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ultramagicalternate · 2 months

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ULTRAMagic Interlude: Shadowland Chapter 11

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“Where to start with you, Aureolus…” Dunja wondered as the other mages waited patiently. “Hum… oh! I know: Pyromancy.”

“Pyromancy? What’s that?” Aureolus asked. He had a rough idea from past conversations, but was not quite sure.

A red-hooded mage patted him on the shoulder. “Fire magic and divination. Easy to cast and usable by any school of magic. I started out with it when I was young.”

“Ah, I see. That sounds handy… albeit a bit dangerous, given what we’re working with.”

“Zhu!” A fireball appeared in Dunja’s hand, crackling away. “Don’t worry. You’re casting the fire, not the other way around.”

Aureolus inspected the flame, nodding once he had a grasp on it. “Alright. I see the fire, but how do I do that exactly?”

Dunja paused. “Well, you see, you… Um… er, just focus on your… no, wait… Give me a second…” It was confusing given that Aureolus was basically a void entity in and of himself. Void callers like her called upon these entities, so she was at a loss on how to instruct one.

“Your majesty?” A blue-hooded mage spoke. “Why not ask the void entity you partnered with for advice?”

“I could, but he’s a bit devilish. I’m not sure if he’d be serious or would try to mess with us…”

Aureolus had an epiphany. “OH, I got it! Do you think it would be like Alchemy? You know, where we refine base matter into something more complex?”

“You could try that,” a green-hooded mage replied. “I’d imagine such beings use similar processes to us. Alchemy and necromancy are what I’d argue to be the foundation of all other forms of magic. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but it’s worth a shot. Worst case scenario is that nothing happens.”

“Let’s see then…” Aureolus focused and put himself in the mindset of performing a transmutation. He held out his hand and a fireball appeared. “Hey! I did it! Just, is it supposed to be this weird?”

The red-hooded mage inspected the orb. It was a ghostly blue with hints of light purple. “Huh, that’s pretty interesting. Try messing around with it. Either way, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Yeah, my boyfriend had pretty weird flames when he first started out” The blue-hooded mage commented as she nudged the red-hooded mage (who was a bit embarrassed).

Aureolus observed the properties of his fire. It was more like a blob than a flame, yet it was still searing hot. Throwing it to the ground made it bounce back to him. This was quite fun to do. Then it was discovered that it could be molded and shaped, like a sort of clay. The mages were impressed while Dunja thought about it further. In hindsight, she figured this was possible. Other void callers she had met in the past had quirks that accompanied their own spells. Dunja was not exempt from this, remembering the lilac color her flames took.

The green-hooded mage was about to speak, but Claudius called for him. “Shoot. Pardon me, guys. Duty calls.”

“Best of luck to you” Aureolus wished. “You know? I’m actually a bit jealous of Blood. He’s got all these cool forms and what do I get? A dang bouncy ball…” This made everyone chuckle.

The red-hooded mage then had an idea. “Ooh, you should try adding stuff to the spell!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Like, try adding other elements and see what happens…”

Aureolus thought about that for a moment, his mind wandering over to thunderstorms. “What about lightning?” He focused again and turned the fireball into a plasma-like substance. It shone brightly and hummed with electricity.

“Hey, that’s pretty good…”

Unfortunately the orb promptly fizzled out. “Aw… I’ll have to work on that one” Aureolus concluded.

“Well if I had to guess, I’d say you’re dealing with a bit of a trade off” Dunja put forth. “It looks like you can do more than standard alchemy, but it also appears to be more unstable… Source, this is so strange. You see, all the void callers I’ve ever met were people like me or beings of light. I’m not sure how all of this is supposed to work with beings of darkness.”

“I want to explain it to you, Aunt Dunja. It’s just that I’m not quite sure what I’m doing in the first place. I’ve got a vague idea, but I'd need time to put it into words.”

“What have you got so far, Aureolus?” The blue-hooded mage asked.

“Hmm… It’s like Alchemy, but different. Imagine the Prima Materia is in a box… and you guys are doing it normally. Me? I’m working with the box itself and it’s not what we’re expecting… That’s all I got so far.”

Dunja wanted to give further thoughts on that, but a bell sounded off in the distance. This was the signal that the last cultist was down and that all hands were needed in the warehouse. The two mages bid farewell and reported for duty. Albrecht came walking over, looking slightly worn out. As he sat down, Dunja handed him a mug of water and Aureolus looked at him with enthusiasm. He could tell the boy was going to ask some questions.

“Not going to lie, Dunja, it’s very weird hearing people refer to me as “your highness.”

“I know how you feel, Albrecht. It took time for me to get used to “your majesty” and “your royal highness” after I married your father and took the throne. I was so used to being a nobody for a good portion of my life.”

“So, how’d it go, Albrecht?” Aureolus inquired.

He was not sure how to answer that. “Um, it went? I mean, things were fairly tame on my end. I had to report a few burns and concussions from people who ended up scrapping with the cultists and I had to stop a few from going after citizens, but that was about it.”

“Sounds a bit tedious… How do you think things went for Torunn?”

“I did hear her shouting “GET’ EM!” a few times and then I heard some crashing. I assume it was a real party over there, heh. Also someone told me that Ma was being fired upon, so she had several knights raise their shields and guide her over to a column. She then took it out with her hammer, causing the platform with the gun-happy cultist to fall. Furthermore, she grabbed his gun and snapped it over her leg somehow. The knights showed me the remains of the weapon after all was said and done.”

Aureolus was utterly impressed. “Awesome…”

Dunja looked over to the warehouse and saw Torunn shaking Saul’s hand. This made her smile. “Sounds like she had a great time.” The good mood was interrupted by something in the distance. All three of them could sense it as it got closer.

Lo and behold; it was Barna, kicking Milosh down the street. Dunja stared at the spectacle in disbelief. It was surreal to witness given all that had happened to her. The worm of man that had caused all of them so much trouble was getting booted down the way like a piece of trash. Very fitting, given who he was. Dunja then realized something important: Milosh never went out in public alone. He was always with her or one of the blades. This made Dunja grin as she clenched her fist, getting ready for a greeting of her own.

“...And here we finally are, at the lovely corner of Howler and Bolt! I must say, sending The Beast of Old after us was quite the play, but you forgot that it would arouse suspicion. Close but no cigar!” Barna boasted as he continued to kick Milosh forward.

“DAMN IT ALL!” Milosh growled as he tried to get up. “HOW!? HOW DID YOU ALL FIND OUT?!”

Barna kicked him again out of spite for the man’s arrogance. “Well firstly, you can’t keep your blithering mouth shut. Secondly, we had a bit of divine intervention you could say. And The Lich of Old? Really now? You placed your bets on a dying primordial who had a target on his back from another primordial? I know you're an utter nutcase, but just how dense are you?!”

“THE LICH IS NOT DEAD!” Milosh screeched. This outburst caused the knights and others to gather around Barna.

He raised his hand to halt Saul’s men. Barna was not done yet. “Boy, I know six people who have a bone to pick with you on that one…”

Milosh began cackling. “You’ll see… haha, YOU’LL ALL SEE!”

“SILENCE, WORM!” Dunja shouted as her fist collided with his head, sending him flying into a pile of trash. Many knights laughed relentlessly at Milosh while others cheered Dunja on.

“Argh… Dunja… come crawling back I see…” he struggled to say as he shakily picked himself up.

Dunja’s anger shot up into her throat, the jab thoroughly offending her. “Come crawling back I see…” she mocked. “SHUT UP, YOU SLIME! Stay down with the trash where you belong!” The queen was sounding like her old villainous self, but it was cathartic to hear her using this against Milosh. “Let me clue you in on a little something: All those times I joked about beheading you? I WASN’T JOKING. God, if only Gratiana was here right now…”

Milosh recoiled, realizing he was being cornered. Then something distracted him: Aureolus. “How queer, I had no idea the first experiments produced such a magnificent specimen…”

“DAD!?” Aureolus panicked as he readied his fireballs at the bruised and bloodied man approaching him.

Barna lurched forward and seized Milosh, holding him up in the air. “STAY AWAY FROM MY SON, YOU INFERNAL MAGGOT!” He roared as hurled him at a wall with all his might, nearly incapacitating him.

Milosh picked himself up and limped away. “You’ll all see… ASCENSION IS NIGH!” He tried to exclaim as he vanished out of sight. The knights and mages scorned and shunned him until he was truly gone.

“AND DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT!” Albrecht called out. Everybody then applauded Barna and Dunja, but primarily Dunja.

“Guys, it’s no big deal…” She said as she blushed.

Torunn laughed. “No big deal!? Girl, that meant everything to us!”

Saul turned to his brother. “See? I told you so…”

Logan shook his head in acceptance. “Aye, right you are, brother…” He approached Dunja. “Your majesty? I’d like to apologize for doubting your convictions. I was skeptical, but that was true grit right there.”

She shook his hand. “It’s alright, I doubted them myself a month ago.”

“I know this may seem a bit gauche, so pardon me, but I have to ask: You wouldn’t happen to have a solution for the voices some of us keep hearing, would you?”

Dunja winced in regret. “I know, dear. I know. Trust me, I’m going to go find Andelin as soon as I can and fix this entire issue.”

“Issue? You mean the source of the voices?” Saul asked, hopeful to get an answer.

She exhaled. “Right, guess I better spill the beans then… Everyone? Listen up: The fear you’ve felt and the voices you’ve heard are not natural. All of that was the result of a primordial known as The Fear of Old.”

“Officer, you’re writing this down, right?” Saul inquired.

“Yes sir! Your majesty? Do you know where this primordial is? And is he allied with Milosh or the cult?”

“To answer your second question, no. Milosh tricked him into doing his bidding. As for the first question, I have no idea. Only Andelin and Milosh know. And even then, I’m pretty sure the former moved him around after the fact.”

The officer nodded as he continued to jot down notes. “Alright then. Before I go report this to his royal highness, is it possible for any of us to find this primordial?”

“Probably not, unless you know reality errors and the exact one to look in.”

“Well shoot,” he replied as he closed his notebook. “Either way, thank you for the help, your majesty. Feel free to swing by the station with anything else you’d like to share.”

As the officer left and the knights returned to dealing with the warehouse, Torunn nudged Dunja. “Careful, they might put you in the pillory in jest…” Both of them laughed.

“Well that was quite the hullabaloo…” Saul remarked. “Barna? your royal highness? Thanks for the help today. We’ll handle the rest from here. The only thing we need is Claudius for a bit longer, as there were more injuries than we thought there would be. Other than that, you’re all free to go.”

“I see,” Barna observed. “Saul, my boy, don’t hesitate to call on us if something else comes up. Take care.”

“You too.” With that, the captain returned to his post.

The walk back to Claudius’ mansion was a bit quiet. There was a lot to take in and everyone was on edge. Aureolus was still weirded out by Milosh’s actions. Just what was that coward planning, let alone thinking? Barna noticed his son was uneasy and pulled him in for a hug. He remembered that despite being in Milosh’s basement for too long, that was his true first encounter with him.

“Hey, don’t worry, Kiddo. It’ll be alright. I’ll make sure that cretin doesn’t lay a single finger on you. Want to go get some ice cream later?”

Aureolus chuckled. “Sure. Thanks, dad. Um, so how are we going to find Andelin? Also do we know where Weaver and Gabriella are?”

As soon as they were inside, Barna kicked a chair in frustration. “Blast! Forgot all about them…”

Dunja sighed. “I have a sneaking suspicion we’re going to need to find Andelin first.”

Torunn laughed. “Oh Andelin? You wouldn’t happen to know where our friends are?”

“I know, she probably has them…” she muttered to herself.

“We still don’t know what’s going on with those two, do we?” Aureolus inquired.

Albrecht shook his head. “Outside of hearsay, nope.”

Barna thought about it for a second. “Hmm… alright, we’ll pause my plans for the moment while we get a beat on Weaver and Gabriella. Then we’ll find Andelin and The Fear… but first comes the ice cream, no two ways about it.”

Next: Chapter 12

#chaotictempleknight #ultramagic alternate #fantasy #sciencefiction #sciencefictionfantasy #literature #fiction #writing #story #chapter #writers on tumblr

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truxi-twice · 4 years

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Oh man, so Ster and I found the coolest thing.

So we were driving around to look at the lights like we do, and we went by this one house toward the end. Last year we could see that they had a Santa taking photos, and we figured they must be having their Christmas party and had something special for the guests' kids.

Nope. Better. We actually decided to get down and check it out and it turns out that actually? The people who live there just love Christmas.

So the week before, they set up this whole wonderland around their house--little paths leading to different photo ops with polar bears and reindeer statues...and a path leading to Santa and Mrs. Claus taking pictures with anyone who comes by. In the back yard they have a multi-level deck with a little dance floor (and a DJ playing Christmas songs for the kids to dance to), popcorn and hot cocoa, an alcove with face painting and another with yard games like cornhole and ring toss, all manned by "elves."

It's just...there. For anyone who drops by.

So Ster and I got pictures with Santa. And it's such a nicer set-up than any mall Santa I've ever seen. I'm willing to bet they have fewer terrified children, because while there's a lot of Christmas, it's also less overwhelming (it's less bright, it's in a relatively quiet, normal-looking neighborhood, there's not the hemmed in thing you get in a lot of mall set-ups). Also, there's a bench between Santa and Mrs. Claus, so, y'know. No having to sit your kid on a stranger's lap.

And they were just charming and very in character. Didn't let us just snap a picture and go. Chatted and asked us what we wanted for Christmas. Ster said Legos and I said new skate laces (something about Santa...you feel weird saying something like a phone or a knife block or Adult Things), and he talked about how he remembered when Legos first came out, and how important it is to have fun, even "childish" things to enjoy even as an adult. It was just charming.

After that, we went into "Rudolph's Clubhouse" (the backyard with the dance floor) and walked around. We had gotten there right at the tale end of things, so after a couple songs, Santa and Mrs Claus came in and danced with the kids, then led everyone in a singalong of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (even Sterling sang along and he never sinces) and it was just all adorable.

I'm really just genuinely amazed. When we left we decided we were done for the evening because nothing would top that. It's just...such a really pure expression of kindness and generosity. These folks just open a good portion of their home to any stranger coming by and welcome them. They provide a whole experience and ask for literally nothing. As far as I can see, there's no way to pay them back, and they probably like it that way. Parents who might not be able to do much for the holiday can still fake their kids to this place and give them a really magical time, with fun stuff that usually costs kind of a lot of money.

I just think that's wonderful. One of the elves said she'd gotten recruited this year and I should have asked her how, because I would definitely volunteer next year.

Just...I dunno, something about people who realize they can do something extravagant and kind for other people, for complete strangers...so they do. It's the best Christmas thing I've seen in a long while.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday this year.

#christmas #tis the season #long post #pardon me while i have a strange interlude #my stupid life #i kind of dont like that tag for this #but its where all this stuff goes

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swiftsnowmane · 3 years

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So lovely was their duet that the Captal de Buch who had paused, panting from the stairs, outside the door of the Hall, turned with startled emotion to Nirac who had followed him. “Nom de Vierge! Can that be the Duke? They sing like angels in there together. Are they then so happy?”

Nirac shrugged and answered with harshness, “No doubt they are, captal. I’ve not seen them in three days. The tiring-woman waits on them.”

The captal raised his bushy eyebrows and laughed. “Oh la belle chose, hein?” he said winking at Nirac. “One forgets all else!” He thumped with his fist on the door, but they were finishing their song and did not hear him, so he opened the door. Earthy libertine though he was, the captal’s roguish greeting died in his throat when he saw them.

The two on the cushions seemed to be bathed in light. The girl was but half clothed yet so pure was the beauty of her arms and breasts gleaming like alabaster between strands of long auburn hair, and so adoring the expression on the Duke’s face, that the captal saw no lewdness, but felt instead a bitter stab of nostalgia. Thirty years ago there had been a moment almost like this for him too, but it had lasted only a little while, when the woman had died.

“Your pardon, my lord—lady—” he stammered, backing off. He saw the measure of the entrancement which held the Duke, in that he did not flash with fury at this interruption. Instead he put his arm around the girl and held her against him in a gesture so tender and protective that the captal swallowed hard.

“What is it, my good de Grailly?” John said. “Have you come to be thanked for your wondrous hospitality?” He smiled and bending his head laid his cheek for a moment against Katherine’s hair. “We will not need paradise, I think, my Katrine, after Château la Teste.”

The girl raised her brilliant eyes and moved in her lover’s arm, as though she nestled closer.

The captal cleared his throat. “I came, my lord, because you told me to. It—it is now Thursday night. There are— are many urgent matters awaiting you at Bordeaux.” He saw the wincing that passed over the girl’s face and added uncomfortably, “May I have a few words with you, my lord?”

The Duke started to refuse, but Katherine, clutching her white robe around her, slipped from his arm, and giving the captal a proud tremulous smile, walked back into the bedchamber.

“She’s of a great beauty, your little Swynford, mon duc,” said the captal, recovering his aplomb now that Katherine was gone. “I congratulate you on a delicious interlude. I deeply regret to wrest you out of it.”

The Duke looked at him strangely, and said, “She is my heart’s blood. My life. I want nothing but her.”

— Katherine, Anya Seton

#Anya Seton #Katherine #Katherine Swynford #John of Gaunt #Château la Teste #historical fiction #this scene.... heart in my throat #so gorgeous

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houseisekai · 3 years

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House Isekai: Shadowbringers -Interlude 1

House Isekai Shadowbringers AU Masterlist Here

—

Interlude: Konosuba Gang

Directly after the events of Act 1: Finale...

As House Isekai moves to Derdriu after escaping Church Forces at Garreg Mach, they decide to camp for the night and rest before continuing their journey.

Finally having a moment of calm, Sitri decides to speak with one of the very first members of House Isekai...

—

[No Greater Sorrow - Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers OST]

Sara stopped the group and turned around to do a quick head count.

All the students were accounted for. Blue Lions and Black Eagles not too far behind.

...Then there was Lahabrea and Sothis, keeping an extremely far distance from everyone. She was hoping they’d keep it that way.

(Sara) “Campin’ here tonight boys and girls. Wouldn’t do us good to get ambushed when we’re exhausted.”

Everyone nodded and moved into the woods nearby and cleaned up a spot.

(Ainz) “We will create protection spells in case anyone is watching.”

(Futaba) “Leave scanning the area to me and Fuuka!”

(Mitsuru) “Understood. Us Persona users will secure the area then.”

(Akira) “Roger. Let’s get going.”

(Dimitri) “Suppose we can make the area comfortable to sleep in then.”

(Edelgard) “Seems fine to me.”

(Megumi) “ We will help as well.”

(Kazuma) “Guess we’ll get a fire goin’.”

Everyone had their assigned roles and got quickly to work.

The Phantom Thieves hopped into the trees and disappeared into the night as S.E.E.S, Class VII followed on foot.

The Denizens of Nazarick began casting spells and aiming it above the campsite.

Lahabrea and Sothis set their own mini camp away from everyone.

Sitri noticed Lahabrea staring at her, then quickly looking away.

(Sharon) “Miss Sitri?”

Sitri turned around and saw Sharon with her smile as Doomguy laid Byleth gently on the floor and began patrolling the area.

(Sharon) “Would you like to get some rest?”

(Sitri) “As much as I would, I don’t like everyone doing work as I do nothing. I will go help Kazuma and the others with the fire.”

She took one last look at Byleth before Sharon bowed at her.

(Sharon) “Rest assured, Byleth will be in good hands.”

(Sitri) “Thank you, Sharon.”

Sharon went back to Byleth and took out some strange device and looked over him. Knowing she was not being any help by standing, she went after Kazuma.

...

(Megumin) “Hm...You know I just realized I can’t really see at all.”

(Aqua) “I can see just fine.”

(Kazuma) “Then hurry up and find some good firewood, would ya? Place is creepin’ me out.”

(Darkness) “If there are beasts here, I will intercept it!”

(Kazuma) “Listen we are NOT getting killed because you want to fuel your sick feti-”

Snap!

(Megumin) “W-WHO’S THERE?!”

Aqua turned around reaching for her staff before easing up.

(Aqua) “Oh, hi Sitri.”

(Sitri) “H-Hello...”

Sitri brought up a torch and looked at the four.

(Sitri) “Would you like some help?”

(Kazuma) “Sure. Though, shouldn’t you be resting?”

(Sitri) “I could ask the same for everyone. You all have been working and fighting tirelessly.”

(Darkness) “Hah, this is nothing, Mrs. Eisner! Byleth took us through worse!”

(Kazuma) “Pah, bullshit! He never trained us for all out war!”

(Megumin) “Kazuma! S-Sorry Mrs. Sitri, he can’t really control his language.”

Sitri couldn’t help but laugh.

(Sitri) “It’s quite fine. Jeralt wasn’t exactly the type of person to filter himself either.”

As she walked over to the group she began thinking to herself.

(Megumin) “If...I can say something, Sitri. We all knew Jeralt during our year at the Academy. He was a good man, and a good father. He talked about you almost every other day.”

(Darkness) “Indeed. I wish he was here to see you now.”

(Kazuma) “You uh...have our condolences.”

(Sitri) “...Thank you. It brings me some level of peace to know how he was...”

She looked up at the night sky longingly.

(Sitri) “Just like all those years ago...”

(Aqua) “By the way, why did you follow us out here of all people? Any reason?”

(Sitri) “No, not particularly. I’ve just had a few questions I’ve been wanting to ask.”

(Kazuma) “Hm? ‘Bout what?”

(Sitri) “Well, I think that floating girl to start. Everyone called her Sothis, but if I recall correctly Sothis was an all divine goddess.”

(Aqua) “Psh, divine my butt! She’s a little gremlin!”

Aqua had a smirk on her face, which confused Sitri.

(Sitri) “Gremlin?”

(Kazuma) “Eh, don’t mind the useless goddess here. She started a lotta bullshit between then two.”

(Aqua) “DID NOT!”

(Megumin) “A-Anyways, we don’t know the true story ourselves. But...from what I heard from other members of House Isekai, she was a true friend.”

(Kazuma) “Not was, IS, a good friend.”

(Sitri) “I’m not sure I understand then. You all seemed so hostile to her.”

(Aqua) “It...may not make any sense but she isn’t OUR Sothis. The Sothis we knew infused herself into Byleth during the encounter with Jeralt’s killers.”

(Kazuma) “Though that’s a story you need to hear from your son and not us. Anyways, only a select few of us could see her during the Academy. We didn’t know the true nature of her, but all we know is that she was with Byleth when it all began. Preeetty sure we were the first ones to meet her actually.”

(Sitri) “You were the first to arrive in Fodlan? Oh, by the way I think I may have found some wood.”

(Aqua) “Yeah, first us, Class VII, then Megumi, then everyone started pouring in.”

(Darkness) “Hm...No, too damp. It wouldn’t light properly. And yes, we were. The four of us were in Kazuma’s mansion when we suddenly found ourselves flung into a battle at Remire Village. It was there we rescued Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude alongside Byleth and Jeralt.”

(Sitri) “So he became a mercenary like his father...”

(Megumin) “Very good one at that! When we first met him, he didn’t seem to have too much emotion. Though overtime he became a great teacher!”

Sitri smiled as she continued looking.

(Sitri) “...Thank you for taking care of him.”

(Darkness) “If anything, I feel like that we should thank you, Sitri. We don’t know the full story, but you sacrificed yourself so that your child could live.”

(Sitri) “It’s something any mother would do for her child. Though I can safely say I had no intention of...being resurrected, I am happy to see my son alive and well.”

Her smile quickly faded when she started to think again.

(Sitri) “But...Why did Lahabrea resurrect me? He appears to be my son but-”

(Kazuma) “Frankly, I think we should be careful of that asshole. I don’t know what’s going on with him exactly, but I KNOW he doesn’t have our best interest at heart.”

(Aqua) “Right? Plus she resurrected her using some dark magic! That can NOT end up being good!”

(Sitri) “...”

Minato walked past them, not even facing their direction.

(Minato) “Could try and NOT talk like Sitri isn’t even there.”

(Kazuma) “Oh piss off, Arisato. Like you’re one to give me a lecture about manners.”

(Minato) “Hmph.”

(Sitri) “Um...Pardon my rude manners but are you all always this...um...-”

(Kazuma) “Dysfunctional?”

(Aqua) “Aggressive?”

(Darkness) “Violent?”

(Megumin) “Insane?”

(Sitri) “...Well I was going to use nicer words, but considering our first meeting was launching my body into the air and strangling each other-”

(Megumin) “Yeah, most of the time.”

(Kazuma) “House Isekai says you get used to it after a while.”

(Sitri) “I...suppose that’s true. I guess it’s not entirely set in since I’ve only awoken just a few days ago.”

(Aqua) “Alright, these ought to be good. Everyone got something?”

Everyone held up some wood and started to walk back to camp.

(Kazuma) “Oh hey, you finally weren’t useless.”

(Aqua) “Shut up, NEET.”

Sitri looked puzzlingly at them. She could tell they cared about each other, but why were they so...mean?

As they continued to walk, they saw Lahabrea sleeping underneath a tree nearby the camp with Sothis nowhere to be found.

(Aqua) “I got a real bad feeling about him...”

(Kazuma) “I’ve noticed him staring at us, including Sothis while we were walkin down the road.”

(Sitri) “Perhaps there’s a reason he looks like my son?”

(Megumin) “It better be a good one. We haven’t had the best experience with impersonators if you haven’t noticed.”

(Darkness) “Not to mention your resurrection appears to play a key role in all of this as well...”

Sitri looked at her hands and furrowed her brow.

(Sitri) “...Am I?”

(Kazuma) “Well, once we get to Derdriu and meet up with Claude I suppose we’ll get our answer. No use bustin our brains trying to figure shit out so early.”

(Aqua) “Oh hey, you finally said something intelligent-”

(Kazuma) “Fuck off.”

Sitri giggled.

(Sitri) “I guess you were right, you do get used to this.”

(Darkness) “That was....alarmingly fast.”

(Megumin) “Oof, whatever I’m exhausted. Let’s hit the hay yeah?”

(Sitri) “Oh um...”

The four turned around and faced Sitri, eyebrow raised.

(Sitri) “Thank you for taking care of my son.”

[This Beautiful Cruel World - Attack On Titan OST]

They all smiled and raised their arms in unison.

Without another word, the four went to their spot to sleep.

Sitri smiled and was about to sleep when suddenly a pain flashed in her head.

“…I can’t believe I’m missing her.”

“...do me one favor in case I go down for good this time? Protect everyone else. You’re the only one I can rely on for that.”

“Do not hesitate to call upon me or the others should the need arise. We will take care of you in these times…”

“Edelgard, what did you do…?!”

Sitri shook her head once the pain was gone.

(Sitri) “What was that...?”

She looked at the four who were setting up their beds, yelling at each other with profanity.

There was no way they had said all those things at her once.

...So why did their voices sound clear as day, and what was going on?

Her eyes glazed over to Byleth, who was finally put to rest with Megumi, Sara, and some of the other staff and House Reps looking over him.

She then turned to Lahabrea and frowned again.

(Sitri) “What have you started, my son...?”

INTERLUDE: END

Your dream is where your heart is

It’s something more fragile than life itself

No matter how many times you throw it away, you still find it

So rest in peace now

Your wish is violated by your pulsing urge

and as much as you forget about it, you recall it again

In this beautiful and cruel world

We only ask “why” we’re still alive…

Ah, what are we going to protect

with our strength and weakness? If reason no longer exists

TO BE CONTINUED IN:

#House isekai #House Isekai Shadowbringers #House Isekai Shadowbringers Interlude #crossover #fanfic #writing #sitri eisner #satou kazuma #darkness #dustiness ford lalatina #megumin #aqua

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anistarrose · 4 years

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Fear The Reaper A Lot, Actually - Chapter 4

AO3

Chapter Summary: An unlikely friendship springs from a book club, while secrecy becomes more important than ever for Tres Horny Boys. Kravitz receives a summons. Angus does a hit.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Don't let the Lunar Interlude-esque setting confuse you — this update's a long boi! If you can't already tell how much I love Angus McDonald, then the next few thousand words should make it pretty clear.

***

Some days, Kravitz found paperwork relaxing. Today was not such a day.

The Raven Queen was almost always receptive to his suggestions about how to restructure the forms, and happy to do what she could to minimize the bureaucracy and tedium inherent to almost any other office job. But today, Kravitz’s unbeating heart just wasn’t in his work — just like yesterday, after he’d returned from Wave Echo Cave.

So it was simultaneously a relief and a surprise when a blue glow flashed in his peripheral vision, and he felt the telltale tug of a summons from the Material Plane, specifically…

“The moon?” he muttered out loud. “What is with these people and ridiculous floating secret bases?”

The pull of the summoning spell was designedly weak, and easy for Kravitz to shrug off if needed — but he wasn’t going to pass up an excuse to get out of the office, and try to part ways with Taako on a better note this time. Maybe he could ask around, find out if anyone knew what Lucas and Noelle were up to…

In a cozy bedroom on the moon, a hissing plume of smoke emanated from a sapphire arrowhead, embedded in the soil of a potted plant. As the smoke solidified, Kravitz’s human form took shape, and instinctively scanned his new surroundings for dangers or necromantic abominations.

Two floor-two-ceiling bookshelves were stuffed with novels and encyclopedias, and glow-in-the-dark stars covered the ceiling. The bed was neatly made, but was so small it couldn’t have accommodated anyone larger than a gnome, or a halfling… or a human child.

“Hello again, Mister Grim Reaper,” said Angus. He sat on a tiny wooden chair, pen in hand and notebook open to a fresh page. “I’ve got a number of questions for you.”

Kravitz plucked the arrow from the potted plant, and the electric blue glow of the sapphire faded. “Does Taako know you have this?”

“Nope. But if he did, he’d probably endorse me breaking the spirit of the law, if not the letter — after all, you never said that only Taako could summon you this way.”

Kravitz holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I was just… expecting to meet with Taako today, so this surprised me. But I’d be happy to answer your questions — provided they don’t take more than an hour or so.”

Angus narrowed his eyes. “Will you answer me honestly?”

Seeing no reason to lie to even the most precocious of ten-year-olds, Kravitz declared: “I swear to answer truthfully upon my oath to the Raven Queen.”

“Then tell me — why are you so nice?”

“Pardon?”

Angus glared at him. “You know exactly what I mean — why are you so helpful? You tried to reap my friends’ souls, and told them they that could only save themselves by accomplishing an impossible task! But then, you — you saved them yesterday, and even healed them! What are you playing at?!”

Immensely grateful that he’d set the terms on his own honesty oath, Kravitz told the truth with a few details omitted. “I helped them because they seemed like nicer people than most of the bounties I hunt — and in that strange sort of ‘begrudging respect’ way, I guess I’m growing fond of them.” Taako even moreso than the others.

“If you were really fond of them, you wouldn’t be trying to kill them in the first place,” Angus muttered, lowering his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz told him, and that too was the truth. “It’s just what my job demands —”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have gotten into this line of business!” Angus screamed, wiping tears from his eyes. “In two months, I’m gonna lose three of the closest people I have to family, and it’ll all be because I’m just a kid detective who can’t track down a couple of liches — but it’ll also be because of you! I hate you, and I hate everything you stand for!”

Angus’s fist sunk harmlessly into Kravitz’s raven-feather cloak, but he staggered backwards like he’d punched a brick wall, falling to his knees and taking off his glasses to sob — but against his better judgement, Kravitz kneeled down at Angus’s side.

“Don’t count out Taako and the others just yet,” he whispered. “I’ve seen them do miraculous things — escaping from me in the laboratory, for one thing, and banishing Legion, for another. If they can defeat thousands of unruly undead souls in combat like that, then they might just be worthy opponents for even the most crafty and powerful of liches.”

“You’re sure they’ll be okay?” Angus sniffed.

“No,” Kravitz admitted. “I’m not sure. I wish I could be, because I really don’t want to send them to the Astral Plane. But they’ve got help — not just your smarts, but my scythe as well, because I don’t intend to just stand idly by without giving them a fighting chance. I… truthfully, Angus, when I offered them the deal, I wanted to bring an end to the headache they’d given me by any means necessary. But they’ve earned my respect since then, and though the deal can’t be undone, there’s no rule stopping me from aiding them. I don’t want to reap their souls if there’s any way I can avoid it, any excuse or loophole.”

Angus rubbed his nose. “Do you — do you normally like reaping people’s souls?”

Kravitz took a moment to think about his answer. “I was a human like you, once. Alive, and precocious, and always getting in over my head. When I died, and started serving the Raven Queen as a reaper, I felt like I had discovered my life’s purpose, even though it ironically required becoming undead as a prerequisite. My duty is to keep the balance of the universe — to save lives by stopping liches, necromancers, and their foul servants from upsetting that balance — but I remember what it felt like to be mortal, to have mortal loved ones. So… I don’t enjoy watching people grieve, because it feels all too familiar.”

He sat down, and crossed his legs. “I don’t tell a lot of people about this, but in a way, if I’d come to terms with death and grieved more quietly when I was alive… well, let’s just say I probably wouldn’t be a reaper today.”

Angus managed a smile. “You know, you’re nothing like the Grim Reaper in the Caleb Cleveland, Kid Cop books.”

“Oh? I know there are… a variety of misconceptions about me floating around in the world, but I haven’t read that series. Are they detective stories?”

“They’re the world’s greatest detective stories,” Angus declared, “and I own every installment!” For the first time since his ill-fated attempt to punch Kravitz, he stood up, and selected a book from his bookshelf. “This is the first one that you — well, not really you — show up in.”

Kravitz took a look at the cover illustration, which featured a child in a deerstalker hat standing back to back with a deathly pale man, dressed in tattered gray robes and wielding an iron scythe. The title read Caleb Cleveland and the Mask of Death.

“Not much of a resemblance, is there?” Kravitz mused. “I guess can’t fault them for the iron scythe, because that’s what everyone seems to expect, but iron and celestial magic don’t always get along — better than iron and fae magic for sure, but still not especially well.”

“His personality isn’t a whole lot like yours either, sir,” Angus sheepishly admitted. “This is the start of the five-book Grim Reaper arc, which starts off with the reaper helping Caleb solve murder mysteries until Caleb’s previously-struggling private detective agency — which he started after his schism with the corrupt police establishment in the last book — is renowned throughout the country. But then Caleb realizes that the reaper is just trying to bring about an era of prosperity and increased population density, so that he can kill the maximum number of people possible while poisoning the water supply! And of course Caleb disavows his partnership with Death, but the reaper spends the next four installments of the arc committing more murders as revenge — which initially felt like a little bit of a motivation downgrade, if I’m being honest, but it also led to some great continuity between books as well as some really well-written horror that unsettles without pulling on cheap shock value! So they turned out to be some of my favorite books in the series, and… I’m sorry if I judged you a little hastily because of them. You’re a whole lot nicer than the Grim Reaper I expected.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You’re hardly the first person to misjudge me for my line of work, and I don’t expect you to be the last.” Kravitz flipped through the book, which was full of underlined words and fan theories neatly written in the margins. “Actually, do you mind if I borrow this? I’ve always loved mystery novels.”

“You really want to read it?” Angus’s eyes lit up. “Uh, well, I should probably start by giving you the first book in the series, otherwise a lot of callbacks to previous adventures won’t make sense. But I guess I did kind of just spoil the whole plot of Books 21 through —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kravitz assured him with a smile. “And I think I will take Book 1 to start out, please.”

“Alrighty, then!” Angus selected a well-worn book from his shelf and handed it to Kravitz. “Could you, um… let me know what you think of it when you finish reading?”

“I absolutely can. Oh, and Angus?”

“Yes?”

“You sound like a marvelous detective. If anyone can crack the case of these liches, I believe it’ll be you — but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t, alright? That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, and you’re a growing kid — you need your rest.”

Angus nodded. “I’ll try to remember that, sir.”

***

Angus gave directions to the three Reclaimers’ shared dorm, but didn’t specify which individual room was Taako’s, so on a hunch, Kravitz knocked on the door of the room that smelled the most like baked goods. Sure enough, he heard Taako shout “It’s unlocked!” over the banging of bowls and cookie sheets.

“You need to look after your arrows better,” Kravitz warned him as he entered. “If someone with more malicious intentions than Angus were to steal one, then they could easily lure me into a trap.”

Taako blinked. “Whoa, what happened to your accent? I thought you were a stranger and almost chucked a bowl of gingersnap dough at your head!”

Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “Did you really? You look like you’ve got a pretty firm grip on it, there.”

“No, you called my bluff. I’m too good of a chef to just go chucking perfectly good food whenever someone spooks me — the point is, what is up with your voice, my dude?”

“It’s, um… a work accent,” Kravitz explained. “My normal voice isn’t that intimidating. As you can tell, heh.”

“Still wouldn’t want you to slice me up with a scythe, though. You gotta give yourself more credit.” Taako rolled a small handful of gingersnap dough into a ball, dusting it with sugar and placing it in the corner of a fresh cookie sheet. “And to answer your complaint earlier, Angus wasn’t as slick as he thought he was when he swiped that arrow, but I let him get away with it ‘cause I knew neither of you two dorks would try to fight each other or anything like that.”

“He actually did want to fight me for a minute or two,” Kravitz replied, “but we worked it out and now we’re apparently… book club buddies? I’m not sure, I’m no good with kids — or maybe I’m better with kids than I’m consciously aware of?”

Taako snorted. “I didn’t endear myself to little Ango at first either, but now I guess I’m his hero, and his teacher, and maybe even his emotionally adopted uncle or something? There’s just something magical about that kid.”

“Absolutely, but… he seemed stressed.” Kravitz sighed, and Taako’s expression softened. “I suppose this is partly my fault, but there’s an awful lot of pressure on him.”

“Yeah, he — he doesn’t find it so funny when me an’ the boys joke about death, I’ve been noticing. I’ll make sure he takes some time off the case to relax — you think that would help him?”

“I think that would be a good place to start.” Kravitz nodded, glancing over the sheets of oatmeal cookies cooling on the adjacent counter. “You look like you’ve been keeping busy yourself.”

“Yeah, the Director was so thrilled with my Candlenights macarons that she requested a couple batches of oatmeal-white chocolate and some gingersnaps. Guess she read my cookbook or something — ‘cause my whole cookie portfolio is choice, don’t get me wrong, but those are a couple of my top-tier baked goods after the macarons.”

“They smell heavenly — and I should know, working in the Astral Plane! Do you mind if I try one?”

“Wait!” Taako pushed Kravitz’s hand away from the tray. “I didn’t check them for — hang on, you’re already dead, right? You know what, go for it. Sorry about that.” Under his breath, he added: “It’ll be fine. Perfectly fine.”

Confused and a little concerned, but too polite to decline Taako’s offer, Kravitz took a bite of an oatmeal cookie. It was still slightly warm, and the white chocolate melted in his mouth, but he couldn’t imagine it being any less of a delight after having cooled, either.

“So, how many of these does your boss actually want,” asked Kravitz, “and how many can I take back home? They’re just as good as they smell!”

“Course they are,” Taako snickered. “Gimme a few minutes here, and I’ll make you a little gift baggie.”

“Speaking of gifts, that reminds me —” From an inside pocket of his cloak, Kravitz procured four new summoning arrows. “I spoke with the Raven Queen, and was able to arrange an exception to that… company policy, the one about summoning me for business only.”

Taako didn’t look away from his cookie sheet, but his ears immediately perked up.

“You can use them outside of emergency situations — within reason, of course,” Kravitz continued. “I don’t want to manifest in the middle of, I don’t know, a heated debate about moon bylaws, or whatever it is that you people vote on up here.”

“Actually, it turns out moon society is kinda authoritarian.” Taako finished filling the first sheet with gingersnap dough, and began work on a second. “But be honest — how much of this was actually premediated on your part, and how much is just a spur of the moment decision now that you know I’ll give you free baked goods?”

“It was premediated, but make no mistake, the baked goods are a bonus,” Kravitz chuckled. He neglected to mention that there had been no company policy in the first place, nor had there been a conversation with the Raven Queen. Part of him just wanted to give Taako his Stone of Farspeech number like he had with Angus, and bid farewell to the archaic summoning rituals altogether, but it would still be handing over personal information to an active bounty, and there were some lines even Kravitz didn’t dare cross — at least, not yet. “But as good as it is to be able to keep in touch with you, there’s something I should probably warn you about sooner rather than later.”

“Fire away.”

“I assume you were looking for Lup in Wave Echo Cave the other day. But that didn’t unveil many clues to you, did it?”

“Unveil? No matter you and Angus are starting a book club, you speak in the same detective mambo-jumbo. But you’re right, we found zilch.”

“Are you going to start looking for Barry Bluejeans next, by any chance?”

Taako made a funny expression. “Yeah, I guess that’s the plan. But, well, we also agreed that the plan should be to stay on the moon to rest and train for a couple days — ‘cause Magnus has been a bad influence, and we all rushed into the cave expedition just a day after we almost died averting the crystal apocalypse. You saw how that worked out for us.”

Kravitz nodded. “Today is the first day I’ve actually seen you without bags under your eyes. It suits you.” The last part slipped out without Kravitz thinking it through, but it prompted a wink from Taako, which Kravitz considered among the better possible outcomes of impromptu flirting.

“But getting back on topic,” he continued, “I wanted to warn you about Barry. I’ve encountered him a number of times, and he’s not exactly a normal lich.”

Taako sat down on a stool and crossed his legs. “Well, you dunno what my reference point is for liches. He could be a totally regular, run-of-the-mill lich by my standards — maybe a little spooky, but nothin’ to write home about, you know?”

“Then you’d be consorting with some pretty strange liches, because Barry is a very confusing one. Most liches are either antisocial or obsessed with grim monologues, but Barry has held a handful of coherent brief conversations with me — all of which started out weirdly normal, until he started rambling nonsense about the planar system with a genuinely unsettling amount of conviction.”

“Oh, those liches,” Taako muttered, nodding along. “Always saying the darndest things.”

“I feel like you’re not taking this as seriously as you could.” Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “To be fair, I’ve never seen Barry hurt innocent mortals, which is another way he differs from essentially all other liches — but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a threat, especially if you’re hunting him down. After all, there’s a reason I’ve spoken to him several times, but never successfully captured him.”

Kravitz thought back to one of his first and most troubling encounters with Barry, about a year after the end of the Relic Wars. They’d crossed paths by accident, in a seaside town recently demolished by a serpent of the Oculus’s creation, and Barry had exploited the shambles of the port to his advantage, hurling fishing nets and tattered sails at Kravitz as he made his escape.

“You can’t run from justice forever, Bluejeans!” Kravitz had shouted, slicing through a weighted net with his scythe. “Your kind all wind up in the Eternal Stockade eventually!”

“I’ve spent decades bracing myself for the end of apparent eternity and the exhaustion of apparent infinity,” Barry had replied matter-of-factly. “If your prison could really stay intact until the end of time, then I’d be happy to hunker down there with everyone I love and wait for this storm to blow over.”

With a flick of a spectral hand, he’d flung a half-dozen crates of rotten fish at Kravitz’s head. “But you don’t see me handing my soul over without a fight, so… I guess that should tell you everything I think about your so-called ‘eternal’ stockade.”

Kravitz had easily dodged the crates, but stepped right into the epicenter of the geyser that erupted from beneath the dock a moment later, launching him into the air. By the time he’d flown back down to sea level, Barry had been long gone.

“You know, if he still seems pretty chill for a lich,” Taako mused, dragging Kravitz back to the present, “and he’s harmless except for when you try to capture him, then… why are you still trying to capture him? Why not just let him do his thing?”

Kravitz sighed. “That’s a good question, and I’m honestly curious… why do you think I haven’t given up on him?”

“Well… ‘cause liches are illegal, right? Is this a trick question?”

“That’s the answer I was expecting, and you’re not wrong — but that’s not the entire story, either,” Kravitz told him. “I also don’t want to leave Barry to ‘do his thing,’ as you put it, because I don’t know what ‘his thing’ entails. I’ve heard him allude to needing something specific out of undeath, but I don’t know what that is — if it’s immortality, or power, or something else altogether. I don’t know if he’s just putting on a harmless facade while he waits for me to let my guard down.”

Taako nodded. “You think he’s planning something.”

“I know he’s planning something. Most liches, they’re unpredictable because the combination of undeath and their hunger for power has eroded their sense of logic and driven them insane. And at first, I thought this was the one thing Barry had in common with them — with his nonsensical grim warnings, and haphazard pattern of popping up in the last places I expect — but over the past decade of hunting him, I’ve gradually realized he isn’t insane at all. He just bases his decisions off of information that no one else in the universe seems to possess, and constructs plans that no one else in the world understands. He’s unpredictable, but not irrational — and coming from a spellcaster as powerful as he is, that honestly terrifies me.”

Taako whistled. “Guess we’ve really got our work cut out for us, then.”

“I’ll leave you with this: please, if you track Barry Bluejeans down but he seems civil, and reasonable, and harmless, you still cannot and should not trust him, no matter what he tells you. With liches, even abnormal ones, you can’t risk anything less than constant vigilance. Take it from someone who learned it the hard way centuries ago, and has been significantly better at his job ever since.”

“Aww, you’re worried about us,” Taako snickered as he placed the gingersnaps in the oven. “But I read you loud and clear — you don’t need to worry about me falling for a lich’s tricks, of course, but I’ll remind the other two goofuses to be careful.”

He frowned, closing the oven door. “Although, now that I think about it… what does Barry even look like as a lich? I don’t actually know what we should be searching for, but I’m assuming it’s not a normal-ass dude in jeans.”

“Oh, you can’t miss him. Most necromancers spring for black or gray robes, but his is bright red.”

Taako’s eyes went wide. “You know those grim warnings you mentioned him giving? Would they happen to be about, uh, the hunger of all living things?”

“You’ve met his lich form, too?” Kravitz slapped his forehead. “Were you also the best man at his wedding? Do you golf with him on Saturdays?”

“Man,” Taako muttered, “I am so glad we decided not to tell the Director about this.”

***

Angus found Noelle in the Bureau’s gym, dumping a cooler of water on her teammates as they finished an intense workout. On the other side of the room, Avi was thoroughly demolishing Brad Bradson at an impromptu game of half-court basketball, and a small but rowdy crowd had gathered to watch.

“Not gonna lie, I’d kill to be a tireless cyborg like you, Noelle,” Carey groaned, overdramatically collapsing into Killian’s arms. “I’m exhausted.”

“I dunno. If training didn’t make my arms ache, then I don’t think it would be half as satisfying,” Killian replied, wiping her brow. “Although some laser eyes to pair with my crossbow might be pretty kickass.”

“I’m enjoying the whole swappable body parts thing more than I thought I would,” Noelle said. “At first I was worried I’d accidentally fry a whole bunch of people with my arm cannon, but it turns out I can just take it off for non-violent occasions!”

“Hey, Angus!” Carey called out, waving to him. “Got any strong opinions about cyborgs and integrating technology into our bodies?”

“Um, I was actually just here to ask Noelle a few questions. Is this not a good time?”

Noelle shrugged. “Well, we just finished training for the day, so I don’t see why not.”

Angus beamed. “Great! But do you mind if we conduct the interview somewhere… a little quieter than this gym?”

Noelle raised an arm, shielding Angus from a stray basketball. “Sounds like a plan.”

Upon arriving in Noelle’s as-of-yet sparsely furnished dorm, Angus sat cross-legged on the floor and opened to a fresh page in his notebook.

“So, Magnus told me that you had a run-in with Barry Bluejeans shortly before his death in Phandalin. I’d never want to force you to think back to traumatic memories, but if there are any details you recall about him off the top of your head, that could be vital to our investigation.”

“I appreciate the concern, but it’ll be alright,” Noelle assured him. “I’ve already been thinkin’ back to that encounter a lot, ever since I learned Barry was a lich — ‘cause he really, really didn’t act like how I was always told liches would behave. See, he… he almost took a blast of fire to the chest while he was shepherding us into that stockroom, and even then, he told us to stay in there while he risked his life trying to lead the dwarf away. He was so brave, and he even got that dwarf out of the bar… but still not far enough away, I guess.”

“Was he using any spells? Magically redirecting fire? Did he try to teleport you to safety?”

“No, no spells that I saw. He threw a chair across the room to distract the dwarf at one point, but that was with his own two arms and I imagine a whole lot of adrenaline, not any sorta spectral mage hands or whatever it is that wizards use.”

“Hmm.” Angus clicked his pen. “I hate to say it, but if he didn’t cast a single spell, then it sounds like he really wasn’t trying that hard to save the town…”

“No, that’s not it. I’m sure of it. He told us not to be afraid, but he was… he was scared. Did a real good job of hiding it, but he was shaking as he closed that door to that stockroom and went back into the bar to face the fire. I sincerely believe he was doin’ everything he could to save us from the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, and it just… wasn’t enough.”

“I wonder if Lich Barry has — or rather, had a kinder but more incompetent twin brother,” Angus mused, jotting down the thought in his notes. “It would make more sense than — wait. What did you just say about the gauntlet?”

“That Barry tried to save us from it? I guess I didn’t know what it was called back then, not until after I died and I remembered the Relic Wars —”

“Exactly! Noelle, you’re a genius!” Angus sprung to his feet. “We need to go talk to Johann!”

Noelle floated after him as he raced out of the room and towards the nearest elevator. “About what? The Voidfish?”

“Right! Maybe Barry didn’t cast any spells when he was alive because he didn’t remember that he could!”

“So when he died, the memories would’ve all rushed back to him, and he could go back to his lich-y business!” Noelle finished. “But why would the Bureau have erased information about Barry, of all people?”

“I don’t know,” Angus admitted as they stepped into the elevator and it began to descend. “Maybe he used to work with them, and went rogue? I’d ask the Director, but…”

“She’s not in on the lich-hunting secret, right. But you’ll probably have to tell her eventually, won’t you? Y’all can’t keep sneaking out forever.”

“Oh, I know. But the Reclaimers are going to be the ones to break the news to her, not me. They were the ones who lied about it in the first place, after all.” The elevator doors opened, and Angus sprinted out at full speed towards Johann’s office. “Johann, I have a question! Is there a way to check what people the Voidfish has erased?”

Johann gingerly set down his violin, and tapped his head. “You’re looking at it. I’ve been in charge of feeding info to the Voidfish basically since the Bureau got started, and lucky for you, I’ve got a pretty good memory for who and what gets erased from the rest of the world.”

He sighed. “I kinda… I feel like the least I can do is remember them when no one else will, you know? ‘Cause it’s what I hope someone will do for me when I’m gone, and… well, that got real depressing real fast. You probably don’t want to hear that, kid — so just tell me, who do you need to know about?”

“I realize now that I’m forming the question in my head that this might sound like a goof,” Angus admitted, “but have you ever erased information about someone named Barry Bluejeans?”

Johann laughed. “You’re right, that does sound like a goof! I can’t remember hearing about him before, never mind erasing him — and I’d definitely remember a name like that, trust me.”

“Oh.” Angus’s face fell. “I was so sure…”

Noelle drifted over to the Voidfish’s tank, watching the swirling galaxy patterns drift by. “Don’t give up, Angus. You might still be onto something — maybe the info could’ve gotten erased before Johann was in charge here, or maybe before the Bureau even found the Voidfish.”

Johann nodded. “Yeah, maybe. You want me to ask the Director about it?”

“No!” Angus and Noelle shouted in unison.

“Not yet,” Angus added hurriedly. “Maybe eventually. I’ll need to talk to Taako and the others about it first.”

“Okay, whatever,” Johann shrugged. “I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but you do you.”

As Noelle rode the elevator back to the roof with Angus, she asked: “So, what’s our next move?”

“I guess we should go tell the Reclaimers about the break in the case, or lack thereof. And maybe make an argument for coming clean to the Director, while we’re there.”

They made their way back to the Reclaimers’ dorm, but upon opening the door, every one of the room’s occupants jumped out of their seats in shock.

“Oh, it’s just you two,” Taako sighed, lowering his Umbra Staff. “Try and knock next time! I thought you were Lucretia coming to bust our secret meeting!”

The living room looked exactly how Angus would expect the site of an impromptu clandestine gathering to look, with dozens of papers scattered about and a corkboard lying on the coffee table. Red and blue strings connected dozens of thumbtacks, and the center of the board was occupied by a red crayon drawing of a disembodied robe.

Merle chuckled, elbowing Magnus. “You know, if you’d really wanted to keep our meeting secret, then we woulda made sure our ‘security guard’ actually locked the goddamn door —”

“That’s not important right now,” Magnus interrupted, closing the door and motioning for Noelle and Angus to join the circle around the coffee table. “What’s important is that you two haven’t let anything slip to Lucretia since the last time we talked!”

“Um, we haven’t, but…” Angus frowned. “We were actually thinking it might be better to let her in on the secret. I have a lot of questions that only she can help us answer —”

“Then they’ll just have to go unhelped!” Taako declared, magically silencing Angus’s Stone of Farspeech. “If you tell her our lives depend on arresting one of the Red Robes, she’ll go ballistic!”

Angus blinked. “I think I’m missing a lot of context here, sir.”

“I think I’m missing even more,” Noelle added.

Magnus pointed at the drawing of the Red Robe. “See this? This is Barry’s true form, according to Kravitz. And according to Lucretia, the Red Robes are all super duper evil, so she’s not too keen on us talking to them. Or interacting with them any more than we have to, really.”

“Well, what’s supposedly so evil about them?” Noelle asked. “Are they all liches?”

“No! Well, actually, they might be,” Merle admitted. “I dunno the states of all their souls, but we do know they made the Grand Relics!”

“What?” Noelle gasped.

“You know, like the Philosopher’s Stone?” Magnus added. “And the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet?”

“No, I know what the Grand Relics are, but there’s gotta be some mistake,” Noelle replied. “Barry was trying to stop the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet from going off and incinerating the whole town — and even if he was amnesiac when I met him, I just can’t imagine him ever creating something like that. It just doesn’t make sense —”

“Nothing about Barry Bluejeans makes sense,” Angus agreed. “There must be something we’re missing…”

“I’m sure there is, but one way or another, I’m pretty sure Barry did help make the Relics,” Magnus told them. “He’s popped up near almost every one of them, except for the Oculus —”

“Yeah, remember when you sensed a lich in the Cosmoscope, Noelle?” Taako chimed in. “That was Barry. He rooted through Lucas’s trash and said some ominous shit about billions of lives getting devoured. Doesn’t that sound like a guy who could be the evil mastermind behind the Relic Wars?”

“Well, why don’t we just ask him?” Merle spoke up. “I mean, it’s not like we have any trouble finding the guy even when we’re not looking for him, ha! — so next time we run into him, how about I cast Zone of Truth, and ask what he has to do with the Grand Relics?”

“That’s a great idea, sir!” Angus exclaimed, but his face fell after just a moment. “But if Barry usually just shows up around the Relics, and we have no idea where the last three are, then how will we know where to look for him? We don’t have the time to wait for another to surface randomly like the Philosopher’s Stone and Gaia Sash did.”

“Kid’s got a point, Merle,” Taako admitted, rubbing his chin. “But as long as we don’t have any other leads… I can think of at least once place it wouldn’t hurt to check, and maybe even grace with a séance!”

“Phandalin?” Noelle asked, and Taako nodded.

“Exactly! Sure, the last time we revisited an old stomping grounds didn’t go so well, but Phandalin’s just a flat circle where you can see danger coming from any direction. What could go wrong?”

***

End notes:

Some miscellaneous headcanons about the stuff in Angus’s room: Magnus made the bookshelves and chair, Lucretia provided the bed and helped Angus attach the stars to the ceiling, and the books are almost all Angus’s own. It took a while to bring them all up to the moon, but Lucretia was happy to help, and she and Taako both gave Angus a few more novels to add to his collection.

Next chapter has some exciting stuff happening, including an appearance from a certain lich that the boys may or may not be hunting, so stay tuned! I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hold the every-other-Tuesday update schedule after Chapter 5, because long story short:

I got a part-time job that doesn’t take up that much time, but does occupy the part of the day when I’m usually in the mood to write.

I had mild insomnia for like a solid 4 nights, which I have since recovered from but not before it threw a wrench in my writing process, so that burnt through a “buffer” pre-written chapter or two.

I’m by no means abandoning this fic, but if updates slow down to more of a monthly pace after Chapter 5, this is why! Just wanted to give you all a heads-up.

#taz #taz balance #taakitz #taako taaco #kravitz taz #angus mcdonald #magnus burnsides #merle highchurch #no-3113 #lucretia taz #barry bluejeans #taz balance spoilers #fic: FTRALA #rosalia writes fic

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weepylucifer · 4 years

Text

Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 8

Interlude: David

“Talk to Nightingale,” Peter had said. Of course David was going to converse with Thomas, frequently and on all manner of subjects. The matter of the missing crystal ball, however... well, it couldn’t hurt for David to ask around in his spare time, and catch up with Thomas on the matter at his leisure. Perhaps when he already had something to show for his efforts. Oh, Thomas would be delighted. Certainly, he was going to try to hide it and insist on him following the rules and not interfering with investigations in the future, but beneath that, he’d be glad to have this task taken care of. Then he’d see that David could still make a valuable contribution to the modern Folly.

So, inferring that Peter didn’t want to be bothered looking for that crystal ball, David ventured out (with what he dearly hoped was Peter’s covert permission) to see if some of his old contacts from the demi-monde were still around. Certainly, he expected to find the demi-monde as much changed as everything else, but some people stuck around for a seemingly indefinite amount of time.

Oberon had apparently wed one of the new river daughters, acquired some children with her and was now hosting something called ‘art therapy’. Well, David had always loved to draw. He accepted the offer of an easel, canvas and paint and got to work.

“And I may choose what I draw?” he asked.

“Of course,” Oberon told him. “The aim of this procedure is for you to confront upon the canvas whatever you feel you must.”

David nodded.

Oberon’s place was spacious in a way that was not to David’s taste, but he claimed the minimalism was conductive to his creative process. There was coffee on for him - sweet and almost white with milk, the way he preferred it - and a plate of snacks (no obligation). The food was kosher, Oberon informed him. David hadn’t often been in a position to keep kosher (it had been unheard of at the old Folly, at Casterbrook everyone had received the same boarding school lunches, and during the war you ate what you could get) and thus couldn’t claim he had been afforded even the opportunity to miss it, but it was a nice touch.

“This looks as though you knew I would return here,” he said.

“I suspected it,” Oberon said smoothly. “Your return has made little waves already, and I assume it will only make larger ones.” Apparently the orisa Peter was involved with was a sister to Oberon’s wife, and thence the news had travelled.

“Are you glad to have me back, old friend?” David asked softly. He kept his eyes fixed on the canvas, where his sketch was coming along. It would be a simplistic little thing, compared to his usual work: his hand was quite out of practice after six years of handling his staff and rifle with nary any time for anything else.

He had kept a notebook tucked into his breast pocket, where some of the other men had carried bibles, quite worn by the end of the war. Beyond drafts for new spells, notes on troop movements and strategy, and idle thoughts of his scientific work that he had let his mind drift to during the lulls, there had been little sketches there, and snippets of poems. He had drawn most of the men in his unit at some point. His poems had been dilettantish, and they had shifted focus with the time: what had started out as paeans to sweet Phoebus Apollo, the boyish god of the eyes of sun, had turned, later, to the warlike deities. He had read one aloud once, one he’d deemed sufficiently disguised, and the lads had teased him for weeks about what a harridan of a girl he must have at home, that she must compare to Athena of strategy, while their Captain had watched on with a lopsided smile.

(”What happened to Apollo?” Thomas had asked later, when they’d been alone, the only ones awake during the first watch of the night.

“The war changed him,” David had replied.)

(He’d never shown Thomas the poems to Thanatos, the angel of death.)

“I am glad you ceased the abandonment of your post,” Oberon said. “I am glad you stopped hiding.”

“It was rather chosen for me,” David argued. “The abandonment as well as the return.”

Oberon gracefully nodded his assent. He was always rather graceful in his movement. David liked to look at him, had always rather. All the controlled strength to him, the fluid, natural elegance of him. Masculinity misted off him like a golden vapour. Perhaps he should ask... but no. A wife, children: potent obstacles to that sort of thing.

For some reason, he had to think of Peter for a second. He shrugged it off. If Thomas truly hadn’t figured that one out yet, well, what on earth was David to do? Perhaps it was best to let the young man be, and look for suitable candidates for some... little adventures later. Or perhaps he was being overly optimistic, seeing as Thomas still barely gave him the time of day.

“And what is it you seek here now?” Oberon asked. “Hopefully not to disappear again? Because I am unsure of whether I would lend my hand a second time.”

David shook his head. He had wanted to disappear so badly, then. Oberon had taken pity and helped him find someone who might assist in that, who would create for him a replica of a dead body - his dead body. Now, funny enough, it was the furthest thing from his mind.

“No more running,” David said. “I am assisting the Folly in an inquiry.”

“What is your capacity within the Folly now?” Oberon asked. “I hear tell from my wife that certain elements will want to know, and soon.”

David didn’t know what certain elements meant, nor the answer to the question. “It is yet to be determined,” he said. “The Folly are looking for a dangerous magical object, that might have recently been sold to someone unaware. I don’t know my way around the demi-monde as well as I used to, my friend. With whom would I begin a search for such an object?”

Under David’s hands, the canvas began filling up with landscape. Not so simplistic after all, apparently. He couldn’t recall consciously deciding what to draw, but now he had already started, and it was going to take itself to some sort of conclusion. He had drawn the snow, the overcast sky, now for the leafless trees. He added the dark trunks, tall and imposing, and a clearing in the middle.

“I will outfit you with a list of names, and places to start,” Oberon said. “The goblin market has changed little since you last visited. The faces differ, but the customs remain.”

“That is heartening,” David replied. Satisfied with the look of his painted landscape, he started populating it. The dark shapes, so still in the snow, pitiful heaps of humanity, sunken now, vacated of their souls. A corpse, a carcass, where was the difference? The werewolf, writhing in the snow. Beaten but not yet knowing it.

“Mind where you step, though,” Oberon said. “The relationship of the demi-monde to the Isaacs has hardly grown any more cordial.”

David looked up from the canvas. “What happened?” he asked.

Oberon shrugged. His tight shirt left little to the imagination, and David watched the ripple of his muscles below the fabric with appreciation. “The Starling is working on doing things a new way, reaching out, establishing relations between the community and the Folly, but the Starling is... a recent phenomenon.”

“Pardon me. The... who now?”

“Peter Grant. Nightingale’s Starling. Some interesting ideas, that one.”

Peter Grant. David hummed thoughtfully. Peter was turning out to be a more interesting person by the day. New ideas. Peculiar methods. A man after David’s own heart, it seemed, and handsome too. And... Nightingale’s Starling, really? Then he remembered the actual topic of conversation, and mentally walked himself a few steps back.

“What does Thomas say to that?” he asked.

“Not much.” Oberon rolled his shoulders. He was doing it on purpose, David was sure. “The Nightingale keeps to himself.”

There was something odd to that statement. David picked up a smaller brush, to finish off the contours of the werewolf in its death throes. “Hm? Strange. Thomas was always the social butterfly.”

Oberon gave him an expression somewhere between amusement and incredulity, which to David was entirely weird. “Is that so?”

“I can’t imagine Thomas never popped ‘round to mingle. Sure, he wouldn’t have before the war. But he is technically fae now, and it does seem like the kind of thing he’d do, barring any other society... no offense meant.”

Oberon shook his head. “The Nightingale can barely show his face in any demi-monde pubs without half the clientele fleeing through the back door. His arrival heralds emergency, and most likely combat. Nothing else. He’s not... widely trusted by anyone in my circles.”

“I don’t understand,” David said. His hand holding the paintbrush sped up a little. The outline of the soldier, the only one upright, bent over the werewolf, got a little messy, so he corrected himself. He had not forgotten this moment, even after there had started to be many like it. The bayonet affixed to the rifle, pointed forward and downward, soon to arch for the werewolf’s throat. The staff, too, strapped to his belt. And then, out of some inexplicable impulse, David gave him wings.

These were not the serene, down-feathered wings often featured in depictions of biblical angels. These wings were breaking out of the man’s shoulders in a way that should not be, wrong and painful and bloody and raw. At last, David took another paintbrush, dipped its stiff bristles into the scarlet paint and flicked it with his index finger against the canvas. A fine red mist.

“Are you finished?” Oberon asked.

David nodded.

“Well, let’s see your offering for today.” Oberon crossed the room to stand behind David, scrutinizing the painting.

“This is a scene that you witnessed?” he asked.

“Well, the wings are an embellishment,” David said, “but otherwise, yes.”

“Is this figure supposed to be you?”

“I don’t have wings.” David shook his head.

Oberon crossed his arms. He chortled. “Oh, but you do. False wings, of wax, and the foolish hope to boot.”

“I’m Icarus,” David surmised, “my hubris caused me to fly too close to the sun and I plummeted. Very on the nose, my friend.”

“Oh, not at all. You’re Daedalus. You made these wings, you gave them to him, and you are watching all you ever loved take a nosedive off a cliff, and you’re asking yourself what you have done.”

There wasn’t much David could say to that. He wondered where Oberon had received that information. He wondered how Oberon knew what he had done.

Oberon cocked his head and gestured again at the painting. “This is the Nightingale, then.”

“I do wish everyone would stop calling him that,” David said. “The Nightingale is a construct that served to maintain troop morale. I am told that over seventy years passed since then.”

“A blink of an eye to some of us,” Oberon stated. Of course, David thought, he was much older. But that wasn’t the point.

“The point is,” he said, “I want to know what happened. I want to know how almost eight decades went by and this...” He gestured at the painting. “...is still the reality.”

“Maybe,” Oberon said, “I am not the person to ask this question.”

----

It really was a nuisance, David reflected, to be without his own vehicle. In town, it would do, but not outside of it, and as far as he remembered, his new destination was quite a drive out. He had only been once or twice, but he was certain that, outfitted with the navigation device on his new phone, if he figured it out correctly, he might get there without much trouble. But the problem of the car remained.

Well, Thomas and himself had had an agreement, back in the day, to share everything they owned between them. What’s mine is also yours, it had run. They never reneged on that agreement, and David figured this was important enough to infringe upon Thomas’s Jaguar again. At least this time around, Peter couldn’t possibly get caught in the crossfire.

As he was leaving London, he switched the radio on. Modern music was something he hadn’t gotten around to discovering yet, but he expected it to be as changed from what he remembered as everything in this new age. What he got was a mellow-voiced man singing (he would only later learn that the song was about as old as the car he was driving),

Try to see it my way Do I have to keep on talking till I can't go on? While you see it your way Run the risk of knowing that our love may soon be gone We can work it out We can work it out

While the lyrics were a little bit somber at times, the melody was upbeat and had David humming and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. It was repetitive and by the second iteration of the chorus he was singing along. His singing voice wasn’t anything to write home about, not at all like that of Thomas, but it raised his mood a few notches and that, he supposed, was rather nice to have.

The melody stuck, and still coursed through his mind when, hours later, he arrived at that strange little tower. He got out of the car and stretched his stiff limbs expansively before walking up and ringing the doorbell.

The door was opened by... oh boy!

The door was opened by, there was no other word for it, a fuzzy young woman. Owing to the rather warm weather, she was in shorts and a black-and-gold top of some sort that, David observed, cut off an inch or so above her navel. It was very plain to see, because of this, that the whole of her was covered in a fine golden fuzz, like... like the fur of a bee, if the hairs on a bee were indeed called that. A single tendril of a glamour beckoned, almost probing, testing the waters out of routine rather than genuine interest, telling of the taste of honey and the steady buzz of the swarm and a... fuzzy embrace. As per usual with fae of the female persuasion, this left David largely unaffected.

“Yeah?” the young woman asked.

“I am looking for Hugh Oswald,” David said. “Does he still live here?”

“Sure, grandad still lives here,” the young woman replied. “Why, what do you want from him?”

Grandad. Indeed, David thought. Hugh always did ensure us rather too profusely that he was interested in beekeeping a normal amount.

“I’m come from the Folly,” he said.

“Oh,” Hugh’s granddaughter said. “They have another guy now?”

“They’ve had me for a while, in fact. Long story.” For once picking up on his opposite’s reluctance, David said, “He will want to see me. I know him quite well, we served together.”

The young woman - just now it occurred to David that he hadn’t asked her name, was it awkward doing it now? - cocked her head in a deeply sceptical way. “But you’re not the Nightingale.”

So she too knew that moniker. The Nightingale. David felt anger bubbling up within him. He took a deep breath to contain it. “No. But he is why I’m here.”

“I don’t know about this,” Hugh’s granddaughter said. “I don’t want to stress him out.”

“He will very much want to see me,” David insisted.

“I’ll go ask him if he’s up for it,” the young woman said, and slammed the door in David’s face.

David waited a minute that felt approximately like a thousand minutes, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet with pent-up energy, picking at his collar as always when he was agitated. He’d never known why very little other people tended to have these little nervous habits, but to him they seemed natural as breathing. One plucked at one’s clothes when one was nervous, and one flapped one’s hands at about chest-height when one was in extreme happiness. That was how feelings were appropriately expressed. Curtailing these expressions could feel grating to the point of extreme discomfort, so he had never put much effort in trying, even when people stared sometimes.

The door opened again, revealing the bee... woman. “He says you can come up.”

David nodded. “Splendid.” She waved him to come in, and in he went. Not much had changed from his vague recollection of Hugh’s weird tower. Some furniture had been replaced or positioned differently since, but it was still much the same place.

“Out back,” Hugh’s granddaughter waved a hand in the direction of the staircase. “He’s in the garden.”

“I know my way,” David said, and yet still she followed one step behind him. Should he ask her name now? He did not.

They stepped out into the garden and David registered the omnipresent buzz of the swarm, the many bee-friendly flower arrangements and fruit trees before he registered the old man in the wheelchair. “Hugh Oswald,” he said, “We’ve much to discuss.”

The old man made a startled sound and recoiled so violently he almost toppled his chair over. David winced in sympathy and started towards him hands raised, not sure what to do to help but needing to do something, but Hugh’s granddaughter beat him to it. She rushed to her grandfather’s side and steadied him, stroking his back soothingly, then turned her head to throw David a look of pure venom. For a moment, he felt a prickle down his arms, like the painful little stings of a myriad bees.

“See,” she exclaimed, “this is why I didn’t want to let you in here, moron!”

“Mellissa...” Hugh Oswald gasped. His voice sounded as frail as he looked, god, he looked wizened, he looked like he’d disintegrate into dust at a careful touch, this couldn’t be, this wasn’t Hugh, Hugh was twenty and strong and full of the brimming vigour of youth, Hugh wasn’t old, couldn’t be old, and David was beginning to tremble- “Mellissa, you see him too?”

“What?” Hugh’s granddaughter snapped. (Mellissa, she was Mellissa, that was her name.) “Of course I see him. The idiot! I had no idea he was going to scare you!”

“But...” Hugh raised a shaking hand, pointing in David’s direction. He had trouble catching his breath, and his other, gnarled hand clawed into the armrest of his chair as he gasped. “David Mellenby is buried.”

“No, Hugh,” David said softly. Oh, he was still trembling, he felt like he should faint, but he couldn’t now. “No, I’m quite alive. Please, we can sit together and I can explain.”

“Nope,” Mellissa said. “You’re leaving. Right the fuck now, or I’ll have the hive on you.”

The bees seemed to buzz louder. David began to retreat.

“Wait,” Hugh Oswald said, sitting up a little straighter with a small amount of struggle. “Wait, Mellissa, let him stay. I want to hear...”

“Grandad, I don’t think you should...”

“If he’s really here and not dead, I want to know why,” Hugh Oswald said, his voice a tad firmer now.

Mellissa seemed extremely reluctant to agree to this, but she relented. “I’ll be close by.” She glared at David one last time as she went back inside the tower. “You pull any shit at all and I’ll see you chased out, Mr. Folly.”

David could do nothing but nod.

He picked up the spare chair and sat across from the old man. When he looked into his face, he could just about see, beneath the fine net of wrinkles and the wisp of thin, white hair, the boy Hugh Oswald he had known. It sent a shiver down his spine. He hadn’t realized...

He hadn’t realized until that moment what ‘eighty years’ really meant. At times, it felt like he had simply been transported into a kind of fairyland, a place where up was down, being... the way he was was legalized and celebrated with parades, but his lover was determined to never let him near again. A dimension of opposites. But Hugh, here, like this, showed him plainly that it was the same world, although having turned times upon times without his active participation. Hugh Oswald had grown old in his absence, so very old it seemed a miracle he was upright still. How many survivors of Ettersberg had died in those long interim years, simply from a too-long life? How had David not thought to ask?

“Yes,” Hugh said, “it’s not looking too well, is it?”

It took David a second to realize he meant himself. “You look fine,” he muttered, drawing patterns on the tablecloth.

Hugh Oswald made a wheezing sound. David grew worried, but then realized it was laughter. “Still a miserable liar.”

“I’m not...!” David started, but was there any use in denying anything now? Hugh looked frail, and that was obvious enough.

Hugh waved it off. “Do tell, old friend,” he said, and while he was trying very hard to put a calm face on it, the tremor was still present in his voice, “what brings you here, back from the grave? I found your body...” His voice caught, and splintered on the last word, and for an endlessly, agonizingly long moment, he fought to maintain his composure.

David felt like dirt. What had he done to the boy? How could you do this to Oswald, Thomas had asked him, a few days ago in that cave, and he had been right to ask.

“Never, in fact, in the grave.” In short, David summarized what had happened to him, his heedless flight into the countryside, the faerie he’d met, the long sleep. “I’m dearly sorry,” he said, something he seemed to be saying often these days, “of course I should’ve remembered that my sudden appearance would startle you. Only, I assumed Thomas had already told you I was back. You would’ve been the first to call, no?”

Hugh Oswald wheeze-laughed again. “Thomas? Hah! The Nightingale hasn’t spoken to me in over twenty years.”

David blinked.

David blinked again.

David blinked back to the year 1944, to Arnhem, Private Hugh Oswald’s first engagement. The boy had barely been of age. After the dust had settled, he had broken down weeping, and David had found him later cradled in Thomas’ arms, head resting on his shoulder, both hands clutching his Captain’s jacket, tears and snot leaving a growing stain on Thomas’ uniform. Thomas had shushed him, muttering that yes, he knew, yes, he understood. Oswald had become one of Thomas’ boys, a favorite, maybe. Thomas had always had a way of almost obessively mothering the youngest recruits. And David, of course, as Thomas’ lieutenant and partner (although no one would have known about that latter part, obviously) had, as a matter of course, shouldered his part of the weight.

They hadn’t talked for twenty years? Why? How?

“What happened?” he asked.

At this point, Mellissa came back out with a cup of tea which she placed in front of her grandfather, and nothing for David. David decided not to mind.

“What happened?” Oswald carefully took a miniscule sip of his tea, testing the temperature. “Time passed. I grew older. Thomas grew younger. It... pains him, I suppose, seeing me this way. It pains you right now.”

David waved it off. Yes, it... shocked him seeing Hugh like this. But that shock was his own thing to overcome. “People grow old. Surely Thomas is not so thin-skinned as to break contact with one of his closest friends over this alone.”

Oswald shrugged. “I don’t know what else it might have been. We used to meet fairly regularly up until the late sixties. I can’t recall exactly when, but he broke contact fairly shortly after the rejuvenation event. We didn’t see much of him after that.”

“Who else is still standing?” David inquired.

“Ah. Arkwright is still alive, Patterson, Simpkins, Gerald and Mercier - John, not Edwin, obviously. Giles the younger and Rooney, although he’s been having heart problems. Blaine and Gardiner. A few others. Thomas doesn’t talk to them, either.”

David began drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “Have you fellas asked him why? Has he ever explained himself?” It seemed impossible that Thomas should, for any reason, leave his ducklings behind. A world of opposites, again.

Hugh Oswald looked out at his garden. “We weren’t going to make demands of him. He’s... he’s the Nightingale.”

The flat of David’s hand hit the table so hard it smarted. “No!”

Oswald winced. “Wh- what...?”

“Perhaps Thomas stopped talking to you because you insist on doing this!”

“Doing... what?” Oswald cocked his head, confused at David’s sudden ire. Oh, yes, they all tended to forget he could be angry. Had always tended to forget that. Lieutenant Mellenby had always been the soft, pale shadow attached to Captain Nightingale, until they’d learned that he had been made Lieutenant for a reason, that he held ferocity within him rivalling, and sometimes surpassing, that of Thomas.

“The Nightingale. You really kept that up all these years, hm? He is still going about his life like that, isn’t he! The war has been over for such a long time! How old are you now, Private Oswald, hm? You must be pushing a hundred. Did you lads have him carry you all on his shoulders for the entire duration? And then you did not even have the common civility to reach out and inquire whether he was struggling?”

Because Thomas was having troubles, as much was clear. David remembered the other night in the reading room in stark detail, remembered how something had been revealed to him there in its sudden vulnerability that he could not categorize.

“It was just his way. You don’t...” Oswald interrupted himself, but David could guess at the end of that sentence. You don’t ask the Nightingale whether he’s struggling. Goodness but he wanted to drop his head into his hands and stay like that for a while. Thomas had gotten that nickname when he’d joined the school choir. In this moment, David wanted very much to chuck a fireball at a few of Oswald’s pretty flower arrangements, and was almost thankful for the inhibitor cuffs.

“Well, you didn’t know him before the war like I did.” David sighed. And how indeed would Oswald know? He was much too young. “I see how it all changed him. And it’s not improved a bit, it seems, in all the years. He doesn’t seem to have one true friend in all the world. He secludes himself even from me, and I’m his lover.”

Oswald shifted in his seat. “You...?”

“You heard me right, his lover.” He didn’t originally come here to unload this on Hugh, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. It was allowed now, the law was on his side now, and there was nothing Hugh could do but sit and take it. “Do you understand me? We are as Orestes and Pylades, Achilles and Patroclus, we are as Wilde and Bosie Douglas, we are two Alan Turings. We are Friends of Mrs. King. We commit acts of buggery upon each other, and we do so extremely well. We-”

“I know what a gay man is, Davey, you can quiet down,” Hugh Oswald said with a tired wave of his hand. “Look, none of us knew this for certain about the two of you, but a fair few of us suspected. We thought it best not to pry at the time. What makes you tell me now?”

“I’m...” David rubbed his eyes. They stung a bit. “I’m telling you in part because I can, I suppose. And because I need to impart to you that Thomas is a man who bleeds red. He lost everything too, you know. He lost me, and that is my own shame to bear, but he would have needed a friend, and what he got appears to have been a gaggle of mouth-breathers chorusing ‘If the Nightingale can do it, so can I’. Yes, you lads needed something, too. But you went back here and lived out a life in peace, and Thomas has kept on fighting the war every second since. And you’re surprised he didn’t show at company reunions? You gave him notice of my ‘death’, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Oswald gripped the edge of the table with both hands, attempting perhaps to keep his calm. “He sort of nodded, and dismissed me from the hospital room. ‘Thanks for telling me’, he said, ‘Dismissed, Private’. And he did that blank face of his. And that was it, that was all of it.”

David ran his hands across his face. He couldn’t begin to imagine how they both had to have been hurting. I’m such a bloody idiot. “This is a mess,” he groaned. “This is a mess and I’m not equipped to fix it.”

“Well, well.” Oswald patted his hand. “You’re back now, isn’t that enough?”

“No,” David said. “It’s too little too late. I fear we all broke Thomas, and there’s no unbreaking him.”

----

Back at the Folly, David parked the Jag, snuck in through the back door and collapsed on a couch in the drawing room. He felt drained. Driving from Herefordshire had taken a while. It was late, darkness was beginning to fall, and he was tired.

He felt more than saw Molly enter. When he turned and beheld her, she was carrying a tray with tea and small sandwiches. The small dog they had here now was following on her heel, hoping to catch a bite. David noticed just then that he had missed lunch and dinner, and he was quite hungry.

He gave Molly a small smile. “Oh, are these for me?”

Molly nodded, and set the tray down on a coffee table. The Folly was full of these rooms, David thought idly, rooms of artfully arranged armchairs and little tables, rooms that nobody now used. What a waste, what a tremendous waste. He took a sandwich. The dog - his collar said Toby - immediately begged, and David bent down and stroked his fur. Good boy.

“I still don’t understand it, Molly,” he said. “I saw Oswald, but he gave me more questions than answers. Why were things permitted to get this way? Yes, Hugh is old now, and frail, but he had a life, in his way. He continued doing what he loved to do. He fucked a bee, somehow. Why was this not a possibility... here?”

Molly tilted her head to the side. The look in her eyes was... calculating, somehow. Do you want to know? she seemed to be asking. Can you bear the knowing?

“I want to know anything anyone can tell me,” David told her. This was his penance. And more, he couldn’t stay his natural curiosity. He had to empty this cup to the bitter dregs.

She took a step forward, reached out her hands, and suddenly was touching him. In all this time, she had never touched him--

He blinked his eyes, and a brief bout of blackness enveloped him, and he was suddenly elsewhere. He was in his own bedroom. How had that happened? It was night, not dusk. He quickly cycled through, and dismissed, half a dozen hypotheses. He had certainly not sleepwalked, and Molly certainly hadn’t carried him here. This felt too strange to be any of those. And the room was different, clothes and books and magazines lying about that he didn’t own anymore and hadn’t in a long time. What...?

There was someone in his bed.

When David went closer to investigate, it felt like he was floating rather than walking. It took him a few seconds to identify Thomas there in his bed (where he had every right to be) because so much was different. This was not Thomas of present days, except if he’d fallen very grievously ill very quickly while David had been away. He was gaunt and sickly pale, messy, unwashed strands of his hair hanging into his face, his jaw littered with chestnut-coloured scruff. He was fully dressed, down to his combat boots, and clutching to his chest a piece of fabric - a jumper, one of David’s own old favorites.

He waved a hand in front of Thomas’s eyes and got no reaction. Just a vacant, empty stare fixed at the ceiling.

The door was cracked open, slowly, carefully, and Molly entered. She was carrying an empty laundry basket under her arm.

Oh, this had to be a memory, David thought. A memory that Molly was now sharing with him. How fascinating. How did she do that? Had she always been able to do that?

Molly approached the bed and gestured with her free hand in the vague direction of it. No reaction came from Thomas. He seemed catatonic, wholly somewhere else, or maybe nowhere at all.

Molly hitched the laundry basket higher up her hip. Still no reaction.

She gestured again, perhaps a bit frustratedly. When there was still no movement in response to this, she bent down and carefully, with the very tips of her fingers, reached for the jumper in Thomas’ hands.

“No!”

Immediately, Thomas snapped to, curling protectively around the bit of fabric. One of his hands twitched and his shield came up, with the same intensity as on the battlefield, with a whoomph of raw energy that, as always, even just in this second-hand memory, felt like it made David’s teeth rattle.

Molly threw up a hand almost in exasperation, and gestured again at the bedsheets, the jumper - a cream-coloured one - then at her laundry basket.

“No... no. You can’t... can’t.” Thomas looked up at her out of wild, red-rimmed eyes. His voice sounded like he’d screamed it hoarse. David thought of his boyfriend as he’d met him, with that easy grin and the sun on his face, thought too of his revered Captain, sure as a rock in every crisis, a force of nature when unfettered on the battlefield. This iteration of Thomas looked feral.

“It smells like him,” Thomas muttered. “It does, still, a bit. Nothing else does anymore.”

Molly shook her head, enveloped by deep pity.

“Do you understand, nothing else... Molly...” He began rocking himself back and forth, cradling David’s jumper to his chest like a mother her baby, like a child a favorite doll. “Please don’t take... please, please don’t make me...”

Thomas Nightingale, pleading.

Molly stepped back, and the shield broke apart, and Thomas buried his face in the cream-colored wool, and David could hear his flat, hitched sobs, like they were being torn out of him, and he wished to never have been born to cause such grief.

Beyond the window, the light changed. It changed rapidly, light and dark and light again, and David watched as Thomas remained still and unmoving on the bed, barely changing position, watched in fast-forward as his hair and beard grew, as he got ever thinner, as Molly came and went and tried and more often than not failed to force some food upon him, and the days turned to weeks turned to months--

“Stop,” he cried, “Stop, Molly, stop, I can’t see any more!”

Seemingly Molly had heard him and was complying, as David felt a huge, yanking tug and was back in the drawing room, breathing heavily and slightly nauseous and... still... holding a sandwich. He put it down for Toby. He wasn’t hungry now.

“Damn,” David said. He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them, not caring if it didn’t look proper, there was no one here but Molly to witness it. “Was it like that all of the time?”

Molly vaguely waved a hand.

“But it’s better now. It is better now.”

Molly shrugged. She had always been able to communicate much with sparse gestures. She then lowered her hands, and looked at the floor.

“Listen, don’t you think that. You’ve done more than enough, I’m sure. You’ve given your all. You still do, don’t you?”

There was some movement at the door, and David looked up to see the second fae had appeared, the new one - Foxglove. Molly’s... sister?

She moved - in that gliding way the high fae moved - closer to Molly and opened her arms. Molly stood still as a statue for a second, then she accepted the comfort, hugging her sister, resting her head on Foxglove’s shoulder. Even amidst all the misery, David’s heart felt a flush of that comfort, too.

This is good to see, he thought. And he knew what he had to do next.

----

The light was still on in Thomas’ bedroom, pouring out under the door in a warm, golden sheen, so David knocked and then let himself inside.

Thomas hadn’t undressed for bed yet; he was seated at his desk, pen in hand, finally correcting Peter’s homework. It was good to see him, not whole by a long shot, but at the very least not driven frenzied by grief.

Thomas put his pen down. “What is it, David? Come to apologize for disappearing with the Jag a second time?”

“I’m sorry,” David said. He couldn’t bear to look at Thomas’s face and see that cold disapproval there now, so he hung his head, and scrutinized the carpet.

“You do realize you cannot just go off like that?” There was a small scraping sound as Thomas pushed his chair back and stood.

“What’s yours is mine,” David muttered. “What’s mine is yours.” He felt so very tired.

He felt the sigh more than he heard it. He knew without looking up that Thomas was rolling his eyes now. “Look, certainly it annoys me that you keep spiriting my car away, but there is more to this than me feeling territorial about my property. I didn’t know where you were all day. You only recently got back. We’ve not gauged yet how deeply you’re affected by what you’ve experienced, you might endanger yourself going off alone, you might be volatile...”

And now Thomas was stood before him, and David felt his hands resting on his shoulders - Thomas had such beautiful hands, fine and graceful, he had always loved them - cupping his face, combing through his hair, like Thomas was reassuring himself that David was really here. Searching. David laughed.

“I might be volatile? I? Me?”

“You’re something, that’s for sure.” A hand lifted his chin, gentle but unyielding. “Look at me, Davey. What’s going on?”

And David met those clear, grey eyes and something in him bubbled over. He threw his arms around Thomas with abandon, and pulled him close, and held him there. “Oh, Thomas. Oh, Thomas.”

A hand was carding through his hair, and it felt so good after the day he’d had. “David...”

“I went to see Oswald.”

Thomas’ hands withdrew, and he took a step back, disentangling them again. “You...?” For a moment, something flashed in his eyes, and was suppressed too quickly for David to decipher. “How was he?”

“He was old... very old. His granddaughter is a bee. But Thomas, I understand now. I understand it all.”

David laughed again. His head spun. “I understand why you are this way now. And you’re not mad at me because I ran away, you don’t even bear a grudge against me because of Ettersberg. Or perhaps you do, but that’s hardly the point, is it? You’re not angry, you’re scared.”

And there it was again, something flashing in the depths of those grey eyes, a flicker of uncertainty, ruthlessly smothered. “I beg your pardon,” Thomas said.

“For all these years you’ve had to go it alone,” David replied. He felt fevered in that way that resembled emerging from a week-long series of gruelling and time-intensive experiments crowned at last by success. How everything fit together so smoothly at last! Hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. “Letting no one close was where your salvation lay. You stopped contacting the lads because they couldn’t see that you were struggling with them starting to age past you. That you felt some sort of way about it. You’ve been Hugh’s Greek hero for so long. You don’t know how to step off that plinth and be human again. You have reason to fear that it will get bad... very bad, if you try it.”

David grinned, and seized Thomas by the lapels, and would have picked him up and spun him around the room if he didn’t feel so light-headed, so very drunk on the exhilaration of everything coming together at last. “But that’s all right now, my sweet songbird. I’m here! I will take good care of you. I understand you, fully. You’ve had to build these walls, but me going past them is a good thing. You can finally put that all down - that sword and shield, all down and away. And I will stand guard. Won’t that be good?”

Thomas tore himself away.

The exhilaration shrivelled, all joy in David took a fatal plunge at the cold rage in Thomas’ face.

“Lieutenant Mellenby,” Thomas said quietly (oh, he never raised his voice when he got angry anymore, he grew quieter), “What the fuck did you just say to me right now?”

David felt tears threatening to spill at last. He was no longer light. He was miserable and anchored to this carpet, his body a lead weight. “Thomas...”

“You have no right. No right at all. How dare you? How... dare you? After Ettersberg? After all you’ve caused to happen?”

“I only meant...”

“There’s the door. Leave now, before I start throwing fireballs.”

#david mellenby lives AU #rivers of london #oh boy 5:30 in the morning!#david: ''i am helping!'' *makes it worse*

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liggytheauthoress · 4 years

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tagged by @addictsitter

Favorite movie: Newsies, Boondock Saints, and The Swan Princess Movie that makes you remember your childhood: I know I just used it for an answer but Swan Princess again; my best friends in middle school and I watched it all the fucking time, it was Our Movie Favorite Tom Hanks movie: The Terminal, I guess Favorite Disney movie: going by just the animated classics, then The Black Cauldron and The Emperor’s New Groove Movie that makes you cry: it’s really, REALLY rare for a movie to make me cry but I s2g Ink makes me bawl like a baby every single time Favorite 80’s movie: The Princess Bride and The Goonies are the first ones that come to mind; I know I have more but I’m too lazy to think of any others Favorite comedy: probably Clue Favorite sports movie: Space Jam (shh it counts). also Major League. Favorite courtroom movie: uhhh I don’t really have one? Favorite horror movie: oh god that’s a long list. first few that come to mind are the Friday the 13th movies (except Jason Goes to Hell, we don’t talk about that one), Saw, Final Destination, and Scream Most overrated movie: yeah I don’t think I could pick just one, there are a LOT...most of Tarantino’s movies are on that list though... Favorite gangster movie: White Heat Favorite war movie: I have been obsessed with the 1993 Gettysburg movie since I was like six years old. seriously. we had it on VHS so we could only watch it on special occasions bc my dad didn’t want the tape to wear out, and I used to sneak-watch it while he was at work. Movie you can watch over and over again: waaaay too many to list here tbh Movie with the best soundtrack: The Descendants movies x) also Sucker Punch Favorite Christmas movie: Arthur’s Perfect Christmas xD Movie you’re embarrassed that you love: not sure, I stopped feeling shame about my movie preferences a long time ago... Favorite sequel: ignoring franchises like LOTR, then Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, Descendants 2 and 3, and of course Lion King II Favorite period drama: Pride and Prejudice Favorite movie quote: way too many to list here but the first one that comes to mind is, “Pardon me while I have a strange interlude,” from Animal Crackers; I use it whenever I can, it’s even my discord status

tagging @racetrackshiggins @horaetio @silverfoxbobbyfish and anyone else who wants to steal

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scentedkryptoniteballoon · 5 years

Video

youtube

Groucho does what he does best in Animal Crackers “Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”

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sunnybimbo · 6 years

Text

at this point i should really just post my entire wip but im holding off as long as i can until i fuckin finish it asjdhasjldhasjld

have more of my shunkeith old west(esque) au because i was feelin soft for it

Then, completing the cycle, Lance wanders in last. At the end of the week, he hands Hunk another bag of horse feed, kicks his legs up on a desk, and says, "Hunk." and nothing further.

When Hunk glances at him past a stack of books and gets nothing in reply, he playfully rolls his eyes and, in the exact same tone, responds, "Lance."

They have that standoff which is really nothing more than Lance glaring at Hunk's back for nearly five minutes, until Lance gets exasperated and throws his hands up in the air. "You never listen!"

"You didn't say anything!" Hunk shoots back.

Lance opens his mouth to retort, probably with a quip about Hunk's (seemingly) nonexistent love life, when he is interrupted with a very familiar, very polite knock on the doorframe.

Hunk turns with his usual spiel of 'Welcome, how may I help you this fine day' ready on his lips, but it's chased away in the wind and gobbled up by his heart as it leaps into his throat.

Keith stands at the doorway, an absolute surprise mostly because it isn't night, but partly because of the delicate bundle of flowers in his gloved hand. There are maybe five or six stems topped with thick layers of silken petals, each a different shade of color than the last all the way around. If there was ever need of proof that rainbows can be caught, those flowers are all he'd need.

He's dressed to the nines, or atleast as close as Keith can get. His hair is brushed high up in a loose ponytail, off of his neck that's revealed by his collared shirt. His trousers are leather- a stark contrast to the comfortable wool he usually wore (despite the weather), and his boots shined bright.

When he steps in, his face is flushed, but he looks Hunk right in the eye as he offers him the bouquet with a soft, "Here."

Hunk startles, dropping a book or two right on his foot as he hurries to slide them on a table. When Lance snickers in the background, Keith grows even redder, but Hunk hurries to shush him. "These are mine?"

"For you." Keith confirms. The tips of his fingers are rough as they rub against Hunk's, but Hunk's aren't any better so it isn't much of an issue in his book.

Ha, book.

He brings the flowers to his nose. They hardly have a scent- probably just for show more than anything- but there's an earthy tinge just in the background, muted like when Hunk can hear a party going through the night down the street while he studies his books.

"Thank you, Keith." Hunk breathes, fingering the soft tops against his palm. "These are awful lovely."

Keith grunts his acknowledgement, eyes darting to the ever-nosy Lance. Didn't Lance know that was Hunk's job?

"Pardon me for a moment?"

On his way to grab a vase, Hunk bodily grips Lance by his skinny little arm and tugs him to the back. He knows his eyes must be wide and he must look embarrassed, because Lance doesn't immediately tease him and instead placatingly lifts both his hands and pretends to be busy studying an ancient map on the wall that Hunk keeps forgetting to switch out.

Hunk takes the interlude to calm his heart, which is near starting a fire against his ribcage.

"You know, I think I hear Pidgeon calling for me." Lance says, after a few minutes. His grin is wolfish, gleeful at the thought of finally having palpable dirt to gossip about Hunk instead of the other way around. "I'll come back tomorrow."

Lance is out of the office before Hunk can think of something to say, a true testament to how flustered he is, and Keith is soon taking his place not one minute after.

"Your friend said you were about to collapse." Keith says, no small amount of worry evident in his voice. "You want I should go get someone?"

He nervously hovers in the doorway, not unlike a hummingbird hovers over honeysuckle, and it fills Hunk with the most adoring feeling, straight in his gut. It warms him all the way down to his toes and it, for some strange reason, makes him feel like the prettiest person in the country.

"I'm fine. Just a little... surprised. I suppose. Wasn't expectin' this from you."

Keith frowns. His expression darkens a tad, and Hunk's known him just long enough to realize it's disappointment that swirls in his irises. "I can leave, if you'd like. Didn't mean no discomfort."

"No discomfort caused." Hunk rubs his sweaty palms on his trousers and stands up straighter. "I appreciate them an immense amount, actually. Thank you."

Keith hovers again, and if he were able to he'd probably be buzzing louder than a wasp in a half-destroyed nest. He steps forward- not exactly in Hunk's space, and holds his hand out to gather Hunk's, pressing a kiss against the back of his palm.

It pulls a soft giggle from Hunk, half because Keith's glove tickles his skin but mostly because of how this feels like a fairytale. Keith flushes in response, pretty and pink, and he soon after leaves with a gentle incline of his head and a soft grunt as he mounts his horse.

---

Sometime when the heat lifts to something more bearable, signifying the beginning of autumn's kiss upon the earth, Shiro comes to visit him. It's a slow day- a Sunday, which was always slow- and Shiro seems to know this because he fits his fingers between Hunk's, pressing their palms together, and asks him to spend the day together.

Hunk doesn't know how he lets these cowboys startle him so much just with their words, but the offer does nonetheless. He sets down the duster he was using to clear the podiums here and there, scratching at the stubble he'd meant to shave off that morning. "Now?"

"If that's alright with you." Shiro affirms. His eyes, grey like the stars, sparkle in the morning light, playfully if Hunk squints. "I've hardly spent a moment with you, even when you help me with my letters."

"I'd've thought you'd be gettin' tired of me by now." Hunk laughs, shyly. "I don't have anything planned today. Wouldn't mind spendin' the day with you a bit."

They don't head anywhere special, really. Shiro admits that he hadn't planned this far ahead in his mind, something so uncharacteristic of him that Hunk is oddly flattered.

So, with no prior commitments needing his attention, Hunk leads Shiro to a small pasture off to the north. It was the lowest point in the entire valley, always dewy as if the sun never reached deep enough to make the water turn to mist, and cows rarely wandered up far enough to leave any cowpies.

Perfect for lazing about, in Hunk's book.

He'd thought ahead enough to bring a gingham blanket for them to sit on, but he bemoans not having thought to bring lunch. "We coulda had a full-on picnic!"

Shiro sits beside Hunk, the latter flopping to the ground like a boneless babe. He watches him for a soft moment, long eyelashes glittering in the light. Hunk didn't know he'd ever be enamored by eyelashes, but here he is.

"I'll give you more warning next time." Shiro hums, legs crossing. "If you'd like."

Butterflies dance over their heads, brilliant orange as if they'd been painted by fairies with the deepest vat of gold paints. It doesn't distract Hunk, per se, but the colors catch his eye enough that he misses the longing look Shiro offers him in the moment.

He mulls over the words, obviously teasing, and Shiro bashfully brushes a few blades of grass from their shared space.

Shiro takes the brief respite to get comfortable, unstrapping his holster to toss it out of the way. A gust of wind sends a shiver through his bones, and he hurries to pull the scarf from his neck to instead cover his nose- which was reddening from the cool.

"I'd like that, Shirogane." Hunk says, eventually. His fingers crawl across the blanket, purposefully looking off into the distance. A last means of defense, in case of sudden rejection.

Shiro's hand covers his, not quite bigger than Hunk's own but marginally more confident as he slides himself closer until they're hip to hip.

They sit out there for longer than they probably should have- enough that the sun disappears behind the highest mountain and bathes them in shadows even though it's closer to noon than it is midnight- doing nothing more than talk.

After it all, Hunk doesn't even remember what they say, but he remembers intensely the way his heart swelled and his cheeks ached with how much he smiled.

#shunkeith #sheithunk #voltron #im laughin this is literally the scene right before another wip i posted #i just need to stop teasin and toss it out into the void but also its not READY YET #jam writes #long post

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lacrimoso · 6 years

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word: ache | @cannibalesque - ♥

“Hit me.”

It catches him off-guard, but wouldn’t it do so to anyone?

“Ah... pardon?”

He hopes he misheard. He hopes he misunderstood. He hopes that Naki still had that mumbling problem. He hopes for a lot-- too much; so much that it was cause for a dull ache within his chest.

“I want you,” and the young ghoul initially doesn’t skip a beat (and shuu just wants it to end there. please end there.), going as far as to stare right at him before he falters, “to hit me as much... as much as ya can.”

And he feels his stomach drop. It falls so hard and fast that it plummets. It lurched forward-- making all possible responses catch in his throat.

And these thoughts...? They remain, and they lingered. But, worst of all, they ached.

“Naki, mon amour...” he heard himself whisper, almost inaudible. His voice was little more than a wisp. “You...”

(you can’t ask that of me.)

It’s like clockwork, the way he’s moving. Hand goes to rest on cheek (soft. just like him.), and he nearly feels a wince beneath his fingers. Naki’s eyes twitched, gradually easing into a squint whilst tears had-- oh... oh, no.

He’s already crying.

Shuu swallowed and looked away shut his eyes. He didn’t want to hear him beg. Not tonight.

“Please. I’ll be okay.”

Was he telling the truth? It was so hard to tell. So badly, though, did he want to believe him.

“You...” Shuu tried again, voice still gentle, soft, and delicate. “I--”

Naki bit his lip and slowly put his hand over his. Fingers wrapped around it, grip benign and docile. He licked his lips, blinked back the budding tears (some had already rolled down his cheeks. were it another day-- another season with another reason, shuu may have found them beautiful.) as he leaned into the touch. Cheek cupped itself neatly, nestling into the warmth of Shuu’s palm. Eyelids fell, nearly fluttering shut as he dared to breathe out a sigh.

“I’ll tell ya if it’s too much.”

Time stops, and it waits. It has its hands at its throat. Even as Shuu’s eyes opened, time choked itself.

“--...”

He could see him from beneath his lashes, and he’s unsure if it was proper of him to feel sad. Naki’s on the verge of sobbing, and Shuu found himself asking so many questions to no one else but himself. Does he want to bawl? Does he want to mewl? Does he want to whimper? Does... Does Shuu want to see that?

(will you regret it later? or...)

Slowly, with clear reluctance does he lower his hand alongside his guard. Intricate and tender does he move, fingers hovering over damp skin before moving to aside stray strands of blond. Hand leisured, taking its time in adjusting-- touching and feeling until it has itself cupping Naki’s chin.

(or... will i regret it later?)

“Naki, mon chéri.”

He proceeded once he could look into the other man’s eyes. Only then does he raise his other arm with fingers loosely splayed apart.

“Please, clench your teeth. If you keep your mouth open, you’ll bite your tongue.”

Tone was kept sweet-- sugary and thickly slicked with love. Perhaps, it was best if it was he did see it, after all.

It felt like hours have passed. It’s easy to lose count.

Naki’s breathing through his mouth, jaw hanging slack with the smallest hint of blood’s flavoring tainting his tongue. Vision flickers during rapid bouts of blinking with hand clutching blond hair. He’s bleeding from the nose (one, long, and thick line of red leaks from the left nostril. he tries to sniff it back up but knows that’s not how it works.) and tears have run down his cheeks. There’s stains, darkening and moistening skin in runny marks.

He’s such a goddamned mess, but it didn’t matter. It’s what he wanted anyway, so why should it matter?

However, things have come to a stop. He sways from side to side, not yet falling because of sturdy support. The realization greets him in its slow, menial way. Holding his breath, he tightened his jaw and sealed his lips. Eyes fought back the urge to screw shut, crinkling at their corners before--

“You look so... so tired.”

--his hands grip tight at Shuu’s thighs, those being his only leverage save for the other ghoul’s hand holding him up. He trembled. He shook. He writhed. He’s breathing deeply, occasionally letting loose a hiccup and a pathetic, little sniffle. He doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want to plead. Heart’s beating fast in his ears, and it sounds like rushing water. He doesn’t care, though. He’s never cared.

(please please please please--)

He welcomes the sound of flesh against flesh. He welcomes the feeling of skin smacking skin.

(--please please plEASE PLEASE PLEASE--)

A gasp escapes, and Naki’s hold faltered for a half of a second. The realization was immediate, own breath hitching within throat as he clasps again. Fingers dug themselves into fabric of Shuu’s pants, and he’s nearly gritting his teeth. It’s hard to keep looking at him with his hunched shoulders and his aching neck, but he wants to. A voiceless “thank you” oozes from his expression, the younger ghoul managing the tiniest of smiles throughout the pain.

And, ah-- he’s shown too much. There was a brief pause within ministrations, Shuu’s eyes going wide at the reveal with his hand freezing in the air’s midst. Fingers twitched, and Naki saw it but would say nothing. He felt fingers loosen within his hair for but a moment’s time being immediately returning to their original strength. He braces himself for another (hard! it hurts, it hurts, it hurts! but he wants it! replace the hurt with another kind of hurt!) and sobs when he feels the burn before the crash.

(this is what i want. give it to me.)

He wants to beg for him. He wants to plead with him. He wants to call out “harder.” with what’s left of his voice. He wants to hurt.

(i need it. i need it so bad. i need it more than anything.)

But it’s so hard. It’s so, so hard.

This pain... was so familiar. It’s strangely lovely. It’s something he wants to keep and to hold close to his heart. The tears have since stopped, and he finds himself already missing their presence. Hands claw, having lost their hold once again and desperately clinging for any show of support. He doesn’t want to rip the fabric yet, in the back of his head, knows he’s already done that. It’s stretched out and worn thin, and it’d surely be seen as ugly later on. Naki peered up at Shuu, with a mystified expression.

For once does Naki enjoy the sensation. For once does he find something softer than the feeling of death. Dying’s such a commodity, he believes. It’s something he’s been so unsure of for a while (live without yamori? die with yamori? he’s not sure and it hurts!), and he’s never been bold enough to simply ask. Instead, he wanted to replace it. He wanted to forget. He wanted to feel something different. He wanted to share himself-- expose himself.

And so he dares to speak. He dares himself to be bold.

“Hhh--”

Shuu stops, patient and quiet. He’s breathing through his nose, but Naki could see how exhausted he’s slowly becoming.

“--hhharder.”

He’s unsure if he should be grateful for the interlude. It allowed for more and more thoughts to seep through (gagi and guge would still be here if it wasn’t for you. yamori would still be here if you were there. miza wouldn’t have nearly died if you were useful for once in your fucking life. and if it weren’t for you, shuu would’ve-- ... would’ve...), and Naki’s eyes begin to water again. Just before these tears began their downwards stream once again, Shuu’s lips pursed in a little coo.

“This is the last one, mon ange.”

It’s embarrassing, but he can’t remember what that meant. Maybe he’ll ask later... if he can remember. He wants to know.

Naki’s eyes flutter shut at the assurance, though. Breath was held with shoulders tensing only to grow lax seconds later. His rapid heartbeat was almost a rhythm at this point, thumping hard and rough against the drums of his ears. It was nearly enough to drown everything out--

“... Je suis désolé.”

--but only nearly.

He’s gone to great lengths to clean up. This mess? It was his, after all.

Tenderness-- it’s almost alien to Naki when comparing it to a mere half of an hour ago.

A tissue (light pink in color. naki doesn’t know why shuu has them in those shades but never asked why.) dabbed itself at Naki’s lip. He struggled all the while, wincing and flinching back until Shuu held him by the jaw. Smudged was the blood until Shuu licked the tip of his thumb, wiping away the leftovers and the leftovers’s remnants.

“...”

He noticed the way Naki refused to look directly at him. He smiled, though, and stifled back a sigh. Admittedly, it hurt to smile but... wasn’t that was what he was supposed to do? Fake a smile? Pretend like everything was okay? He’s done it before, and he’s gotten away with it before. So, with that in mind, it was okay, wasn’t it? It was okay. And even if it wasn’t, he’d make it okay.

“Ya didn’t wanna do it, did you?”

Hesitation. Reluctance. Embarrassment.

Previously peering down at the tissue, fluffing at its corners and turning it around to find clean spots, Shuu paused and peered up at Naki. The question, while reasonable and almost expected, wasn’t something he had been preparing to answer.

“Why do you say that?”

“...”

“Naki, I--”

“Ya didn’t want to. I heard what ya said back there.”

(ah... shit.)

“I dunno what it was, but... I know it wasn’t good.”

He blinked, still trying to keep the smile nonetheless. It faltered. It’s always quick to falter, especially when he saw Naki lean forward. Eyes fought back the urge to shut (escape the situation. he can’t tell him the truth. not right now. maybe not ever. it’d only make him cry, and he can’t make him cry any more.), mistaking the action as an initiation for intimacy. It’d be easier to avoid, after all. Maybe he’s lied his way out of another situation and--

“‘M sorry.”

--oh.

Naki’s rested his head on his shoulder, nearly nestling close to the crook of his neck. He heard him suck in a breath (he remembered he put on a special kind of perfume earlier. he wanted to ask naki’s opinion on it.) before he felt arms lazily wrap around his waist. Naki scooted closer, clumsily draping his legs over Shuu’s, and he... he let it happen.

“Why do you say that...?” he asked again, voice growing weak as his own arms draped themselves around his dear’s shoulders.

Initially, his answer was silence, and he’s uncertain if he liked it. Seconds ticked by, growing more and more tense by the moment, before Naki’s hold developed into an embrace.

“‘M sorry I made ya do that.”

He felt himself freeze.

“I was fucked up earlier, man, 'nd... I w-wanted somethin’ t’make it less fucked up and... a-a-and...”

Sighing, Shuu buried his face into the side of Naki’s head. He took in the smell of him (the cheap cologne. the lingering smell of blood and dirt. there’s a hint of metal. but he doesn’t mind.), and sat silent for but a moment’s time. He felt Naki shake weakly within his arms and instinctively firmed his hold, tightening his embrace. He shut his eyes, knit his brows together, and shushed him with gentle reminders and soft words.

“It’s okay.”

Naki trembled, sniffed, but, at least, he was breathing.

“All I ask is that you please... please--”

Eyes cracked open with nothing to stare at.

“--don’t ask for me to hurt you when you are already in pain.”

#cannibalesque #『 D. how many pages is that? 』#『 S&N. you make me think of what life should've been like. 』#i really liked writing this kfgjfk i had this particular idea for a while and they always said make ur dreams a reality. and so i did. >:')#me in the thinkers position: hmmmm. uhhh. ah. hm.#violence tw /#suicide ideation tw /#ANYWAY UHHHHH HELLO IM GONNA FINALLY TRY AND DO ALL THESE DRABBLE IDEAS I HAD FOR ME AND MY FRIENDS' MUSES UHHHHH #YEH. DAS IT.

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