But one day, she came home with a spring in her step and a smile on her face, and it almost moved Selene to tears then and there. She hadn’t seen the girl smile that big since Obi-Wan’s departure. That night she had sat with her mother, talking on and on about how she had met a few people in town; two in particular, a human, Cobb Vanth, and a Weequay, Baer, who had apparently liked her enough to offer her a job as a hostess in the cantina in town on the spot.

Selene had been skeptical about what sort of people that would expose Raza to, but seeing her daughter happy had won out, and she had let it happen without saying anything.

A couple of more years passed. Raza had spent less time home and more time at the cantina, but as a mother Selene couldn’t not notice how many times Cobb’s name came up and the sort of affection Raza would say his name with. She had met the man once or twice in town, and well, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t understand the appeal. He was attractive, charming, had an easy smile, and from small talk around town she knew he was kind, always put others first, often checked in on older or worse-off people, had his share of bad jokes. He had even called in a favor to get Raza her own place in town which gave her the independence that Selene wanted for her so badly. Obi-Wan would’ve liked him, she realized one day as she sat in the corner in the bar, watching silently as Cobb animatedly told a story to Baer and Raza, who were utterly enraptured with it. They would’ve gotten along. A few minutes later, someone had put some song on the jukebox and Cobb had all but dragged Raza to the dance floor, very loudly ignoring her shrieks of half-hearted protest before she relented and let him pull her in for a dance. Well, maybe Obi-Wan wouldn’t have been too thrilled that he was evidently moving in on his little girl, but still, he was decent enough he might have gotten a pass.

But like everything else, that had been bound to end in trouble, too. Try as she might to hide it from Raza, Selene had never quite been the same since Obi-Wan’s death. She was getting old and their Force Bond being broken had affected her just as much as it had Raza. On a particularly bad day she had been nearly bedridden, and Raza had come up to help her.

It was that night that The Mining Collective had shown up and decimated the town, and enslaved the residents with it.

They had seen it happen from the distant safety of their home, and realizing that intervening would’ve left them vastly outnumbered, they had to stay put. Raza had been a wreck all over again, and she hurt for her. How many times would she watch the people she cared about getting pried from her.

More months passed. It was all but impossible keeping a low profile against the Collective. Using some Jedi tricks, she and Raza had managed to make it seem like their home was abandoned, and it had worked out well.

Until one day when there was a rough knock on the door one night. Raza had all but shoved her out of the entry room to keep at least a couple of doors between her and the visitor, and gone out to face the stranger.

The visitor had been Cobb, weak and half dead. Raza had helped him get into the house, and after he had murmured something about it, Selene retrieved the armor he had motioned at, pretending to not notice that it was Mandalorian armor and that raised way too many questions. She had walked back into the house to find that she had interrupted the pair caught up in each others space, forehead to forehead, just holding each other- it was intimate - far too intimate for just friends as Raza had insisted so many times. Still, it felt all sorts of wrong bearing witness to whatever it was, so she had slipped away as quietly as possible.

Cobb’s recovery had been touch and go for a couple of days. Raza hadn’t left his side for long, nor he hers. And she finally, finally got to see why Raza and him had the talk of the town for nearly two years, and her suspicions from the other day about just what they were to each other increased tenfold. Even half dead, the man looked at her with a fondness that made her own heart ache.

It wasn’t until late one night when Cobb was out cold that maternal instinct finally took over and she couldn’t not say anything any longer. “I missed this, you know.”

Raza looked up at her and frowned. “What?”

“You. Smiling. Being very happy,” Selene replied, she crossed the room to stand beside her. “Your dear friend Cobb have anything to do with that? Is something going on here?”

Raza huffed “No.”

“Handsome man drops into my daughter’s arms after escaping slavers, first thing out of his mouth isn’t asking for shelter, it’s informing you he thought you were dead, no, nothing to read into here at all.”

“He technically didn’t ask for shelter, it was implied. Basically the same time he asked about me, considering he fell right before.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Mother. We’re friends.”

“Oh, yes. Friends. All my friends looked at me like that.”

“M-”

“Darling, if any of my friends looked at me like that, you wouldn’t have existed.”

“Mother!”

“What? I wasn’t your father’s first choice either, you know. Close second, but second all the same. That went to our friend Siri. But you? You don’t have to worry about that. That man probably only sees you in a room full of people. He’s a little more grey than I would’ve liked for you, but that could just be life on Tatooine - and the last few months in that… horrible place. Besides, if I recall, Leia and that Han aren’t that far off from you two.”

“Mother.”

“I can hear my title just fine, dear. No need repeating it so much.”

Raza shot her a look.

Selene laughed, then reached up and tucked a strand of golden brown hair behind Raza’s ear. “It’s just been so long since I’ve seen you happy, Raza. I’ve missed it so much, missed that little smile. I’d be grateful to anyone who brought that back.”

Raza opened her mouth, floundered for a moment, then shut it and promptly left the room.

It made her the first time she had flirted Obi-Wan. He had floundered and retreated the exact same way. It was almost fitting.

A day later, Cobb had wandered over to the armor he had brought by after ‘remembering something’ and had returned with a cylinder wrapped up in some cloth. He had handed it over to her, citing had ‘found it next to the armor’ and it ‘reminded her of ‘that one conversation we had’ and ‘just in case, I figured it might come in handy for that’- whatever that meant.

She got her answer when Raza had started to unwrap it.

It was a lightsaber, which came with initial mixed feelings. While that was almost guaranteed to mean that the Jedi currently missing it was most likely dead, it also meant that Raza had trusted Cobb enough with their Jedi secret, and he hadn’t sold them out.

And then her heart skipped a beat when Raza finished unwrapping the sword and the cloth fell away.

It wasn’t just any lightsaber. It was Obi-Wan’s. She didn’t understand how or why it could’ve come to Jawas on Tatooine, but she would recognize it anywhere.

And judging by Raza’s face, she had recognized it too.

Tears had sprung to her eyes nearly immediately, and Cobb, the poor man had looked panicked for a couple of moments, fearing that he had somehow messed up and offended her because of something he didn’t understand, but then Raza launched herself into his arms, nearly knocking the pair of them off balance and all but sobbing ‘thank you’ into his shoulder. He had held her against him and let it happen, looking quite lost for a moment until Raza had repeated ‘it’s my father’s’ a few times, and realization and then understanding crossed his face and he held her closer. He looked up at Selene then, keeping up his reputation on making sure everyone was okay, and she offered a grateful, tearful nod of her own.

She had left them alone again, figuring they had earned it again. If they weren’t anything yet, she was almost certain they were on the path.

Of course, the pair of them did absolutely nothing to quell Selene’s assumptions.

They had taken to sparring to check out the armor and looked far too comfortable standing that close to each other and being extremely hands on.

One night they had gone outside, reporting that they were going to check out any potential shift change patterns in the Collective’s ranks. They had tucked themselves just outside the house, where they could see into the valley below but if the Collective had scouts they could easily duck out of sight. Selene She had gone to poke her head out to offer them a drink, only to catch them talking quietly. The set of binoculars they had been sharing had been set aside between them, temporarily forgotten in favor of whatever the talk was. They were leaning close, almost touching foreheads again- but this time there was that loaded moment, and Cobb leaned forward further, going in for a kiss- and she had ducked her head at the last second, but hadn’t moved to entirely pull away either. She was dimly aware they were talking again as she made it inside. Maybe she had been wrong after all.

The next morning she had found them still outside, sleeping. Raza was curled against him and he was leaned into her, so whatever had transpired after that failed attempt at a kiss couldn’t have been that terrible.

Maybe she was right. Regardless, they were worse with subtlety than Anakin and Padme.

Another few days passed until Cobb had announced he was ready enough to go after the Mining Collective, and he and Raza had gone looking for a fight - and had won said fight a mere couple of hours later.

The weeks following that had gone by quickly. It was… strange, watching everybody realize they had been freed, that they had won. And before long, slowly but surely the town returned to something vaguely resembling normalcy.

Still, her daughter being one of the two town heroes was a nice touch. Obi-Wan would’ve been delighted- was delighted. She could feel that much. Especially when being the town heroes ended with them essentially being handed leadership roles. Whenever someone needed something done, the town went to them for it. And after a rocky start, they had settled into the roles nicely.

The little quiet lonely girl she had raised was finally an outgoing powerhouse of a woman, and Selene couldn’t have been prouder.

Years ticked by like that. Her daughter was consistently happy, her friends had been returned to her and were staying in place, a little worse for wear but getting better with time. There was always a looming threat of raiders or Tuskens, but that was just Tatooine in general. It was commonplace.

She still didn’t know why Raza and Cobb still kept dancing around each other, though. Always standing close, always touching, leading the place together- there was a stint where they even lived together for a stretch when the krayt dragon had taken out Cobb’s house out of commission during a hunt- but still never managed to proceed from there. She had lost track of how many busybodies in town asked how long the pair had been married.

Of course, because there was never a dull moment in their lives, it took the arrival of an actual Mandalorian to finally, finally do the trick and get the ball rolling. Things had been off to a rocky start, considering the Mandalorian’s solution to killing the creature was teaming up with Sand People. Selene and Raza had dealt with them in the past so they knew what to expect, and a couple of the People themselves had recognized them from previous dealings with their family and stuck close by, distrustful of the other Mos Pelgo residents- not that the feeling wasn’t mutual, and Cobb was at the top of that particular list. He had insisted they should stay with him for the night ‘so they weren’t potentially caught unawares, Jedi skills or not’, and refused to take no for an answer. The following morning, most of the town had gone after the Krayt, Cobb and the Mandalorian included, and Raza had stayed behind to hold down the Fort and keep the peace. Another couple of days had gone by, and there had been news across a few communicators that the Mandalorian had killed the Krayt. A few of the residents had piled into speeders to go investigate and help out where they were needed, and Raza had been among them.

She and Cobb had been one of the last groups to return after nightfall. Selene had seen a few of the others returning with their group, giggling amongst themselves and looking back at the pair every few seconds before going on their way. She had been concerned, protective, even, until she looked back at Raza and Cobb, who were just outside his house, just in time to see the former lean up to kiss the latter goodnight.

Well, wasn’t that interesting. She had pretended to look busy for a while and wandered by Raza’s house until she had spotted her daughter returning home. She had offered a knowing smile then, and her daughter had gone red. “So, it takes a krayt dragon’s meddling to get that man to sort out his priorities, hm?”

“Mother,” was Raza’s chosen reply, just as it had been those years ago.

“It took at least three near-death experiences to get your father to prioritize, you know. Now come on, you’re not getting out of not telling me anything about this.”

Raza had given her that same mocking tired look that Obi-Wan had given her so many times in their youth, though she had relented and moved aside to let her into the house - just like he did back then, too, letting her win whatever argument it was just to make her stop.

She had missed that, too.

#Ship: Robb #this is a mess and the ending sucks BUT #also @ mobile people Im sorry in advance if the readmore doesnt work #chyrstis

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berry-witched · 3 years

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aaa tell us about hitori!!! what’s their ultimate? do they have a backstory?

Cjfjdjdh thank you so much for asking anon!!! Please I have so much to say about this liddol guy,,, I love him so much ohmygosh-

Ok, first, here's a picture of his not danganronpa sprite!!

I know he looks really different but I couldn't get his full design on the sprite, so I hope I matched the energy! Alright, I'm gonna put everything about him under a read more because I could talk about him for ages of my gosh-

Tw/Cw: Caps, cursing, dr1 and sdr2 spoilers, chapter 5 shenanigans

Ok, as you know, his name's Hitori!! But his full name is Hitori Yuko!!! His ultimate is the Ultimate Hope, but in a sorta different sense compared to Makoto or Nagito. It's weird to explain, it's more of like an ultimate positivity thingy? But it's also kinda like how a kid would see a super hero!! I have to go more into his personality and backstory to fully explain- He's generally selfless, but he's a bit to exciteable at times. He's also persistant and dedicated! Like, for example, at the beginning of the game (during the prolouge), on of his lines would be: "Stop moping around, they can't keep us here forever!! Not if I have anything to say about it!" And "You can count on me! I'll get us out of here, safe and sound!!"

Also, I would think you can only get his FTEs at certain times during the game, that go with his whole arc!! You'll see more of that I'm a second!

He's positive and thinks of himself to be a hero, but to the point of annoyance and isolation. Not like he thinks he's better than everyone else per say, but more of a "I have to be able to help everyone!" type of thing. Thus actually connects a lot to his backstory, which I'll get into a bit later!!

When the game first starts, he sticks mostly with Nagito, and Hajime, much to Hajime's dismay. So far, everybody's pretty neutral on him, but nobody other than Nagito really likes him. He's really excited to be hanging out with Nagito, and it seems like this is his first friend per say. He has a sort of blind optimism too, no matter the situation. He's the classes optimist!! But sometimes, because of this, he's kind of an idiot.

Most people really start to hate him around ch1. Because, at this point, it's staring to sink in that they're gonna be stuck on the island, but it hasn't quite affected him yet. He still keeps up the can do attitude, but nobody -other than Nagito- is having it.

Hajime's got to much of a temper, Fuyuhiko has a short fuse, Hiyoko doesn't like him at all, he freaks Kazuichi out, etc. Most of the sdr2 cast sees him as a hope obsessed nuisance, and some of the more outspoken members say that to his face. Little do they know what they have in store..

It's around the first trial that his hopeful persona starts to crack. As soon as Nagito is revealed to be who he is, he feels betrayed, cheated almost. When he was friends with Nagito, he felt special, he felt unique. Nagito was able to tear down his walls, but as soon as it was revealed, he couldn't tolerate it. The first person to let him feel loved I'm years, and it was just a ruse.

"Hope doesn't tolerate your lies."

Afterwards, the only friends he has are people who are hyper as he is, or people who have the patience to deal with him. Ibuki, Peko, Mahir, and Mikan, despite the fact that she doesn't fit either of the categories- Also another oc of mine named Pyry- And by extension because of Mahiru, Hiyoko, though the insults never fully stop- please I am going to curb stomp Hiyoko if she doesn't stop saying shit about my boy

Although, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect. It was always there of course, but now it's even more prominent. You wouldn't notice it unless you actually knew him, so it's pretty much not noticeable to anyone 🤡

Ok, ch2 absolutely destroys him- like seriously, he loses two of his friends, and then it turns out that they didn't even have to die and it's Fuyuhiko's fault. So yeah, that's where some of his character development comes from- Normally, he would've forgiven Fuyuhiko but he doesn't get forgiven until like,, ch4 so-

Ch3 is even worse. he losES LIKE ALL OF HIS FRIENDS-

He also gets despair disease- His disease is 'quitter disease' because I never came up with a better name for it- Basically, he's just sad and one of his lines describes it- "There's no point in trying, we're all gonna die here anyways." And "You really think we're gonna get out of here huh? You really are an idiot.

These lines are said to Hajime- Please save my poor boy-

Fuyuhiko actually ends up being the one to look after his during it, mainly because he feels bad, despite Hitori's protests.

Ch3 is the only time he fights back against Hajime's conclusion, and the last time he does. He doesn't want to lose his only remaining friend.

But he does. And now he's alone again.

He keeps up his unaffected persona, despite the fact that he had a breakdown at the trial- He forgives Fuyuhiko, and just sorta keeps on keeping on, like he always has.

Ch4 is especially hard on him, but he's just sorta,,, fine with being near Nagito? Despite the fact that he really hated being near him, he's just sorta succumbed to his fate- During the ch4 trial he's the only one not treated terribly by him, so that's strange,, mutual respect I guess?

During ch5, he's more distant than ever, and you can only unlock his last FTE the day before Nagito's death. The last lines are what's ment to stick with you.

"Y'know, you're the only person who's really.. cared about me, and is still.. here. Thank you for that. I would really miss you if something happened. I wonder if you would do the same.."

AND THEN HE FUCKING DIES AND SO DO I

You'd find him slumped against the wall near Nagito, but it looks like he got caught in there by mistake.

He didn't-

So basically he and Nagito did the death room thing together, then discovering that they were all Remnants of Despair, thus making the ch5 plan together. But Hitori knew more than what he let on.

He and his avatar was sorta glitchy, so he was sort of a glitch in the matrix if you will. This caused him to get flashes of the past years he'd spent at Hope's Peak, but it also sorta fucked with Junko's brainwashing-

So, as soon as he died, due to his glitching, he woke up.

Nowadays, he spends his days amongst his sleeping classmates, and the class 78 survivors, waiting for the day they wake up too.

I WAS SO BUSY WRITING THAT THAT I FORGOT HIS BACKSTORY SO HERE IT IS-

He'd been raised with an avarage life, with avarage parents, and avarage friends. But he wasn't exactly avarage. Ever since he was a child, he was always an extordinatuly good writer. He could write pages upon pages of different universes, worlds, and lives. But, his friends weren't always as supportive as he thought they would be. They longed to be like him, to have his talent as their own, but they didn't want to try. So, they used him instead.

He wrote paragraphs on top of paragraphs for them, but it was never enough. They always wanted more, and he always wanted to help. But, day by day, they wanted more and more, until all he had left was his optimism, that they would love him like they once did.

He hasn't written since.

HITORI MIGHT BE A BADLY WRITTEN OC, BUT HE'S MY BADLY WRITTEN OC AND I LOVE HIM-

#☁️| mod sylvie #☁️| not an edit #please i love him so much #ALSO HE NEEDS MORE CHIAKI INTERACTIONS NO CAP #☁️| Hitori my beloved <33

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ofgoldenangel · 3 years

Text

Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

SUMMARY: Gabriel Meets Wally West at the Christmas Tree lighting and they spend a wonderful time together. With Snowball fights and Hot chocolate TRIGGERS: None WRITTEN WITH: @fasterthanl1ght

Gabriel: loved all these lights and happy kids faces he passed while walking through Rockefeller It was amazing to see how the humans celebrating the holiday season. He found a nice spot in front of the tree on a park bench smiling softly hearing the sounds of happy kids and movement of people. He felt eyes on him as he gave them a soft smile "Hello, Enjoying the Holiday fun?"

Wally: Wally was having a blast. Christmas in Rockefeller. It didn't get much more iconic than that. He passed by a family making a snowman, some kids having a snowball fight, a couple taking a romantic walk. As he approached a park bench he got a look at the guy sitting on it and was slightly floored. Damn. He'd met some good looking folks in his time, like the Titans or the Justice League, but this guy was like on another level. It took him a second to realize he was staring and he turned away a bit just to avoid making it super obvious. "Hm me? Yeah man I love this time of year. It's my favorite!" Wow did he always sound like such a nerd? He coughed a bit feeling the need to clear his throat suddenly before turning the question on the other man. "What about you? Are you stoked for Christmas? Or you know, whatever you celebrate?"

Gabriel: Gabe chuckled softly feeling eyes on him as he sat near the hub of all the activity, he'd briefly saw Sam and Charlie dancing feeling extreme happiness to see them enjoying themselves when he turned his attention to the boy with bright red hair something he'd yet to see in this new world. "Same, I love the idea of bring families closer and sending everyone good will." He mused looking at the other chuckling softly "I'm very stoked for it, this will be the first year in awhile I've got all my siblings close enough to spend time with them. We celebrate Christmas, well I suppose some of us do either way I'm super excited."

Wally: Family. It was a little hard to think of that with Barry gone and his parents...well he just didn't really want to think of them. Hell he hadn't even decided if he was going to visit Iris yet. He smiled lightly and decided to join the guy on the bench to look at the tree. "I was an only child but I can imagine it must be pretty great having your siblings around for Christmas. In any case Christmas is the best for sure."

Gabriel: Looked at the other wondering if he had someone to spend the holidays with, he'd learned that many people were sometimes without family which made his heart hurt for those. "Really how interesting, I'm sure my youngest brother wishes he was an only child. But I rather like it, we sort of had a family falling out years ago this the first time we are all in the same city together. I'm sort of working up my courage to see how he is doing at the Lux club."

Wally: "Ah. Sibling rivalry. I've heard tales of it." The Titans were probably the closest thing to siblings he had and they had their tiffs for sure. Dick probably had the best examples of sibling rivalry of anyone he'd ever met. But that didn't mean the Bat Fam didn't have each other's backs when it counted. Mostly. He pat the other on the back in encouragement and grinned. "Hey man don't sweat it. I'm sure your brother will come around. If ever there was a time to patch things up and start again, this is it. That's what Christmas and New Years is all about right? Peace on Earth and goodwill and stuff."

Gabriel: He smiled nodding his head "it can be quite crazy but lucky I'm pretty close to the youngest group so I i admit its hard playing both sides." He mused looking at the other he was hoping to move forward with his fallen brothers, especially Lucifer, he really missed his younger sibling and hopped maybe with everything happening they could get on better terms. "Thank you that's very kind of you to say, currently he is going through a rough patch and I want to be there for him but I don't want to come off overbearing. Its hard being the elder brother at times especially when once upon a time we were so close. I miss that closeness we used to share."

Wally: "That is a fine line to walk. Wanting to be closer but afraid to push them away at the same time." He'd done the same thing with his friends. It had taken him so long to decide to come back to them but he did and they welcomed him without question. He knew not everyone was so lucky but he had hope. "I think you'll be close again. You're his brother. That has to count for something." Wally was sometimes too optimistic for his own good but during Christmas he felt it was justified. His specialty was bringing some cheer to where it was needed most and as he watched the kids playing, some he even recognized from F.E.A.S.T. an idea came to him and he grinned. "You wanna join a snowball fight?" It was totally random but this guy sounded like he could use some good old fashioned winter fun right about now.

Gabriel: "You are right very fine line so far the last time we saw one another it was nice, we didn't beat each other up like before." He mused smiling softly he missed Lucifer and fighting with him in the Veil only made that feeling so much stronger if he was honest with himself. "I love your optimistic not maybe people have that gift , I think you are right clear all the negative from my head and we should get close again. I never stopped caring about him I'll just have to show him." Gabe's smile returned almost tenfold when the other mention a snowball fight. "I'd love one! its actually be my first in a long time promise to take it easy on me? OH I'm Gabriel by the way, Gabe for short." He replied hopping off the bench holding out his hand.

Wally: Alright that just wasn't fair. No one should be allowed to look that good. The dude, Gabe's smile was practically blinding. Holy hell. Wally did his best to shake it off and laughed as he held out his hand to shake the others. "Wally West. Optimism is kind of my thing. There's always a bright side somewhere if you're willing to look." He grinned happily and started towards the kids calling to them. "Hey guys, this is my new friend Gabe! Mind if we join you?" They kids all looked at each other before agreeing excitedly and separated themselves into teams. Having a grown up on their side gave them a great advantage after all. Wally turned back to Gabe nearly buzzing with his own excitement. "Alright if this is your first snowball fight I'll try and go easy on you. The kids might not though so just, heads up. Basically there's two teams right. And you just run around pelting each other with snowballs until the other teams give up! Easy!" Ok so maybe those rules were oversimplified but that's how he used to play with the Titans. Only they used super powers. Which reminded him of one other thing Gabe should know. "Just remember when you're making a snowball don't pack it too tight. And make sure there's no rocks or ice in it. We don't want anyone getting hurt you know. This is strictly for fun. No tears allowed. Unless of course you feel the need to cry when my team wins. I promise I won't judge." Cute or not Gabe was so going down and Wally couldn't wait.

Gabriel: He was quite happy for the distraction in the form of Wally the male seemed to be just as fun as he was plus it gave him an excuse to not wonder into the Lux too early and set Lucifer off. He walked a rather thin line when it came to his youngest brother but he was still happy to be close to him once again. "Sounds like great advice to live by when one thinks about it" he mused letting the other talk giving the kids a slight wave of his hand. He looked at his teammates smiling before being pulled back to Wally. "That sounds amazing, I hope you wont cry if I get you a couple times then?" he teased nodding his head he'd seen the other making the snowballs enough to get the hang of it plus it will be fun either way I'm sure" he mused before nodding is head chuckling at the other "I promise no tears or pain, but try not to cry if If my team takes the win after all I could be some snow chap" he mused moving over to his team to help make some snowballs for the starting fight.

Wally: Wally was glad he could provide a distraction if nothing else. Christmas time was no time to be down when you could be getting that holiday cheer. He grinned a cheeky grin at the other's words, before switching his tone to one of mock sympathy. "Listen Gabe you're a cool guy and all, but you're not going to hit me. Not even once. But don't feel too bad though. I was the dodge ball king back in high school." Or he would have been if he'd been allowed to use his powers. He totally let those jerks pelt him back then.The kids had built up two snow barricades to act as bases for their teams and Wally went to the one closest to him to plot with the kids on his side. Once their strategy was set he picked up a snowball and made a show of stretching out in front of the enemy team and Gabe. "All right kiddos let me show you how a pro gets things done." With that he sent a snowball flying straight at Gabe. At normal speed of course. He didn't want to crush the poor guy on his first strike. Not in his first snowball fight ever. With the first ball in the air the game was on and with a yell it began. "ATTACK!" The kids behind him all screamed and let their own snowballs fly. Wally was smiling like a loon as he peppered the other team as best he could with going over board.

Gabriel: Gabe had to admit he was beyond glad that he could spend time with Wally he seemed like quite a fun person plus his bright red hair had captured Gabriel's attention almost immediately. He decided it was best to not go over using his strength and powers less the other feel he gave them an unfair advantage. "I bet I can hit you just once during this little snowball fight, Loser buys the Hot chocolate what do you say? We both come out a winner." He mused holding out his hand winking at Wally. He smiled watching the kids excitedly get ready for the fight, it was times like this he loved humanity, things were so simply to kids compare to adults. "Okay now we are going to not only win but have an amazing time okay?" He told the kids smiling at their cheers before he ducked to move away from the snowballs flying "Cheater!" he chuckled out loud throwing his snowballs "Let them have it."

Wally: "Alright hot stuff, you're on. I'll take that bet. That hot chocolate is going to taste so much sweeter when you buy it for me." Wally wasted no time and once the game started he was off like a rocket. No super speed yet but even his normal fast was crazy. He made snow balls in record time and his team now had an endless supply. When he joined the fray he targeted Gabe specifically. Mostly because he didn't want to go for the kids because that seemed kind of low but also because it was the best tactical option to take out the strongest asset first. He almost missed the snowball coming at him from the side but his speed kicked in just for a split second, lighting flashed across his eyes as he moved imperceptibly fast just enough to doge before time slowed again and he was going at the kids pace. Any normal human wouldn't have seen that be he was unaware of who the person was that he had actually challenged.

Gabriel: He couldn't help but chuckle at the other he could tell he was going to like Wally alot, they male had similar energy to him which made wanting to be friends with him quite easy. He wouldn't even mind paying for Hot chocolate if his team lost after all this fight was the most fun he'd had in ages. He didn't know Wally had powers of course had he been human maybe he wouldn't have noticed the sudden super speed. He couldn't help but smile using some of his strategy to up his aim a bit trying to get a snowball and hit the red haired male moving to dodge anything coming his way. "is that the best you've got Wally?"

Wally: The kids were dropping fast now as one by one they started to get tired or took one too many snow balls. Wally was laughing and running around making more snowballs and generally having a great time. He might as well have been a kid himself for all the fun he was having. There was a reason he got along so well with the kids from F.E.A.S.T. It was also why the Flash helped deliver presents on Christmas Eve. This was what the holidays were about and Wally loved it with his every fiber of his being. The challenge from Gabe only made him grin wider. "You wish. You haven't seen even half the things I can do." The battle was slowing down as the kids gradually began to sit on the side lines. Of course his energy reserves were doing just fine and he wasn't waning at all in his onslaught. He saw the snowball Gabe threw at him coming and caught it mid air with a smirk. He pulled his arm back and sent it flying right back at Gabe, certain that it was going to hit.

Gabriel: Gabe was enjoying himself itd been such a long time since he'd be this free and happy. Lately he'd been feeling a tad off but after spending time with the kids and Wally he felt rejuvenate in a way he couldn't explain. The holidays while not all of his siblings favorite time still was great because they once again were all together. He could tell the kids were getting tired with their snowball antics which was fine because his subject was Wally. He chuckled at the others reply looking back at this attempts he enjoyed the fun that came with fight. So when wally caught his snowball only to throw it back he let it hit him. " ahh I've been hit" he fell to the ground pretending to die " how cruel the world is did you see how vicious he was in his attack kids?" He chuckled making the kids laugh.

Wally: Wally laughed and did a victory lap as Gabe went down, moaning about his epic loss. "Woo! That's right! Team Wally for the win! Heck yeah!" The next moment he was gobsmacked as the kids proceeded to ignore him in favor of going to check up on Gabriel to make sure he was ok. His heart melted at the sight of them checking Gabe's forehead and trying to see if he was hurt. They were such good kids. He shook his head smiling lightly as he went over to help. He held out his hand to help the other up out of the snow. "Looks like victory is mine. These kids are shaming me pretty good in sportsmanship though so what do you say. Truce?"

Gabriel: Gabriel chuckled softly watching Wally do his victory lap before he had all the kids rush to him checking him over. This is why he loved kids so much, they were always so kind and loving before the world or people molded and changed them. “I’m okay I shall struggle with this loss” He teased the kids tickling a few before waving his hand “I will say though I have all these candy canes, and it's only fair to share them huh?” He mused handing each kid from both teams cane telling them how great they played as they ran off to their parents who were waiting. He smirked at the hand Wally held out to him taking it without any issue hiding a little bit of snow in his other patting through the others bright red hair. “Oops” he smirks laughing nodding his head “quite so, they are brilliant at sportsmanship and I do accept that Truce. How about that Hot Chocolate I promised?”

Wally: The scene was heart warming really. The kids obviously loved the candy canes and he loved seeing them so happy and carefree. However his own happiness was tinged with a little bitterness as he watched some return to their parents, and some to their chaperones from FEAST. It wasn't fair that those so young had to go through something as terrible as growing up without a home or family. But that was why he did what he did. If no one else would love them then he would. Just like Barry did for him. He was smiling as he helped Gabe up until something cold ran through his hair and down his back. "ha-ah! AH! COLD!" He jerked back and shook his hair out as best as he could but the damage was done and his usually bright red fluffy locks were now damp and limp as they hung down into his eyes. "Well that was cheap! So much for sportsmanship!" He shivered and made a show of shaking off the cold. It might have been a little exaggerated but that smirk of Gabe's left him even more flustered than the snow and he had to play that off. "You do realize this means I have to get you back at some point?" Despite his words he was still grinning like mad at the other. "But later. Right now I'm going to need something to warm up after all this cold."

Gabriel: He had greatly loved hanging out with the children and spending time playing a game he'd only seen from Heaven. He had fun, enjoying the laughter of child who seemed to wish him and Wally all good will before they left. Gabe chuckled at how well he'd managed a sneak attack on Wally if anything Michael would be proud of how well he'd played things. "sorry Wally but you know its only fair I was cold now we both can be." He chuckled happily looking at the other before smiling " I suppose so but either way I planned to warm you up with some nice Hot Chocolate so maybe you'll find it in your heart to forgive me" He gave a rather cute pout before nodding his head pulling the other towards the Hot Chocolate tent "They have a couple kinds, Mellow Hot Chocolate, Mint Hot Chocolate or Regular what do you feel like?"

Wally: Ok. Saying something like 'i was planning to warm you up' should not have sounded sexy at all. And yet here he was, having those kinds of thoughts when clearer that was no the intention. Then Gabe hit him with a pout that should not have been as cute as it was and Wally was even more confused. He was freakin hopeless. He was also really good at being in denial so he just laughed and shook his head. "Your bribe is tempting, therefore I will forgive you. This time." He was grinning ear to ear as he followed the other into the tent, sighing as the warmth and scent of chocolate filled the air. "Mmm you know I think I'll go for the mint. I like switching things up."

Gabriel: Had to admit it was nice having Friends even if their was something quite new between them it felt nice to have someone to hang out with that wasn't his family. He chuckled softly "Yes I told you I can be quite convincing, plus I've just thought to share the snow with you since you shared with me" He teased the other before nodding his head "perfect I'll get a mellow one" He mused ordering their hot chocolate and paying for their stepping to the side to wait for it. "smells good doesn't it?"

Wally: Wally had severely underestimated just how convincing his new friend could be. hell it's not like the guy was actually doing anything particularly convincing in the first place. Wally was just weak. That was it. He rolled his eyes still smiling. "How generous of you. We should get you a medal to commemorate your generosity." He stood beside Gabe as they waited for their drinks, the other people happily chatting and milling about around them. He took a deep breath and slowly released it, taking in the smell of chocolate hanging in the air. "Mm it does. Thank you. I know we tease and all but I do actually appreciate it. The drink and the snowball fight. People underestimate what a little fun can do you know." Wally may not have admitted it to himself or anyone else but he also had a lot on his mind this season and a snowball fight with a perfect stranger turned friend had been just the distraction he needed.

Gabriel: Gabe smiled at the other he was quite glad to have run into someone new while hanging out by the tree, he'd known plenty of his siblings were off doing whatever made them happier so it was nice to have something of his own. "I wouldn't mind one, I bet I'd look very dashing with some medals" He chuckled softly looking around everything smelled heavenly and he could still hear the sounds of happiness filling the air. "You are very welcome Wally, I appreciate you hanging out with me after the game, its been quite along time since I've had this much fun" He replied honestly smiling when their drinks were done passing Wally's his. "So what other things do you like to do for fun? I'm curious"

Wally: Dashing was definitely one way to put it but Gabe didn't need a medal to look good. He did that just fine with his stunning smile and those blue eyes and that curly hair and, oh wow. Wally really needed to stop. He was getting way too ahead of himself here. He chuckled and nodded. "Yes dashing. I'm sure you would. And you're welcome too. Though It's not like I was going out of my way or anything. I just like having fun. Especially this time of year." He was more than happy to spread the love and cheer with someone who needed it. The last question had him pondering for a second. "Well, I play video games and watch movies, jam out on my guitar or bass, go running, swimming, basketball, I volunteer a lot. That's actually how I knew those kids. Most of them were from F.E.A.S.T. I don't know if you've heard of it but it's a great place. They do a lot of good there and i'm happy to be a small part of that." Was he speed talking? He didn't think so but when he got to rambling it was harder for him to tell. Shockingly he wasn't used to talking about himself this much. Which meant it was time to switch subjects. "What about you? What sort of things do you do when you're not getting utterly destroyed in snow ball fights?"

Gabriel: Had to admit this wasn't his first time being called dashing, there were entire artworks detailed to his face taking on his beauty unlike his brothers who looked more like a hot mess then anything real. Yet hearing it from wally made him smile a bit more chuckling "it's still was quite the first meeting, it's been awhile since I've had fun like that, things have been rather strange since moving here to New York. Much like everyone else its been a rather up and down year." He replied honestly he hadn't felt this happy since before he arrived here and learned the truth of his father's cruelty towards his siblings. "That sounds amazing, i mean not many people volunteer much here I've noticed and I have heard of F.E.A.S.T I love their work and often working towards doing more for them. Sort of a pet project of mine, i have quite the soft spot for children." He mused enjoying all the new information he'd gotten from Wally he was quite a wonderful person. "Well not at completely exciting as everything you do, I enjoy reading all types of books really you'll often find me with a book in my hand compared to gaming controller but I still can hold my own thanks to my elder brother. I also love cooking and baking so i like finding and trying new food to create, spending time with my family is always a plus in my book. It never fails to make me smile finding activities that will make my siblings smile and laugh. " He mused honestly smiling softly as their drinks were given to them taking a sip. "Mhmm its soo good isn't it?"

Wally: "Tell me about it. New York ain't like Kansas that's for sure. It's a whole other animal." New York City was probably three times the size of Keystone City and eve for a guy who could see it all in seconds, it was a lot. He listened, nodding along and smiling as Gabe explained his own interests. They had a lot in common but some differences as well. Wally for example, couldn't cook to save his life. It took WAY too long for a speedster. "A love of books we have in common and also a love of food. Though I am probably the worst cook you can imagine. Big ups to you for learning how to cook. I usually make due with fast food and hot pockets." He sipped his hot chocolate admiring the way he talked about his family. No wonder the guy was excited to see them this year. By the sound of it they seemed very important to him. He was about to answer Gabe's comment about the drink when he tipped it back and got nothing. "Huh. It was. Must have been better than I thought since I downed that in no time."

Gabriel: "I take it you are from Kansas then? I've never been there I hear its a lot of farm land is that true?" Gabe questioned wondering about other places outside of New York. He was beyond happy to be making friends with the other boy it wasn't as if he had plenty and enjoyed having people around after coming from so many siblings "Yeah? food is amazing and sometimes a good book is enough to keep me entertained all night, I've never had a hot pocket before does it taste good?" he asked wondering if the other wanted to grab some food later with him given that he seemed to like food as much as he did. "I enjoy cooking it does take some time though If i ever cook for you I can just invite you over when it's done, then you reap the reward of my cooking" he mused smiling as he sipped his drink till the end before looking at the other. "That's cute Wally, I'm glad you like it, you know we don't have to end our company if you'd like, maybe we could look around together and grab some more treats?"

Wally: "Put it to you this way. If you like wheat, corn and cows...and nothing else, than Kansas is a great place for you." He wasn't joking either. Outside of the cities that was pretty much what Kansas had. "Oh and tornadoes. But you get used to it." They didn't mean anything to him but even for the rest of the Kansas populations it was a normal enough occurrence that it didn't faze them too much. Wally was a little taken aback by the offer to cook for him. Out of the blue. They'd barely met but Gabe seemed so, open. More so even than him and that was saying something. "Well, I mean sure I'd love to hang out some more. And I'd love to try your cooking and show you what a hot pocket tastes like, not that it's anything to write home about. But...I don't know I'm just not used to people liking me so quickly. Are you sure you really to want to do this? I'm asking now so you don't make a mistake you might regret later." Wally winked and laughed but there was an undertone of insecurity there that he couldn't mask if he tried. It was just a habit of his to make light of things that worried him or things that he was unsure of.

Gabriel: "I have to admit I've never seen a Cow up close are they cool animals? though I have to wonder what place you like more New York or Kansas" Gabe asked curiously things about Wally keep getting more and more interesting as he chatted with the other. "Tornadoes quite the thing they are destruction and beauty if you believe the whole eye of the storm thing" He mused He smiled softly at the other "I love cooking for people....that offer was odd huh? sorry I'm quite new at this whole making friends thing. I'd like to try a hot pocket especially if you give me tips. I like you Wally you are fun to hang out with...I'm sorry if I'm too strange" He mused running a hand through his hair, humans were so hard to understand but then again he did like Wally. "I want to hang out more with you and get to know you, if you'd be willing to get to know me?"

Wally: "Oh Kansas for sure. Don't get me wrong, New York is great and all. But in the famous words of Dorothy Gale, there's just no place like home." Keystone would always be his city and even if he was currently stationed in New York City he still cleaned up the Keystones streets any chance he got. Central too if Barry was busy. "I've seen tornadoes and cows up close and personal so I can say for sure that cows are cute and that tornadoes are awesome. The destruction isn't, but nature is incredible in it's own right." As Gabriel began to apologize Wally was quick to ease his worries. "No no you're not odd at all. I'm the one who's odd. Frankly I was just surprised you hadn't gotten tired of me yet. I'm not exactly everyone's cup of tea you know." He chuckled a little at the quip and smiled. "Of course I'd be happy to hang out with you. And if you really REALLY want to, I'll even get you a hot pocket. Though as a cook you might want to brace yourself. They're not exactly five star quality haha." This whole meeting felt incredibly serendipitous. Almost like it was too good to be true. That didn't bother Wally at all. He'd always been of the mind set that you roll with the good times and the bad. He was going to enjoy this new friendship as long as it lasted.

Gabriel: “Sounds like a nice place, maybe one day I can go visit down there, at least see where you came from and how cool it sounds.” Gabe replied smiling softly it was nice to see other places and he thinks he might have seen Kansas once upon a time but he hardly remembered anymore. “Cows and cute and tornadoes are awesome just so long as the destruction is kept to a minimum, Got it” He mused chuckling. Gabriel wasn’t sure if he mis-stepped but he was grateful when Wally told him he hadn't and he didn’t want to ruin his friendship. “Oh good I’m so glad to hear that you don’t find me odd. I don’t think I could, you are very fun Wally, I mean what about you makes people tired?” he questioned curiously what about Wally made people upset he couldn’t understand at all. “I don’t mind, My other siblings are huge snack lovers, they might have even fed them to me and I don’t remember every new thing they like to show me in terms of food there is a lot. But I can get some good ideas from them about food related fun” He mused happily chuckling softly before wrapping his arm around Wally’s shoulder. “This is going to be the start of a great friendship just you wait Wally.”

Wally: Gabe definitely made Kansas sound a lot cooler than it actually was. Obviously Wally liked it because that was where he grew up and that's where his home city was but most people didn't really care for it. Especially people who were used to huge metropolitan areas. But Gabe seemed really interested so, why not? "Maybe I'll take you sometime. Show you the sights." Even if there weren't too many sights to see. This whole whirlwind of a friendship was fast even for Wally but he didn't mind one bit. Gabe was kind and generous and easy on the eyes. Wally wasn't surprised they hit it off so well but he was surprised at how quick Gabe was to defend him when they had only just met. The insecure part of him knew it was probably only temporary and that one day Gabe would grow tired of him but the optimistic side didn't really care. If that was what happened then he'd cross that bridge when they got there. For now he was just happy to get to know the guy. He smiled hearing him talk more about his siblings so fondly. "You're family sounds like a great bunch. Complicated, but still great. I'm lucky to find people who can tolerate me." He felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the hot chocolate cover him as Gabriel put his arm around him. For a second he wanted nothing more than to just stay like that, warm and safe and happy. He didn't know how long this would last, whatever this was, but he intended to enjoy every moment of it. "I think so too Gabe." A great friendship indeed. Whatever came next Wally was going to embrace it for however long he could. /END

#discord chat #Rocking Around the Christmas Tree #Featuring Wally West

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arnoldjaime13 · 3 years

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Blog Tour- BETRAYER by @ANConway With An Excerpt & #Giveaway! @RockstarBkTours

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the BETRAYER by Nicole Conway Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

About The Book:

Title: BETRAYER (The Dragonrider Heritage #2)

Author: Nicole Conway

Pub. Date: February 23, 2020

Publisher: Broadfeather Books

Formats: Paperback, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 352

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, B&N, TBD, Bookshop.org

Read for FREE with a Kindle Unlimited Membership!

The darkest secrets of Murdoc’s violent past may be their last hope.

As pressure mounts to find the Tibran witch, Devana, Thatcher and his companions struggle to regroup after discovering Phillip’s bitter betrayal. Forced into hiding while they await a new plan of attack from Prince Judan's network of spies, tensions rise and threaten to tear their company apart. Murdoc knows every second they linger risks another attack from the vicious Ulfrangar Assassins or Phillip, but Reigh is determined to stay and await new instructions.

With two of his closest friends now locked in a battle of wills, Thatcher is caught in the middle—until a surprise assault by the Ulfrangar drags him into the darkest depths of their brutal order. Faced with a life-and-death race against time, Murdoc is the only one who might be able to save him now. But for Murdoc, taking up an assassin’s blade again to fight the same order that trained him will also mean facing the worst demons of his past.

Can Murdoc finally rise above his bloody past and save his only friend? Or does destiny have a new path in store for an assassin-turned-hero?

About Book 1:

Title: HUNTER (The Dragonrider Heritage #1)

Author: Nicole Conway

Pub. Date: November 24, 2020

Publisher: Broadfeather Books

Formats: Paperback, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 352

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, TBD, Bookshop.org

Read for FREE with a Kindle Unlimited Membership!

One boy must earn the trust of a blind dragon and hunt down an elusive sorceress before she can rekindle the war that nearly destroyed their world.

As the Kingdom of Maldobar emerges victorious from the brutal invasion of the Tibran Empire, much of the land is left in utter ruin. With his home destroyed and family gone, 16-year-old Thatcher Renley has no one left to turn to. And when he’s mistaken for a Tibran soldier and banished to a wartime prison camp, Thatcher knows his only hope for freedom lies in appealing to Queen Jenna directly.

But getting out of the prison camp might be the least of his worries— especially after he stumbles across a feral dragon locked in an iron cell.

As far as dragons go, Fornax is a lost cause. The battle that killed his rider also left him blind and too aggressive for any knight to control. But Thatcher can’t deny feeling drawn to the beast. Does he have what it takes to calm Fornax and join the proud ranks of Maldobar’s dragonriders? Only time will tell. And with a bloodthirsty Tibran witch threatening to rekindle the chaos of war, everyone’s time may be running out.

Excerpt

PART ONE

Murdoc

Chapter One

Thatcher Renley was, by far, the biggest idiot I had ever met in my entire life—and that’s saying something, because I’d also met Prince Reigh Farrow. He was in a close second. But at least he had enough common sense to know that this so-called hunt Queen Jenna and Jaevid Broadfeather had sent us on was essentially a glorified suicide mission. We were charging straight into a fight with a largely unknown Tibran witch, armed with only fragments of information about her abilities and location. And if that weren’t enough, there were only three competent fighters among our group—dragons included.

Granted, Reigh could manage decently against common enemies. He’d apparently been trained in combat by the Gray Elves, and their scouts had recently improved in their fighting ability. They must’ve stumbled across someone with an actual brain who was now training their scouts and warriors. Knowing that, Reigh had probably held his own fairly well in Luntharda. But we were a long way from the wild jungle, and sooner or later, that temper of his was going to cost him.

Phoebe was … well. Hmm. Perplexing, I guess. She fluttered around with her mad storm of red curls flying, bubbling like an excited child about the projects she was working on, and radiating a relentless optimism that sort of made me sick to my stomach after a while. Not that she annoyed me, really. It was just strange to be around someone that persistently happy all the time. Happiness wasn’t something I’d had much experience with.

Which brings me back to the biggest moron of them all who, unfortunately, was now both my primary concern and the bane of my existence. Thatcher was astronomically stupid. Honestly, it was staggering he’d survived as long as he had without someone following him around, smacking his hand whenever he was about to try something dangerous. He’d volunteered for this mission without having any combat training of any kind. He was a farrier’s son, for crying out loud, and was essentially the human personification of a dandelion puff. Short, scrawny, wide-eyed, and baby-faced—he didn’t have a prayer of surviving this mess unless someone watched over him constantly.

How, by all the Gods and Fates, I had wound up being that person was still beyond my understanding.

Ugh. Fine, fine. I’d done it by choice, I suppose. Sort of, anyway. I mean, sure, I could have left him there in that alleyway in Thornbend to die along with most of the other peasants and villagers. Maybe that would’ve been kinder in the long run—especially if we were all soaring toward a gruesome death right now. Still, in that moment, with all the world swallowed up in flames and that pitiful kid on the ground at my feet, I’d looked into his eyes as he spoke to me, offering me a different path I’d craved for so long. And I’d realized … no one had ever talked to me that way before. Like I was someone and not something. No one had ever treated me that way. No one had ever looked at me and regarded me like … a person.

So, I’d made a rash and irrevocable decision. A mistake, probably. But then again, I’d been swallowing back hopes of escaping that life—the life of an Ulfrangar assassin—for as long as I could remember. That night in Thornbend had been my first real opportunity. The only catch was, of course, keeping the baby-faced kid who kept calling me “friend” alive, too.

Thatcher treated everyone that way, though. It’s like there was no room in his mind for the possibility that a person really could be evil. Shocking, considering the vacant way he stared at me sometimes—like you could pass a twig through his ear and it would come out the other side and not hit anything in between.

At first, I’d just assumed he was incredibly sheltered or naïve. Maybe he was. But after our experience with Phoebe, finding out that she had been a Tibran, I’d expected him to reject her entirely. Anyone else probably would have. Whether out of shame or fear, she’d kept that information from everyone.

But Thatcher had insisted on helping her. He’d forgiven her without a second thought. He was stupid, yes. But he was also far kinder than anyone could ever deserve.

Least of all me.

He still called me his friend like it was nothing. He laughed and chatted with me as though he genuinely enjoyed my company and wanted me around. He kept chasing after me whenever I tried to put some safe distance between us. Didn’t he get it? Couldn’t he sense it at all? I was not a good person. I never had been. I’d accepted a long time ago that no matter where I went or what I did, the pack—the Ulfrangar—would always own me. They’d carved their mark upon my soul from the very beginning and nothing could erase it. Deep down, I would always be one of them.

Even now, sitting behind Reigh astride his lithe green dragon, the weight of their presence crushed down over my body from every side. They were everywhere and nowhere. They moved in shadow, lived in anonymity, and thrived on the constant stream of the world’s darkest secrets. There was no place I could hide, nowhere I could go that they wouldn’t be able to reach.

The more I thought about it, the harder it was to justify why I’d let Jaevid set me free—even if I knew the answer already. Because of Thatcher, the idiot. No one seemed to know what he’d done to provoke Devana and her new monstrous minion, Phillip. Maybe nothing. And honestly, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t put a hand on him if I had anything to say about it. He’d called me a friend—someone who was like a brother to him—and that was enough. It was more than anyone else had ever done for me my entire life.

We cruised, riding the strong winds coming in from the sea along the eastern coastline. The tower of Eastwatch faded behind us, and far below, small villages and towns dotted the hills. Most were a safe distance from the steep cliffs that dropped into the toiling dark ocean—places where wild dragons liked to nest. But the farther we flew to the north, the more the cliffs gave way to rocky beaches. Fishing towns were built right up against the banks amidst the clusters of odd, hexagonal basalt columns and massive trunks of washed-up driftwood from Luntharda’s giant trees.

Dayrise stood just a few miles inland, stretching all the way to the sea where a large port was packed tight with big merchant ships. The vessels cruised in from the open sea, white sails puffed and banners fluttering high as flocks of seagulls chased them in. Most were probably owned by merchants happy to be sailing their trade routes again now that the Tibran war was over.

Not that I’d ever been to Dayrise myself, honestly. The Ulfrangar network spanned far beyond Maldobar’s borders, but the territory I’d been assigned to work was back down on the southern tip of the kingdom. I’d never had any reason to journey this far north.

Too bad it didn’t make me feel the least bit more secure.

A glimmer caught my eye far in the distance off our right side—the tell-tale flash of sunlight over glossy scales. A dragon. He was far off, maybe three miles on our tail, and had been since we left Eastwatch. From so far away, I couldn’t tell much else. Maybe it was just a security escort from the dragonriders keeping an eye on us from afar. Maybe it was a curious wild drake that’d caught wind of the dragoness in our group and was interested in her. I didn’t know.

And when it came to being followed, I hated not knowing.

The sight of those faraway scale flashes and the faint shape of great dark wings flapping put a pang of dread like a cold iron spike in my gut. I looked away and set my teeth against the rush of adrenaline that made my skin tingle and my heart pound like mad. I’d have to mention it to the others eventually. But not yet. I needed more information, first. To be sure this wasn’t some arrangement Jaevid had put in place because, well, he now knew what I was. He had every reason to be concerned and to want to keep a close eye on things.

Or on me, rather.

Reigh started our descent as we neared the city’s outer limits. I had no idea where we were supposed to go or who Jaevid Broadfeather had waiting for us. Hopefully not another noble with an estate we might accidentally burn down. Well, sort of accidentally, anyway. And technically we hadn’t been the one doing the burning, but I digress. Whatever. Burned is burned, I suppose.

Unlike Eastwatch, the city of Dayrise wasn’t one visited by dragonriders on military orders on a regular basis. There was no towering spire meant to house soldiers and mounts looming over the rooftops, and no high city walls topped with battlements. Not that we got any strange looks as our dragons circled outside the city’s outer limits. In fact, there were more than a dozen sizable inns crowded around the main roads leading in and out of the city’s tightly packed streets. Many of them were flanked by massive barns two or three stories tall intended to house dragons.

Reigh chose one closer to the port on the western side of the city and guided his green dragoness into a smooth landing. She cupped her wings and stretched out her hind legs, landing on the grass as elegantly as a swan on a pond.

Thatcher’s much larger orange drake landed next to us, shaking his black-horned head and puffing unhappy snorts through his nose. The dragon curled his long, striped tail around his legs and bristled, small ears turned back as those milky green eyes darted around.

I frowned. Thatcher trusted that beast wholeheartedly. But I’d seen it drag him across the horizon like caught prey once already. Thatcher had been lucky to walk away from that ordeal—luckier than anyone else seemed to want to acknowledge.

“Let’s get Vexi and Fornax settled here and find our contact,” Reigh called back to me as he straightened in the saddle. He pulled off his helmet, nearly slapping me in the face with the end of his long, sweaty braid in the process.

“This is an old city,” I muttered as I studied the road ahead that led into the narrow cobblestone streets. “Places like this tend to be dangerous after dark, and there’s only a few hours of daylight left. We should go quickly.”

He unbuckled and dismounted first, then stood sorting through his saddlebags while I climbed down. “I agree. Which is why I’m leaving you in charge of this.” Reigh took out a small drawstring purse, poured a few gold coins into his palm then tied it shut again and tossed it in my direction. “Our contact is supposed to meet us at the sign for the Crosswall Docks. They’re probably already waiting on us. Think you can find it? Taverns with dragon accommodations are harder to come by here, and we need to keep a low profile—meaning, we stay away from the ones farther into the city. So, I’ll settle up for the dragons here and meet you there.”

The purse jangled when I caught it, as though there were still quite a few coins tucked away inside. “You expect that to take a while? We need to stay together.” It wouldn’t take that long, of course. I knew that as well as he did—meaning he had another motive for wanting a few minutes alone.

“I’ve got some letters to send back to Luntharda. Shouldn’t take me more than an hour,” he replied, bowing his head to hide his face as he crammed the handful of coins into his pocket. Reigh’s emotions ran so close to the surface, it was ridiculously easy to read him even with his face angled away. Judging by the scarlet color his ears were turning, these must have been personal letters. Letters to a girl, most likely. Love letters. Ugh.

He would’ve made a terrible assassin.

“And who is it that I’m supposedly looking for at the docks?” I pocketed the bag of coins and ran a hand through my hair, trying in vain to get it out of my eyes. Months away from my former life had allowed it to grow out longer than it’d ever been before. I’d have to fix that soon.

Reigh’s expression scrunched as though he were trying to think—emphasis on trying. Complex thought didn’t seem to be one of his stronger qualities. “He didn’t say specifically. Just that we’re looking for another Broadfeather. His brother, probably. I can’t recall his first name, but I met him briefly after the war ended.”

“If we go on ahead, how do you intend to find us later?” I arched an eyebrow.

He shrugged. “Looking for someone named Broadfeather at Crosswall Docks? That’s plenty to go on. I’m sure someone can point me in the right direction.”

Fair point. A last name like that was one people generally remembered, after all.

“Did you see all the ships?” a sing-song voice chimed suddenly. Phoebe practically fluttered over to stand beside me, her red curls bobbing around her and her big, blue eyes shimmering with excitement. “Aren’t they beautiful? Can we go see them up close?”

Reigh’s entire demeanor soured as he stood straighter. “Didn’t see enough of them while you were sailing around with the Tibrans, conquering other kingdoms and slaughtering their people?” He growled every word through his teeth as he leered down at her.

She shrank back some, almost like she might duck behind me if he made a move toward her. “O-Oh, um, well, no. I mean, yes, I did have to sail with them. But Lord Argonox didn’t allow me to leave my cell or go up onto the deck during—” She stopped short and went quiet. Her brows drew together as she flicked speedy, nervous glances around everyone. “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered at last, as though she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Reigh didn’t respond. Instead, he glowered down at her with his mouth mashed into a tight frown. His light amber eyes flashed with a mixture of wrath and what I could only guess was withheld terror.

I’d seen that look before from my Ulfrangar handler whenever I’d challenged or defied him, as though for the briefest instant he wasn’t sure if he should hold his ground or flee. And while I could sympathize to a degree—after all, Phoebe had apparently been the one in charge of all the magical experimentation for the Tibran Empire—she was about as threatening as a freshly-cut daisy on her own. She probably weighed seventy pounds to his one hundred and fifty or so.

Awkward silence hung in the air until Thatcher drifted over to join us, sporting his usual, blissfully vacant grin. “Are we staying here for the night?” he asked cheerily. “I’ve never stayed at an inn before. I thought Jaevid had arranged for us to stay with someone in the city?”

With a tight sigh, Reigh spun on a heel and gestured for Thatcher to follow him. “He did, but we’ve got to get the dragons settled and I’m betting yours will need extra assistance. So, come with me. Murdoc, you can take her and find our host. We’ll catch up.”

Phoebe didn’t say a word for a long time as she followed along close beside me. Lugging her bag of gear over my shoulder, I tried not to look her way more than necessary. According to Thatcher, I gave the impression that I was glaring whenever I stared at someone for too long. No need to make it worse.

Besides, one glance was all it took. The distant fogginess in her eyes as she stared down at the sidewalk put an uncomfortable tightness in my chest. I should say something, right? That was the normal thing to do. Wasn’t it? Gods and Fates, how was I supposed to know what normal was?

“You should stop apologizing,” I blurted before I could change my mind. My tone came out much harsher than I intended, as usual. Curse it all. I should have kept my mouth shut. Silence was always safer.

Phoebe tripped over an uneven stone. She staggered, and I snapped my free hand out. I seized her arm to hold her steady.

She let out a scream. Not a surprised little yelp—a real, primal, utterly terrified scream. Phoebe went completely stiff in my grasp, blinking up at me with her entire body trembling.

What? Why would she look at me like that—like I was about to do something terrible to her? I’d never raised a hand to her. Was it because she knew I was an Ulfrangar now?

Before I could ask or even say a word, her entire expression suddenly went blank again. Her body relaxed and she glanced around, seeming confused for a moment. “O-Oh! Murdoc! I-I guess you startled me.” She blinked up at me, face flushing almost as red as her hair. The forced, twitchy smile on her lips looked almost painful. “I’m so sor—um, I mean, thank you.”

I slowly let her go. “I … I didn’t mean stop apologizing in general. I meant stop apologizing to Reigh.”

Phoebe swallowed hard. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she fidgeted with the embroidered hem of her long tunic as her mouth scrunched up. “I, um, well, I mean he is right to hate me. I did—”

“I know what you did,” I interrupted as I began walking again. “Most everyone does now, right? But Queen Jenna forgave you. The Court of Crowns absolved you. You’ve apologized to everyone over and over, including Reigh. You’ve made changes to your life to become something better now. No one can ask any more of you than that.”

“But he still hates me, doesn’t he? He’d probably kill me if you and Thatcher weren’t here.” She trotted to catch up and fall in step next to me like before.

“There’s nothing you can do about that. You can’t change your past or erase what you’ve done. And because of that, some people will always hate you. Even if you do everything right from now on, it still won’t matter to them. They will never be able to see you as anything more than what you were,” I tried to explain without biting every bitter word through my teeth. “But that doesn’t mean you should go on groveling for forgiveness. You’ve done your part. Forgiving you is Reigh’s problem now. So let it go.”

She didn’t respond right away. For a few more blocks, she followed along in total silence while we wound our way through the city’s narrow streets toward the sea. Then I felt the pressure of her wide, blue-eyed gaze on me again. It hit me like the glare of the sun, making my skin tingle. “Aren’t you afraid that people won’t forgive you for being an Ulfrangar?”

I paused at a corner before a broad, open square. In the center, a white stone fountain sprayed ribbons of water around the bust of a man in battle armor. He stood tall and proud, his eyes seemingly focused right on me, with a helmet under his arm while his other hand rested on the pommel of the sword belted at his hip. A dragonrider, most likely. But not one I recognized.

“That’s different. I don’t expect them to forgive me, so it would be pointless to ask for it,” I confessed as I held the statue’s frozen gaze. “The people who know what I’ve done could never truly forgive me. Like King Jace. And the ones who don’t understand only offer their forgiveness because they don’t know any better.” I flicked a look down at her. “Like Thatcher.”

Her mouth scrunched into a dissatisfied little frown. “What about Lord Jaevid, then? He knows, doesn’t he?”

I couldn’t keep the irony from my tone. “No. Not really. He’s gotten a small taste of it, so now he’s suspicious. But he doesn’t understand the extent of what I am.”

“Well, I forgive you, Murdoc,” Phoebe announced, a rebellious crease in her brow. “So which am I, then? Someone who understands? Or someone who doesn’t?”

I had to think about that.

The Tibran Empire had paid hefty sums to hire out Ulfrangar assassins and spies throughout the war. Phoebe had probably seen others like me before, if only in passing. She’d certainly seen all of the evil and unbridled cruelty that could come from a man like Argonox. In fact, she had probably witnessed and experienced more of it than even she could remember. But did she really comprehend what I was? What I’d done to survive up to this point?

“Could you forgive Argonox?” I countered. “Or any of the soldiers who were in charge of keeping you obedient? What about the ones who put those marks on your skin?”

Her face slowly drained of color. “B-But you didn’t do tha—”

“I’m no different from them,” I cut her off quickly. “You strip away the emblems and the banners, the flags and the creeds, and you’re left with the same thing. At its roots, evil is evil, and it doesn’t matter what you dress it up in. That’s why deep down, I’ll always be what the Ulfrangar made me. I’ll carry their darkness in me until the day I die.”

“You really think that?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “You truly believe you’re evil like Lord Argonox was?”

I set my jaw and looked away. No matter how I turned the words in my head, none of them sounded right. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. It wouldn’t matter anyway. Clearly, she couldn’t understand. We were nothing alike. Phoebe hadn’t chosen to become a Tibran. She hadn’t chosen to do all of the things Argonox had forced her to do. But there had been moments in my life, a few vile moments steeped in malice and blood, when I had. I could have rebelled then. I could have let the Ulfrangar kill me for my defiance and ended it there. But instead … I’d accepted that fate. Wanted it. Thrived on it.

Sometimes, I’d even enjoyed it.

That was the part of myself King Jace would never trust—the part Reigh, Thatcher, Jaevid, and Phoebe should have been disgusted by. But they didn’t know.

And I had no idea how to tell them.

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chroniclackofselfpreservation · 3 years

Text

Creatures of the Night

Chapter 33 - could you find a daydream in the dead of night?

Back to the Beginning < Previous chapter / Next chapter >

AO3

Masterlist

(TW: scary/nightmarish imagery, memories of an abuser, dissociation,)

(The title of the chapter comes from "Unbroken" by Birdy.)

It was late afternoon by the time Daveigh had forced Patton to call it quits for the day. He’d been going at it nonstop for hours, and while he wasn’t physically tired, his mind felt raw and tender, like thinking too hard might give him an aneurism. Projecting-wise, the memories weren’t getting any easier to handle no matter how hard he tried to distract himself, and he couldn’t get farther than a couple dozen yards from his body without his mind yanking him back out of fear.

“It’s only your first day of training,” she said as they hiked back to camp. “You’ll get it.”

“Thanks,” Patton said, surprised at the genuine optimism in his reply. He wasn’t only confident that he’d get it down eventually, but was eager to contact Roman and Virgil as soon as possible. Patton wasn’t naïve enough to think it would end well given the difficulties projecting was already giving him, but he had to try. He wasn’t blind. Patton could see the strain all of this put on Logan. He always tried to have control of a situation—especially one concerning the safety of his friends. It was the least Patton could do to ease his stress.

The two of them arrived at camp to find Logan sitting by the unlit firepit whittling a stick with a familiar, pale stone. Patton recognized it as the one Mikhail had tried to hand to him before he’d projected into the past. The man in question stood at one of his handmade tool sheds, smashing rocks together at an angle and testing the subsequent edges with his thumb.

Daveigh wandered over to chat with Mikhail, and Patton approached the hunched, focused figure at the firepit. Logan didn’t look up, engrossed in his task.

“What are you carving?” he asked gently, trying to keep from startling him—especially while he wielded such a sharp blade.

Logan looked up, knife halting mid-stroke. His face immediately brightened. “Patton! Oh, it’s—well, I was attempting to make a face, but I’m not very good at it yet.”

Patton tilted his head. “I can see it if I squint,” he teased good-naturedly, taking a seat by Logan’s side. “I doubt I could do much better,” he admitted.

I know a warrior when I see one. Patton still balked at Mikhail’s words. He may know how to shiv someone before they could do the same to him, but he was no trained fighter and his hands weren’t steady enough for detailed work like whittling. Logan, on the other hand, surely could have been a surgeon if it had interested him.

“How did you training with Daveigh go?” he asked, the edge of his bottom lip held between his teeth in concentration as he worked the blade around a lump Patton assumed was a nose.

“It went well,” he said. “I’m definitely making progress. I—” he glanced over at Daveigh and lowered his voice. “I think I might try contacting Roman and Virgil tonight.”

Logan’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t look up. “Are you sure? You’ve only been at it for a day, Patton. I don’t want you to risk yourself if you aren’t ready.”

“I can do it,” Patton assured him, and he wasn’t completely lying. Heck, he’d projected back in time to see Virgil and hadn’t so much as sneezed. Given that he had similar feelings for Roman, it made sense that traveling there would be easier than simply projecting somewhere random. Daveigh had said that their powers flowed easily toward those they loved. Besides, Patton wasn’t as concerned with how it would affect him afterwards. All that mattered was getting the message to them. Once they had that peace of mind, they could deal with the repercussions.

Logan stopped and met his eyes, searching. Patton hated how easily his face clicked into an innocent smile, his mind racing, coming up with a million different outcomes and subsequent excused he could use.

“I trust you, Patton,” he said, and if not for Patton’s already firm façade, he probably would have flinched at the words. “You know more about his area of magic than I do.” Logan turned back to his work. “What did Daveigh have to say about it?”

“She’s curious, mostly,” he said, quickly sorting out a believable lie. “There hasn’t been an oracle like me, well, ever. She said it could go either way, but I’m confident I can handle it.”

The best lies, Merri had taught him, are almost completely true.

For the rest of the evening, Patton, Logan, and Daveigh helped Mikhail around camp. He’d finished their sleeping mats, which they moved into Daveigh’s hut and discussed where they could build a hut of their own in the future. Jorryn appeared from the jungle just as the sun was setting, arms laden with food. Berries and nuts, roots, melons, and mangos; it was the most food Patton had seen in a while. Thankfully, there was more than enough for everyone to eat their fill.

They sat around the fire Daveigh telling them of ancient kingdoms and daring adventures. Patton pierced pieces of mango with a sharp stick and roasted them over the fire for Logan and himself.

“…swung her sword down with a mighty roar—but she noticed the assassin’s hidden dagger too late. The blade took her in the side, right at the joint in her armor,” Daveigh said, eyes wild with excitement as she wove her tale. Patton gasped, and Daveigh’s smile grew wider. Mikhail listened passively, whittling a stick into various shapes and designs with far more dexterity than either of them could dream of. Jorryn sat forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands hanging down limply. Tiny, almost translucent vines sprouted from the ground and twined through his fingers—as if the island itself were a child gripping the fingers of its father. He stared at the fire without expression, lily-pad skin turned rich olive-gold in the firelight. The patches of orange and white lichen mottling his face, arms, chest, and legs turned warm and flickering. Patton hadn’t paid the Green Man much attention since arriving, however he went off on his own most of the time, rarely hanging around the rest of them. Patton hadn’t heard him speak more than a few brief sentences.

Patton could see a pervasive melancholy lingering behind his defensive air. Patton looked away, not wanting to stare.

“Blood spilled from the wound, and Lady Fenroy knew she had little time left. Her trusty bowman shot an enchanted arrow at the attacker from his perch, forcing the enemy back. The Lady’s panther bared its fangs and—”

Something rustled from the shadows of the jungle, hidden by the darkness of night. Patton shot to his feet and Daveigh paused, looking confused. Mikhail also looked as if he’d heard it, though he didn’t seem nearly as worried about it. Alert, but not tense.

“Patton?” Logan inquired softly, taking the stick of roasted mangos from him before they brushed the dirt. “What’s wrong?”

As if on cue, two figures emerged from the foliage, blinking in the light from the fire. Patton relaxed, sitting back down. It was Eudora and Killian.

A smile broke across Logan’s face.

“Would you two care to join us?” Mikhail asked, equally pleased at their arrival.

“Oh, they’re invited, now?” Jorryn muttered. “After wanting nothing to do with us for the past few centuries?”

“Killian wanted to come,” Eudora said curtly. “I have no intention of bothering you all.”

“It’s alright if they stay, right?” Patton said, plowing through the tension by force.

“I see no reason why not,” Logan said, looking quite excited. Patton felt a besotted smile work its way onto his face at Logan’s expression.

Killian pulled Eudora by the hand, coming around to sit next to Mikhail. Thankfully, Daveigh cleared her throat and continued her story, gradually easing the tension in the group. Even Jorryn relaxed a bit. Killian leaned over and talked to Mikhail about his knife, inspecting the runes with a smile. Daveigh eventually fell back into her excited, animated way of storytelling, doing exaggerated expressions and voices that made Patton giggle. Eudora lingered outside of conversation, but Patton could tell she was listening to the story and trying not to react at each twist and turn.

Patton picked the hot, dripping mango off the stick, handing one to Logan and popping the other into his mouth. He smiled and hummed happily as the juice covered his tongue, the sugars sticky and caramelized. Logan looked at him with a strange expression on his face, a faint smile of his own crawling its way onto his face.

Patton couldn’t remember being this content since their arrival on the island.

Daveigh finished her story and they all clapped—some more enthusiastically than others.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said, bowing with a flourish. “Now, excuse me while I stuff my face. I’m starving,” she laughed, accepting the roasting stick Mikhail passed to her over the fire.

Logan cleared his throat. “At risk of dampening the festivities,” he started, “I’d like to get some more specifics from you all about the curse on this island.”

Jorryn’s expression darkened, his fingers twitching.

Daveigh and Mikhail both looked at Eudora. She reddened a bit, looking… awkward almost. “I’ve told you everything I know. What more is there to say? We’re stuck here forever and we’ll never die.”

“If Ursula dies, will the curse break?” he asks.

Eudora snorted. “That is impossible.”

“Will it break?” Logan repeated, firmer.

“Yes, I suppose. If she were to somehow die despite her immortality.”

Logan leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “As of right now, I have very good reason to believe the last heir to the Witch Queen’s Inheritance is working to solve this very problem,” he said and everyone stared at him as if he’d gone completely insane, but he continued before anyone could interrupt him. “Regardless, if the curse breaks, we have no guarantee we will be returned to where we came from. We’d simply be in danger of dying on the island, no one knowing our location, yes?”

“And the one person with the power to transport us out of here would be dead,” Jorryn muttered.

Daveigh raised a finger. “Well, if this heir was powerful enough to kill her, maybe he could do it?”

Eudora didn’t look as optimistic. “Even if the heir learned to Displace—assuming he was powerful enough in the first place, it would take several years of training regardless—Ursula is the only person who knows the exact location of the island. A witch cannot displace themselves or anyone else somewhere they cannot picture exactly in their minds.”

Logan perked up. “You’ve studied displacement, then?”

“In all but practice,” she admitted. “A single witch with enough raw power to displace themselves, let alone a group of people, is a rare breed. Even if I did have the power necessary, I’ve been away from the Witchlands for so long, I don’t know if I’d trust myself to remember the location properly. It would be extremely dangerous.”

“Very well,” he said. “Thank you.”

Mikhail passed around more food, and the mood gradually lightened once more, Daveigh prodding Mikhail into telling a story of his own—though quite less animated.

Patton watched as Logan sat back, staring at the fire. He could practically see his mind working the problem like those ring puzzles Logan always had sitting on his desk back home, turning it over and over, looking at it from all its angles for the solution.

Patton smiled and popped another piece of sugary-sweet mango into his mouth.

* * * * * * * * * *

Patton lay on the new sleeping mat Mikhail had made for him, staring up at the ceiling, Logan and Daveigh asleep beside him. Daveigh slept almost as silently as Patton did, and he only knew she was still breathing due to the slow rise and fall of her chest. She occasionally shifted around, though. Logan slept on his stomach, a mass of tangled limbs and even messier hair. For someone so organized, Patton wouldn’t have thought he’d sleep so disheveled.

It was adorable, really.

Patton was certain Logan hadn’t forgotten what he’d said about trying to contact Roman and Virgil tonight. Rather, tonight was the first night in a while that, despite their predicament, it seemed as if everything would be okay in the end. The sheer relief of actually enjoying themselves for the first time in several days was exhausting in of itself. Patton couldn’t blame him for falling asleep seconds after laying down.

Patton closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He knew what he’d likely see when he projected—especially so far away—but he couldn’t afford to be nervous. As he’d quickly learned during his training, the emotions he felt would directly influence his mindscape, and therefore his experience while projecting.

He just had to stay calm.

Patton pictured the house in Wakeby, letting the small, rhythmic breaths puffing from Logan’s nose lull him into the meditative state. Patton felt his body suddenly weighed down, and he jerked up.

He was still in the hut. Patton looked down at his semi-translucent hands in frustration. He hadn’t officially projected to somewhere else—on purpose, at least. Still, it seemed ridiculous that he could astral project through time on accident, but when he finally wanted his freak powers to work they were stubbornly weak.

No, I can do this, Patton thought firmly, pulling himself back into his body. He opened his physical eyes, set his jaw, then closed them again.

The next four tries all ended the same: Patton sitting up in the hut, still overlapping his own body. He returned to his body and sat up for real, cradling his head in his hands and sighing. Why couldn’t he get this?

Patton glanced at Logan’s sleeping form. Waking him up at this point didn’t sound like a good idea. He’d risk alerting Daveigh as well, and there was no way she’d condone any of this. He just had to think about it like Logan would. On the surface, it seemed as if nothing had triggered the projection into the past. All he’d done was stand up and walk around the fire to take Mikhail’s knife from him. He was lucky he hadn’t passed out on his way to find Logan. He could have stabbed himself. But it didn’t make any sense for something that astounding to happen for no reason. Patton just had to figure out why.

What would Logan do? he thought desperately. Well, he’d probably have Patton walk through the events leading up to the projection. Patton thought back. Daveigh had been asking him about his family history—which he hadn’t been too forthcoming about, though not due to a lack of willingness. Mikhail noted that Logan was still gone, and Patton had asked if there were any predators on the island.

A few, Mikhail had said. The thought should have terrified Patton, but all he’d felt was an overwhelming urge to protect. Almost anger at the image of something hurting Logan. The darkness inside him ready to rip open the throat of anything daring to harm those he loved. Usually, thoughts like those would have troubled him, but at that moment, he’d accepted them. Used them as fuel. Channeled them.

Then Mikhail had offered him the knife, he’d stood to grab it, and then…

Patton rested his chin in his hands, tapping the point of his nose with a finger as he wracked his brain. He wouldn’t be surprised to see steam leaking out of his ears. He usually relied on the adrenaline of danger to help him make quick strategic decisions. Did Logan think like this all the time? Patton smiled to himself. That boy was truly amazing.

Shaking his head, Patton returned to his problem. The only significantly different thing that had happened was the surge of protectiveness. That had somehow had flung him several hundred years into the past… right to when Virgil was having a rough time.

Patton’s eyes narrowed and lips pressed together in a frustrated pout. He didn’t want to end up in the past again. Especially without someone like that nice witch to help him orient himself. Unfortunately, that was the only sort of lead he had. He hadn’t gone as far as integrating the person he’d grown up as into the personality he’d crafted for Dot, but after his conversation with Roman that night, Patton had learned to tolerate it. Maybe even accept it. As long as he focused on Roman and Virgil, he’d end up seeing one of them. Hopefully.

Nothing to do but try, I guess, Patton thought, laying back down. He set his jaw and proceeded to let his imagination run wild with all the horrible things that could be happening to Roman and Virgil. It was a particular kind of trick to both rile himself up and stay in enough control to still project. The darkness inside him unfurled almost hesitantly, as if it didn’t trust Patton’s deliberate goading.

Slowly, it filled him. How dare someone hurt his friends. He’d kill them. Tear them limb from limb.

A sudden dizzy weightlessness took hold of him, and it took all of Patton’s willpower not to freak out and inadvertently pull himself back into his body. A second later, he blinked, finding himself standing in their living room. Whispers of memories immediately bombarded his ears.

Patton. Patton! Patton… dozens of voices screamed, cried, growled, whispered, laughed. He recognized them all. Patton plugged his ears, but it didn’t make a difference. It’s okay, he assured himself, taking a breath. Just stay calm. They aren’t real. He had to stay focused. He could still feel his body lying on its mat back on the island, the gentle breeze across his skin. He’d be alright.

“Roman? Virgil?” he called. Nothing. Would they be able to hear him in this state? Patton couldn’t be sure, so he rushed upstairs—running wasn’t much different as a projection, though it was a little odd when his feet didn’t sink into the carpet at all. Checking both their rooms, Patton found himself alone in the house. Roman’s truck was in the driveway.

They’re probably just out of the house, he thought halfheartedly, standing alone in the upstairs hallway. Last he and Logan had seen, they’d been facing off against an angry immortal witch. Patton shook his head. They weren’t dead. He wouldn’t accept it. He’d just have to leave them a note for when they got back. Daveigh had explained how they couldn’t interact with most physical objects while in the astral plane. Patton would just have to figure something out in that case—

A towering figure blocked the stairs, so tall he had to bow his head. Patton froze, feeling as if his heart was squeezed to stillness inside him. The hallway light wasn’t on, so he couldn’t make out the man’s face, but he didn't have to. The figure had a bottle held loosely in his hands, a stained wife-beater hanging from his shoulders and stretching over his beer belly. The smell forced its way up Patton’s nose, choking him. Still, it wasn’t a perfect memory of the man. The figure’s arms were gangly and inhumanly long, and his neck looked disjointed, bent as it was against the ceiling.

The whispers swelled in a frantic crescendo. Patton felt his limbs going numb as his body began to pull him back.

No, he thought hopelessly, squeezing his eyes shut. I have to leave a note. I have to let them know we’re okay. He isn’t real. He can’t hurt me. Even in his head, he sounded breathless and pathetic, and he knew he didn’t believe himself.

The man grunted, as if annoyed by the cramped hall and took a lumbering step toward Patton. The house around him flickered, almost glitching and giving way to empty, nightmarish darkness. Seatbelts sprouted from the ground and began winding around his wrists and ankles. He could feel them. Patton, at last, let out a scream as the man charged, lifting his bottle like a club.

Patton’s vision of the Wakeby house flickered, and he felt suddenly dizzy. He was getting pulled out and into a nightmare.

“No,” he growled, that same feral protectiveness sputtering to life inside him. Patton's mind felt as if it were being torn in half, but he suffered through it, forcing himself to stay aware. In the back of his mind he could feel his physical body trembling and gasping, responding to the fear without knowing where it was coming from.

Just as the man was about to bash him over the head, Patton relaxed his arms and managed to wriggle free from the seatbelts. He dove past the man’s feet as he took a clumsy wing, falling over.

“C’mere, boy,” he groaned, writhing around as he tried to right himself in the too-small corridor. Patton raced down the stairs, heart picking out a frantic trot in his incorporeal chest. He came to the living room and kitchen, but his mind was blank. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t interact with anything. It wasn’t as if he could pluck a sticky-note from Logan’s desk and leave them a nice little note on the bathroom mirror.

“Get back here,” the man’s grating voice called, lumbering footsteps descending the stairs. Patton panicked, his mind lancing with pain as he resisted the pull back to his real body. He swayed as he rushed to the cellar door—somewhere to hide. The pain got so bad he couldn’t see straight.

Something ground beneath his shoe as he instinctually grabbed for the door handle despite his hand passing through, and he spared a second to glance down. He’d stepped in the leftover rosemary powder from when Virgil had sealed Remus in the cellar.

And he’d left a footprint.

Thinking as quickly as his pain-addled mind could, Patton dropped to his knees and spread the half-burned powder across the floor in a thin sheet with his hand.

“Don’t you run away from me,” the figure said, coming to the bottom of the stairs. Patton didn’t look up, quickly scrawling “We are OK” in the powder with a hasty P&L beneath it.

He finished the tail of the L right as the man reached him, grabbing him and lifting him into the air with too-long fingers clamped around his neck. The sight of the man’s face was what finally did it. Grubby and scratchy, the feeling of fingers around his throat.

Patton’s mind finally broke.

* * * * * * * * * *

Logan woke to Patton’s screams. He jerked awake, Daveigh’s confused mumbling behind him. Patton shot straight up to a seat, gasping for breath and dry heaving.

Logan rose to his knees. “Patton? What’s wrong?”

“I’m slipping. I’m…” he said gasped, sitting back against the wall of the hut. He met Logan’s eyes with considerable effort, a wan smile flickering across his pale face. “I did it. I told them.”

“What’s going on?” Daveigh asked.

Logan’s heart skipped a beat. How could he have forgotten? Patton had said he was going to try contacting Roman and Virgil tonight, and Logan had fallen asleep instead.

Mikhail was at their door in an instant. “What’s wrong?”

“Da… Daveigh,” Patton managed, voice sluggish like he was sedated. “I’m slipping. S…. sorr….” the rest of the word ended in a long breath and Patton seemed to wind down like a toy, eyes glazing over.

Daveigh sat up, taking everything in for a moment before sighing. “He did it, didn’t he. Contacting your friends?”

“I believe so,” Logan said. “What does he mean he’s slipping?”

“He’s dissociating,” she said, crawling forward and placing a gentle hand against Patton’s temple. “Quite extensively from the looks of it. He must have really gone past his limit. Everything’s fine, Mikhail. You can go back to bed.”

He gave a nod and a concerned glance Patton’s way before retreating back into the darkness.

Logan worried his bottom lip between his teeth. “Is he going to be okay?”

“He’ll be fine after a few hours,” she said. “Patton? Do you want to lay down? You’ll get sore sitting up all night.”

Patton’s index finger twitched and a breathy, strangled hum limped out of him. Not much Logan could decipher there.

“Patton, could you blink for me? Once for yes, twice for no?” he offered gently.

Patton blinked once, slowly. Yes.

“Would you like us to lay you down?”

Another affirmative. Daveigh helped him situate Patton back onto his sleeping mat, the hut creaking beneath them.

“There isn’t much more we can do until he recovers,” she said, yawning. “Be ready for a lecture in the morning, kid.” With that said, Daveigh returned to her own mat and promptly fell back asleep.

Logan knelt at Patton’s side for a while longer, feeling helpless. He pulled his mat a few inches closer to Patton’s and lay on his side, watching him. Patton stared at the ceiling, expressionless, and yet his eyes were pooling with tears. One slipped free and cascaded down the side of his head and into his hair. Instinctively, Logan reached out and wiped it away with a knuckle. Patton closed his eyes, squeezing out more tears and leaning almost imperceptibly into the touch.

“I’m sorry this happened, Patton,” Logan whispered. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”

Another soft note from Patton’s throat, his eyes still closed. Logan could interpret the meaning well enough on his own. He hesitated for a split second and then said, “Please blink twice if you want me to stop.” Patton opened his eyes, still unfocused, but perhaps a bit confused. Logan held his breath as he carded his fingers through Patton’s curls. They were slightly tangled and Logan could feel sand and dirt throughout, but they were still so soft.

Patton’s eyes fluttered shut, a relieved little sigh leaking out of him. In a fit of lucidity, Patton rolled over onto his side, curling in on himself. Logan froze, holding his breath. Patton was so close, now. He could feel his breath against his shirt. Slowly, he relaxed again, running his fingers through Patton’s hair until they both fell asleep.

#memories of abuse #memories of abuser #past abuse #mention of abuse #nightmares #intense imagery #scary imagery #nightmarish imagery #dissociation #tw dissociation #COTN

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