#one that bends the trees and smells like ozone. it was never like that in thr southwest and im not sure that happens here

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

#there's something really beautiful about experiencing the weather patterns of a new place #where i live now. its not like where i grew up. not like the foothills of Appalachia but its more familiar than the Chihuahuan desert was #when i go home to ohio everythings so green. so green. unimaginably green and the towns are in the woods. the hills roll #and trees billow deciduous and packed so tightly the treeline is like a wall of plant matter. here there are trees but they are tall and #evergreen. patchy in places like shrubs in the desert. the grass grows green but also pale tan and dead. houses are routed in valleys #between mountains. they're made of wood and not stucco but they still look strange and the landscape is crumpled together tall. and there's #water. it rains. days can be dreary and gray with drizzle. i forgot what thats like. when a single low stratus cloud blocks out thewhole sk #and fog clings to the trees. my school bus used to drive by a lake where thr fog was so thick i didnt kno how the driver could see the road #but somehow i forgot how much joy suspended water vapor gives me living in a place where when it rains it pours so hard the streets flood #and the greedy ground drinks the landscape dry. but there are new things as well. here smoke rolls up over thr mountains and gets stuck in #the valleys so that the weather forcast reads: Smoke for days on end. im used to tornado warnings and heat warnings and dust storm warnings #but ive never expected Smoke as a type of weather. and im sure there's more to experience. ive only been here like 3 weeks. its not as gree #as home. the storms dont seem to get quite so violent. the woods are so full of bears that its an active threat. but its not the desert #and while ill miss the shapes of desert plants and little lizards. when i look up at the pine and spruce trees i feel like i can breathe a #little easier. well see how i feel once the long cold winter sets in haha #but i dunno. part of me still longs for a violent thunderstorm. one where u can feel the temperature drop and u csn feel it building all da #one that bends the trees and smells like ozone. it was never like that in thr southwest and im not sure that happens here #but maybe thats just a desire for chaos and violence as a product of my pathological internal control. i cant be spontaneous so let nature #bring the fear to me. some of my favorite memories are watching lightning strikes #so it goes i suppose #unrelated #listen. is it fucked up to have ohio nostalgia? maybe so. but in my defense i grew up in the pretty part of ohio lol

[innocentbi-stander]

There’s nothing I love more then a powerful jaskier au but I’m also extremely fond of when jaskier gets to be an oblivious idiot (geralt can’t hog that title all of the time)

So hear me out, jaskier with magic, but also a jaskier that is in extreme denial about having magic

geralt knew jaskier wasn’t completely human a week after meeting him. He didn’t smell quite right, there was always a slight tinge of ozone under his natural scent, something that felt like raw untapped power

his medallion didn’t vibrate though, so he knew the bard wasn’t a monster. He waited for the other shoe to drop, for jaskier to finally reveal whatever the hell the bard was. Months and months go by, and eventually years and still...... nothing.

geralt watches as the flower crowns jaskier makes never wilt, how the sun shines brighter when he laughs, how people seem to bend over backwards when jaskier smiles hard enough, and how the forest itself seems to create paths for him to walk down, how the road wouldn’t dare to lay a rock in his merry way

it isn’t until they’re in the middle of a bandit attack off the path and geralt watches as the bandit creeping behind jaskier is thrown into a tree with a sickening crack, and the man threatening jaskier with a sword suddenly screams in pain as the metal turns red hot, giving geralt the time he needs to cut the man down, the scent of burned flesh lingering in the hair

jaskier turns to him, a relieved smile on his face, and geralt thinks this is the moment, there’s no denying this, and jaskier just makes some comment about how lucky he was that it was hot out today, and can you imagine how that could have gone if it was fall?

and then geralt realizes, 

oh.

jaskier is just a fucking idiot

an idiot who is so convinced of his own humanity that he denies any and all of the signs pointing towards just the opposite

signs like how jaskier always seems to know what geralt needs before he knows it himself

random weird instructions like, make sure you bring an extra vial of Swallow, which comes in handy when swamp water makes the first vial slip right through his hand to smash on the ground or a “don’t forget your cloak” on a perfectly sunny day that turns to a downpour as he trudges back to the inn

all of these instances continue through the years, years that don’t seem to affect jaskier as geralt silently adds possible immortality to his list of “weird things jaskier can apparently do”

eventually when yennefer and ciri join them on their travels, other people are finally privy to jaskier’s powers

yennefer directs a questioning eyebrow toward geralt when the dead bird they stumbled upon twitches to life in jaskier’s hands and flies away. 

later that night geralt tells yennefer about all the instances of magic that have surrounded jaskier since they’ve been traveling together

the only thing yennefer can think of is that it must be fey blood, it’s the only explanation that makes sense of all of the raw power

ciri joins the ranks of People Baffled By Jaskier’s Obliviousness when she watches jaskier glare a field of flowers into full bloom and then remark on the power of positive reinforcement because, look ciri!

these instances continue

a perfectly sunny day turns into a downpour when geralt accidentally insults jaskier’s outfit

valdo marx conveniently has an intimate run in with a ditch after crossing paths with them on the road

a tavern bar catches on fire after the owner refused to serve geralt

it all comes to a head when nilfgaardian soldiers manage to corner them in the mountains. Geralt is cutting down soldiers left and right, yennefer is shooting spell after spell. but its obvious they are tiring with so many soldiers, and they are in a space too small for ciri to scream without hurting any of her family

jaskier doesn’t know what’s happening, one second they’re being overwhelmed, and he feels a sensation boiling up in his chest, engulfing his body and growing bigger and bigger with his desperation and he just wants everything to stop and suddenly he feels a need to push out and he closes his eyes and thrusts his hands forward, and everything is..... quiet?

he opens his eyes and he sees geralt and ciri and yen all gaping at him and jaskier looks around and sees frost stretching out from his feet, and ice enveloping all of the soldiers, freezing them in place. there’s neat circles of grass surrounding each member of his family but the frost clinging to his fingertips leaves no doubt about who was the cause of this sudden onslaught of snow.

the bard brushes his hands off on his pants, and makes a small show of straightening his clothes before he looks back at his companions, still staring at him in awe.

“well, that’s new”

yennefer lets loose a loud laugh shocked from her in disbelief, followed by the little giggles of ciri

the bruise geralt leaves on his own forehead after facepalming doesn’t go away for three days   

#the witcher #the witcher jaskier #the witcher geralt #the witcher yennefer #Witcher AU #witcher geralt #witcher jaskier #witcher yennefer #witcher ciri #the witcher ciri #bamf jaskier #feral jaskier #magic jaskier #jaskier has magic #but he doesn't know it #oblivious jaskier #geraskier #witcher headcanon #non-human jaskier #fey jaskier #or something like it #to be determined later

[herenya-writes]

if you’re still looking for a lil sad spirk prompt, how about one of their communicators going out on a planet while they’re both down there and one can’t find the other and it’s getting dark or stormy?

Thank you very much for this! I know this is like a day and a half late, but such is the muse lol. Also, this got a little longer than I thought it would be (around a thousand words) so most of it is going to be under a read more. Thanks again!

Lightning flashed across the sky and thunder followed all too quickly. He had known when he and Spock flew the shuttle down here that storms were common on the planet, but he had hoped that they would be in and out without having to deal with any. Well, it was too late for that now.

He flipped open his communicator, already heading in the direction of the shuttle. “Kirk to Spock, do you read me?”

“Affirmative, Captain. Tricorder readings have picked up an intense storm gathering just south of our position.”

“Yeah, I see it,” He glanced up at the rapidly approaching storm wall. “Rendezvous at the shuttle; she’s strong enough to weather the storm.”

“Aye, Ca—” The communicator crackled and hissed before falling silent.

Jim froze, fear racing through him as bright as the lighting that flashed in the distance. “Spock? Spock, do you read me?”

When several seconds passed with no answer, Jim cursed and changed directions. He was about three minutes from the shuttle now, but all the shelter in the world wouldn’t mean a thing if Spock wasn’t there with him. As he headed toward the place where he and Spock had split up earlier, he spoke into his communicator again. “Captain Kirk to Enterprise. Do you read me, Enterprise?” The only response was a crackle. The storm must be interfering with the communicators.

He was practically sprinting by the time he reached the edge of the forest that Spock had wanted to investigate, his steps spurred on by the claps of thunder that were drawing closer and closer. The dense trees forced him to slow, however, and limited his vision to only a few dozen meters in any direction. “Spock! Spock, where are you?”

He could smell the ozone in the air now and knew he only had a few minutes before the rain started coming down. He called again, doing his best to throw his voice above the thunder that seemed to shake the trees every time it boomed.

Finally, finally, he heard a response, and the relief that coursed through him was instantaneous. “Over here, Jim!” He spun around and took off in the direction of Spock’s voice, paying no mind to the tree branches that stung his face as he ran by.

He found Spock leaning against a tree, one of his legs bent at an unnatural angle. “It is broken,” Spock confirmed as he dropped onto his knees next to him. “After the communicator went out, I attempted to make my way to the shuttle. In my haste, I did not see that the ground beneath me was unstable. It shifted under my weight, and I fell.”

“Bones is going to tease us about this for weeks,” Jim said, hoping that the humor would cover the fear in his voice. Spock was in no condition to move very far on his own, and the shuttle was too far away for Jim to carry him. Even if Spock could walk they would never make it in time.

Spock, of course, saw right through him. “Jim.” It was just a single syllable, but it did more to calm him than all the words in the dictionary could. He forced his shoulders to release some of their tension and stood.

“I’m going to see if I can find some shelter nearby,” he said, glancing around the forest. He turned his gaze back to Spock and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you dare move unless you absolutely have to. Understood?” Spock only inclined his head in response, which wasn’t a yes. They didn’t have time for an argument though, so Jim just glared at him one more time before stepping past him and deeper into the woods.

By the time he found something that was semi-suitable, small droplets were beginning to fall, splashing in his eyes as he made his way back to Spock. “The storm front is almost on top of us, but I found a small cave where we can shelter,” he explained, already bending down to help Spock up. “As long as the rain doesn’t go too sideways, we should stay relatively dry.”

Spock winced as Jim pulled him up, and Jim had to push down the guilt and sorrow that erupted to the surface of his mind. After a minute of maneuvering so that Spock was putting as little weight on his injured leg as possible, they headed toward the cave. With each step, Spock’s stoic composure slipped just a little. To anyone else, it might have been invisible, but Jim had learned to read him like an open book, and right now every micro-expression was one of pain.

The rain began to fall faster and harder, and their clothes were nearly soaked by the time they reached the safety of the cave. Jim helped Spock sit against the back wall, forcing himself to keep a level head as Spock let out a quiet hiss of pain.

“Well, so much for staying dry,” he said, sitting next to Spock, careful not to jostle him with his movements. “Are you alright? Is there anything I can do?”

Spock shook his head. “Your presence is enough, ashayam,” he replied, and Jim couldn’t help the way his lips turned up at the endearment. “Although the storms on this planet are violent, they are also short. We should be able to return to the shuttle within an hour and a half.”

Jim laid his head on Spock’s shoulder, and a silence fell between them for several minutes. The rain continued to pound against the ground outside the cave, lightning flashing across the sky every few seconds and chased by loud claps of thunder. If he had been viewing it under different circumstances, Jim might have found the storm beautiful.

“You scared me,” he said after several minutes, the words almost whispered. He knew Spock would hear them, though. “When your communicator cut out, my brain immediately jumped to the worst conclusions. I know the dangers our job holds, and I know neither of us would trade it for the world, but I can’t imagine what I would do without you by my side.”

He felt Spock shift and place a gentle kiss on the top of his head. “Nor can I, ashayam.”

They watched the storm in silence after that, silently drawing strength from one another as a hundred words passed between them unsaid. They would survive as they always had, side by side, universe be damned.

#herenya writes #spirk #this was supposed to be angsty but its not really #only kinda #idk #i had fun writing it tho!

[writing-the-end]

LoL Chapter 43- Remember

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU, designs, ideas belongs to @theguardiansofredland)

Finding Mumbo isn’t the only challenge facing the hermits. They need to remind him who his family really is. 

_______________________________________

“....i….a….n….? Gri…..Grian!” Iskall’s voice, tainted with fear, breaks through the empty unconsciousness that gripped Grian. He winces, pain shooting through every nerve and muscle of his being, his heart aching and fingers numb. xB is hovering over him, bending water to ease the pain and electricity that still runs through his body. Jevin’s slime runs across the burns that lightning has left behind. In the air, a faint scent of burnt chicken permeates around Grian. 

He sits upright, terror ricocheting and intertwining with the pain in his body. Despite the horrible pain of electricity conducting through him, and the Forest of Memories using his proclivity for pain to drag him deeper into despair, his first worry is Mumbo lost in the woods.

Mumbo’s a city boy. He doesn’t know anything about the wild. Even if he’s just lost, he could fall down a ravine, or get caught in carnivorous vines, or hunted by a beast. But this isn’t any forest- this is the Forest of Memories, haunting him with his past, his fears. And haunting him with what just happened. 

But it’s not just that Mumbo is from the city. He also knows his best friend's brain will turn his memories, his thoughts, his actions against him. It couldn’t have been any other hermit, one that wasn’t so insecure about their position among the guild, their ability to be a mage. It had to be Mumbo, the newest, the most fearful. It attacked him knowing he saw himself as the weakest link. And it made him believe it, see it. 

“We have to go after that spoon.” Grian states, standing. He wobbles like a newborn shleep, falling to his knees. 

“Hold up, Grian. You literally just had 300 million volts use your body as a lightning rod, I know you’re the guild healer and all but you can’t go running after him.” Cleo holds him down, keeping him from trying to run off into the woods. “Grian stop! You can’t run off on your own, or the Hangman’s Playground will turn your thoughts against you. We’ll go together.” 

“How will we even know where he’s gone?” Keralis questions, reaching out to pet a shleep that had wandered into the clearing. The second the bug mage’s fingers sink into the galactic wool, red bolts of static zap him with a yelp. 

“I think he went that way.” BDubs points, seeing other shleep going to the east, static bolts of red energy dancing between swirls of starry fur. Zed is positively delighted to have the company of the shleep in the terrifying forest, and he makes sure to keep the ruminants spirits high to help with the sanity of the rest of the group. 

Iskall helps Grian to his feet, letting the angelic being rest lean on his shoulder, his friend stumbling along with the group. Joe casts a spell which enchants a compass that Wels had, pointing the direction of Mumbo. Though the poem rhyming ass with compass was a bit much. 

The longer they spend within the Forest of Memories, the longer it’s effects linger and worm their way through their defenses. Stress’s amulet shatters, breaking in a burst of darkness. Immediately, the memories of her life before the hermits flood back in. She ignores the laughter, the empty parties and emptier people, running forward and grabbing another amulet to protect herself. They’re all fighting off their own demons, but the knowledge that Mumbo may be fighting his alone keeps them moving forward. 

Ren tips his head up, sniffing the air and wagging his tail. “I smell a change in the air, I think we’re close.” 

“You can’t possibly smell Mumbo, he’s not that stinky.” Iskall jeers, pushing a copse of brambles out of the way. 

“It’s not Mumbo I smell- it’s his magic. It smells like ozone.” Ren disappears through the green foliage, though his tail gets stuck on the way out. He yanks it free a few times. 

“Why would magic smell like oz-” Iskall’s cut off when he gets his answer. A bolt of lightning burns the grass at his feet, red lightning branching and crackling through the sky. 

Grian let’s go of Iskall, stumbling forward. “Mumbo…” 

Hovering in the air, surrounded by bolts of lightning striking at random intervals and places, the multi-mage is lost within his own magic. A power surge, fully realized, and well beyond Mumbo’s control. He was alone, with no one to calm his fears, to help him reign in his magic. Mumbo’s eyes are open, though glowing and crackling with energy. His arms hang limp, his feet at least a meter off the ground. 

Mumbo’s in a power surge. TFC tries to step closer, but with every forward step any hermit takes, they’re forced to retreat two lest they be struck down like Grian was. He’s not even conscious enough to realize what he’s doing. And the surge is getting stronger. Lightning begins to burn the trees around them, setting the wood on fire. The shleep that were following Zed scatter, their wool turning a misty black. 

“He’s going to destroy everything!” Beef warns, jumping back and stomping out a fire started by the lightning. 

“He’s going to destroy himself!” Xisuma adds. “But how in the world are we going to get close enough to talk him down?” 

Iskall and Grian look at one another. They’re Mumbo’s best friends, if there’s anyone that could bring him back to reality, it’s Iskall and Grian. The architechs. Iskall casts his magic, his own radioactive iskallium negates the energy of Mumbo’s magic, and Grian wraps his arms around Iskall and flutters into the air, within shouting distance of Mumbo. He struggles with his wounds, but refuses to drop Iskall. At least, not this time. “Mumbo? Mumbo!” 

Grian’s shouts fall on deaf ears, the hollow form of Mumbo possessed only by magic. Iskall and Grian look at one another, then back at Mumbo. “Mumbo, look! Grian’s fine, it’s not the worst wound he’s ever gotten, you know that!” 

“Mumbo, I know you think we don’t want you.” Grian ducks, his hair standing on end as a bolt of lightning nearly hits him again. “But that’s not true! You’re a part of this family, you’re a hermit! We aren’t like other guilds, we aren’t like your parents were. I asked you to join us because you were fun, and unique, and different. That’s what this guild is for.” 

“You’re so strong Mumbo, because no matter how many times things don’t seem to work out, or your magic is just out of reach, you still keep trying! We all admire how no matter what happens, you still get right back up and try again. I mean, Grian and I have mega thrashed you before, and you just stand up and go for it again!” Iskall notices Mumbo’s eyes blink, and the loud roar of cracking lightning and thunderous roars begin to deafen. 

“Yeah, Mumbo we know you’re strong! You’ve beaten us before, and we’re two S-class mages! But we also understand your struggle. We see how hard you work.” Grian floats toward the ground, following as Mumbo’s feet touch down on the grass. Iskall kneels beside Mumbo, Grian wrapping his wings to coo and comfort all three. “Mumbo, we want you around. You are a hermit and you are a part of this family.” 

“You aren’t our weakest link, man. You’re our best friend.” Iskall breathes. He watches Mumbo blink once, then twice, and on the third time they can see his grey eyes once again. The last of the lightning fades away, Mumbo collapsing into his friends’ arms. 

“I’m so sorry, I hurt you.” Mumbo whimpers, turning his head. Embarrassed to look at Grian. He hurt his best friend. He could’ve killed all the others. 

“You know me, Mumbo.” Grian chuckles. “Nothing can keep me down for long.”

The other hermits join the architechs on the ground, reminding Mumbo how much he means to them. How he’s made their lives better, brighter, more fun. 

And the Forest of Memories can’t hurt them. 

The dark shadows lurking in the foliage instead show the dappled light of the sun through the trees. Rather than focusing on the negative, they see the light. Sunshine burns away the voices of those who wish to tear each hermit down. Doubtful family members, cruel guildmasters, even the voice of Magistrate Dolios himself is eradicated by the group’s sentimentality of each other. 

Instead, the Forest begins to play the best moments of their times together. Mumbo and Grian meeting, Team ZIT meeting TFC on the side of a road, the day Cleo beached her ship on an island that should never exist. Days spent basking in the sun, too hot to train, playing on the beach and in the waters of the Ashioll sea. Cheering on and betting during duels, but always there for both the winner and the loser. Training feeling more like play with the hermits, dinners are bright and happy even in the dark, the island flourishing with life during festivals as the hermits grow excited. Even when it rains, they can be the happiest days on the island. Huddling close to warm fires with mugs of cider, blankets wrapping around friends. Playing in the puddles, dancing in the rain, enjoying every second of their lives. 

They’re a family, though not by blood, but by choice. A family that nothing, not even the Hangman’s Playground, can tear apart.

#hermitcraft #light of lairyon #lol #hermitcraft au #hermitcraft fanfic #wizard hermits #wizard au #wizard grian #wizard mumbo #wizard iskall #wizard tfc #wizard joe #grian #grianmc #mumbo jumbo #iskall85 #tinfoilchef #joehills

[lilyharvord]

The Chain (Part 9)

Thank you to everyone for being so patient with my update for this fic. I’m officially done with my first semester of graduate school and since I’m on break, I want to try and post as many chapters as possible to get as close to finishing this as possible. We’re time jumping after this by the way everyone. It’s about time we kicked it up a few notches and got to the meat and bones of this fic. 

Tag list: @delilahlbard, @king-maven-calore, @thatoddgirl777, @elliekratzzz, @evangelineartemiasamos, @evangeline-of-montfort, @scxrletguardsdawn, @freaky-freiday, @petergrantkavinsky, @kuwei, @whatsup-gorls, @katiemoore,  @redqueenetwork, @tranquil-dusk (I’m trying to add you but for some reason it wont @... the same problem happens with @thatoddgirl777 and I have no idea how to fix it)

Find the rest of the fic here: part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6 / part 7 / part 8 

Enjoy everyone (: 

(/Mare/)

When I run from my lesson with Julian, it feels fake and I wonder if he even buys into it. I have far too much control over my ability now, and it is hard to fake going out of control. Still, the rain feels good on my face when I finally find a balcony. I couldn’t care less about the paint that is most likely being washed away. I tilt my head back and inhale, letting the rain drench my hair. Today is just a bad day, and it is only set to get worse. 

The rain is warm as if washes over my face. I wish it were cold. I’ve felt too much lately. I want to be numb for a few minutes. 

Thunder rumbles in the distance. A moment later, the air changes as another bolt of lightning prepares to races across the sky. The storm is right overhead. I miss the electricons more than anything as the pressure escalates around me. 

We’d go storm chasing on a day like today to hunt down the elusive bolts of lightning so that we could harness them ourselves. Harnessing natural storms is like wrestling with my brothers when I was little. It’s pulling against an impossible force, but the power that roars through my veins when I manage to get what I want out of it is exhilarating. 

Gripping the banister, I inhale the smell of ozone and open my eyes to watch the flash of white as it shoots across the sky. Change, lightning is change. Storms come and wash away the old to bring new, brighter things behind it. Tyton had taught me that. Ella taught me it could be elegant. Rafe taught me it was beauty. I taught them it could bend but never break.

A hand closes around my arm and I almost yelp at the freezing touch. Two Sentinels stand over me. They must have followed me out here and given me a careful berth until they were certain I wouldn’t electrocute them. 

“My lady,” One of them growls, his grey eyes like dirty snow. Probably a Gillican judging by his touch. He’s twice my size, but nowhere near as powerful. I still hate the sight of them. 

“Let go.” I insist as I tug my arm. But he grips me tighter and steel panic laces through my bones. They had found me before, but who knows why they have come looking for me now. Has Elara decided to make a move? Has she found something out? 

Tugging against him, I bring my other hand up to grab his wrist and shock him into letting me go. I never get the chance though. 

“You heard my bride.” Maven. My blood runs cold as he steps onto the balcony, looking over the two guards like they are common dirt. “Let her go.”

The relief I should feel is replaced by cold fear. I’ll take the Sentinels over him any day. I’m not in the mood to play games with him. 

“Apologies your Highness, but we must keep Lady Titanos to her schedule.” The one holding me speaks in a baritone that makes Maven’s lips pull down in a frown. His grip is already loosening though. I can’t believe I never realized how in pocket Maven and Elara had the Sentinels. These soldiers stopped serving the king a long time ago. “It’s orders, sir.” 

“Then you have new orders,” Maven’s voice is colder than ice. It reminds me of the freezing nights in Paradise Valley when the wolves would howl at the moon and the wind would answer back. “I will accompany Mareena back to her lessons.” 

I’d sooner let him walk me off a cliff. But the Sentinels drop my arm none the less and leave us on the balcony. The buffer they put between me and Maven leaves with them, and then I am alone with the man who destroyed me. 

“We have working showers inside, you know.” 

I push my wet hair out of my face before turning away from him. Jokes aside, I don’t want to see him. My nightmares have returned in all their supernatural fury. Every night I dream of chasing him down a hallway, the burn of the knife as it cuts my side, and feeling of dying in a Silent Stone room. I wake gasping and on the verge of screaming, but no sound comes out. I’m grateful for that at least. Still, I miss Cal’s warmth, and being able to curl against him to tether myself to reality when the dreams refuse to leave. 

“I want to be alone.” I murmur, setting my head in my hand. My patience is holding, but not for long. 

“I understand that.” 

Oh, I know you do. I keep my lips from curling into a sneer by sheer will alone. Lightning flares across the sky again. The storm is creeping beyond us, but I could still pull a bolt down and hit him if I wanted. My aim is perfect. I could cook him to a crisp like I did Elara. 

I grip the banister again to settle my thoughts. I can almost feel the char of her hair between my fingers and the weight of her head if I close my eyes. I can hear the hum of the cameras as I hold up the head of a she-wolf and promise to come for the pup. 

“I understand how difficult it is.” He continues as he steps up next to me, bolder than he ever was. My eyes snap to him, but I’m more curious now than wary. What has made him so certain? Before, he had still been wary around me. It wasn’t until we joined the Guard together that he truly pretended to open up to me.  

His eyes are cold as he stares out over the palace grounds. “These people. They make it impossible. I can’t say what I want, do what I want—with my mother around I can barely even think what I want. And my brother—!” 

“What about him?” My blood runs cold. What has Cal done now? He promised he would stop prying—

The words stick in his mouth, and he pales with a blush. He’s not the perfect statesman that locked me in a cage yet. He’s not the boy listening to a ghost in his head yet. There is still a part of him that is Maven, and not the thing his mother created. “He’s strong, he’s talented, he’s powerful—and I’m his shadow. The shadow of the flame.” 

The part of me that always understood that part of him, and even loved it quakes. I step out of Gisa’s shadow because of him, but he never does leave Cal’s. He never gives himself the chance. He keeps chasing the edge of Cal’s shadow like there is one. Maven casts his own shadows though. They haunts me and they haunts Cal in the future. If only he knew that. 

When the words come to me, they are true and that is what makes me feel sick. “Then maybe you should try to be more than that.” 

His eyes widen at my words, and I find myself unable to stop. “You could be more. I think you could. Stop chasing the edges of shadows, you’ll never find them. Find a way to be alone with your own heart, and be happy with it.” 

His entire face folds in on itself, pinching in places I never saw before. I’ve never seen this emotion from him, and I have no idea what to call it. For a moment I wonder if I’ve said the wrong things, and done exactly what I told Cal not to do. But a part of me still wants to save the boy that I thought was trying to save me. Even if its hopeless, and he is too far gone to save. Monsters aren’t born, they’re made. Julian told me that once. Well if monsters can be made, they can be unmade too.  

“That’s something you should know about us Silvers. We’re always alone. In here, and here.” He gives me a tired smile as he touches his head and then his heart. The line sends a shiver down my spine though. He’d said the same thing last time too. It only reminds me that perhaps we’re on a track, and there is no getting off. There are no other exits, only the ones that I know are coming. 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“You better learn to hide that heart of yours, Lady Titanos. It won’t lead you anywhere you want to go.” 

My heart aches more than he could ever know. This is the boy, this is the truth. There is nothing to save. I am trying to fix a shattered mirror and cutting my hands on the pieces to spill my blood for nothing. I turn my eyes back to the sky, closing them as lightning strikes again, and thunder roars above us. Battle lines were drawn before; I have to redraw them now. 

“I think I can help with your problem.” 

I turn my eyes back down to him, and instantly he is the Maven I dreamed about. The mask is so perfect. I forget there are cracks that the darkness slips through. 

“What problem?”

“You’re homesick.” Holding out his hand to me, he nods down to it when I don’t take it. His skin is like ice when I slide my palm into his. I thought I remember him being warm by this point. Instead, he’s a corpse before I make him one. “I can fix that.” (/////)

The wind cuts through my hair, ripping it from its braid as Cal and I race toward the Stilts. I’ve ridden a cycle with him numerous times since this night. Nothing takes away the rush or competes with the feeling of flying that this generates though. Usually we tear down mountains roads and I close my eyes, trusting him to keep me safe as he cuts around turns. He’s taken Gisa once too. I had to peel her off of him when they returned because she was gripping his body so tightly. 

Right now, his body is warm in my arms, warm and real. It reminds me that I’m safe with him. Even if I’m terrified of the situation we’re in. 

When we finally reach the branch in the road that will bring us into the Stilts he brings the cycle to a stop, and cuts the engine. I’m the first off, and I peel away from him like a second skin. He pushes it into the trees, his eyes dancing to me every so often as he does so. I know that look he is throwing over his shoulder. I’ve seen the worry that creases his brows and the concern that flares like a light show in his eyes many times when he’s uncertain what’s going through my mind.

“Do you want to talk?” He eventually asks after throwing a few leafy branches over the cycle to hide it. I tuck my hands into the pocket of my coat to hide the shake in them. 

“There really was nothing to save.” It’s a thought that’s been going through my mind since Maven confronted me on the balcony. 

His expression melts into true concern faster than I can swallow my words. But he swaps that for a different mask of emotion. There’s no jealousy in his eyes, but I can see the beginning flares of his panic. His one true fear before we started this was that I would choose Maven this time around; that maybe he really was the consolation prize all along and I only chose to try again because I lost my chance to be with Maven. 

“He’s still a ghost.” I whisper to him before reaching out for his hand. He lets my fingers interlace with his. I squeeze them tightly, trying to get him to understand. “That doesn’t mean I won’t mourn a chance lost.” 

He nods tightly, his jaw squeezing until a muscle in it feathers. I cup the spot with my other hand, caressing it to soothe him. “I love you, you know that. Even if you drive me up a wall sometimes.” 

With a light laugh, his worry melts away, and I’m glad for it. We can’t be questioning each other right now. There’s too much at stake. There can be no edges. We filed them down after the war so we could fit together after all. That is where the real truth lies though. 

Maven carved himself to fit with me. But Cal and I smoothed down together, cutting off the edges that mattered so we could fit. I didn’t need to change for Maven because he melted what he needed to make the perfect mask. It had been a lie from the beginning. A beautiful, wonderful lie. Cal had been real though, had never bothered to hide what he was, even when those parts hurt. He made me better, and I made him better. Nothing about Maven had made me better. He made me strong sure, but a brittle kind of strong that hurt anyone that got too close. 

Reaching out, he pushes my hair away from my face, his smile falling fast. “I wish you didn’t have to go through this.” 

He could be talking about anything. Shade. Maven. All the New Bloods. Losing myself. Losing people I love. Even losing him for a bit. 

“I don’t.” I insist, even though the words cut up my insides like glass as I speak them. The truth cuts sometimes. I’m used to the sting. (////////)

The meeting with my family still stabs like a knife. Kilorn’s rage burns like a brand. Gisa’s wish rings in my ears.  I feel like I’m drowning, being swallowed up by the old emotions. It’s like reading a book where I know the ending and hesitate to turn every page. I hate every second. Even as I make my way straight of Will’s wagon. 

Cal trails me, making sure to stay hidden in the shadows so Kilorn doesn’t see him, and so Will’s spies don’t notice him ether. Kilorn knows who Cal is, I know he does. He had known from the moment he first saw him. I couldn’t be more grateful for my friend keeping his fat mouth shut around my family though. I think my dad would have found a way to stand and kill Cal where he stood if he knew he was the Crown Prince. 

I hold my hand out, telling him to stay back silently, while I take the final ten meters to the wagon on my own. He melts into the shadows, playing the part of a shadow so expertly I have to do a double take. But even his eyes are gone. Maybe he turned and went back to the cycle. I hope he did. When I step into the wagon, it’s to see Will smiling, already waiting for what I have to say. I tell him everything. And just like he did last time, he admits to knowing everything.

Tristan waits behind the curtain, ready to pounce. I can see the toes of his boots before he announces his presence. He’s more arrogant than I remember. I still see the pole Ptolemus shoots through him though, and the mental image makes me shudder. 

“The royal monkeys have chosen a queen this past week.” Tristan’s smile is cold as he looks me over. “You’ve been all over the screens Lady Titanos.” 

I hate that name, and all the implications of it. “They aren’t all monkeys.” I insist, and the fire that lights in his eyes makes me wish I hadn’t said anything. 

“Are you talking about the prince you’re engaged to or the one waiting outside in the shadows?” Will asks as he leans back and rests his hands on his stomach. 

My heart does a jump and a skip, and I��m sure all the blood drains from my face. I thought we’d been careful and I had been incredibly impressed with how Cal disappeared. Still, I should have known, Will is a spy in the Guard for a reason. 

Tristan erupts though, and takes two quick steps for the door, his hand flying to his pistol. I leap and grab his wrist though, twisting it expertly and spinning to put myself between him and the door. And ultimately between him and Cal. 

“You brought a Silver here?” he hisses down at me, even though my hands are already lighting with sparks. “The Crown Prince? Do you know what we could do if we took him in? What we could bargain for?”

Relax, I want sneer, you get him eventually. And he will do far more this time than he did last time. My words when I do speak are low, like thunder in the distance as I glare him down. “You leave him alone.” 

Tristan’s lip curls in disgust. “A few weeks in the lap of luxury and your blood is as silver as theirs,” he spits, looking like he wants to curl his fingers around my throat and throttle me. “Do they take turns?”

“What?” I gasp in surprise. That’s not in the script. 

“Do they take turns rolling in the sheets with you?” His lips curl at the surprise on my face. “Or do you pick one over the other? I’m going to guess the one hiding out there gets the most time.” 

Fury like nothing before sears through me. I bring a hand up that sparks as I sneer. “You idiot. I’m protecting you from him. He’s a trained soldier that would turn you inside out like a shirt if he wanted. And he’d burn this place down if you so much as tried to go after him.” 

You’re only alive because I haven’t burned the oxygen from this room. A real threat, one I believed when Cal said it the first time, and one I believe now. I have to keep Tristan away from Cal. I can’t have a stray bullet finding its way into his chest or his head. 

Tristan deflates, his anger melting away as I slowly lower my hand and disburse the sparks. Will lays a hand on Tristan’s shoulder, calming him further. “That’s enough,” he whispers. “What did you come here for, Mare? Kilron is safe and so are you siblings.” 

This is what I came here for. To put the pieces in motion finally. To start the game for my side. “Shade was a member of the Guard, and they killed him for it.” The only fact I can trace. “I have to pretend it doesn’t bother me.” 

“You’re dead if you don’t.” Will reasons. 

“I know. I’ll say what they want. But I’m in the palace, the center of the royal family. I’m quick, and quiet. And I will help the cause.”  

Tristan sucks in a ragged breath. His eyes light with a new fire, this one vastly different from his anger. He rises to his full height, beaming at my words. “You want to join up.” 

“I do.” My words are final, and I don’t bother to look at Will, only Tristan. 

“I hope you know what you’re committing to. This isn’t just my war, or Farley’s or the Scarlet Guards—it’s yours. Until the very end. And not to avenge your brother but to avenge us all. To fight for the ones before and the ones to come.”  

The ones to come. My chest squeezes as I picture Clare’s toothless grin at the same time that her laugh rings through my ears. My own hand curls into a fist on my stomach. There are plenty to come. I swore myself to the Guard to protect them before I even knew about them, and now more than ever my heart pounds for that future. I will fight tooth and nail for it. I will spill my blood and others so that someday, someday I can sit on my porch and watch a little dark haired boy run rampant in the backyard. So my brother’s name can live on in his daughter. So that someday my family never has to be hungry. So that someday, I never have to be afraid. 

I slip my hand into Will’s gnarled one. Cal warned me of war once, of what it brings. We both know the cost now, but I know what waits for us on the other side. There is a light, there is hope, there is good. I will do whatever it takes to get back there. Even if it means mucking my way through blood and mud once again. 

“I am with you.” 

“We will rise,” Will breathes in unison with Tristan. The words are like hope burning in my chest, lighting up the room around us as I speak them too. “Red as the dawn.”

(////////)

Cal is quiet as we walk through the halls of the palace. And I am too. My silence is contemplative though, his is patient while he waits for what I have to say. He’s always waiting, waiting for me to cross the bridge. He waited for me to say yes too. He asked seven times before I said yes to him in the dead of night wrapped up in cool sheets and half delirious with sleep. I’d pressed a kiss to the space between his brows and said yes without him asking. He waited almost two years for me to say that word after he asked the first time. Now he waits without asking. He knows I will talk eventually. 

“I have to tell you something.” I eventually whisper, and grab his wrist. The cameras whisper around us, and I turn my eyes in their direction before saying, “Your rooms are safe.” 

When Maven brought me there, I made sure to do a sweep. There are no cameras in Cal’s room. I wonder why, but I don’t bother to question it too much. It’s a silent blessing, the perfect meeting place. I don’t have to wait until the guards change to speak with him. 

He nods and takes me a back way. For a moment, I fear we’re lost, until we turn a corner and he brings us to his door. He glances over his shoulder at the same time that I swipe my hand to surge electricity through the camera’s wires, shorting it long enough for me to slide in the room and him to follow me without us being seen. 

In the dark of his rooms, I feel like a ghost. He goes to turn the lights on but I catch his hand. And for the first time in a long time, almost shock him. The hairs on his arms rise as my sparks threaten to explode out from under my skin. I haven’t been this nervous in so long. It makes him jumpy. 

“What happened?” He asks quickly, spinning to face me and grabbing my shoulders. His shadow looks different in the dark, smaller and less imposing. Strange how that is what made him most human to me the first time as well. 

I slip out of his grip only to dive into his chest, wrapping my arms around his middle and burying my nose in his shirt. He smells just a hint like the river as spending a couple of hours in the Stilts, but underneath it, that scent of burning wood clings to him. It relaxes every muscle in my body as I inhale. 

He wraps is arms around my shoulders in response. For a moment, I think he’ll repeat his question. Instead he just reaches up to threads his fingers through my hair that I pulled out of the braid long ago, tangling them in the slightly wavy locks. I can’t hold the secret in any longer, not now that I’ve signed up for this, and he will someday too. I should have told him the moment I found out, but I wanted it be a surprise, a little secret that I could tell him with a laugh. Instead, I feel like I’m telling him before we walk to the gallows. It taints the joy, the happiness of what is to come. 

“I wasn’t completely honest with you before all this.” 

His shoulders stiffen as I bring my hands up to close them in fists on his back. I’m never good at starting conversations like this and I immediately regret the words I spoke. He’s already on edge, and I made I worse. Squeezing the fabric of his shirt softly, I murmur, “before we got here.” 

He relaxes again, and disengages from our embrace to lift my chin. He needs to know, deserves to know. 

“I didn’t want to go after Giselle that night. I told you I was tired, but there was another reason.” It has never been so hard to put something into words. I wish I had just told him in the first place, maybe this whole mess could have been avoided if I had. 

His brows furrow and his face twists as he tries to think back to that strange night and morning. I grab his hands and squeeze tight, willing him to pay attention to my words, more than the memory of what I said. 

“I was going to tell you we had to call off the wedding—”

His eyes widen in surprise, and he opens his mouth to speak. I press my finger to his lips to keep him from doing just that. “For just a little while. Something came up.”

He sits with baited breath, his expression confused and fearful. A mix that’s dangerous for a soldier, especially one like Cal that is used to knowing everything. My lips curl into a weak smile as I say, “We have to get back because something’s waiting for us. Or it may have come with us. I’m not sure. If it did, I have to be more careful than I thought.” 

His eyes dart around the room like someone might be listening, and he slowly takes my hand to pull me into his closet where our voices will be furthered muffled. Has he grasped what I’m about tell him? Cal’s observant, even with all his bullheaded tendencies, and he’s not stupid. He knows me well enough to notice when my habits change. And they had been changing, little by little. I’m a subtle creature, but he’s very good at reading me now. 

In the safety of his closet, I can smile bright. I can let the warmth of my news pulse out of me like sunlight. It had terrified me the moment I knew what was happening, but slowly that panic had been replaced by a strange joy, a strange curiosity. And now, it was longing. 

“You can talk freely now.” He whispers. 

The words die. They won’t come. Like stones, they sit in my throat and choke me. Maybe I shouldn’t tell him. Is it cruel to get his hopes up about something we may never be able to return to? And yet, this is not just my burden to bear. This is our future. I am in this to get back to my family. He is in this to get back to what we had in Montfort. He may need something else, something to fight for that isn’t just me. Even if it’s not as tangible as it is for me. 

I’ll just have to say it, push the words out one by one. “I was pregnant.” 

They come easier than I thought, and honestly come out more like a garbled rush than the wonderful phrase they should be. As soon as I speak those words into existence though, the joy leaves, only to be replaced by trepidation and the air around us is leeched of its warmth. 

“What?” Cal’s question is a wheeze, a word not quite formed. 

“Three or four months, I wasn’t sure.” I grab his hand and squeeze as his eyes widen in the dark to the side of moons. “I told you we had so much waiting for us. That’s what is waiting for us. We have to follow everything to the line because of that future.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He whispers, his eyes darting as he thinks back over everything, every action I committed before that night, every word I spoke. 

“I was going to tell you that night, but then we got called to deal with Giselle.” I shake my head, laughing quietly. It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I am not the only one privy to this secret knowledge. 

His eyes darken though. Storm clouds gather in his irises as he leans down to whisper.  “You said you didn’t know if it came with us.” 

“All my knowledge and memories came with me… and I’m in the same body theoretically just--just five or six years younger. It might have come with me.” It’s a long shot, but if I’m right, we have far bigger problems than we originally thought. 

“You don’t look like—”

“I didn’t look like it in Montfort either.” I reason dryly. He would have noticed if I did. His lips twist and he nods. 

“What do you want to do?”

“I’m going to wait and see if anything happens.”  

He pales at the prospect, but I grip his fingers tightly again, forcing his gaze back down to me. “This is what we are fighting to get back to. Why we have to be so careful.”  

“I wish you’d told me sooner.” He murmurs before reaching down to circle one of his arms around my waist. In the dark I’m not quite sure if he’s smiling or grimacing. Not until he cups my jaw and presses his lips to mine. He pours every ounce of the joy that is about to explode out of him into that kiss. It mixes with mine until I’m certain we are glowing like a small sun. 

And in that closet, nestled in a nest of snakes and wolves, I finally let myself breathe.

#red queen #glass sword #kings cage #war storm #broken throne #post broken throne #The Chain #marecal #the eternal ship #the eternal ship sails on #sighs #okay so the end was cheesy and terrible and i hate it and love it at the same time #I've been building up to that reveal though so yeah there is it #no mare is not pregnant in this part of the fic #I decided #that would be too weird #but I think she did have to share that news with cal #it becomes important later on #anyway #we are time jumping in the next part #not sure to where but lol you're all gonna find out #my fanfics #my writing #and the wheels slowly start falling off the bus (((((:

[imagine-loki]

Between pages

TITLE: Between pages

CHAPTER NO./ONE-SHOT: One-shot

AUTHOR: fanfictrashdump

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki always carries a book. Not because he’s reading 24/7, but because he likes tucking flowers from the bouquets you make and leave in the shared kitchen in between the pages. 

RATING: T

NOTES/WARNINGS: There is fluff in my soul and I will not apologize for it. Language, extreme awkwardness, and unlikely friendships ahead. Let Loki be soft 2020.

=

Loki, God of Mischief, Prince of Asgard, Rightful King of Jotunheim, Odinson was a master sorcerer. His talent was unmatched in the Universe, and he was capable of feats that were previously unheard of in all the Nine Realms. He could defy the laws of physics, of imagination. He could bend the very fabric of the Universe and arrive at a different planet with merely a step in any direction. He was awe-inspiring and nightmare-inducing in equal measure.

So, how in the fucking hell did some silly flowers become his ruin?

Groaning pathetically against the plumpness of his down-filled pillow, he contemplated escaping the Tower. He had run away from more dangerous places before. Surely, walking out of Stark’s prized building would be little more than child’s play to a sorcerer of his caliber. However, any time he reminded himself that he was, indeed, a sorcerer the wound on his ego would split and bleed fresh, once more.

It would have been so easy to explain away. There was a reason they called him the Silvertongue, but he just stood there. Like a moron. He just… he just handed it over, and now…

He groaned again, teeth bared in a half-snarl as the memories flooded his mind.

There were few things in this little, mortal trash heap of a world that intrigued Loki. The supersoldiers held his interest for a moment or two, until he had all but uncovered the secrets of their endurance and had promptly become bored. The spies were fun to watch, if only to watch Barton squirm under his intense gaze, thinking he had another plot to put him under mind control. Banner was… well, he didn’t mess with Banner. Or Stark, for that matter. They were on an unspoken truce upon which his very survival was pinned. After all, Loki was nothing if not self-serving in his quest for continued breathing.

Then, there was the mutant; the plant witch.

The five-foot-nothing little imp who he could not seem to put the fear of god in, no matter how much he tried. The mortal had talked back, disobeyed direct orders on the field, sassed, hugged, and blackmailed him over a hobby in the course of less than a year. Loki would be impressed at her ruthlessness of character if he wasn’t utterly annoyed at her existence.

Well, that, and the fact that he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out how her powers worked.

And that was the source of his current anguish.

Lily, the little mutant, had a predictable daily routine. She would wake up with the sun, make breakfast for the whole team, go to the gym and be back in time for the meal. Once she set the table, she would always conjure a handful of flowers in the vase in the middle of the table. It was never the same arrangement, twice, and it was never the type of arrangement the mortals would overpay for at the local flower shops. Wild variations of popular flowers, bits of flowering tree branches, weeds–wildflowers of all types that brought in butterflies from the open balcony windows and delighted all.

At first, he thought she simply picked them outside and coaxed them into bloom. It wasn’t until one morning, when he had been up uncharacteristically early that he had been proven wrong. He watched her kneel on a chair at the table, hands held aloft around the vase before every vein visible pumped a fluorescently-bright green. Like seedlings, the flowers grew from tiny roots until they overflowed from the jug. Loki had walked over, almost reflexively, watching how the petals bent under his fingers and how the cool stems still felt like they were thrumming with life as if freshly picked.

Fascinating.

Loki, while talented in his own right, had never been able to conjure a flower that looked so much like a flower. They usually looked too perfect, almost artificial–like a painting of a flower brought to life. He plucked a bud and tucked it between the pages of the book he had been reading (ironically, it had been Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman). He decided that he would study this specific specimen and figure out her secret. Surely, it would be easy to conquer the skill that a mortal wielded.

He had been horrendously wrong.

That first failed attempt at replicating her craftsmanship prompted him to grab a few more samples, the next day. And the next. And the one after that, too. After a while, he had all but given up on learning how to conjure these life-like flowers, with their slightly irregular patterns and charming blemishes. But the habit had stuck and he still collected them.

Every morning, like clockwork, he would go to the kitchen for a glass of water, pull a bloom and press it between Whitman’s promises to return to his beloved dirt. The team had started making jokes about his current inability to put down the poems book, everywhere he went. They wrongly assumed that he was simply enamored by the mortal’s views of humanity or that he was learning what being human really meant. In reality, all Loki was doing was carrying the vessel for his preservation and lying in wait for the opportunity to be all on his own to snatch another souvenir.

He’d be loathe to admit that his theft was now out of pure admiration. Flowers were always his mother’s thing and he never really cared much for gardening, but he could appreciate the intricacies of every subtly veined petal and rough leaf. His fingers often ran the length of the stems and leaves, gathering the light coat of dew that glistened on the greenery, smiling to himself all the while. He supposed he had never found the need to conjure a flower or anything of the sort meant to be a soft gift–it wasn’t really his style–but the fact only made him all the more awestruck.

“You like today’s bouquet, Lokes?”

He nodded, a little distracted, having just pressed the most perfect daisy, with a little notch in one of the petals into the book. The small, leather-bound tome rested beside him on the table, golden lettering catching Lily’s eye.

“Oh my gosh, I love Leaves of Grass,” she exclaimed, and Loki had mindlessly handed her the book for her to peruse before he even had the good sense to panic. “I know. Surprise, surprise, plant babe likes plant-themed title of book, but I truly loved it when I read it in high school. It’s sad, but a good type of sad, if that… makes… sense…”

It was her trailing voice that had made Loki blink away from the flowers. Green eyes trailed from the vase, to his empty floating hand, to the table. His book was no longer there… and he was the reason for that. When his shocked gaze flickered up to hers, he found her dainty fingers trailing over a perfectly dried dandelion that Loki had chosen because it had a singular freckle amidst a canvas of soft yellow.

Loki had disappeared before she even looked away from the keepsake.

“Maybe I should just take my chances in the dungeons. I’m sure Father dearest would rather see me in a cell,” he moaned petulantly before he stiffened.

There was energy crackling in the air, making it smell like ozone and magic. Loki sat up in bed, retrieving a dagger from under his pillow and noiselessly stepping onto the carpeted floor. Beneath his feet, the carpet felt odd. With a frown, he glanced down, finding the floor covered in green and yellow–a blanket of buttercups. By the door, Lily smiled shyly, her body slumping slightly against the wall as the green faded away from her veins.

“You’ve overtired yourself,” he remarked, drily, ignoring the fact that his cheeks burned in a way that told him that he was flushed crimson. His feet shuffled beneath him, grounding him to reality and allowing him to resist the urge to bend down and run his fingers through the blooms.

She shrugged. “I’ll feel better after breakfast.” There was a tense silence between them for several more seconds. Lily held the book out in her hand, but Loki hesitated crossing the landscape to retrieve it. “You always pick the iffy ones.”

His brow pinched in with confusion. “What?”

“The flowers. You always pick the ones that aren’t perfect. Spots, notches, missing petals or stamens–”

“It makes them real,” he interrupted. “The flaws make them real. Machines can make flawless flowers.”

“I agree. I just… didn’t peg you for the type who could appreciate that, y'know?” Lily sighed, trying to suppress a grin. “Then again, I didn’t peg you for the type who pressed flowers, either.”

Loki glanced at his feet with a frown. “Everyone likes flowers,” he muttered under his breath, just shy of defensive. He managed to will his feet forward, relieving her still reaching hand of the book without glancing at her.

He swore that he hadn’t been this pathetic before he moved to Midgard.

Lily cleared her throat awkwardly, tipping a golden flower back with the toe of her trainer. “Would it be OK if I brought some flowers for your room, every once in while?” She gave him a hesitant smile before adding, “I-I need the practice,” in a rush.

“Don’t you think the others would be more deserving of them?” Loki hated the fact that he sounded somewhat bitter.

She giggled under her breath. “The others won’t really appreciate them, will they?” Before he could offer a witty retort to try and dispel the awkwardness he felt, Lily had grasped his wrist and tugged him along out the door. “Come on, we’re late for breakfast,” she remarked, conversation already forgotten.

#Loki #Others #Submitted one shot #submission #between pages #Fanfictrashdump

[chalmogsico-college]

The witch Mint, the wizard Tortoise, and Luara who hadn't found her style quite yet, carefully made their way through the dark pine forest just outside of the school grounds. The perpetual frost that clung to the cold soil crinkled under foot as a sharp wind rattled the branches above them. The three mages were warm in their enchanted robes even as their breath fogged the air infront of them.

"I'm sure he's fine," Mint said, his arms crossed tight across his chest and his voice shaking just so slightly, "Hell, he was probably just running late. I bet he's already at the class room and we're going to be in trouble for not being there."

"No way," Luara replied, as she pushed onward towards the small cabin they knew was somewhere around here, "Professor Van Shamanov is never late, and you know how weird hes been acting over the last few weeks,"

"He's been acting weird because you keep trying to talk him into summoning a new familiar," Tortoise rolled their eyes, "Let the old bastard grieve,"

"Grieving is one thing, but his familiar has been dead for like a hundred years? He needs to move on, and like, its obvious he's capital L Lonely," Luara turns on her heel to follow a different path through the woods, hopeful that This would be the right one. She doesn't worry about getting lost, worst case scenario Mint's insane sense of direction would save them.

"Yeah, I'm going to side with Luara on this one, Tort," Mint nodded as Tortoise gasped in mock offense, "You heard what Headmistress said, the man's getting to the edge of what The Viper will allow. He shouldn't be all alone in the end, and you know he won't just make a friend or something. Too much of a loner,"

"Nope! He won't make new friends because his trio is broken," Luara said,

"And how would you know that?" Tortoise quirked a brow, "Been snooping on our favorite GILF?"

Luara stopped and turned to glare at them, and to their credit, Tortoise managed to not flinch or look away for an entire ten seconds, "He isn't a GILF because that would imply one of us wants to fuck him," Tortoise intoned like a scolded child as they dropped their gaze.

"Good neither." Luara turned to set back on their way as Mint snickered.

Eventually they did find their way to the rotting cabin, a full two hours after class was supposed to have started. Luara took the old brass knocker in hand and thunked it down hard against its strike plate three times.

A moment passed with no response.

Luara raised her hand to knock again as the door swung open on screeching hinges.

Professor Van Shamanov's impressive bulk filled the doorway as he stooped down to glare at his visitors from below the head jamb.

His eyes softened as he saw his startled students, bending to step out of his home and closing the door behind himself as he spoke, "Hello," his voice was rough with too many years spent in fire warmed rooms, "I suppose I'm a bit late for class aren't I?" He untied his robe from around his waist to put it on properly as he started back towards the college.

"Yes sir," Luara never thought of herself as short until she was having to jog to keep pace with their frankly giant teacher's strides, "We were worried about you, its not like you to be late,"

"Yes, I know I've been out of it lately," He nods before changing the topic, "Did you three complete your assignment? Gathered all of your components for today?" he holds out a hand and whistls to call his staff to him, the gnarled thing shot out of the woods like a torpedo but he caught it with practiced ease before it could splinter itself against the trunks of one of the trees, "And are you positive the components you chose are the ones you want to use? The difference could very well change the course of you lives."

Mint fussed with the bundle in his pocket before nodding. Tortoise pulled theirs from under their hat and smiled as they held it up proudly. Luara pulled two from her coat, one wrapped in the yellow she preferred for her spell work, one in the soft lavender Van Shamanov did.

"Yeah, and I brought one for you two," Luara chirped as non chalantly as she could.

To all three students surprise the professor actually held out a hand for it, "I'm curious what you think I'd put in that circle," he huffed good naturedly.

Luara handed it over and giddily tossed a smirk over her shoulder at the others as Van Shamanov undid the bindings to open it up.

A moment later she crashed into him as he stopped dead in his tracks to turn towards her. Luara staggered a step back, "Everything okay professor?" She asked nervously.

"Who told you? I assume Katy, but Headmistress might have known as well," his gaze was focused on the items in his palm, a dried orchid bloom, a nickel ring, and a wishbone.

"Dean Deane ," Luara said with an averted gaze, it wasn't like the professor to show such open anger, "She thinks you need to summon a new familiar, and that if you had the same components you did for your first it might be easier for you,"

"Please do not snoop like this again." Van Shamanov said firmly before turning back on his path, "We will be quiet until we get to class," he commands.

---

The other two trios that made up their summoning 833 class perked up as Van Shamanov entered.

"My apologies for being late. Is everyone ready to begin?" He pulled a tarp from his desk drawer and tossed it into the air. It straightened itself out and settled ready for use in the clear spot in the center of the room.

He waits for the murmurs of agreement to die down before starting on his spiel, "I trust that every last one of you has put the necessary time and thought into what will be happening today. A familiar is a life partner, they will be at your side through thick and thin and will be entirely reliant on you for the magical energy that sustains their like. They will aid you in every way they can and do whatever it takes to help you as long as you return that favor. They are powerful and temperamental creatures of contract, harming or betraying them will be the last thing you do. If any one of you has any hesitations about this, any second thoughts, anything other than Full confidence in what you are about to do, what components you have chosen, or what you will say to them once they are listening, leave. You are not ready yet, and I say that without judgment, I'd rather see you leave today than with a disloyal familiar tomorrow."

He stood infront of his class, head held high as he finished his final warning and reminder and waited to see if any of his students would flinch. When he was met with only eager eyes and nervous smiles he grinned from beneath his beard, "Very good," he turned to who he has decided will go first, "Tortoise, you're up," he finishes firmly as he steps back towards his desk

"Wait, Why?" Tortoise hesitated to get out of their seat.

"Because I'm upset with Luara and I know she wants to go first. By asking you to go first I am acknowledging that as directly as I am ethically allowed to." He takes his seat at his desk as Luara pouts.

"Why not Mint?" Tortoise looked to his friend who blanched at the suggestion, "Never mind, I forgot he was a coward," they sighed and pulled their bundle of components and their wand from beneath their hat as they stood to go to the edge of the circle.

The bundle was dropped in the center of the interlaced runes. The room was near silent beside the soft crackle of the torches. With everyone's attention on them Tortoise knelt in one of the smaller warded circles that surrounded the larger summoning circle.

Their instincts told them to just start pouring magic into it, a show of power to attract an equally powerful familiar, but Professor Van Shamanov had warned them against doing that. Power and Impulsiveness were not a good mix. Besides, they were a wizard, without structure their magic would fizzle and drain too quickly for them to really get anything going.

So, they took a deep breath and reached out to the warding line, pouring magic into it to set it glowing and active. Familiars didn't tend to turn violent with their summoners even if they declined the offer, but it never hurt to be cautious. Then they found the connecting line, the one that wrapped around and around and around the circle, that conected it to the other they'd be reaching into to try and coax a familiar across the boundary from one universe to another. Finally, they found the call line and pushed a surge of power through it, along with the promise of their favorite dice set, a bell they found in the sand outside their childhood home, and a bracelet their little brother had made for them before he passed away.

Speaking the meaning of the offerings was not a necessity, but Tortoise always struggled with the ephemeral and passing concepts along a line like this was definitely more a witch's skill than a wizard's.

"I offer you a dice set with the blessing of The Raven, she's my patron and she could be yours as well. A bell I found when I was young, I carried it with me on a chain around my neck for many years, it doesn't ring anymore but it holds more memories than I could speak, and a gift from my little brother, he didn't know about magic, but he told me that it would protect me. And well… I haven't died yet? So, I assume it works," they take a breath to find their center, "I am called Tortoise and I ask for…" They paused, this was the part that even with the years they had had to think about it, he could never decide on, "I ask for a friend. Someone who's sturdy and who I can rely on."

A hushed moment passed as the candles flickered and the smell of ozone filled the room. At first a fine mist formed within the summoning circle, it glittered like a frozen fog as it passed from its world and into ours, though soon it was thickening around the offered items and taking a solid form.

Tortoise couldn't help but choke out a laugh as a galapagos tortoise took shape before him. Its dull grey shell alone was bigger around than the circle Tortoise knelt in,

"What am I called?" the tortoise asked with a smooth water thin voice,

"Wizard," Tortoise responded with the name that formed heavy in their mind as soon as the tortoise had taken shap. They grinned and stood and let the magic fade from the circle, to set Wizard free of the bindings on it that trapped her within it.

"I look forward to being your friend, Tortoise," Wizard said as she made her way out of the circle with the slow elegant confidence only a fey shaped like a tortoise could muster.

The rest of the class clapped and jeered, Mint shook their shoulder as they took their seat, and Luara clapped and half jumped out of her seat to take her turn before Professor Van Shamanov could call on someone elsee.

Tortoise couldn't stop smiling after Wizard got comfortable next to them, nor could they focus on their friend's turn. They had a familiar and they looked forward to being her friend.

[queenbirbs]

the way home | Ch. 1 | Edward x MC

Pairing: Edward Mortemer x MC

Word count: 2,048

Summary: In which traveling to the past is only half the battle; or: Elena finds her way back.

Warnings: language

Notes: This series is complete. I’ll be posting chapters on here and over on AO3. Title taken from Tony Anderson’s The Way Home.  Continue on to chapter two.

Inspired by @choicesmonthlychallenge day 16 prompt “tick tock / time.” 

------

“You heard what my colleague said.” Robert’s voice sounds from the backseat, pulling her from her study of the countryside. “If this doesn’t work, then we may get stuck somewhere else with no--”

“Fuck that,” Elena cuts him off. “It’s going to work.”

He rolls his eyes at her in the rearview mirror, but says nothing more. They’ve spent enough time together over the last two years that he’s learned when to stop bothering with trying to change her mind. 

“Damn straight it better work,” her sister Gabby says around a mouthful of sour gummy worms. “I didn’t put two-thousand miles on my car for you all to get skunked.” 

Robert makes a face at the unusual term. “Are you forgetting that if we get caught then you’re an accessory before the fact?” he points out. 

“Yeah, but that won’t really affect my trade-in value, now, will it?”

Up ahead along the highway, a yellow sign reads: Welcome to New Mexico; Land of Enchantment. With Colorado in the rearview now, Elena pushes out a breath, trying to calm her racing heart as the pockmarked landscape passes in a blur. 

She’s tired of having her fate sealed, printed onto expensive cardstock, and ogled by museum-goers. What a life she led! How tragic, though, about Captain Mortemer spending all that time searching for her! the people at the museum tut and shake their heads before moving on to the next room. Elena’s tired of coming back home, of staring at that portrait of him and wondering if it’s the last she would ever see of him. 

During their four trips to the past, she’d managed to find Edward only twice. Though she was glad to be leaving it behind, there was something to be said about the ease of communication in the twenty-first century. After their last return, Elena and Robert didn’t bother with the faulty compass or time anomalies. Every deadend, every long night of research, and every weekend trip to scope out a lead was for the assurance that this would be their final voyage to the past. There would be no more time-hopping, no more disappearing for months at a time. With each stone they overturned, there was hope that it would bring them here. Here, she bemuses, to the long stretch of empty highway between southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. 

The trip to South Dakota had been a last-ditch effort. Robert’s old colleague from Oxford let him know about a warehouse hidden away in the Badlands, rumored to house hundreds of artifacts -- including the one they were after. Convincing Gabby to be their getaway driver was the hardest part; putting on a show of being a damsel in distress with a broken-down car and incapacitating the guards was much easier, in Elena’s opinion. 

Under her touch, the artifact in her hand glows the same eerie shade of blue as the compass. The whistle is a tarnished gold, engraved with the initials of a sailor who escaped H.M.S. Fletcher after its sinking off Cape Horn in 1890. News articles about the event were vague. The sailor’s diary, however, detailed his two days trapped in an air pocket, blowing his whistle desperately for help, and suddenly appearing on the shore eight years in the past. The only corroboration was the event log of a fisherman who watched the man “step out of thin air.” By all accounts, the tale was nothing more than a fantastical story. 

They reach Urraca Mesa with plenty of light left -- surprising, given that they were forced to hike around the scout ranch that owns the property. The mesa glows crimson in the afternoon sun, towering above them as they make their way up the trail. Elena’s duffel bag smacks against her thigh with every step. Along the next rise, Robert stops and consults his map with a scowl. 

“The lodestone minerals makes navigating this place a pain in the arse,” he grumbles as his compass refuses to cooperate. The needle jerks back and forth, never settling on a clear direction. 

“Does it have to be exactly on the ley line?” Elena asks, fidgeting with her bag’s strap to move it to a less sweat-drenched part of her back. 

“Of course it does. That’s why we drove all the way down here in the first place. The electromagnetic energy is at its peak along--”

“Okay, okay!” Gabby interrupts. “How about we try something else: do you have the exact coordinates?”

“Yes, but a compass doesn’t work like that.”

“Yeah, but a phone does,” she snaps back, tugging her phone from her backpack. “Lemme have ‘em.”

“We’re too far out of range for cell service.”

“Maybe, but it’s worth a shot.”

Robert sighs, then flips his map over for the coordinates scribbled on the back. Gabby’s fingers fly across her screen. Within a minute, the automated voice is telling them to continue south for 256 feet.

“Verizon,” she offers at his look of surprise. 

You have arrived at your destination! the phone announces as they come to a copse of trees underneath the mesa’s shadow. Elena isn’t sure she really believes in all of Robert’s theories about magnetic fields, but there’s something different here. An odd sensation tingles down her spine and through her fingers, as if she’s touching a live wire. The smell of ozone is heavy, as if a tremendous rain fell moments ago, though the desert is bone-dry. 

“Well?” Robert motions to the whistle in her hand. 

She lifts the whistle to her lips and blows. Its shrill cry pierces the air, the mesa’s steep walls echoing the noise. At first, nothing. Then, as if ripping a seam through the fabric of reality, a portal cleaves the open air before them. That blinding blue-and-white color shimmers before them. 

“Holy fuck.” Gabby grabs her arm and squeezes. “You-- you weren’t making this shit up.” 

At that, Robert turns and lifts an eyebrow at her, a smirk stretching across his face. 

“You think we’d make you drive two-thousand miles for a practical joke?”

“I mean, we used to play them on each other growing up,” she says. “But this would be one hell of a trick.” 

“No trick,” Elena tells her, turning her attention away from the portal and back to her sister. “But it does mean…” she trails off, her throat too tight to finish the sentence. 

With tears welling in her eyes, Gabby throws her arms around her and hauls her in for a tight hug. The portal sparkles against Elena’s closed eyes; tears drip steadily down her face. 

“You’re really sweaty,” Gabby complains against her hair, prompting a laugh from her sister. “I hope you didn’t forget to bring anything, because there’s no CVS on the other side.”

“I’ll be okay. I have everything I need. And there’s always the local market.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they’re stock-full of tampons and condoms.” 

Robert clears his throat, gesturing to the portal when both sisters glance over at him. 

“I’m sorry, but we really need to go, sooner rather than later. I’m not sure how long the portal will stay open. If it closes, we may not get another chance.” 

Elena nods, crushing her sister against her one last time before letting go.

“I know you’ll have a badass sword or whatever, but make sure you use those moves I taught you,” Gabby tells her. “I didn’t close up shop at the gym for a whole day just for you to rely on weapons only.”

“Okay,” Elena nods. “I will.”  

“And try to get a message to me. I’ll keep an eye out for any new pirate documents and artifacts. There’s a subreddit I follow that keeps me up-to-date.”

“Okay, I will.”

“And tell that little boy of yours, whenever he comes along, that he has a really cool aunt.”

“Okay,” Elena promises, her voice breaking around the words, “I will.”

Nodding at Robert, she walks with him to the portal’s edge. This close, she can smell the salty wind and feel the humidity of the Caribbean. Glancing back at her sister, she gives her a watery smile. 

“Love you,” they say in tandem, prompting the other to chuckle. 

After a final wave, Elena turns and links her arm through Robert’s. 

“Ready?”

“Ready.” 

Together, they step into the portal, and the world closes up behind them. For the briefest moment, she glimpses that swirling mass of colors that surrounded the Intrepid during the chase with the Admiral. Then: white sand; a blazing, blue sky; palm trees swaying along the curve of a coastline. The salty wind that she caught the scent of earlier rushes past, a cool balm against her sweaty skin. Across the blue stretch in front of them, ships cruise toward the shore, their sails trimmed for an easy docking. Through the trees to the west, a bustling town sits above a busy port. 

“Where are we?” Elena asks, squinting at the buildings to see if she can recognize where they’ve landed. 

“Santo Domingo -- though you’d know it as the Dominican Republic,” Robert explains. “That white flag with the odd-looking red ex is a symbol of the Spanish empire. The ships out there are flying the same colors.”

“Okay. Now, more importantly, when are we?” she asks.

“The Spanish ruled this half of Hispaniola between 1697 and 1795.”

“Oh, yeah, you know,” she scoffs, “just a hundred-year span of time.” 

“Quiet, I’m not finished. Do you notice something off about the buildings? Extensive damage like that isn’t caused by a tropical storm. That would be hurricane-force winds.” As he lectures, he swings the bag on his shoulder round and starts to dig through it. “In 1754, Santo Domingo was hit with what would’ve been a category three hurricane. Twelve ships were lost.”

“That history degree of yours is coming in clutch,” she says, grinning when he scowls at the slang term.

“Our only real way of knowing, of course, is to go into town and find out.” 

Pulling a tube from his bag, Robert bends to set it down in front of the portal. She forgot it was there at all, too excited at the prospect of returning home. “I’d advise you to retreat,” he tells her as he backs away, a pistol in his other hand. 

Elena heeds his warning and follows him several paces away. She claps her hands over her ears just as Robert pulls the trigger. The gunpowder explodes into a ball of fire, eating away at the portal until it collapses in on itself, blinking from existence. 

“So.” Her words sound muffled to her, still ringing from the blast. “That’s why you didn’t want to fly to South Dakota.”

“Not really. I just hate flying.”

“Convenient that you picked a century when airplanes haven’t been invented yet.” 

Robert grins at her and shrugs, though the jovial expression drops from his face as he gestures to the whistle, still clutched in her hand. 

“For the next item on the agenda, you need to get rid of that.”

“What? No!” Elena takes a step back and holds it against her chest. 

“Elena--”

“Not until I find Edward. If we went too far in time, then this was all for nothing.”

He settles his hands on his hips and shakes his head at her. 

“If you hold onto that, you’ll be drawing unwanted attention to yourself. There are those that can… sense power in objects. You’d be wise to toss that thing into the sea.”

“Later,” she snaps, then hesitates, trying to reign in the irritation at his lack of understanding. “Look, I know that for you, your goal is complete: you’re back. But mine isn’t.” 

Robert grimaces, glancing away and towards the ocean beyond. Finally, the set of his shoulders loosens and his breath escapes him in a sigh. He digs through the bag at his side for a moment, before pulling out a long, gold chain. 

“Here.” He takes the whistle from her and loops it through the chain. “So you don’t lose it in the meantime.” 

Elena settles the necklace across her chest; the whistle disappears into the top of her shirt, hidden from view. 

“Thanks.”

“Now,” Robert gestures towards the town, “let’s bury these bags and go see about this pirate of yours.”

------

References:

The warehouse full of artifacts in the Badlands is a reference to Warehouse 13, a show about a warehouse full of artifacts in the Badlands.

#edward x mc #edward mortemer #distant shores #distant shores fic #august choices challenge #Kaila writes things #f: the way home

[allmywardensaresafeandsound]

How about #73 for Surana/Anders? 💕

73. Height Difference Kisses Where One Person Has To Bend Down And The Other Is On Their Tippy Toes

F!Surana/Anders (pre-relationship)

Anders remembers the time spent in the Circle in flashes; some as clear as the day, and some dark like never-ending stone and silence.

He remembers the smell of books blending with ozone and metal polish, Karl and the shape of his smiles, the summer days in the Chantry, with candles melting and the Sisters fanning themselves with old pamphlets. The remembers Conte and rats, making conversation late at night when no one else would, he remembers fireflies and ice, and calling them iceflies and thinking that if a swarm could laugh that would be what it would feel like.

His memories of the Circle hold a precise type of sharpness that almost seems fabricated, glazed, as if a part of his mind had polished and retouched them, the Circle and the dreams he dreamt in its walls becoming one, never quite the same as all the other fleeting, hungry memories he jealously collected in the years. The outside with the trees heavy of spring, mother humming as she sewed her embroideries, the cold of lake water, the lady that once found him sleeping under one of her fruit trees and offered him a peach. He remembered those like paintings, vague and filled with the memory of a feeling that was.

His memories of the Circle simply are, locked, almost breathing, quiet and sharp with the knowledge of all the things he should have forgotten. Vivid, dream-like, true, different.

He remembers Malaad. He remembers her brittle like the surface of a frozen lake in autumn, beautiful and scary like the promise of a fall in icy waters. He remembers her cold fingers and the way she looked, young, scared, a reminder of why he hated it there, of what he could become if he allowed them to believe the Circle was all his life and future.

He doesn't remember her being small, and it's weird now that he thinks about it, because she must have been. He remembers her being younger, almost a child, but most of all he remembers her still, frozen, deep, as if waiting, instead of simply young, or small. Each rattle of her body seemed to hide a new and different shape, herself just a distortion of something else.

Malaad, now, is simply Malaad. The light is soft and grey from the overcast weather, and the scent of rain makes her gentle and serene, her robe willowing softly, the shape of her body steady in the chilly, charged air.

Next to him she looks short, so short. He almost can't believe it now that he notices it. He shakes his head and smiles to himself.

The thought that he may not remember this, this exact moment, thia exact feeling of wind on his face, this warmth, this peace, caresses him. It's freeing. Exhilarating. He's free. They both are.

He kisses her forehead and she's surprised enough to almost headbutt his chin as she looks up to him.

"Everything alright?"

"I could say I'm freezing my arse off."

She huffs, quiet, amused. With her ice magic she doesn't feel the cold the same way. "You could."

A voice calls from the fortress, and Commander Surana turns towards it, a bit less free, a little more careful. But still as steady, never brittle like she once was.

"I have to go, Nathaniel is back."

"Go. I'll stay a little more."

For a second she looks at him like she doesn't expect to see him again if she turns her back.

"I won't run, Mal," he teases.

She isn't really an expressive woman, Malaad, but he guesses that's her raising one eyebrow and laughing at him.

"You could."

He could, and she would let him. But he would miss her, and he's tired of losing friends.

"You'd be so bored without me."

She smiles, something small and calm and tender. She's short, he remembers, as she rises on her tiptoes, her hand on his chest, head tilted up, the grey sky mirrored into her eyes. He bends down at the last minute, and her lips touch his cheek in a kiss.

He remembers her being cold, like the stone, the magic at her fingertips, the loneliness, like the fear and the thrum of Fade in the walls like chains.

She's warm.

#was i tired to look at it anymore and that's why i am posting it? #yes #dear god i have no idea where i was going with this #but i hope it's decent #malaad/anders #oc : Malaad #not even a kissie on the lippies cause i have no idea if they even meet again after daa #BUT THERE'S A LOT OF FEELINGS OK #dragon age #mine #thank you for the prompt!!!!! #i'm happy i wrote something!

[ninemelodies]

no man’s land

Prompto gets flashes of a too hot car, baking in the heat of the sun. He remembers creaky motel beds and a snore like a chainsaw. Oceans, mountains, the feel of a camera that is not his beneath his fingers, and the too tight squeeze of a wrist band covering his biggest secret. Auburn hair, eyes that shined with too much malice and knowledge, the crushing feeling of realizing that even with a gun in his hand and magic at his back, he’s still powerless. “It didn’t...work out that way though, did it?”

Prompto doesn’t mean to trip over a grave. He’s running blind, doing his best to keep the tree branches from smacking him in the face. They slow him down some, but not enough to get him caught by the guard behind him. He hears a faint damn you as the footsteps fade out. That’s good, though Prompto knows he hasn’t lost the guard yet, he also knows that he can’t risk getting put in jail for trespassing, again.

Luckily, the forest seems to be thinning, and running is becoming easier. His camera bounces roughly against his chest, and Prompto takes advantage of the lack of trees to readjust it. He cites this as the reason he didn’t see the sword sticking out of the ground, nor the small stone set in front of it.

The toe of his sneaker catches the blade of the sword, causing him to turn around and stumble into the stone. He goes down backwards, camera clutched tightly in his hand as his arms cartwheel to try and prevent his inevitable connection with the hard ground. Prompto lies there for a view minutes, staring at the sky and struggling to get air back into his lungs. When he can finally breathe again, he groans and rolls over onto his hands and knees. He reaches for his camera, but his fingers just grasp the soft fabric of his shirt.

He scrambles up, praying to whatever gods might be listening that his camera came out unscathed. It wasn’t a cheap model, and he had saved for years to be able to afford it. If it broke, Prompto would be extremely upset. A quick survey of the ground brings up nothing, and Prompto allows himself a brief moment of panic before something glints at the edge of his vision.

It’s his camera, dangling off the very sword that he had tripped over. “Thank Shiva!” He rushes over, and quickly checks his camera over. It still works properly, and the screen isn’t scratched, though it is covered in mud where it had made contact with the ground. Prompto’s hand stills from where he’s wiping off his camera.

If his camera had been caught on the edge of the sword, why was it covered in mud? And why did Prompto clearly remember having it in his hand when he went down?

“Pretty sure Shiva didn’t have anything to do with saving your camera, Prom.” A voice behind him whispers.

But when Prompto turns around, there’s no one there. He tells himself it’s just the wind (nevermind the fact that the trees are still and eerily quiet) and shrugs off his unease.

He ignores the way the back of his neck prickles as he bends down to get a better look at what he tripped over. The sword is askew, so Prompto takes the time to straighten it. As he’s doing so, he uses the edge of his sleeve to clean off a bit of the blade. Underneath all the grime, the blade still shines brightly.

Prompto’s thanking his luck in landing a job at the Insomnian Museum of History because he recognizes this metal. He’s seen it on guns and swords that belonged to royalty and high ranking generals from before the Daemon Wars and the Great Night. This sword is old, pushing 150 years, and yet still looks sharp enough to kill. The handle is bulky, and looks like it was created out of pieces of machinery. Prompto trails his fingers over it, trying to think of what to call his newest discovery so he can present it to the museum.

“Machine blade?” For some reason, that name doesn’t seem right on his tongue. Prompto’s seen countless blades and other weapons, but for some reason, this particular one stirs a feeling in his heart. Something thick and bitter and melancholy. Prompto can’t explain it, but he knows this sword. His sleeve snags on the edge of one of the machinery pieces, and suddenly Prompto is hit with the odd feeling that he’s seen something similar in one of the cars his sister, Cindy, loves to work on. He swallows past the lump in his throat and tries again. “Blade….Engine...blade?” And yeah, that name seems right.

His feeling of unease growing, Prompto moves down to look at the small stone. It’s unreadable with all the plants and dirt covering it, but when Prompto cleans the stone off it reads ‘Noct’ and there are two years underneath that. It’s a grave. He’s been kneeling in the mud of someone’s grave this entire time. Even worse, he tripped over this person’s gravestone! Slowly, so as not to the disturb the dirt under him any more than he already has Prompto shuffles to the side of the grave.

He traces over the years again and does a quick calculation in his head. Whoever this was, they died young. 20 years old, the same age Prompto was now. Sadness and anger crawl their way up Prompto’s throat like bile. The sadness he understands, but where was the anger coming from? Instead of addressing it, he shoves the feeling to the side and instead focuses on the sadness.

“You died young, huh Noct?” Prompto whispers as he pulls his camera out and snaps pictures of the grave and sword he’s kneeling beside.

There’s a deep exhale somewhere in the vicinity of Prompto’s left shoulder. “Mentally, yes. Physically, I died when I was thirty.”

Prompto neck cracks loudly with the force at which he whips around to stare at the man kneeling next to him. For the second time that day, Prompto shrieks and goes toppling over backwards. This time he keeps his grip on his camera. He blinks once, twice, eyes wide as he tries to process the sight in front of him.

Messy black hair frames a pale face, and midnight blue eyes are wide with concern. “Prom? You okay?”

Prompto can’t unstick his tongue to cobble together an answer. (He’s too busy dealing with the realization that a) this man is insanely gorgeous and b) faintly see-through.)

At his silence, the other man sighs and looks away. “I guess it was a long shot that you’d be able to see me.” His eyes slide back to Prompto’s face, and they’re searching for something. “You probably don’t even remember me.”

It’s only when the man stands to leave that Prompto can finally unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Wait!”

The man eyes widen with surprise, and he searches Prompto’s face again. “Prompto?” He questions.

“Noct….is.” And Prompto wish he could explain where the second half of that name came from, or why it felt so right to say it. “Noctis!” He scrambles up and reaches forwards to touch Noctis’s face, just to prove to himself that the person in front of him is actually there and not just a hallucination caused by a concussion. His fingers go through Noctis’s cheek and Prompto has to bite back a gasp at the cold. Somehow, Prompto already knows what Noctis’s face would’ve felt like if…

Noctis, to his credit, doesn’t even flinch, but his eyes darken and the corners of his mouth dip into the barest hints of a frown. “I’m dead, Prom.” He reaches up to cup Prompto’s hand, which still lingers near his face. Prompto has to repress the urge to shiver. “I have been for a very long time.”

And there’s the elephant in the room that Prompto really hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. He’s talking to a ghost. A ghost that he recognizes more and more with each passing second. A ghost that he knows things about that he shouldn’t. “Why do I...know you? Why do you know me?”

“You were my best friend.”

“But that can’t be right.” Prompto’s voice rises in frustration. “I was born 20 years ago, and if that sword is anything to go by, you’ve been dead for almost 150 years! There is no way I could know that you love to fish or that car rides make you sleepy and that you miss your father more than you would ever tell me!”

“I…” Noctis opens his mouth, and then closes it. “We became friends in high school. When I was 20, I was told that I would marry Luna, and so you, me, Ignis, and Gladio set out on a roadtrip to meet her in Altissia.”

Prompto gets flashes of a too hot car, baking in the heat of the sun. He remembers creaky motel beds and a snore like a chainsaw. Oceans, mountains, the feel of a camera that is not his beneath his fingers, and the too tight squeeze of a wrist band covering his biggest secret. Auburn hair, eyes that shined with too much malice and knowledge, the crushing feeling of realizing that even with a gun in his hand and magic at his back, he’s still powerless. “It didn’t...work out that way though, did it?”

Noctis shakes his head no. “Ardyn intercepted us in Galdin Quay and things just went downhill from there. Insomnia fell, my dad….” Noctis pauses and takes a deep breath before he can continue. “We ended up travelling all over Lucis, it was simultaneously the most fun I’ve ever had and the most danger I’ve ever been in. I forged a covenant with several gods.”

Shaking ground and a cloying fear that Noctis was never going to come out of that pit alive. The smell of ozone and hair that was flat and damp from the rain.

“But eventually, we did make it to Altissia.”

“Leviathan,” Prompto breathes, and his memories shift. There’s water and rubble and a white dress stained with red. Blind eyes staring at him and the urge to scream as tears of frustration prick the edges of his lashes. He blinks them away as a new memory surfaces. The feeling of Noctis’s arm pressing into his wide pipe, eyes distorted in anger and mouth twisted into a snarl that Prompto has never seen before and never wants to see again. Air whistling through his hair and a bruise forming on his shoulder from the force of Noctis’s shove. Snow and cold and the burning sensation as his fingers succumb to frostbite in the freezing wasteland caused by Niflheim’s own quest for power. “You pushed me off the train….” Noctis’s voice twisted in anguish as he calls Prompto’s name, then the relief as he tells Prompto that yes, of course he was worried. “But then you rescued me.” The promise to be with Noctis forever. “And then you vanished into the crystal and you came back and then you left again. How am I supposed to be at your side when you keep going to places I can’t follow?” Prompto’s not proud of the way his voice cracks.

But it’s okay, because when Noctis speaks again his voice is thick with anguish. “I’m so sorry, Prom.” He reaches forward like he wants to wipe away the tears that have started rolling down Prompto’s face, but he freezes with his fingers inches from Prompto’s cheek. Noctis swallows and then lowers his hand. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you then, and I’m not going to waste it now, but I love you Prompto, I always have.”

Prompto’s breath hitches and he surges forward to wrap his arms around Noctis’s waist. “Idiot! You’re an idiot!” He buries his face in Noctis’s shirt and takes a shuddering breath. “I love you too, then and now.” It’s only when Prompto looks up, intent on pressing a kiss to Noctis’s forehead that he realizes that Noctis is solid and warm. He’s holding Noctis and not passing through him. Prompto pulls back in shock, wide eyes locking with Noctis’s. “I guess the god’s decided to give you a second chance.”

Noctis can only nod dumbly in response, too wrapped up in being alive to think about it. As it is, Prompto is content to stand in the clearing, arms wrapped around Noctis and face pressed into his shoulder. But eventually, a thought skitters across his mind.

“Hey, Noct?” The man in question hums in response. “D’ya think if we dug up your grave we’d find your bones or nah?”

Noctis smacks him on the shoulder and Prompto’s laughter rings through the air around them.

#final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #promptis #prompto argentum #noctis lucis caelum #my fics

[balladserial]

Episode 1: Part 2

Chaos ensues almost immediately. I think I see Mikael hopping on Clairvoyance’s back piggy-back style out of the corner of my eye, but it’s hard to keep track of them for longwith people rushing this way and that. Between everyone scattering and the shouting of the Guard over the bar noise, it’s difficult for anyone to keep track of their surroundings.

That’s good for me.

I sprint across the room like a bat out of hell, ducking briefly under the arm of one of the Guards. My legs sweep glasses to the floor with a clamor of sound as I vault over the bar, but I hardly have time to stop and apologize. I can smell ozone in the room behind me, and that smell never precedes anything good.

Hellfire in a bar full of alcohol? What the fuck are they thinking?

I don’t intend to stick around and find out.

A cluster of fearfully huddling serving staff blocks the way to the kitchen, and I don’t have time to ask them to move. I barrel right through, knocking two of the more lightweight of them to the floor.

“Sorry!” I yell over my shoulder, already halfway through the kitchen.

Elbowing the last of the kitchen staff out of the way, I emerge through the kitchen door into the golden light of the fading sunshine.

I hear shouting and heavy footfalls behind me. Shit. I still have a tail, although I don’t dare look over my shoulder to see who’s pursuing me. Instead, I pick up the pace, my worn shoes skidding over the rough cobblestone street as I turn a sharp corner.

All this running is not doing wonders for my lungs. My chest contracts in sharp pain. It feels like a weight is pressing down on my lungs, squeezing out the oxygen like so much toothpaste. It’s not a comfortable feeling. My breaths come shallow and half-filled.

The pedestrian path ahead rounds the top of a hill, and the city of Greater Mercy lays itself out before me. It’s an enviable city, all golden minarets and silver spires. Vertically built, with walkways between the buildings at even the highest levels, the city feels more like a spider’s web than something man made. I swing myself onto a pedestrian ladder at full force and climb like my life depends on it, in the vain hope that maybe all that armor will weigh the Guard down some.

I should be so lucky.

The path at the top of the ladder hits a crossroads, intersected by a magnetic levitation track. I strain to sprint past the crossing in time,, but I feel a deep panic well up in my throat as the pedestrian gate falls closed, signaling that a train is coming. I can’t breathe at all now, and I can feel heat rising to my face as I skid to a sudden stop.

A quick glance behind me shows the Guard is mere moments away. It seems I only have two of them on my tail: a short Guard whose silver armor is still shiny and unscratched, struggling to keep up the pace, and the gold-plated Order member from before. Her hair is long, brown and plaited neatly to the back of her head. She has severe features, and I sincerely doubt she’ll be in the mood to let me bluff my way out of this. Which leaves me with one move left.

The supply train glides towards us silently, with the kind of stealth I’d expect out of a train that literally does not touch its tracks. I have only a split second to judge its speed, and I take the risk. Unfurl the rope on my belt, throw the hook at the end, and hold tight.

Real tight.

The force of the car passing nearly pulls my arms out of my sockets, but I maintain my grip. The momentum swings me upward, and my hands scream in protest, but find purchase on a ridge in the metal. And just like that, I’m riding the train. I’m RIDING the SUPPLY TRAIN.

The wind rips a whoop of joy from my lungs, adrenaline triggering waves of giddy laughter.

I exhale. Speaking of my lungs. I furiously untuck my shirt and reach underneath, carefully undoing the hook-and-eye clasps under my right arm until the tight fabric of my binder falls away and releases the pain in my chest. I cough loudly, willing air into my lungs until they fill up once again.

I’m just beginning to get comfortable, perched atop the speeding train, when a deafening noise erupts from behind me. I hit the deck before my brain has even processed the sound, reflex taking over my body and slamming it to the cart’s roof. My already sore chest smarts with blinding pain, my ribs smacking at full force into the harsh metal.

The front of the car in front of me erupts into blue flame, the smell of smoke and ozone acrid and unfamiliar against my nostrils. The Hellfire is a good ten feet from me, but I can still feel the heat on my skin as if I had been standing a foot from a heater. It burns through the solid steel the way I’m told ordinary fire might burn paper. Its uneven, flickering light casts everything around it, including my own face, in a cold, eerie sheen. My heart pounds in my gut.

That could have been me.

“Tal Nika Joane!” calls a booming voice from the direction of the caboose. It’s to the Guard’s credit that I can hear her at all over the rushing wind. “By order of Her Highness, Princess Arrellia Valonde, you are under arrest for crimes against the Principality!”

“I’m sure I am!” I shout back, clinging to the car for dear life.

“Come back with your hands above your head and you will be taken in peacefully! Continue to resist, and we will continue to shoot!” bellows the voice, not sounding particularly amused with my very funny quip.

“Serious question?” I yell back, still straining to make my voice heard over the wind. “How many people in high speed train chases actually go for that? I gotta know what percentage of the Principality are actually credulous schmucks-”

Another burst of Hellfire erupts about three feet to my left. This time the heat is close enough to irritate my skin, like a bad sunburn.

I have to get out of here, but I’m essentially trapped between two walls of cobalt flame. Both of which are slowly creeping in on my position. The only direction I can run is toward the Guard.

I glance over my shoulder toward the front of the train. It’s about to round a bend, then the track dips and heads through a small, curated forest-like area to a tunnel with about two feet of clearance from the top of the train. I’m on a time limit, and I need to make a decision fast.

My jaw clenches vise-tight, but I put my hands on my head and walk, slowly, towards the caboose. My heart thrums at hummingbird speed inside my ribs, but I will my outsides to stay calm. A deep breath: in for five seconds, hold for five, out for eight.

The Guard meets me halfway, climbing onto the roof of the train just in time to grab both my hands. She wrenches them roughly behinds my back and begins to fasten them with a pair of iron cuffs.

“Tal Nika Joane,” she booms, practically yelling in my ear. “you are under arrest for multiple counts of underage drinking, truancy, petty theft, vandalism, aiding and abetting a known fugitive, and piracy.”

She pauses to breathe. I don’t blame her, my rap sheet is pretty impressive.

“You retain your right to silence until an advocate can be acquired. If you cannot acquire an advocate, you are entitled to self-representation.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I reply, wriggling my hand a little as she struggles with the cuffs. I can almost feel something inside her bag, I just need to distract her long enough to reach it. “Listen, you couldn’t have done this like a year earlier when I was still a minor? I’m too young and pretty to spend my life in jail, yknow? Look at me, I wouldn’t make it two weeks.”

The Guard rolls her eyes and yanks my arm a little too hard in the wrong direction. I manage to bite down on the pain, but only just.

“You should have thought about that before you became a pirate,” the Guard says smugly. “But don’t worry, kiddo. With the crew you run with? I doubt jail is what the Princess has in mind for you.”

The train veers to the right, and I swallow. I’m not entirely sure what she’s implying, but I can make a rough guess, and I’m not a fan.

“Cool,” I say out loud, clenching both fists. “Well, as fun as that sounds, word of advice?”

“Huh?”

“Duck.”

I pivot on one foot and swing the steel cuffs at full speed into the side of her face. There’s a satisfying crack as her nose breaks under the force and blood begins to flow freely down her face. I desperately wish I had time to savor the hit, but time waits for no man. The train is swiftly approaching the tunnel and there’s only one way off this thing.

I pitch my body sideways, and briefly, I am weightless. The feeling doesn’t last long. I feel the familiar pull at my guts as gravity grabs me back and I fall, crashing my way through tree branches and brush until I finally roll to a stop on the leaf-covered ground.

Everything hurts.

I can feel the beginnings of some nasty bruises all over my body, and a dull throbbing pain in my shoulder tells me the bone is probably dislocated. I’m not sure what else is broken, but the continuing pounding in my chest tells me that I’m not dead, and that’s the most important part.

“You good, Tal?” calls a familiar tinny voice from just above me.

I struggle to my feet. It’s not an easy task, what with the pounding in my head, the world swimming around me, and my arm threatening to detach itself from my torso entirely.

“Clair?” I ask aloud. “Where are you?”

“Behind you, doofus.”

I turn. Indeed, hovering in the air behind me is a fist-sized orb made from intricately constructed bronze. It’s held aloft by a single spinning propellor, buzzing around me like a really weird, oversized bee. On the side of the orb facing me is a single blue eye.

“So are you dead now?” says Clairvoyance, hovering by my clearly injured arm smugly. “Because if you’re dead I get your stuff, that’s the arrangement.”

“I never agreed to that,” I grumble, massaging my limp arm. “And I’m not dead. Where are the others?”

“Back on the ship,” he replies. “It’s docked a few blocks west of here. Wanna head out, or would you rather go back and hang for your crimes against humanity?”

“Get fucked,” I groan, pushing past him in the direction of the slowly fading sunset. He chuckles behind me and speeds to catch up.

“Glad you’re not dead,” he says. After a brief pause, I grin.

“Course you are.”

--

The last rays from the setting sun slink down over the horizon by the time I reach the jutting rock where the good ship Vega Vespa has laid anchor. I’m immediately conscious of how much of a mess I am. My binder is still unfastened beneath my shirt, my hair disheveled (more so than usual) and the knees of my trousers are torn through. The one shackle that Guard managed to fasten still dangles from my injured arm, making me wince in pain every time I move.

Still, the landing point is nice. I can feel the thrumming of the enormous propellers keeping the city afloat beneath my feet, and beyond the sharp drop where the ship is docked, I see a sea of clouds and sky cloaking the distant treetops of Arcadia V’s surface. The ship itself looms far over us. An enormous metal contraption, held aloft by an enormous balloon filled with hydrogen, powered by massive solar sails that billow in the brisk, cliffside wind.

A figure on the deck grabs a loose rope and swings to solid land, bypassing the gangplank entirely. Captain Warring lands with the same grace as usual, although the flyaways in her hair and the sheen of sweat on her face give away a level of stress I haven’t seen on her in a while. I can imagine why; the Vega Vespa isn’t a small ship. There has to be a limit to how long she can leave it docked here.

“Joane,” says the captain, closing the distance between us in two short strides. “What the hell happened?”

“I ran into some...Guard-related problems,” I explain sheepishly, feeling my face go red. “I might have jumped off a train.”

“You might have-” Captain Warring looks literally the most tired I have ever seen her be. “Joane. You are on deck duty for the next two weeks once you’re healed and fit for manual labor. Go see Gratitude.”

“Captain-” I start.

“Do not test me,” she snaps. “You could have been killed.”

“Yeah,” I admit, rummaging with my good hand in my pocket. “But I also got this.”

From my pocket I pull a yellowed, folded piece of paper. I unfold it. Official Principality letterhead.

“Flight schedule of the P.A.S. Condor. Transportation of black bar goods.” I let out a shaky breath.

“Docking in West Compassion on October 1st.”

[Episode 1 Part 1] - [Episode 1 Part 3]

#story #Ballad serial

[rileywrites-reylo]

Even After (Part I)

Rey x Ben Solo/Kylo Ren

Summary: We were both wrong, the voice in her head is shaky and she knows this is an apology. Words: 1.2k. (I really have an infatuation with this Force Bond business.)

“These are your first steps...” Or: how they fall, and what it means to come together.

The first time they kiss, it’s full of salt and sand. It’s uncomfortable and awkward; it leaves the both of them feeling empty and wanting in ways they could never have imagined.

The first time they kiss, it’s through their bond.

It shouldn’t have surprised her the way that it does when she feels the essence of Leia Organa tingle through her veins for the last time and suddenly he comes to her; he’s pulled there where she is, or she to him; somewhere in the middle. Neither are really quite sure. They both forget to question it, the Force, when the muddied water of his eyes meets with the rainy earth of hers for the first time in months.

For the first time since they fled.

The Resistance was scared of her.

The First Order hadn’t been scared enough of him.

Death paints his features, drips from every dark fold of his robes. He’s changed his attire to something less like an abyss and more like storm clouds, but his eyes are the same shade of drained.

You look terrible, she thinks, immediately regretting it, knowing exactly why the skin wrapped around his hollowed eyes was bruised, why he looked so waxy and washed out.

She’d seen it all in her dreams, in her nightmares; the night he’d fought his way out.

She’s already sending him the shame of her hastily released words, apologizing as though it really would have made a difference to him whether she had thought it to herself or said the words aloud.

He would know. Does know, always, when they’re like this, connected as they are; even when they don’t want to be.

You don’t look any better, he sends her, but there’s no bite to his words. She knows he’s right. She’s exhausted; worn, spent, and alone.

What I said before still stands, he offers, punctuating her thoughts, you aren’t alone. You don’t have to be.

Even after…

For a second, they’re both standing amidst all of that violent, blood red, back to back, hearts pounding in sync through chest walls. But then the smoke invades, the fire, his carcass, and she’s across from him, miles apart and deceiving him again, with the same hurt swimming in the depths of his chest and eyes.

He’s thinking about what he’d said to her; all that he’d expected. He shows her the way her eyes had been, his words dripping from dark eyelashes while the world they’d almost created together falls through the glossy white; pieces of what could have been burning in her irises.

We were both wrong, the voice in her head is shaky and she knows this is an apology.

It’s not wrong to want, Ben.

Dark eyebrows rise, and then furrow, but she’s too busy taking in all of his freckles and the way his mouth pulls towards his chin as he uses her name like a question mark.

Rey…

She takes a step towards him; the grey fabric wrapped around his legs rustle as he does the same. It’s cautious at first, trust still frayed at the edges. When she feels his heart pang and her bones start to ache with the full force of his loss as he fully exposes himself, she forgets everything and they’re on each other in an instant; hoping that the Force would give them this in this moment of need.

This moment of wanting.

It does.

His face finds safety in the lines of her stomach, his knees give out and his hair catches on her belt as he settles himself and pushes into her harder, long, thick arms wrapping all the way around her, bare hands like a vice at her hips.

She’s solid enough that he can almost hear her heart pound away in his ears; the sound like an echo in an empty room; can almost taste the air, her breath is a damp, metallic breeze in his bangs.

He sends a silent thank you to whatever this is, because in this moment he decides that she’s right. He wants this, wants her.

He’s solid enough that she can smell his sweat, can feel the dampness of the fabric at his chest pressed into her, the saltiness of his tears resting on clammy cheeks, the tang of burning ozone in his hair.

He sends her a flash of the planet he’s hidden himself away on, towering trees filling the strange purple sky above his head. The air around him is thick and suffocating, barely breathable to begin with, but even more so now with the haze of smoke from the burning ultra green trunks; red angry lines evidence of how affected he’d been, of how he’d lost himself.

I’m all that’s left.

That’s not true, his fingers bunch at her robes.

She’s gone.

Not really. She will always be with you; in your memories, in your words, in your eyes. I see her in every star, she offers and her hands leave her sides to find the softness of dark, smokey waves.

He breathes her in, soaks in every word she gives, reveling in how this feels. It hurts to think of what this would be if she were here, with him, her skin tinted pink with the setting suns. Her own hair smelling like a world caught in fire.

The ghost of her fingers runs through his hair as his lips try in vain to paint the words they’re both feeling; being touched and touching; holding, from across the bond; wide open and vulnerable. She can feel every ounce of his heart, and he hers, one drowning in agony and shocking her with the whisperings of “please” echoing through its chambers, the other hurting for him, for the galaxy, for herself.

But there’s warmth.

It scares him.

Scares the both of them.

There is fear in hoping.

“Ben,” phantom breaths caressing his temple, the breeze of it rustling the darkness of his hair, “It’s OK, I know.” Fingers reach out to rest where his heart lie, somewhere far across the galaxy on a planet made of emerald trees and amethyst skies. She pushes at the wrinkled mess of his tunic until she finds the skin beneath it; her skin blooming against his feels like every distant sun that shines down on all of the lovers who’ve ever danced together.

“How?” he whispers back. She knows what he really means.

The question he asks is the same one that every lover asks each moon that’s ever danced with the Universe.

She shakes her head, and cradles him to her, bending her soul so she can better meet his, “I feel it, too,” pink of her starry lips playing at pale, freckled skin as she smiles knowingly, teasingly, and in forgiveness. Dark eyes look up at her through long, wet lashes to offer her his own secret smile; glint of a time where she’d stayed with him only because he’d made it so shimmering regretfully beneath where the humor and the weight of her words danced.

His big hands are feather light on her cheeks, pulling her, pleading, and abruptly he’s pressing his lips to hers a little too roughly, her teeth clank against his, her lip gets pinched between the white, and then he’s gone.

She’s left hunching over a haunted space in the emptiness of her cramped sleeping quarters, cold metal walls of a stolen ship closing in as her lips buzz and salty tears that don’t belong to her run down her cheeks.

Part II coming soon. Please let me know what you guys think. Input is greatly appreciated!

#reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fic #reylo imagine #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #rey x kylo ren #rey x ben solo #ben solo x rey #kylo ren x rey #force bond #leia organa #reylo fluff #reylo angst

[speckledkingsnake]

A rusted, bent cigar case

Amidst the darkness of a trance, the first thing you feel is pain, a dull, radiating pain on your gut. A voice, masculine and old, the sort that has begun to become more a rumble, calls, “Get up, little hatchling!” And you feel your legs move to acquiesce as you wrap your arms around your midsection. The Adder banner behind you flaps in the wind, and the same wind brings a chill to your soaked form. Sweat. A broad, rough hand, huge when compared to your infantile form, grabs you by the back of your Adder yellow shirt, moving you upright with ease.  The face that greets you is smiling, with a none-too-comforting sense of weariness. A tall man, broad, taller than most of those sharp-eared Elezen you’ve met, he’s got white hair like yours, “Have you been eating?” Your stomach hurts, and you feel it contract, hear the sounds in your ears, muffled within you. He laughs, not sharp-eared, but sharp of hearing, always has, you haven’t snuck by him yet, though you have many others, your feet never make sound. This close, you can smell him, you pick up something ozone, and metal, but it all pales to the smell of tobacco. ”If you don’t eat, you’ll never catch up to me.” He laughs, and the force of his patting to your back is nearly enough to make you stumble. “Come on, again. Arms up.” His knees bend and your arms move up, his movements easy and yours stiff - his feet don’t make any sound either, there is only the wind and the calls of passing birds. Another blow follows, an ill-advised dodge, your stumbling legs, and his fist finds your temple, and this time, things go dark. Something soft rests against your shoulder, and you don’t bother opening your eyes - you’re nearly asleep. “You didn’t have to do that.” Low and almost shy, feminine. She never talks like that, you haven’t known her to be shy, so you know well enough that this isn’t her being demure, it’s her being resentful. It’s dark, and cold, as you both rest against a tree, the sound of a rushing river overwhelming the call of nearby animals and the steps of predators, even if your ears strain to stay alert. You say nothing to her words. Your knuckles feel sore and sometimes sting with passing breezes, the skin between your fingers sticks, stained with crimson. ”I could’ve handled it.” Again, she speaks, and you mutter something noncommittal, you know she could, but you wanted to. Her smell mingles with that of the Shroud, of wet, soft earth and clorophyll, but you haven’t confused the two yet. Her head shifts, her hair pressing against your throat. “You’re such a bitch.” It’s said with fondness. Sleep claims you, comforting, the rustling of grass beneath you as you adjust. A mess of colors and smells swirls, robbing you of sense, any sound replaced by a sharp, shrill tone. When things realign, a foggy, red filter fills your vision, the visor of a helmet that sits muggy and uncomfortably heavy on your head. Two lines of armored men, chitin-like plates that broaden the shoulders and cover their faces, you stand among the third, and further on, a taller officer, clad in similar steel. He looks at you, and you know it despite the red visor of his own helmet, similar to yours. You know it by the prickling at your spine and the rising of the hair at the back of your neck, the way your muscles bind tight under skin. Your ears pop, and despite the way it shakes you, you don’t move from your attentive stance. Sound filters in, and the first thing you hear is an odd, gushing crackle. Beside him is a pike, weirdly shaped. Another crackle, a gurgle, choking on water. The pike moves, or the man impaled by it does. He twitches, groans, garbled near-words, and the wood within him creaks as it strains with weight and the struggle through organ and bone. The smell. Ozone, sweat, your own breath fogging up the helmet, iron and rust and something close to bile - what seeps from the man has begun to pool at the bottom of the pike and spread outward. You feel its warmth against your boot despite it all, or perhaps you imagine it, but you can certainly smell it. The sky above is a particularly bright shade of green beyond your visor. No coherent thought crosses you, and all your will is poured into maintaining your postured, bunched and bound muscle at your back, a pulsing soreness to your knees. You feel as if your head is floating, as if you’re faint, but you stay and watch until the creaking and twitching stops, and the only sound remaining is a steady dripping from the body, and the only smell you can pick up on is copper and bile. Tears sting at your eyes, warm, and you close them tight.

You wake, groggy, confused, in an office. It is warm brown hues and dark red carpets. Bookshelves filled with more folders and documents than proper books, a large table that suddenly feels smaller as you sit up, the chair the same, smooth leather that sinks under your weight. It used to be bigger. Atop it are files, an extensive amount, spread, disorganized, your lips feel dry and your eyes heavy. Speckled Kingsnake - a title written on a profile of sorts, your face is on it, your qualifications. You’ve yet to sign it. Your gaze moves to the document beside it, a similar profile by the same title, nameless beyond it, a white-haired man. You haven’t written the date of his death yet. The place smells of tobacco, but you haven’t found his stash of it either. You groan, rubbing at your face.

When you open your eyes again, you stare at a ceiling, woodframe against brightly dyed cloth, the feel of sleep still making your head heavy. The steady sound of breathing, your own and others, slow and easy, and a warmth that seems to press down on you, envelop. Your arm shifts, tingling as sensation flows back into it, as the woman that sleeps closest to you among the many others shifts and allows bloodflow to resume while remaining in your hold. Her horns dig uncomfortably against your chest. Cedar and burnt wood and sweat. You tighten your hold, and she shifts closer. She’s never this friendly awake, and neither are you. You close your eyes.

The smell fades, and the heat of fire follows, stinging at the nose, hot and cloying in your lungs. You blink and your vision comes, through some form of machinery - you zoom forward, to watch as Xaela women and men, some too small to be adults, run from their homes, bright orange lighting up the Steppe and screams filling the usually quiet nights. Chitin-armored men push in, brandishing guns and blades. Screams are cut short. None of you brought cages or ropes to bind them with, to take them with you. You no longer sweat and tremble, your feet feel sure on the ground and your grip doesn’t tighten on the binoculars. You know one left earlier. You know she isn’t coming back. You blink, and your body droops, weighted down by the same chitin plates. They clang in your ear as you fumble with the straps and buckles. You’re bleeding, you know by how cold it feels against your left side, how the undershirt clings to skin uncomfortably. Small taps against your helmet sound in your ears as sand is blown against you. There are distant explosions, the ground shakes after you hear the crumbling of buildings. Adder yellow is spotted ahead, orange under the red visor. This is it. “This is it.” The first coherent words. Vivid, in your voice. You stop fumbling with the buckles, they haven’t noticed you yet, your steps don’t make a sound, haven’t. There are aches and sharp stings all over you, of familiar lances that pierced flesh, but none of it truly registers anymore beyond a dull knowledge that you are wounded. There is no bunching of your muscles, or soreness to your knees. Your lungs burn, and you’ve been walking for long. It could end here. Struck down, faceless beneath chitin, nameless beyond an alias no one important will recognize.

Further on, a tent. Your nose picks up grass and earth, or your head makes you think you do. Regardless, tinted by red, she stands amidst the wounded. You grunt, the sound rumbling in your throat, and your hands move on their own. You tug your helmet off, toss it aside. No other choice. You owe her. The sand sticks to your cheeks and neck, prickling when you move. You blink as they blow against your face, and the landscape changes.

A dark apartment, filled with the scent of old paper and tobacco, thick and heavy. A woman, sharp-jawed and broad-shouldered, laughs against your ear, the soft mattress beneath creaking as she shifts to grow closer, large form curling around you, all strong muscle and sharp edges. Sleep claims you, not despite these characteristics, but because of them.

Rain soaks you to the bone, cloth and leather heavy against your form. Beyond, the imposing, dark shape of a Castrum, and behind, a woman, clad in smooth plate, equally as dark and equally as intimidating. She bares teeth at you, knives in her grip, similar to the ones that weight at your hips. “I should’ve known.” She snarls, a golden gaze, much like yours, tracking you. “Garlean scum!” The words are a bark that precedes a chase. Your chest clenches, but your face doesn’t change, you stare back. Her voice is shrill, it hasn’t been that way before.

She charges you, and your hands shake as they haven’t in years. You take a steadying breath - and the ground melts beneath you, darkness once more enveloping you. A large Roegadyn pats your back, rough hands, familiar, she smiles at you, Ul’dah merchants calling their wares nearby. She leans to murmur something in your ear, something unimportant, and her hand finds your side, fingers curling, easily pulling you closer. Sweat and sand and sharp steel, she smells of it, and of warmth and sleep. 

You run through the Shroud, your body burning and bleeding, a thick, gauntlet-clad hand gripping yours, keeping you upright as your legs refuse to stop stumbling. Your vision is sharp despite the pulses of pain that wrack over you with each forced movement over uneven earth and stone. A smug smile sticks to your mind, a blade, and the smell of roots and wet earth belonging not to the forest, but to someone. Vex looks at you, sharp-jawed but soft in expression, “Hey! Stay awake!” She urges, as she stops you, “Come on, you got it?” Her voice distorts, and your vision melds, forming again, elsewhere.

The same Roegadyn snarls at your ear, thick arms wrapped protective against you, pressure against your shoulders and your midsection. She doesn’t crush you, but there is a dull sort of sting, as your wounds beneath haven’t healed, a particularly bad one on your shoulder. “Next time, I’ll shield you.” She says, a near-whine, “Let me do it.” You can’t reply, things shift and bend. A couch beneath you yields comfortably to your weight, but a lump has begun to form in your throat. A man beside you, tall and sharp-eared, or is he? He stares at you, all the same, friendliness gone from his features.

He says something, but his voice comes a garbled mess to your ear, one you push aside, and your legs will you to stand, to gain distance. Chitin-plate suits him, you realize, and he smells of tobacco and of alcohol, to mask the lingering, natural scent beneath - or maybe, your mind plays tricks again. You smell ozone, you smell rust, and bile. Your blood rushes loud in your ears. The door becomes your sole focus, an exit. Your eyes sting with warm tears.

[shinobicyrus]

“Tooth and Claw”

Haven’t written much Phandom stuff lately, so I thought I’d try something for this year’s Ectober. This one’s for October 26th: TEETH

It was probably a bad sign how long it took for Tucker to figure out which of the tech in his bag was beeping. Had to crouch over it on the sidewalk sifting through a tablet, an old phone, his backup battery charger, two different generations of game boys, his backup-backup charger; Sam always warned him he was slowly sliding down a slippery silicon slope into pseudo-hoarding.

He found the culprit near the bottom of the bag: a Fenton ecto-scope tangled up in some old  cables for a model of PDA he…didn’t actually own anymore. Sam must never know. 

It was a cobbled-together monster made from grave-robbing radio-shacks and amateur soldering kits. Taking it out of the bag only made it vibrate and beep more urgently. The scope took some finagling with a few stuck knobs and dials before the static on screen resolved into something informative: the pixelated silhouettes of trees and a cold-spot slithering past them in toxic, neon green.

Tucker lowered the scope and squinted down the block. The park was that way. Damn. Rustling through his pockets, he pulled out his main phone and pinged Danny on the secure messenger app they’d set up for Phantom stuff- because it wasn’t paranoia when the government really was hunting you down.

GROUPCHAT: WHO YA GONNA CALL? (THE D)

You: Code Green in the park You: class idk whatever the hell AW SHIT THAT’S BIG is Danny: ok I can be there in 8 Danny: keep your head down till I get there

Tucker typed back ‘You know me,’ and added a scardey-faced emoticon. 

Danny: :/ You: I choose to interpret that as loving concern for my safety You: don’t text and fly have you learned nothing from the billboard incident You: such a bad role model You: Thing of the kids You: *think You: Plz hurry

Tucker pocketed his phone before Danny remembered the talk-to-text feature. Or if Sam logged on. Like he needed their reminders not to try stuff solo. He was fully capable on standing on a streetcorner like a good sidekick and wait for the big kids to come and-

A scream cut through the night, echoes elongating on concrete and broken asphalt. 

From the park.

Where the monster-ghost was. 

Tucker groaned. “Aw hell,” and ran down the street towards it. 

Being a technophillic pseudo-shut-in whose primary mode of exercise was patrolling haunted warehouses and fleeing for his life, Tucker was pretty unfamiliar with the park. The light from the scattering of streetlamps following the paths was too few and far between, and the shadows from the trees offered too many places for an attack to come from. Honestly, even without the ghost this place was a deathtrap. 

But whatever, he was committed. He had a Fenton wrist blaster raised and trained on anything that sounded bigger than a grasshopper while he followed the chiming ectoscope.

It all resembled a scene from one of Sam’s Femalien movies a little too close for comfort: the squad of buff, hypermasculine space marines of the spacepatriachy, gung-ho and completely unaware how quickly their collective space-asses were about to get wrecked.

He kept walking. The ectoscope pinged faster. Danny said eight minutes, right? And that was…not eight minutes ago, but sooner than it was earlier. All he had to do was rescue the nice human people from being chewtoys and preferably not get full-ghosted himself.

A twig snapped. Tucker almost shot a startled rabbit, eyes shining on the edge of a streetlight. It hopped away until it melted into the long shadows of the mini-woods. 

“This is a good plan,” Tucker decided. Out loud. On the record. 

Further down the path, where the path looped around a copse of trees and the scarce light flickered weakly, Tucker heard another scream. 

He ran towards it. Look out, creatures of the netherworld, it’s a coward with a guuuun!

Around the bend, the lights were completely out, smothered and snuffed by a low buzzing hum that smelled like ozone and made the ectoscope sputter into a snowstorm of static. There was still plenty of light to see by. Sick, witch-cauldron green radiating from the ghost swimming ethereally in the air like a giant watersnake, only segmented, SUV-sized, and a head that was more a gaping chasm of sawteeth than actual head. 

That sarlacc mouth was perfectly sized to swallow up a lady in jogger clothes, who was pretty much paralyzed with fear…or maybe it was some kind of hypnotic gaze? Maybe that was what the noise was: lulling the prey just long enough to send them to the Boba-Fett Place. 

Tucker threw the ectoscope aside, braced the arm with the wrist-blaster, and shot right down the thing’s ugly mouth.

The low buzzing in the air cut off into a gurgling screech. It reared up, spitting up ecto-bile and vaporized gullet. Tucker’s next two shots hit along its body, making it spasm mid-air like a breathless fish to crash writhing into the grass. 

“Wha-?” The lady said, either broken by the spell or just plain baffled by daring rescue. Tuck ran up to stand between her and the ghost, blaster at the ready.

“Just go, I’ll hold it off!” Tucker yelled over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be-”

Annnddd she was already gone. Oh wow she could really book it. Guess that explained the jogging shorts. Still. 

“What, not even half a second of hesitation?!” Tucker yelled at the receding sound of her shoes. “I know I told you to run, but jeez, a little concern for- oh hi you’re up.”

The baby shai-hulud had risen back up, not floating but still long enough to cast a shadow over him. From that close, its outraged roar smelled a little like sun-rotted roadkill. 

 “Okay, you’re a little mad, I hear you,” Tucker leveled the blaster at it. “But here’s my rebuttal.”

Then the blaster didn’t fire.

Tucker rapidly thumbed the firing switch again. A third time. The blaster shuddered a bit on his wrist, made an sad, tired electric whine. It sounded too much like a whomp whomp on helium. 

“Uh…I don’t suppose you’d let me find someplace to plug this in?” He yelped and dove to the side when the ghost lunged at him. “AH! Guess that’s a ‘no’!”

Oh God how had he thought this was a good plan.

Tucker ran, pulled out every stop he knew from years of tactically fleeing horrifying undead monsters. Thankfully however he’d hurt it before kept it from flying after him, and it didn’t seem smart enough to phase through the trash cans, streetlights, and park benches that got in its way. Or maybe it was just super pissed.

Somehow he managed to pull out his phone in the middle of a zigzag, checked the time. Another three minutes? Two? Like Danny was ever freaking on time for anything in his half-life. “Call Danny!” He yelled. 

The phone showed him a profile pic of Danielle and Tucker cosplaying at last year’s nerd-con. “Calling ‘DANI’…”

“Wrong one stupid clone-racist phone! CALL DANNY!”

“Calling ‘DADDY…’“

“How the fuck even?!” 

Technology you’ve failed me. I’ve shown you nothing but allegedly obsessive love and you do me like that.

The ghost’s glow cast behind him warned Tucker just in time to skid beneath a low-branch and let it ram into the tree instead. Wood crunched and he shuddered thinking of being chewed and ground down to the bone between those teeth.

 It was okay, the plan was going great. He was still alive, stalling for time. Danny would get here, follow the sound of ghost roars and Tucker’s manly not-panicking screams, thermos the worm, then grab some nice post-hunt midnight bro-grub and crack jokes about how Tucker almost got eaten by-

Something snagged his ankle, cutting Tucker’s speed from adrenaline-fueled to face-meets-ground with gravity-speed. Screw you too, psychics. 

He managed to throw up his arms in time to shield his face. Pain lanced up his forearm and burned scraps into his palms. His glasses where askew, the world gone crooked and blurred. Neck twisted to follow the cold, wet feeling slowly dragging him through a bed of dead leaves. 

A long, slick glowing tendril coming from the ghost’s mouth pulled him closer and closer into its waiting maw. The hum turned into hungry, gleeful gurgles. 

Oh. This was. This was not in the plan. 

Tucker dug his raw hands  into the ground, dragging fistfuls of leaves and wet dirt. The light from his phone screen was just an arms length ahead, pulling away, no matter how much he kicked and scrambled and tried to pull himself forward. He thought there’d be more screaming and babbling on his end. Instead he was focusing every molecule of air on breathing, trying to get his crappy body Sam used for workout fodder to fight, stop that grinding progress towards it. 

He was close enough to kick it, watch its expectant slobber dribble on his ripped cargo pants. Stupidly, he adjusted his glasses; got a nice, non-blurry view of that garbage disposal mouth, a hungry pit lined with thumb-sized teeth he could reach up and touch.

Tucker’s entire life, the whole of him, boiled down to this. He always figured his last thoughts would be of his mom, crammed between Sam and Danny on his too-small bed binging bad anime, the way Ingrid bit her lip nervously before she decided to give him his first kiss.

Instead, he just swallowed and said: “Oh Grandmother, what big teeth you have.”

Jesus, good thing no one was around to hear that. 

“LASU LIN IRI!”

A furious growl tore through the trees- a wrecking ball of black and green slammed into the side of the ghost-worm. It reared up and shrieked with pain, the tendril around Tucker’s ankle somehow slack and severed.

The smart thing would be to move. Tucker numbly continued to sit there, jaw hanging as his rescuer clung to the side of the ghost-worm and tore into it with massive claws. 

“Wulf?”

The ghost-worm bucked and wiggled, then body-slammed itself into the ground, forcing Wulf to leap off and land on all fours. His eyes were solid green and burning, snarling something in ghost Tucker couldn’t catch. They went at each other, tearing the small forest around them apart. The worm’s hide was pierced and bleeding in a dozen places, but it had desperation and a metric fuckton of bulk to throw around. 

Wulf took cover in the trees, leaping from branch to branch, constantly circling and taking advantage of every opportunity to claw at its blind spots (how did it see though? did it even have eyes where the hell were its eyes?). Tucker realized his mistake when it dawned on him how much energy Wulf was wasting trying to keep that thing’s attention off of him, how Wulf was trying to protect him. 

The worm must have realized it at the same time. Tucker saw it coming, tried to yell and warn him, but it came too fast- Wulf was blindsided by the worm’s tail end, flew and hit the trunk of a tree and went down hard. Pulled himself up with strain shaking his shoulders. 

The worm let out a skree of victory and hurled itself towards Wulf. Faster than Tucker could shout, he saved himself by cutting a portal into solid air and diving in just before the worm hit, flattening itself and splintering the tree like a brittle toothpick.

It rolled and flopped on the ground, like it was having some kind of tantrum. Pulling itself back up, its mouth-head swiveled around, searching for some sign of Wulf, until it settled back on Tucker.

“Don’t look at me, I don’t know where he went.” 

A muffled, tearing noise came from somewhere in the worm’s middle.

“Nevermind.”

Wulf burst out of worm’s midsection claws first with a howl, an explosion like a sledgehammer to a watermelon that splattered Tucker and everything in sight with green. The worm didn’t even have any breath left inside, much less insides at all, to even make a dying noise as it fell over like a deflated hose. 

Panting, splattered with goopy green chunks on his claws and in his fur, Wulf stood in the clearing and panted hard. His eyes were still narrowed and dangerous, ears flat against his big head and hackles raised. Tucker had forgotten how big he was, half again as tall with enough shoulder width and muscle that would have brought Dax Baxter to weep impotent tears. 

“Uh…Wulf? You okay buddy? Amiko?”

Wulf’s ears shot up, the hunch in his shoulders straightening as he spun around to look at Tucker with huge, concerned eyes. “Amiko Tuck!”

He dove at him, predator fast, and before Tucker could even flinch Wulf’s huge paws picked up Tucker and held him at Wulf’s eye-level. “Ĉu vi estas bone? Ĉu ĝi vundis vin?” His muzzle scrunched adorably as he sniffed Tucker up and down.

“Ah-ah!, that tickles! Haha- okay okay I’m fine, man. Ne…ne- nenio estas rompita.” He smiled with a split lip. “Danke al vi.”

“Sed,” A paw easily braceleted around Tucker’s wrist. “Viaj manoj…”

“Just a scrape man, really,” Tucker assured him. “It could have been- would have been a hell of a lot worse.”

Wulf’s left ear flicked, then looked pointedly at Tucker’s hands. Shaking like leaves in Wulf’s grip. It hurt his palms for Tucker to clench his fist, but it stopped the worst of the shakes. There was nothing he could do to stop the shaking in his heart, how hyperaware he was of his own pulse, the distant but twinging pain in arm, his ankle. The pressure behind his eyes. 

“Please don’t tell Danny and Sam?” He asked, voice a little weaker. “I-I don’t want them to know how close it was. They’d only get worried.”

“Por bona kialo,” Wulf reprimanded him gently.

“Please? Bonvolu?”

It was funny to see a wolf’s brow furrow with deep thoughts, until finally Wulf hugged Tucker tight to his chest. A giant, fuzzy, protective barrier he could wrap his arms around. 

“Thanks Wulf, you’re the best.”

“I know,” he managed, then touched his big, wet nose Tucker’s.

Heat flooded his face. “Oh my God did you just give me a dog-kiss? Is that a thing you just did?”

“Not dog,” Wulf corrected him. “Lupo.”

“You are missing the point of-”

“Tucker!” A voice dropped in from the sky.

Of course this is when Danny would get here. This is his life, this is what he deserves.

Danny floated above the torn up ground and pulverized trees and gaped at the slowly melting leftovers of the ghost-worm. “What the hell- what is Wulf doing here?”

Tucker crossed his arms across and played up snuggling against Wulf’s ghost-hoodie. Not like they weren’t both covered in worm-goop anyways. “Lucky for me you’re not the only ghost-friend I have and this one is both cuddlier and more reliable.”

“I thought I told you to sit tight until I got here!”

“An innocent midnight jogger with bad judgement and possibly insomnia was in danger. What was I supposed to do, ask it to hold up until the real hero showed up?”

That seemed to cut off whatever else Danny was planning to say. “I. There was- yeah okay that’s fair. Good work, Tuck.”

Wulf and Tucker cleared their throats. 

“Both of you. Thanks for having Tucker’s back, Wulf.”

Wulf shrugged, “Ne dankinde. Tucker havis ĝin sub kontrolo.”

“I’m…going to assume that means ‘you’re welcome.’“

“Dude,” Tucker said. “Duolingo. Esperanto ain’t that hard.”

“Iz not.” Wulf said. “English.”

Danny and Tucker both laughed at the smug look on Wulf’s face. 

“Well you two look thoroughly disgusting,” Danny said. “Want to skip the traditional after-hunt bro-snack and get you home to get cleaned up?”

“Hell no,” Tucker said mutinously. “Wulf and I can go back to the apartment to get cleaned, you can pick up some burgers for all three of us for being late.”

Wulf’s tail swished away some stray leaves behind him “Burgers?”

Danny blanched at the thought of paying for enough food to satisfy two grown men and a giant werewolf-ghost, but between Tucker’s guilt-trip look and Wulf’s puppy eyes, he sighed. “Okay, okay fine, I’ve got food duty. But he stays in your room until you two get that crap off you. I don’t want the whole apartment smelling like double-dead worm monster and wet dog.”

“Lupo,” They said together. Wulf’s ears perked and he grinned at Tucker with a mouthful of fangs. 

#ectober week 2017 #ectober #danny phantom #tucker foley #wulf #warnings for ghost goop #and probably butchering #esperanto #anyone who knows the language better than me #i welcome any corrections #rest in piece shai-hulud rip off #not sure if this is any good #but at this point i'm just glad i finished something #huzzah! #yes wulf is going to carry tuck all the way home #don't freak out about nose-kisses tuck it's how he shows affection #i should really write more wulf poor guy doesn't get the attention he deserves #my writing #my fanfiction #phanfic