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britcision · 1 year

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I am back! And with the beginnings of some answers to the mysteries, though sadly not the full John Constantine lowdown! But I will make it up to you all with some Harley shenanigans!

There just wasn’t enough space to get them both in and of course Harley comes first, I stan a queen (Quinn)

We’re gonna take a much closer look in Brucie’s head this time too as he gets a bunch of new information and maybe some new trauma, so this chapter and the next will be a lil Bruce heavy

(Jason is thrilled, believe me)

First Chapter:

Previous Chapter:

———————

Yeah This Might As Well Happen

Jason really wished he could just focus on having a good time with his family. The food was, as always, exquisite, and Sam and Tucker were moaning happily along with the others.

It smelled great. It looked great. It tasted great, but something in the back of Jason’s head just wouldn’t switch off.

Not until Danny came back.

Even the thought that Danny might be in danger while he just ate dinner sat like a lead weight in his stomach.

The expanded aura… well. It kind of helped? Being practically choked by Danny’s presence, aware in every pore of his skin that Danny was there, was fine, wasn’t hurting, did help.

It just. Made it impossible to really think about anything else.

He was barely following the conversation, just reading the intricacies of Danny’s mood changes and losing track of sentences as people said them.

Finally, finally, Danny’s aura shifted again.

Done-got him-no big deal-coming back.

Jason almost sagged in his seat, shoulders unknotting marginally (they probably wouldn’t finish until he could see Danny and prove he was fine).

Sent impatient-relieved-happy-hurry back as well as he could, and nearly dropped his fork at the warm swell of affection he received in return.

Well.

Affection-amused-teasing.

Clearing his throat, Jason did his best to will away the heat along the back of his neck. Nope, he wasn’t gonna blush when Danny wasn’t even here to look at him while smothering him in those feelings.

And it was definitely just the pit curling up into a little buzzing ball of happiness in his chest. Definitely not actually Jason melting like snow under a blow torch.

Whatever.

Danny was fine, he’d be back soon and Alfred had saved them both plates. And sure, maybe something in Jason wouldn’t unclench until he could see Danny in person, but letting Alfred’s cooking go cold was a sin.

He dug into his still steaming plate, forcing his shoulders to relax a little. Tucker and Tim were still talking about tech, currently disparaging what the GIW thought were elite security measures.

Harley had lured Sam, Duke, and Cass into a discussion of her new place in Coney Island at the other end of the table, and yeah, Jason could get interested in that.

Someone might have already asked, but hey. He waited for a convenient pause and leaned in.

“Didn’t Croc move down there with you? He and Riddler attacked the gala last night,” he explained when Harley made a curious noise, head cocking to one side.

Her brow furrowed, so apparently the others hadn’t gotten this far yet. Not sure if he was glad or gonna tease them mercilessly later.

“He what? Yeah, he moved in, but he came back this way ta keep me company as I came up here. Someone’s tryin’ ta give me a hard time cuzza my criminal record, an’ they’re gettin’ intel from one of your local problems,” she added with a shrug, waving her hand.

Cuz yeah, that was also on the list; she’d been up with Ivy, neither of them noticeably causing trouble before apparently Ida Manson got them out of town.

Cass made a small noise of concern and Harley patted her hand, grinning.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me doll, it’s all under control. Thought it might be Pengy havin’ another go at my spot but he burst into tears when I walked in so it’s prob’ly not him,” she said with a very self satisfied smile.

Jason chuckled softly because… yeah, he could picture that. It tracked.

“Smart man,” Duke agreed with a snicker and Harley gave him a fist bump.

“Yeah, I’ll run ‘em down. But why was Waylon at the gala? He jus’ said he was gonna look inta some shit while I was gone,” Harley asked, looking around the table for an answer.

Jason shrugged.

“All their demands were for Harvey Dent. Apparently he was planning to make a run and they beat him to the punch,” he explained, in as much as he understood.

If no one else had a hand on Dent by tonight, he miiiight stretch one of his Red Hood patrols out of Crime Alley to go for a look see.

The man missed his party. The least Jason could do was pay a personal visit.

“Croc mentioned Jason,” Cass noted with a small frown, looking up at him with concern.

And, yeah, that was the other reason he was thinking of getting involved. He couldn’t imagine what the fuck he’d done as a civvie to annoy Dent.

Harley huffed, blowing blonde bangs off her face and lacing her fingers, pointing at Jason.

“Okay, so we gotta go talk to Waylon tomorrow and find out what’s goin’ on. He’s comin’ with me back to Coney when the time comes so he ain’t got time for Arkham,” she said firmly, and something settled in Jason’s gut.

Waylon had so badly wanted the Red Hood not to turn out like he had; another criminal permanently trapped in the system. Yeah, he’d like to return the favour.

Of course, not everyone in the room was up on all the secrets. Sam leaned forward, breaking her quiet streak that as far as Jason knew was her longest ever.

“Wait, you’re going to break that guy out of jail? He wanted to strap a bomb vest to Jason,” she said harshly, finally snapping Tim and Tucker out of their little happy world.

Jason raised both hands.

“He didn’t succeed.” Much as Danny had freaked out about it, Jason wasn’t gonna complain about things that hadn’t happened.

Too much like it actually happened every day, he’d never be done.

Oh. Maybe that was kinda why Danny had freaked out. That probably wasn’t good.

His personal revelation was dampened by Harley waving a hand easily.

“Nah nah nah, we’re not gonna break ‘im out tomorra. He’s gonna tell us what the fuck he was thinkin’, I’m gonna break Dent’s kneecaps, and Batsy’s gonna give a character statement an’ get ‘im released ta me for community service.”

And if any of that didn’t work, they could still just break Croc out the next day. Jason knew the unspoken corollary.

Tucker’s eyebrows raised and he said the very stupidest thing that Jason had ever heard from a genius, and he’d seen Tim on 72 hours of no sleep.

“You know Batman?” He asked incredulously.

Harley stared at him for a long moment. Then snickered.

“Yeah, we know each other from work,” she said dryly, waving her fork, “we go way back.”

The assorted bats snickered to themselves and Tucker sunk back in his chair a little, grinning sheepishly around the table.

“Yeah… sorry.”

Sam rolled her eyes, arms folded as she frowned down the table. She clearly had a bigger question, which was probably fair for anyone who didn’t know the combined Harley-and-bats history.

“And you think Batman will do you a favour? He’s not exactly known to listen to reason,” she pointed out half sarcastically. Not that anyone in the room would argue.

There was a reason Jason loved her.

Harley weighed her up for a moment, then grinned, leaning forward.

“Y’know, kid, I don’t think we were introduced. There’s somethin’ real familiar about you,” she mused, folding her arms on the table and leaning over them, plate slowly nudged aside.

Sam smirked and shrugged. They were meeting a lot of new people these past couple days, but if she’d been doing the gala circuit her whole life?

Yeah, this probably wasn’t the worst. Harley was better than Jason had ever met at a party.

“Sam Manson. Friend of Jason’s through Danny,” she added with a nod to the empty seat still between her and Jason.

Harley beamed, hiking forward onto the table a little more.

“Oh, you’d be Ida’s granddaughter then?” She asked brightly, clearly pleased to have been right. “Your granny’s a real doll, sent me and Ivy on a real sweet vacation this week.”

Sam chuckled softly and nodded, giving Harley a half apologetic half cocky smile.

“Yeah, that’d be my fault. I’m not allowed to come to Gotham if there’s a chance Poison Ivy is in town,” she explained, fingers on her left hand tapping against her right arm.

Both of Harley’s brows went up.

“Oh? Are they scared somethin’ might happen to ya?” She asked, tone already very firmly suggesting she knew the answer.

So did most of the rest of the table, though Duke hadn’t actually heard the explanation last night. Not like he needed to, having met Sam for more than five minutes.

Sam didn’t disappoint. She gave another elegant half shrug, her smile turning fully dark.

“Oh, more the opposite. They think I’ll run off and join her if I see her,” she said innocently. Across the table, Tucker snorted most of a laugh.

A moment later Harley joined him, tossing her head back and laughing.

“Yeah, that sounds like Ida’s girl,” she agreed, wiping a dainty tear from her eye, “she was a real spitfire in her younger days, the stories she told Ivy when they were protestin’ together were wild.”

Sam was practically glowing with pride, and Jason had to admit that he would kinda like to meet her grandmother. He’d met her parents, and… well, maybe awesome skipped a generation.

Harley suddenly stopped, head cocking as she noticed something, a sly smile creeping across her face.

“So if they think you’ll run away with Ivy… whadda they think’ll happen if ya run into me?” She asked with a delicately studied innocence, examining her nails.

“Only good things,” Cass offered, grinning past Jason at Sam. Sam grinned back, giving Harley a shrug and a similarly innocent smile.

“Y’know, they’ve just never mentioned it. Clearly there’s no concerns there,” she agreed, and Jason snickered, raising his glass in a toast.

“None here,” he noted and Sam laughed, clinking her glass against his. Dick raised a hand, fighting a laugh.

“One concern for the integrity of Bruce’s skull?” He offered innocently, and laughed when Jason threw a napkin at him.

“If Bruce’s skull was gonna break it’d have done it years ago,” Steph opined as the voice of experience. Jason raised his glass to her too, but she was a little far to clink.

She grabbed hers up and raised it back anyway, and Sam filled the gap, clinking hers to Jason’s and then to Steph’s to pass it on.

“It’s good for him ta get his eggs scrambled,” Harley agreed from the other end of the table, raising her glass too, “and I’m gonna guess you did some percussive maintenance too that I’ll ask about later.”

“Bruce might still have a concussion,” Duke offered, not completely certain where he sat with this kind of joking, but the kid was new.

You had to watch Bruce try and kill himself going out on patrol with more bones broken than whole a couple times before you gave in to his indestructibility.

Shit, maybe he should ask Danny if Bruce was liminal. For all the guy was technically a default human, Jason knew literal aliens with a better grasp on humanity.

And ghosts, now.

Harley gave him a nod anyway and patted his hand.

“I’ll aim low then sugar, don’t you fret. But to answer yer other question, Sam, Batman’s gonna get Waylon out for me cuz he doesn’t want ‘im in Arkham any more ‘n we do. Bats wants us all ta get better, and Waylon does best left alone,” she explained with a shrug.

“Until you leave him unsupervised and he teams up with Riddler?” Tim asked with a slight smile.

Jason shook his head, leaning forward on his arms too.

“He wouldn’t do it for no reason. He asked what I’d done to upset Two Face, but I can’t think of anything.” They didn’t even cross paths often.

Dent had taken Red Hood’s claim on Crime Alley as a given, learned quickly that Jason didn’t give a shit about playing nice, and minded his business.

“You sound like you know him pretty well,” Tucker said with a slight frown, and Jason shrugged.

Yeah, Tucker wasn’t in on the Robin thing yet. Luckily there was an easy answer.

“I grew up in Gotham. You guys keep coming back and you’ll get a feel for most of ‘em too.”

Tucker hesitated for a moment, probably thinking back to Amity and their own ghostly rogues. Then he nodded, settling back to poke at his mostly finished plate.

Tim still didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t know Waylon the way Jason did. They’d never had the chance to talk beyond the usual Robin-and-Rogue.

Jason could prove his point tomorrow. Maybe bring Danny along.

And like the thought summoned him, Jason’s phone buzzed to a text from Danny.

‘DannyP: who tf is Constantine??👀👀🤣’

Bruce sucked in a deep breath, eye closing, and forced himself to exhale.

He fucking hated magic.

So. Analysis.

From what he understood of Constantine’s general capabilities, him being difficult to find by malicious forces was not unexpected. That seemed credible.

Did Bruce count as a malicious force?

A stern self inventory, past the part that insisted he’d never wish harm on a teammate on principle, and… yes.

He would never have followed the impulse, would have stomped it down the moment he found the man, but he couldn’t deny the urge to lay hands was there.

He’d even been devising new layers of paperwork to insist the man fill out. With, yes, malice in his heart. Just a little bit of spite.

If that counted into making the man impossible to contact… well, he’d bear it in mind. And talk with Zatanna and Dr Fate and see it they could fine tune those wards a little more.

No matter how angry he was about Amity Park, he didn’t want anything actually harmful to happen to a colleague. Even this colleague. Although if he had to pick one…

No. That wasn’t a helpful train of thought.

Taking another steadying breath, this one slower and more evenly, he glanced down at the car. Danny wouldn’t hear anything while inside, but that wouldn’t stop him opening a door to ask what the hold up was.

Forcing Brucie’s casual tones on was harder than normal, but that was expected.

“I can’t really talk about that right now. Can you come by to visit tonight?” Bruce paused, checking his watch. Coming up on seven. “In an hour or so?”

The smile dropped off Constantine’s face as quickly as it had formed. Of fucking course the bat wanted everyone to run around to his fuckin’ schedule.

Raising hell for John all fuckin’ night and all fuckin’ day but when John actually got back to him it was all “oh now’s not a good time”.

His more spiteful side wanted to insist on right now, he was a busy man and he had shit to do that Batman wouldn’t even wanna fuckin’ think about.

Shit, John didn’t like thinking about it.

But it was only an hour, and he could use the damn zeta tubes, and it wasn’t like he’d been planning on fuckin’ sleeping. Why would he do that?

And if it unfucked his communicators, he could use that hour to ask the Superboys what the fuck they were playing at in Alaska.

And then he could sleep, Bat off his ass and conscience clean. Fuck it.

“Yeah, whatever. Wanna tell me what’s got your damn panties in a twist in case there’s shit I need to get ready?”

So of course Bat-tastic said the two worst words Constantine had heard in his life.

“Amity Park.”

Fuck.

Bruce didn’t enjoy the sharp little intake of breath, followed by no sass whatsoever. It wasn’t easy to make John Constantine speechless.

No, this was definitely just satisfaction that the man knew the gravity of what he’d done. That whatever reasons he’d had, he knew Bruce would be waiting for a damn good explanation.

That there might be one.

Bruce didn’t like even considering that an ally would have done something so serious just because he didn’t want to deal with it. Even Constantine.

When the man hadn’t spoken almost a minute later, Bruce took pity on him.

“I’ll see you in an hour.”

Constantine managed a weak agreement and he nodded, satisfied at least that the man would still be there. And if he wasn’t, Bruce could work out a way to reach him again.

Someone had obviously found him to tell him Bruce was looking for him. And apparently there were consequences for Constantine too if he tried to avoid him.

He hesitated for a moment before getting back into the car. He’d been planning to ask Danny gently about Amity Park, to try and work out what had happened.

Something light that might make him lower his guard. Then turn the subject to Jason. How precisely Danny was helping him. What he knew of the pits.

They wouldn’t have time for a full interrogation, not even in the tail end of rush hour traffic, but it would be a start.

But did he want to tip his hand now? Before Constantine gave him the truth about Amity Park, when all it would take was a matter of hours?

Danny likely knew that Brucie was a mask, but it might be useful to keep it on just a little longer.

Light subjects only then. From what Dick and Tim had reported, Danny was equally likely to just drop some huge revelation to see what Bruce would do.

Yes.

Perhaps he could bait that tendency by being innocuous.

Bruce slid back into the driver’s seat, giving Danny his best, emptiest smile.

“So sorry about that. Just a business contact I’ve been having trouble tracking down, so I didn’t want to let him slip away again.” Honesty, in case he could tell.

They would need to get a better idea of Danny’s power-set. If Duke couldn’t do it alone, perhaps Tim’s observation skills could help.

Danny barely glanced up from his phone, shooting Bruce a quick grin before returning his attention to the screen.

“Yeah? Didn’t know anything got done over the new year, I’d have thought everyone was too hung over.” It sounded like a joke, a cheerful prod.

Bruce swore internally anyway, because he was right. Clearly he knew more than an average student.

He didn’t let it show, chuckling along good naturedly.

“Oh I’d have much preferred getting this done with before the new year, but some people are a little hard to get hold of,” he explained jovially, starting the car and backing out.

Danny hummed an agreement, not looking up from his phone. A sharp glance (he could always say he was checking the boy was strapped in) did not show him the screen.

When had Danny strapped in? Bruce would swear he hadn’t when he’d sat, but it was there now.

Clearly his apparent absorption was a trick. Intended to remind Bruce of a typical young adult, make him lower his guard.

Danny stifled a laugh just as they were leaving the garage, and Bruce barely resisted another effort to look over. The screen would still be tilted away.

His opponent was a cunning one.

Or he was overreacting. It could be a real innocence, not a calculated one. A young man paying more attention to his phone?

He wouldn’t have thought it sinister if it were Tim, Dick, Duke, any of their friends.

No.

He couldn’t take that chance. Not with Jason. He couldn’t afford to relax his guard.

It was unfair to Danny, unfair to both of them.

He’d lost Jason once by not paying close enough attention, and Bruce would be the very first to admit that he’d never gotten his boy back.

Jason had returned in body, mind, and soul, just like he’d wished and prayed for for so long. But there was a distance now that Bruce had no idea how to bridge.

He’d thought he was on the right path last night, but a constant nagging in his gut told him he was wrong.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw Jason’s shocked, white face when he’d apologised. It was a blessing he’d had enough to keep him from his bed.

He’d been so sure it was the right move. The next step to closing the distance between them. Offering Jason the public apology, the acknowledgement that Bruce had failed him.

But that was why Bruce would face gods and walk backwards into Hell before he let anything else try and take his baby boy from him again.

“Y’know, you could just tell Jason you love him.”

Bruce nearly crashed the car.

Luckily they were at a red light, so his reflexive slamming hit the brake, not the gas, and the car barely lurched.

When he was sure his heart was still beating, he chanced a glance over at Danny.

The boy was half smirking down at his phone, clearly aware of the consternation he’d caused, and looked up when he felt Bruce’s eyes on him.

And shrugged, like it was nothing.

“Dude, you’re brooding so hard there’s basically a black cloud over your head.”

Add mind reading to the list of suspected powers.

Bruce felt his eyes narrowing before rigid control snapped back into place, keeping his expression Brucie-open.

“What do you mean?” He asked, in a tone he knew gave nothing away.

Danny snorted like he’d told a joke.

“Man, I’m just saying. Jason barely thinks you fuckin’ like him, it’d save you both a lot of trouble if you’d just sit him down and tell him how you feel.”

Bruce hesitated for a long moment, staring into deep blue eyes that suddenly seemed as deep and unreadable as the deepest ocean. As old as time.

Then he forced his eyes back to the road as the light turned and cars started moving again.

That. Couldn’t be true. It was an attempt at manipulation.

A predator expertly analysing what he thought was Bruce’s greatest weakness, striking to do as much damage as he could.

Of course Jason knew that Bruce loved him. He must have. He had to.

There was no way this stranger who by all accounts Jason had known for barely a week could know more about Jason’s life than his own father.

Danny hummed softly to himself, most of his attention on his phone as he texted back and forth with Jason.

‘DannyP: ur dad is giving me the biggest cop energy rn 😳🚔🚔’

Mostly ignoring just the solid waves of angst emanating from Bruce like miasma. Poor guy was only wrapping himself tighter in his own head for Danny’s interjection.

‘JTodd: Yeah Dickie comes by it honestly.’

That was probably a sign Danny shouldn’t do it again.

‘DannyP: 👀👀 think he’s mad at me’

Danny wasn’t great at following signs. Or sitting quietly, in all honesty.

‘JTodd: No one told you not to fly back.’

‘DannyP: Imma make it worse 😈😈’

Tucking his feet up to the edge of his seat, he slumped down as low as he could, glancing up at Bruce through his bangs.

“Sooooooo, how was lunch with Vlad? You seem to have survived, so I’m gonna guess football didn’t come up much?” He prodded, still half suspecting Masters had been up to something.

Bruce wasn’t overshadowed, didn’t have any of Vladdie’s taint that said it had happened in the past, but Danny wasn’t gonna rule out something new.

And all the clenching the big guy was doing on the wheel and on his jaw looked kinda painful.

‘JTodd: I’ll give a touching speech at your funeral.’

Bruce did finally force himself to relax though, sucking in a breath like he’d forgotten he had to.

Mood. Danny forgot about breathing a fair chunk too. Didn’t always remember to do it at all.

His posture changed too, shifting forcefully back to the more lax, open lines of his public persona, but there wasn’t much point. Danny could still feel his aura locked shut like a steel trap.

Being Batman kinda seemed like it sucked so far, and Bruce hadn’t even been a high school hero. Guess being an adult didn’t really make everything easier after all.

The smile he shot Danny didn’t show any of the inner turmoil though, so kudos there.

“It was great, actually. Your godfather is a very charming man,” he added, and Danny stuck his tongue out.

“Oh we’re so not calling him that. He’s just Vladdie, nothing to do with me at all,” he corrected vehemently, making a face.

Checked his phone.

‘DannyP: ABORT ABORT ABORT MISSION HE LIKES VLAD 😡🤮😱’

Bruce made a curious noise beside him, and Danny huffed. There were some things that would have been simpler if Vlad had just been brain washing him.

“Oh? He speaks very highly of you, Danny. I’m a little surprised you don’t get along.” The big guy was clearly fishing, and Danny would give him something to catch alright.

“Yeah? Cuz all he’s ever said to me was that I’m weak, lazy, unmotivated, and will never amount to anything without him. Oh, and that he wants to kill my dad and marry my mom,” he added as an afterthought.

And watched Bruce from the corner of his eye. He looked honestly surprised, but Danny had already learned not to judge from his face.

He felt surprised too though. Surprised and suspicious.

‘JTodd: He’s a great judge of character.’

Fuck it was hard not to laugh at his just flawless acting when Danny had the cheat sheet into his heart.

They drove in silence for a block, Bruce apparently not sure what to say, and Danny gave him a pat on the elbow.

“Don’t feel bad. I dunno what he’s playing at either, but he’s really, really good at telling people what they want to hear.”

And didn’t that do some interesting things to the guy’s aura. Danny had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from laughing.

No matter what he fucking said, it seemed to be convincing Bruce that he was sketchier and sketchier.

‘DannyP: okay but literally every word i say’s making him more and more suspicious and he didn’t even get whammied this is bs 😔😒💔’

He did kinda regret that one pretty much immediately, a sudden wave of protective anger pulsing through his aura.

Making a face again, he focused on wrapping Jason up in his own, soothing him with gentle reminders safe-safe-i’m fine-not hurting me.

Yeah, there were some fucking Issues with a capital I that Danny deadass just wasn’t gonna touch until Jazz got a look in.

No matter what though, he didn’t fucking like what it told him about Bruce. About Jason’s relationship with Bruce.

Maybe he shoulda brought the Fenton thermos. He usually had one on him, but his suit hadn’t come with pockets you could hide a thermos in.

For all Sam bitched about her dress, she coulda carried a rocket launcher and no one would have known.

He was so busy focusing on Jason he didn’t actually notice that Bruce was talking to him again until the man had repeated his name a couple of times, now sounding worried.

Feeling suspicious. Sounding worried.

“Danny?”

Danny shook his head, hair flopping around his face and half his attention still on Jason’s cranky ass.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” he said still half distracted, and felt the suspicion ramp up another notch.

For all that he couldn’t laugh aloud, wrapping the desire and the need to laugh around Jason seemed to be helping. He settled enough to text back anyway.

‘JTodd: Sorry. Probably my fault.’

Well that was bullshit.

“I said I’m sorry, Danny. He mentioned you had a difficult past, but I had no idea…”

And yeah, that probably was too. Easy to prioritise though.

‘DannyP: ur gonna be Jazz’s final psych project if u keep that up and i will not save u 😤🫡👻’

‘DannyP: 🖕💋he’s a grown ass adult and so am i and i can be a sketchy bitch just fine on my own sir’

And since Bruce was going to take whatever he did as suspicious anyway, Danny might as well get him warmed up for Harley.

“Yeah, well, don’t go throwing a public party to all of high society about it. Trust me, I do not need a second creepy billionaire trying to make me a show pony.”

Another block of silence, but Danny was satisfied that this one was at least less certain. Felt like a big decision was afoot.

Finally Bruce sighed and deflated, and for once his aura matched the gesture.

“It was a mistake, wasn’t it?” It almost wasn’t a question. Danny figured that progress deserved a reward anyway. Kinda.

“Well again, Harley Quinn came back from the Amazon to kick your ass about it, so yes. I think we can both agree that was a bad life choice.”

Bruce’s grip tensed on the steering wheel a little and Danny relented. Fuck him for being a softie.

Even when he was also still kinda pissed, it was hard to ignore the sudden doubt, fear, guilt suddenly stinking up the car.

The anger, much more familiar. Danny knew exactly what to do about angry people, but Bruce’s anger felt a little too familiar. A little too internal-only.

“He said you’d never told him you were sorry before, man. Not even once until you shoved him right into the spotlight. What does it say that you can say it to me but not him?” He asked softly.

Bruce was quiet for most of the rest of the drive, but since he actually seemed to be thinking about what Danny had said, Danny left him to it.

It was as they were finally pulling up to the gates of Wayne Manor that he spoke again.

“I may not have been much of a father to Jason, but I won’t see him hurt again. Not if I can help it.” There wasn’t actually any menace in the tone.

Just a stone cold certainty that was way, way scarier.

Well. Probably for anyone who wasn’t the actual ghost king. Or just uncontrollably sarcastic.

Danny grinned.

“Well if this is gonna be your shovel talk, you should be aware that I’ve already been six feet under. It takes a lot to scare me,” he teased, resting his bare feet on the console in front of him.

Outside, the gate swung slowly open. Bruce took advantage of the pause to stare directly at him again, those blue eyes suddenly piercing and not even trying to hide the intelligence within.

“Noted.”

And okay. Maybe Danny needed to invest in some more one liners, cuz that was way fucking cooler than any complicated threat or pun.

Kinda hated how cool it was, actually.

He let just a little of the eldritch creep into the smile he gave back.

“Oh, and Bruce? Samesies. Seems like Jason has a lot more people who have his back than he thinks he does, but now? He’s also got me. And Harley’s probably the nice one.”

If the guy was going to think the fucking worst of Danny no matter what, might as well use that to try and make him be a less shitty dad.

Shovel talking the Ghost King? That took some balls.

Bruce didn’t seem to be noticeably intimidated though. Just stared at Danny for a long moment, eyes narrowed, before he nodded again.

“You don’t know Harley well,” he remarked dryly, heading on up the ridiculously long driveway to the house.

Danny didn’t actually manage to pull all the way back into human tones before he laughed, the shadows stretching and creaking around the sound.

“Yeah, fair point.” He sure as shit wouldn’t argue it where she could hear him after all.

It took Steph to finally bring the conversation back around to the thermos.

They’d moved on to telling Harley the actual details of what had happened at the gala, from Bruce’s crimes to Sam and Danny’s.

Harley was absolutely delighted by the whole story, and it was Steph who gave Sam a gentle nudge, grinning at her.

“Y’know, I never got around to asking why you even had that giant thermos. I was with you most of the night and I never saw you drinking from it?” She asked.

Sam chuckled softly, reaching into the deep pocket of Cass’s pants and pulling out the thermos in question. She always had one on her.

Tucker was supposed to as well, but if he knew she was gonna be there? Yeah, he tended to forget. Or save the space for something more interesting.

“Oh, this? Yeah this really isn’t a drinking thermos,” she explained, setting it on the table and sharing an amused glance with Tucker.

Maybe side eying Jason. It was gonna be a drinking thermos for him, poor bastard.

Steph’s eyebrows rose and she reached out, taking the thermos when Sam nodded her assent. Turning it over in her hands.

“Wait, so it’s strictly a combat thermos?” She asked like it was a joke, grinning at Sam as she unscrewed the lid.

Tucker stifled a laugh from across the table and Sam grinned back, leaning back in her chair. The table had been cleared of dinner by now, but dessert they’d wait on Bruce and Danny for.

Speaking of Danny…

“Actually, yeah. The Fenton Thermos is pretty much our best tool for the rogue attacks we get in Amity Park,” she explained with a modest shrug.

Steph looked even more surprised, hefting the unexpected weight of what looked like an empty thermos.

“It made a pretty good throwing weapon,” Dick offered from the end of the table. Tucker snickered and shook his head, holding out a hand to Steph.

“It’s not actually meant to be for throwing, but that definitely worked,” he agreed, gesturing for the thermos.

Turning it to show the table, Tucker pointed to the big green button on the side. The big, obvious green button that you could pretty easily press by accident.

“You can capture ghosts with it once they’ve been weakened, and then Danny lets them out back in the Ghost Zone. It doesn’t actually hurt them, but apparently it’s not comfortable.”

“How do you know, if it only catches ghosts?” Duke asked, a slight frown on his face and he leaned forward to see around Tim.

Tucker shot him a smug grin, twirling the thermos and passing it back to Sam. Clearly enjoying his time in the spotlight, and Sam wouldn’t begrudge him that.

Not when she could bully him about showing off for his new boyfriend later. It was kinda cute watching that hero worship turning into an actual proper crush.

Cuter that Tim was being just an average guy, and Tucker was still losing his shit over it. Sweet revenge for all those times the boys teased her about her crush on Val.

“Well, for one thing pretty much all of our ghosts have stopped trying to attack these days, and some of them are actually pretty chill? Buuuut you can also use it to catch half ghosts,” Tucker explained with a smug grin.

Sam chuckled, taking the cap back from Steph and screwing it back on.

“Danny says it’s like being squished into a really tight sleeping bag. Worse if someone else is in there with him, but they can’t really move or fight in there.”

“If someone’s been a real pain in the ass sometimes Danny keeps them in Soup Time for a week or so as punishment,” Tucker added, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms behind his head.

“Isn’t that unethical?” Dick asked, down beside Damian, and Sam raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, do the people you arrest only get locked up for a day or so?” She asked dryly and Dick grinned, raising both hands.

“They don’t get locked in really tight sleeping bags. But what happens after they’re let out? They just go back in the Ghost Zone?” He prodded, not quelled by her stare this time.

Good. More fun when people fought back. And, for a cop, Dick wasn’t really all that bad.

He’d probably get fired for that pretty soon.

Sam shrugged, taking over the explanation for now and tucking the thermos back into her pocket.

“Pretty much. Most of the ghosts pretty much just showed up to fight Phantom and the trouble they caused around town was part of that.”

“Phantom being Danny’s superhero name?” Tim asked, looking extremely covetously at where the thermos had disappeared under the table.

Sam stuck her hand in the top of the pocket, keeping it on the lid of the thermos. They didn’t exactly have enough to spare.

Of course Tucker swept in when his boytoy had a question.

“Yeah, that’s him. The town used to call him Inviso-Bill until he actually told someone to call him Phantom instead,” he added, snickering.

Sam couldn’t resist chuckling along; honestly, if she ever learned who’d started that nickname she’d send them flowers. It was fucking priceless.

“Yeah. There were some rowdier ghosts, usually when their Obsessions got triggered, but honestly? Once they were beaten most of them settled down. It was just the ones that wanted to brawl with Danny that kept coming back.”

“We didn’t really have anything else to do with them either,” Tucker pointed out with a snicker, shaking his head, “it was Soup Time, back home, or the Fenton family dissection table.”

Their hosts looked suitably disturbed at that, Harley leaning in from her end of the table to be the voice of the room.

“The Fenton family what the fuck? Didn’t ya say the kid was a Fenton?” She asked sharply.

Sam ran a quick mental check of the list Danny had cleared them to talk about. Yeah, the Fenton parents were on it.

Just not the Ghost King stuff, anything about Jason, and anything specific about Ellie. No worries there.

She shrugged again, fingers tapping on the table. From her guess and Jason’s texting, Danny should be back soon.

“The Fenton parents were the ones who made a portal to the Ghost Zone in the first place. They were really interested in dissecting and studying any ghosts they could catch for a long time,” she explained dryly, not bothering to hide her feelings on the matter.

Duke looked a little sick. Maybe she should tone it down some, for the young and innocent among them.

“But that’d include Danny,” Dick pointed out, suspicion rising towards horror.

Sam fixed her gaze on him, not letting him look away.

“Yeah. It did. Which is why the three of us spent our high school years fighting ghosts and protecting the town in secret, cuz if we told anyone we thought Danny would go on the table.”

“They totally took it way better than we thought though,” Tucker tacked on quickly, searching something up on his PDA, probably for pictures of the GAV. “They’re Phantom’s biggest fans now.”

He tilted the screen to show Tim, whose jaw dropped.

Yeah, to be fair, words didn’t do the GAV’s new paint job justice. Tucker passed the tablet on to Tim to show Duke and Harley, and it made its way around the table.

They were probably running out of time.

Sam leaned in, catching the attention of the rest of the table and making eye contact with most of them.

“Some basic etiquette though, before Danny gets back? You never, ever ask a ghost how they died. They might bring it up, but you don’t ask. Okay?”

“Wait, why not?” Tim asked, his brows furrowing as he turned back to her. “Isn’t that the first thing they do in all those ghost hunting shows?”

Which. Well. Sam had a whole special rant about ghost hunting shows and their bullshit, but before she got started Jason cut her off.

“Cuz dying fucking sucks, Timmy. Do you wanna bug Steph or Dick about the times they died?” He asked pointedly, and Tim flushed.

Yeah, that kinda explained the death taint Sam could just about taste from half the table. She wasn’t going to mention it, because she had some damn manners.

Tim seemed to have gotten the point though, stammering a quick apology and sinking back into his seat. Tucker gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder.

“Pretty much the first thing you gotta learn about real ghosts is that ghost hunters have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t even ecto infuse their tech,” he added with a derisive snort.

Sam rolled her eyes, stifling a grin. Alfred had disappeared, which probably meant Danny was imminent.

“Harder to do without a ghost or half ghost on your team, Tuck. But more to the point, do you guys wanna see the Fenton Thermos in action?” She asked innocently, pulling it back out of her pocket to wiggle.

Once again, Harley spoke for the table.

“Hell yeah. Are ya gonna throw it at Brucie again too?” She asked brightly, and Sam paused, considering.

Finally sighed and shook her head.

“Probably not. I’ll let you handle him,” she decided, smirking as Harley reached back down for her trusty bedazzled bat.

“That’s what the ol’ Therapy Bat’s for,” Harley agreed brightly, getting to her feet. She’d clearly clocked Alfred’s exit too. And the approaching sets of footsteps.

Sam grinned and readied the thermos.

Bruce had almost forgotten that Harley would be waiting until Danny reminded him. An unusual lapse for him, but he had a lot on his mind.

The only thing he wanted to do was get down to the cave and talk to Constantine; to finally get some answers, both on what had gone wrong in Amity Park and precisely what was keeping them out now.

He had the very tiniest bit of hope that one question might also hold the answer to the other; that it was perhaps something Constantine had done, or could undo.

He did not like having to rely on biased secondary sources for data. It was frustrating to run into so many dead ends.

Luckily for him though, Danny had reminded him, which meant he could take Harley aside, find out what she wanted, and get it dealt with instead of going straight to the cave and being surprised.

As little as he liked John Constantine, he wouldn’t subject the man to Harley if he could help it. Harley was something of a kryptonite to many of the magicians; she broke their rules in ways they couldn’t reconcile.

Bruce absolutely did not doubt Zatanna that Harley had temporarily sold herself to a demon prince and within 24 hours annoyed him so much that he gave her back, deal intact.

She was a force to be reckoned with. And privately… Bruce would hang up the cowl if Constantine decided he wanted to give her methods a try on top of his own.

No. Best keep them as far away from each other as possible.

So he was accompanying Danny and Alfred to the family dining room, where he’d collect Harley and take her to his office.

Half an hour to get through whatever she wanted, and then he could go down and talk to Constantine. The perfect plan.

Part of him hoped that Danny had been right, and she was here to explain what he’d done wrong with Jason.

Bruce would be the first to admit that he just… couldn’t seem to do right when it came to his second son.

He loved Jason dearly, but his death was something Bruce had never gotten over. He’d seen Jason so many times, as he died and as Bruce imagined he’d have grown over those years.

It had been hard for him to believe Jason really was himself, even if he looked nothing like Bruce had always expected. He’d always been so small.

No. He’d refused to believe it. Refused to believe the kind, loving boy he’d known could have become this large and angry killer.

It had coloured their relationship ever since. The things Jason had done, the things Bruce had done to stop him.

The fury with which Jason had forced his real identity down Bruce’s throat until he couldn’t deny it anymore. The one person he thought he could never let down again.

Jason was calmer now. Had a lid on the rage, and just plain walked away when he was on the edge of his control. Bruce admired that, as much as he could.

The only thing Bruce knew how to do with his emotions was push them aside and try to keep soldiering on, and it had cost his family so many times.

He’d thought he was getting better, but when it came to Jason… Bruce knew he still wasn’t thinking clearly. He’d upset Jason at the gala, he knew he had.

He’d seen it in his face, even if Jason had covered it before reaching the stage. He just wasn’t sure how.

Bruce prided himself on his ability to read faces. He was certainly no Cass, but it was his most used skill. Jason’s had never been a mystery to him before.

But somehow all Bruce could see in the older Jason’s face was the shadows of the bruises, the beating that face had worn the last time Bruce held him in his arms.

Cold. Lifeless. A death mask that only ever seemed to clear under Lazarus green rage.

He didn’t know when his baby boy had become so unreadable to him. What part of the horrors which Jason had lived through had made him put on a mask so thick Bruce couldn’t see through it.

And he was afraid to ask. Afraid of what he might see under that mask, and afraid to hear everything Jason had been put through because of Bruce’s failure.

He could have asked Danny in the car. At least where he’d gone wrong last night. They’d been alone, without anyone to overhear. And yet…

Bruce couldn’t bring himself to trust Danny. Oddly he found himself liking the boy more since Danny had threatened him, but his doubts remained.

Vlad had been personable, charming, and open during their meal together, and Bruce knew all too well how vile men could put on a front like that.

Normally he would have trusted Danny’s impression of Vlad over his own implicitly; it was part of the reason he brought his children to galas.

Brucie Wayne was too well known, too powerful, too influential. No one wanted to show him anything but their best, the sides they thought he would like to see.

The truest measure of a person came in the way they treated those they saw as beneath them, and for most adults that would automatically always include children.

Danny’s words tracked with the odd moments of quiet regret in Masters’ face when he talked about his godson. Far more egregious than the “misunderstandings” he’d hinted at, but a testament nonetheless.

There had been no trace of a lie in Danny’s voice or face. And yet.

There was no fear either. Not a trace of concern at being alone in the room together before Bruce returned.

None of the wariness one would naturally expect when a young man faced a much older adult who had at the very least made serious threats towards his family and possibly psychologically abused him.

It didn’t make sense. There was no right or wrong way to respond to an abuser, but Danny’s open antagonism of Vlad pointed at something else. A piece Bruce was still missing of what passed between them.

There were too many unanswered questions about Danny Fenton, and the situation with Jason was too delicate to rely on a single unknown factor.

No.

Danny may take advantage of any perceived weakness to steer him wrong, push him to another mistake, widen the rift between Bruce and his son.

It wasn’t safe. Wasn’t the plan.

For all that she’d been a rogue, Bruce trusted Harley implicitly… at least in matters of the heart. On the off chance she was there for anything else, he could still ask her before she left.

Maybe after he was done with Constantine.

Of course no one was around to give him answers when he had plenty of spare time on his hands. No, they had to come all at once.

Fine.

He may have to leave Jason with Danny for now, but they would hardly be unsupervised. The others would keep a watch for him while he got answers.

Bruce was actually beginning to feel pretty good about the evening by the time they reached the dining room.

And then the door opened, Danny walked through, and vanish in a blur of bright blue light.

Bruce threw up a hand to shield his eyes as light flashed across him, and it went dark a moment later.

Sam Manson was holding the thermos again (his head throbbed a warning), screwing the lid back on with a satisfied smirk.

Danny Fenton was gone. Just gone. Like he’d never been there, until.

“I fucking hate you so much.”

That was Danny’s voice, no doubt about it, coming from… the thermos.

What.

As Steph would say.

The fuck.

Harley was the first to recover her voice, throwing both hands into the air and whooping.

“Now THAT is what I call a party trick! You kids ever wanna come out Coney Island way ya can stay with me an’ take a turn at th’ Freakshow if ya want!”

The room froze, temperature actually plummeting as the Amity Parkers both flinched.

(Danny mighta also flinched but he was in a soup thermos, it was harder to tell.)

Tucker spoke up, making a face and exchanging a look with Sam.

“Uh… pass, thanks. Had some pretty bad experiences with clowns and circuses,” he explained, and Harley nodded understandingly.

No matter how much he liked to pretend he was, Joker was hardly the first asshole to wear the face paint.

It was why she didn’t wear hers if she was gonna be anywhere around Jason.

Not like she’d liked the full face stuff Joker did anyway. She could have a lot more fun with eyeshadow and a little lipstick, but some people needed to be terrified.

Harley Quinn’s war paint was satisfyingly terrifying enough that she’d pull it out for special occasions.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” she agreed easily, noted the air began to warm.

So it was one of them doing it. And from the way the two she could see relaxed just after, she’d put her money on Danny. Made sense with the ghost thing.

Anyway, she’d come here for a reason. Strolling casually over towards Brucie, she ruffled a hand through Jason’s and then Sam’s hair.

“Yer all still welcome to come visit though, just call ahead an’ I’ll tell the crew to put the theatrics on hold. I got a whole floor full of puppies and kittens that need some love,” she told them cheerfully.

And paused at a sudden horrible ripping sound, like part of the universe had been velcro and just pulled itself apart.

A glowing green hole opened just behind Sam’s chair and Danny’s head poked through, just a little below Harley’s height.

“You have a fucking what?”

She ruffled his hair too, grinning.

“Yeah, building I inherited had a free floor my aunt used ta rent, I didn’t want anyone upsettin’ my crew and all these lil cuties were just wasting away at the pound so Ivy did me up an indoor park. There’s about thirty of ‘em,” she explained brightly.

Sam snickered, settling comfortably in her turned chair.

“Bet cleaning up after that many is a treat,” she commented dryly and Harley tipped her a wink.

“It’s no trouble! I do the scoopin’ and once a week we load the big bags up on th’ roof catapult and shoot ‘em into the city. At the mayor’s house if he’s bein’ trouble.”

“Harley, I have a theory about who might want you gone,” Duke put in from the other end of the table, all dry sarcasm.

Harley laughed and blew him a kiss, giving her bat a lazy twirl.

“Hey, if he wants me ta stop all he’s gotta do is stop bein’ a pain in my ass an’ I’ll shoot ‘em at the dump,” she told him cheerfully, then turned back to Danny.

Back in the black hair. Didn’t seem like it mattered if he was actively a ghost or not gettin’ sucked inta the thermos. Interesting.

“You need a tow out?” She asked, other hand dropping back to his hair to give a gentle tug.

Danny gave her a slightly suspicious look.

“Do you promise no mind control or creepy clown shit?” He asked warily, and Harley loosed her grip to pat him on the cheek.

“Pinky promise, suga. I’m about to go give Brucie ‘is own private dose of scary clown shit that I’m sure he’ll completely understand that he wants to be in private,” she added more pointedly, giving Bruce a sharp look over her shoulder.

Behind her, Danny shrugged and pulled the rest of his body through the green rip, giving Sam a smack upside the head as his feet touched the floor and snatching the thermos from her.

“Confiscated til you’ll only use it’s power responsibly,” he told her, sticking his tongue out and dropping down into his seat, thermos held preventatively back and over his head.

Which made it all too easy for Jason to reach up and grab it from him, tucking it into the front of his hoodie pocket when Danny whipped around indignantly.

“You’re not responsible either,” Jason pointed out smugly and Danny sputtered but didn’t quite find words to argue.

They were fucking adorable.

If she didn’t have ta go try and beat the sense back inta Brucie’s head she’d have the time of her life just pinching their cheeks and winding them up about what to her studied eye was a pair of oblivious fresh forming crushes.

Young love was just the cutest when it was in that awkward blushy denial phase.

Yeah, Brucie was getting an extra whap for tearing her away from that.

Turning back to the big man, she prodded her bat into the center of his chest.

“So! Whaddaya think, big guy? Wanna give a nice big public apology for ya fuck up or shall we go talk somewhere in private?” She asked firmly, emphasizing those last words into a threat.

Bruce’s attention snapped away from glaring at Danny and Jason to fix on her, clearly analyzing her words. Of all the hopeless little shits…

She was gonna find someone to get him his proper diagnosis. Had to at this point.

Couldn’t be her, she was technically a conflict of interest, but holy fuck the man screamed emotional disregulation with a hefty side of autism spectrum.

At least he’d know what direction he needed help in, as if he wouldn’t promptly ignore any advice that included “talk about ya damn feelings”. Too bad for him.

She gave him another firm poke with the bat and he nodded sharply, gaze snapping from her around to the door.

His shoulders settled just a little, posture relaxing in what she knew was relief as he motioned for her to follow. Still looked tense as hell, but she’d probably only get a dime back for bouncing a nickel off him now.

That was real relaxed for Brucie.

Maybe he was finally self aware enough to accept that he needed some help with all the emotional stuff.

Good. Maybe she’d only do one kneecap.

As Harley followed Bruce out of the room, Sam’s phone began buzzing dramatically in her pocket. Abandoning her quest for the thermos, she pulled it out and glanced down.

Grinned wickedly. She’d been expecting this for a while now actually.

“Aw, look, my parents saw our selfies on Twitter,” she cooed sarcastically, Manson Party Voice making a brief return.

Danny scooted just a little away from the still buzzing phone.

“So are you gonna get that?” He asked as Alfred brought him a perfectly reheated plate. “What? Oh, thanks.”

Sam shrugged, hit speakerphone, and set it on the table. They’d posted those pictures pretty much solely for the incoming reaction.

“Hey mom, what’s up?” She said sweetly, still in her public facing voice.

Her mother did not sound nearly as composed.

“SAMANTHA. Where ARE you?! What are you wearing?! Where are your clothes and WHY, in the name of all that’s good, are you anywhere near HARLEY QUINN?! Have you been kidnapped?!”

Sam rolled her eyes hard enough that Tucker faked a fatal injury across the table. She flipped him off as Tim and Duke stifled laughs.

“Yes, mother, I have been kidnapped and just answered my phone completely normally. I’m at the Waynes’,” she added quickly, before her mother could jump to conclusions.

And gave her some new conclusions to jump to instead, but who cared. Still, something seemed to be sticking in her mom’s mind.

“With Harley Quinn?” She asked suspiciously after a moment’s silence.

Which, to be fair, was kind of a good point.

“Apparently she’s a family friend? Like Grandma and Ivy,” Sam added delicately, a vicious satisfaction rising through her.

She’d gotten to say her piece at the gala yesterday and had thought she was done, but. Well. Years of restriction and so on.

She was definitely still having fun winding her parents up.

Her mom’s sharp intake of breath was clearly audible even over the phone, and then the shouting started again.

“Samantha MANSON do not even THINK about going anywhere with that woman! You have responsibilities! School! Your work! We’re coming to pick you up RIGHT NOW, and… where are your CLOTHES?!”

Alfred cleared his throat from behind them, where he’d stayed from delivering Danny’s dinner. Sam half turned and he raised a brow, inclining his head slightly.

She scooted her chair out of the way to let him get closer to the phone, waving a hand in open invitation.

“If I may interject,” Alfred said calmly, not a trace that anything was even slightly amiss, “the young lady’s clothes are in the dryer at present. They will be finished shortly.”

Another long silence. Her mom probably realizing that Sam had her on speaker. And that she would still be on speaker the next time she spoke.

Finally she choked out a terse, “thank you. I do hope she has been behaving herself. We will be there to pick you up in half an hour, Sammy, and we will Have Words.”

Which Sam kinda doubted, given where the hotel was and how long it had taken Danny and Bruce to get back, but time would tell.

At least they weren’t hiring a helicopter.

It sucked to have to leave, but she’d have needed to head out soon anyway. Her flight back to university would be leaving this evening, and at least this way she could hang out with the others until her parents arrived.

No reason not to needle them more though.

“Aw but mom, I’m having such a good time hanging out with Cass,” she sighed, switching from Party to Heartfelt Woe expertly.

Down beyond Jason, Cass stifled a giggle. It clearly sent Sam’s mom into another spiral of conflicting emotions; delight, hope, ecstasy, and ongoing horror at the presence of Harley.

Who, technically, was no longer present in the room, but telling her mom that would only make her feel better, so Sam wasn’t gonna bother.

Honestly, if she wanted to run away and be an ecoterrorist with Pamela Isley, she could just ask Grandma to text her. She didn’t need kidnapping.

Still, apparently the risk of a close contact with Poison Ivy outweighed her mom’s desire to see her cozy up with the Waynes.

It’d have been real sweet if it had been a worry for Sam’s health instead of a worry about what Sam would do to other peoples’ health. The lack of trust stung, truly.

“We’ll be there in half an hour, Sammy. Get your clothes back on and say thank you for having you,” her mom warned, tone sharp and clipped.

And then hung up the phone before anyone could argue, because while she never used to listen to Sam before, she did somehow still know her. Ah well.

Sam sighed, stuffing the phone back into her borrowed pocket.

“Guess my parole has ended. I’ve gotta get back for my next semester anyway, but you have my number?” She asked Steph, looking from her back to Cass.

Both women nodded enthusiastically, Steph sighing and slumping forward into the table.

“Do you really have to go? Harley probably won’t be done with Brucie by then, you’ll miss the best part!”

But in all honesty, Sam wasn’t too upset about that. She’d made her feelings perfectly clear via thermos, and if Jason wasn’t satisfied with Bruce’s real apology she could always come back.

So she shrugged, grinning.

“Guess it’s my turn to get the video recap once it’s all over. You guys’ll film it for me, right?” She asked, looking from Danny to Tucker.

Both of whom gave her a thumbs up.

“We should make a new group chat,” Tucker mused eagerly, already pulling his phone up, “one for all of us.”

“Then we’d know which galas you were coming to!” Steph agreed at once, her own phone magically appearing in hand.

Dick snickered, leaning back in his seat.

“Said like Steph’s ever let Bruce drag her to one against her will,” he teased and Steph flipped him off.

“Hey, if you’d had the good sense not to let him adopt you you wouldn’t have to do them either,” Steph told him primly. Dick rolled his eyes.

“I’m his ward, not adopted,” he argued mostly futilely, and Sam snickered.

“And still have to go apparently. Doesn’t the ward thing end once you’re a legal adult?” She asked innocently.

Dick gave her a deadpan stare.

“Ma’am, if you want to try and wrest an orphan from the hands of Bruce Wayne you be my fucking guest, I gave up years ago.”

Which, fair. Their rifts had been legendary enough to make the circuit. She toasted him with her phone and settled back.

“Point taken. If being a cop didn’t make him give you up nothing will,” she added slyly, and Dick mimed grievous injury, slumping forward onto the table as the others laughed.

Grinning her triumph, Sam turned back to Alfred.

“So if you just show me where the laundry room is I can grab my clothes?” She offered, trying yet again to be helpful.

Being from a rich family didn’t mean having no damn manners, no matter how often it looked like it.

The old man gave her another of his extremely arch expressions, an eyebrow rising as if to question her impertinence. He had to be fucking with her.

“I shall bring your clothes to the downstairs bathroom on this hall when they are done so that you may change, Miss Manson,” he said coolly.

She’d never heard anything like it.

It didn’t sound like he was upset or offended the way people usually did when their voices iced over that sharply. Just… not an ounce of wiggle room.

Not a sliver of a hint that anything he was saying would not happen exactly as he’d decreed it. He sounded more imperious than a king, and she’d seen those.

Sam kinda imagined that’d be what Clockwork would sound like if she ever met the guy.

Duke misinterpreted her decidedly impressed stare with a wry chuckle, apparently misinterpreting her expression.

Fair, since he couldn’t know she was comparing him to the living manifestation of Time.

Well. Ghostly manifestation. Same difference.

“Miss Manson’s probably the best you’ll get out of him,” Duke said almost apologetically, grinning. “It’s gonna be that or Miss Samantha.”

Which admittedly was enough to make her turn to face him, curiosity peaked.

“What do you mean?” She asked, glancing back up at Alfred.

She couldn’t read anything but serenity in his face, but mild amusement practically radiated off him. She’d have to ask Danny what he saw in his aura.

Dick took this one too, sitting back in his seat and grinning at her.

“Alfie’s serious about the whole “proper titles and full names” thing. I’ve been trying for almost twenty years to make him call me “Dick”, and I think he’d be slower to give that up than Bruce’d be to unadopt me,” he explained cheerfully, arm tossed over the back of his chair.

Alfred treated him to a slowly raised eyebrow too.

“As you say, Master Richard,” he agreed placidly and Sam pressed her lips together on a smile.

She didn’t have to turn around to know exactly what face Danny would be making. The last thing he needed was another scary old man full naming him.

And right on cue…

“Uh… can I specifically request Mister Fenton then?” Danny asked and sure enough when she turned, yup, he even had his hand in the air like a child.

Alfred treated him to that calm stare as well.

“May I ask why, Mister Daniel?” He asked, clearly prodding despite every line of both face and posture oozing nothing but polite respect.

Danny fully flinched, which was interesting. He barely reacted whenever Vlad said his name.

Sam adjusted her opinion of Alfred along a couple “scarier than Vlad” levels.

“I have name-related trauma from another billionaire who refuses to call me anything but that,” Danny admitted sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It’s a really not-fun association.”

“Vlad again?” Tim asked from across the table, sounding sympathetic.

Danny pulled a face at him, sort of grimacing more than a smile.

“Oh yeah. And let’s just say he also does it in super bad situations, so I’d be happier to just never hear it again.”

Sam peaked back over her shoulder at Alfred, wondering what he’d do with this news.

If Danny was gonna be a fixture in Jason’s life (and let’s be honest, he’d be a fixture in Jason’s bedroom by the end of the month), and Jason was a fixture in Alfred��s… they’d see more of each other.

Everyone knew Bruce had been basically raised by Alfred. If he was half as emotionally constipated…

But there was an actual human expression on the old man’s face now, and it looked a damn sight like shame. He cleared his throat, drawing their attention back to him.

“My apologies, Mister Fenton. Would you perhaps prefer Mister Danny?” He asked, which would have seemed completely innocuous on its own.

Dick slammed both fists into the table, making half the table burst into giggles.

“Fucking SERIOUSLY?! Is it just me! This is bullshit Alfie!” He declared dramatically.

Tim looked equally gobsmacked, jaw on the proverbial floor as he stared at Alfred, and even Steph looked put out and impressed.

Danny, deeply confused but relieved, stuck his tongue out at Dick.

“Hey, if you want another overly possessive and creepy billionaire determined to control your life you’re welcome to take him off my hands,” he declared smugly, and Sam snorted a laugh.

There was a decided devilry in young Damian’s face too, which vanished almost immediately after it appeared as the youngest spoke up.

“Honestly, Richard, you must admit that Danny’s situation is decidedly more grave than your own,” he said simply, a strong undercurrent of smugness under the words.

Tim threw both hands into the air so hard he almost tipped his chair over.

“Him too?! Come the fuck ON!” He proclaimed to the world at large as Duke snorted half a glass of water out of his nose in a choked laugh.

Tim gave him a hearty slap on the back that was probably supposed to help, the younger boy still wheezing and gasping for air, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge him.

There was clearly something of an inside joke going on, and it wasn’t exactly a complicated one.

Danny had already settled back in his seat, perfectly happy with the consternation he’d caused, and Sam joined him.

Watching the dramatics of the extended Wayne clan was even better at home than it had been at the gala. For a show this good, she’d have bought tickets.

As she closed the office door behind her, Harley took a moment to give Bruce another, slower once over.

It had been a while since she saw him last, and between what Selina had told her and what the kids told her, she wanted a read on his headspace.

He looked… well, like he had a stick up his ass a mile high, but that was pretty much default for him when he wasn’t being Brucie. Never learned how to take a breath, that guy.

But from the way he moved straight to his desk, not even pausing to see if she shut the door before dropping into his seat, she’d put money on “tired”.

Not just regular nightlife tired either, if he showed it this easily. Freshly shaved, dressed immaculately, face done up with minimal but flattering makeup.

He’d put himself together pretty today, but something was cracking underneath.

Once she was satisfied she’d gotten the big picture, she sauntered after him and hopped up to sit on his desk, foot pressed firmly to the middle of his chest to go for the details.

“So, Brucie, do ya know why I’m here?” She asked expectantly. It’d tell her a lot about where they were starting from; it was hard to fool the big bat, and none of ‘em had been trying.

Bruce raised an eyebrow at her foot, but wisely didn’t move to touch it. Clever boy. He might win a physical fight if they got serious, but he also knew she was damn good at what she did.

If they threw down, she wouldn’t be helping him untwist that mess in his head. And he wouldn’t be walking away unscathed either.

No good with some fresh heroes who weren’t in on the Secret around. She could assume he’d made the calculations, but none of them showed. And wouldn’t it be nice if he hadn’t needed to?

Instead he sighed, leaning further back in his chair and rubbing both hands down his face.

Harley adjusted her estimate from “tired” to “fucking exhausted”. Not a good sign.

“I hope it has something to do with Selina texting you last night about the gala,” was all he said though, cryptic fuck.

Harley pushed with her toes just enough to make the chair roll back.

“Specifically, Brucie. If you can tell me what ya did wrong I’ll make it easier on you,” she teased, waving her bat playfully.

Like they didn’t both know the real damage would be with her words. Bruce preferred the bat though. In all ways, which, ha! She could still rock a killer joke.

He gave her one of his grouchy bat glares too, then slumped. Practically pre-broken. Something had to be up.

“I gave a speech. I… apologized to Jason for not being there when he…” he trailed off and Harley nodded, willing to accept that. Hard topics, and not one they’d discuss today.

Not that she wasn’t waiting with baited breath for Bruce to FINALLY decide he wanted to unload some o’ that trauma. But hey, baby steps.

He looked back up a second later, the mask gone as he met her eyes. He looked agonized.

For Bruce, anyway. Perfectly normal to anyone who didn’t really know how he ticked. But those lines around his eyes, the tension in his jaw?

Harley knew. From watching him when he’d thought he’d failed long ago, and from comforting him when one of the kids got hurt more recently.

“He looked like he’d seen a ghost, Harley. I’ve never seen him so shaken.”

Which Harley did have to bite back an entirely inappropriate laugh at. Jason looked preeeeetty happy to be canoodling with an actual ghost in the dining room right now.

She kept it on lock though. Totally professional.

Honestly, she was a little impressed Bruce had noticed. Jason was infamously his blind spot.

Humming softly she nodded slowly, fingers drumming along the shaft of the bat as she regarded him.

“And why do you think he did that, Bruce?” She prodded gently.

She was gonna have a check in with Jason later, not least for all the deets on his adorable new “friend”. Somewhere private, where the others couldn’t see.

But from what she’d seen tonight… Jason looked good. More relaxed, at ease with himself in a way that really tugged at her heart.

She hadn’t seen a lot of Jason since his return; she hadn’t stayed in Gotham long after breaking free of the Joker. But she’d come back when Selina called, and heard Waylon’s stories.

Of course he hadn’t come back as the happy, cheeky kid full of sunshine and magic. Even if he’d survived the warehouse he’d have changed.

The kid who’d cried at the thought of letting Bruce down so hard she’d foiled Joker’s plans herself so it wouldn’t happen… had been let down even more.

Even from a distance she’d read it in every inch of him; festering rage, pain, moving more like the big Bat than ever. Like his body was just a weapon he was barely connected to.

Like nothing else mattered but his mission, and he’d run on broken legs without even noticing. Like he didn’t think there was anything about him worth protecting.

(It may have factored into one of her own visits back to Arkham, even if Mister J had left her alone.)

The poor guy had been so full of anger ever since he came back, and for all that she’d been Joker’s when he died he’d never blamed her.

If anyone else on Earth knew what it was like to have your life torn to the ground by that bastard, to have nothing left even after you crawled away, it was Jason.

Harley wouldn’t have blamed him for hating her just as much as the clown himself, but he hadn’t. Not even full dark side. Not even that first time, Tim’s blood still on his suit.

He’d tensed to fight, admitted he’d heard about the big split, and believed her when she swore it was true. Even accepted her number, though he hadn’t called for almost a year.

They weren’t close, not like she was with the baby bats these days, but Harley worried about him.

There was something broken in Jason that still hadn’t healed, that he kept gashing himself on its sharp edges. Something that might finally be scabbing over.

So yeah, this was 1000% not the fucking time for Bruce to be all up in his bullshit.

At least he seemed to know that too, shaking his head and slumping forward against her foot so he could rest his head in his hands.

“I… I don’t know. I thought I could show him how sincere I was. Have witnesses who’d hold me to it. Not force him to be alone with me when it’s clearly not what he wants,” he admitted bitterly, shoulders slumping.

Harley let out another low hum, tracking every inch of his posture with alert eyes.

Yeah, that was true. Fucking stupid, especially from a guy as sharp as Brucie, but true. And fully consistent with his character.

Then she sighed, pushing him back upright, foot rising up almost to his collar to make him look at her.

“Did ya think about asking Jason what he wanted?” She asked dryly, fully aware of what the answer would be.

Watched Bruce’s face pinch in annoyance. Probably at himself, which would be good. Sometimes the answer literally was that easy.

He still shook his head, even if he didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“I thought…” he sighed again, running a hand through his hair, but didn’t try and hunch. “I didn’t think. I assumed he would see it the way I did.”

Which he’d clearly already noticed Jason hadn’t. Honestly, Harley was almost proud of the man. He wasn’t usually this emotionally aware.

No wonder he was exhausted. Lotta introspection, using all those brain muscles he abjectly refused to hone.

Harley nodded and crossed one leg over the other, switching out which foot kept Bruce pinned to his chair.

“It’s one helluva lot ta throw at someone in front of an audience, Brucie,” she agreed plainly, and watched with interest as that moment if irritation sharpened.

Almost pulled him back to bat face.

“You sound like Danny,” he grumbled, not actually arguing. Might have tried to cross his arms if her foot wasn’t in the way.

Harley wasn’t having any of it. She knew she’d liked the kid.

“Good, he’s got two braincells ta rub together. What’s more important: that people see you say you’re sorry, or how Jason feels?” She asked sharply, her patient tone evaporating.

To his credit, Bruce didn’t hesitate.

“Jason.” This, there was no question of. Good.

“And who knows best how Jason feels?” She pushed on, eyes narrowing when he hesitated.

“Don’t make me use the bat, Brucie,” she warned him, and Bruce sighed again, shaking his head.

“I know what you want me to say, Harley. But Jason… his emotions are unpredictable. Out of control. I doubt even he knows what they are half the time.”

Which, frankly, they weren’t going to get into at the moment, if ever. Jason’s emotional state was Jason’s business.

Harley fixed Bruce with an unimpressed stare, raising an eyebrow.

“Good thing I didn’t ask anyone to control it, huh? But who. Knows. How Jason feels.” It was barely a question anymore, the tapping of her bat against the desk more an empty threat.

She wasn’t against percussive maintenance, especially where Brucie was concerned; he responded better to violence than words half the time.

Kinda like he needed the stubbornness actually knocked out of him before he could listen. It was why she wouldn’t recommend him to any ol’ civilian friends still in the biz.

Not that they’d have appreciated her recommendation.

He stared her down for a moment, defiant even with the bat to hand. Harley let the other brow rise slowly and crossed her arms, leaning forward to lean on her knee.

Bruce could outstare a cat, but he couldn’t impress or intimidate her and he knew it.

He said nothing, still staring her down, and she could see where his brain had turned off and the stubbornness kicked in.

Fine. She’d played this game before, and she knew what he expected to come next.

Sometimes she even let him have it, a little rough and tumble so he could wrestle himself out of his head by wrestling her. But today, there were way more interesting things for her to do with her time.

Nothing short circuited a pattern of habit like the wrong response. Or a response that pulled up an older pattern.

Still staring him dead in the eye, she stuck her finger in her mouth, licked it wet, then leaned forward to shove it in his ear.

Bruce jerked back, hands almost rising defensively even as he made a disgusted face.

“Harley! Stop!” He protested, already losing a little of that stoic wall, and Harley grinned. It’d worked since they were Jason’s age in college and probably always would.

In his bat-suit, Bruce could take any torture, any indignity and never break. Without that cowl though, he was the same dweeb who’d joined the cheerleading squad with her because Harvey pouted.

It was really a very good thing she’d been on her way out of the rogue business before she cracked his identity, but since he’d always known hers he probably had plans against her.

He didn’t use them though, and she appreciated that, even as she licked her other finger fast and stuck it in his other ear.

“Say it, Brucie, or I’ll lick every pen in this office,” she threatened, watched a smile almost crack. And watched him sag, one of her wrists in each hand, his expression sobering.

Not closing off again though. Now his exhaustion was plain to see, along with the lingering sorrow and regret.

Looked like that little tussle would be enough for today. Probably.

“Jason knows what he’s feeling best. I am sorry, Harley. I never meant to hurt him,” he confessed almost in a whisper, and Harley let her own dramatics subside too.

It wasn’t what he needed anymore.

Hooking her foot in under the arm of the chair, she pulled him back in towards her.

“I know, kid. An’ lucky for you, Jason’s got a lotta people in his corner, and he’s a resilient boy. He’s gonna be alright.” His relationship with Bruce could only get so much worse, honestly.

No matter how the two disasters kept rubbing each other wrong, there was still love there. That was what had hurt Jason so much in the first place.

If he hadn’t loved Bruce, he wouldn’t care what the man thought of him. If he hadn’t thought Bruce loved him once, he wouldn’t care that the Joker lived.

Maybe one day she’d knock their heads together and make them talk it out.

Today, Bruce gave her a helpless look.

“I don’t even know how I hurt him, Harley. I should have asked, I know I put him on the spot, but I never thought… how can I stop if I don’t know what I’m doing wrong?”

Harley sighed softly, straightening back up and tugging her hands back easily, propping them on the desk behind her.

It was a tough one, not because the answer was hard, but because it’d be hard for Bruce. But he might finally be ready to hear it, if he’d done this much of the work without her.

“You know what I’m gonna tell you,” she prodded gently and didn’t push back when he pulled the chair in enough to brace his elbows on the desk on either side of her hips and bury his face in his hands.

Muffled the hell outta his voice, but she could still make out the words.

“Talk to him.” Which, yeah, she had a chuckle at the irony, petting mussed black hair.

“Yeah, yeah, the Bat’s one weakness, clear communication. But you don’t know Jason as well as ya think ya do, Brucie. He’s not the kid you brought home.”

He pushed up at that, frown on his face and mouth open to argue, and she placed a finger across it to shush him.

“I know ya think you know that. But he’s really, really not. And thinking ya still know him the same way is how you keep hurting each other.” She gentled her voice, kept it soft, but he still slumped like she’d punched him.

She went back to petting his hair. He preferred punching.

“Stop trying to surprise him. Ask what he wants. And if you can’t tell him how you feel…” she paused for a moment, let Bruce huff out the beginnings of a grumble, and chuckled softly.

No surprise there.

“Then try writing it down. Write him a letter, and keep it to yourself until you know what you want to say. As many as it takes, and toss ‘em right in the fire. And if ya still can’t say it aloud, hide one in yer underwear drawer or somewhere personal.”

That prompted him to look up again and Harley cocked a brow, grinning.

“What better way ta make one of your nosey lot read it?” She asked, grin settling to a smirk when Bruce’s lower lip slid out in a pout.

Not that fake pretty boy play one he did for cameras, the real Bruce Wayne Does Not Like You’re Right.

Catching it between forefinger and thumb she gave it a gentle tug.

“Seriously though. Try it. It’s easier than tryin’ ta improvise. And always, especially double important if yer gonna be in public, talk ta Jason first. No more surprises, or how’s ‘e gonna trust you?”

He knocked her hand away, but his eyes did that far off thing they always did when he was calculating, so she assumed he was taking it on board.

Finally he nodded, glanced at the clock, and frowned. Rigid mask falling back into place, her old classmate disappearing again.

“I’m afraid I have a meeting, Harley. Cape business. Was that all?” He did actually sound kinda sorry, so Harley forgave him for switching himself off before they finished.

“Fine. But I’m stickin’ around fer a bit, so we’ll talk about the apology thing later,” she warned, giving his chest another sharp poke and then trying to neaten the mess she’d made of his hair with her fingers.

Gave it up as a bad job.

“An’ put the cowl on, ya look like a drowned bat.”

He raised a pointed eyebrow at her, the gesture saying more clearly than words whose fault that was, and let her push him back far enough to stand.

“Thanks, Harley. I probably won’t be back tonight,” he told her, voice already lowering into that bat growl Selina went crazy for.

Hopping off the desk, Harley waved him away and bent to scoop her bat off the floor.

“Yeah, yeah. I gotta check on Waylon tomorrow anyway, but I’ll drop by when I have a minute.” She paused at the door and grinned over her shoulder at him. “The little one didn’t even try an’ stab me today.”

Bruce gave her a tight smile back, already at the clock. Ready for his Grand Descent. Dramatic bitch.

“High praise, from Damian,” he acknowledged, and Harley laughed, heading back out into the manor.

Maybe she’d join the kids for dessert.

Bruce had to admit he felt lighter as the door closed behind Harley.

She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t know, not really, but just. Knowing she was here. That she knew why Jason was upset, and would help him fix it.

He was always grateful that she’d been one of the rogues who turned… well, not exactly straight, he kept up with her exploits in Coney Island, but good.

She cared about people, and protected what she considered hers fiercely. Luckily for him, that included his brood.

And. Maybe. Just maybe.

Danny might have had a point.

Perhaps Harley could help him work out why it was easier to tell Jason he was sorry to a room full of people than it was at his son’s hospital bed after a bad patrol.

He changed in the elevator on the way to the cave, the spare suit from his office easy and familiar to put on.

A good thing too, since just as he arrived and settled in front of the Batcomputer to pull up anything he thought he might need (and telling himself it definitely wasn’t evidence against a colleague), the zeta tube activated.

::B069 - John Constantine::

Tonight was finally going to be his night.

A hundred feet up in the dining room, Danny Fenton stiffened abruptly mid conversation, senses prickling as someone new crossed his aura.

Well. Someone different. There was no mistaking that potent, crackling cloud of mixed wards and magic. It had been a while since they’d been to Amity Park, but it certainly wasn’t someone new.

A slow, thoughtful smile spread across his lips and he settled back in his chair, ignoring the surprised looks from his companions as he considered this development.

It certainly answered his earlier question.

A hand rose slowly to cup his chin, fingers drumming along his jawline as a slow chuckle slipped free.

Tonight might just be more interesting than the gala after all.

“So that’s John Constantine… huh.”

———————

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#dp x dc #danny fenton dead and loving it #dead on main #danny x jason #jason x danny #yeah this might as well happen #chapter 11 #answers time #somehow bruce is temporarily still in the dark #bruce heavy chapter #getting into the angst a wee bit for brucie #sucks to suck buddyboy

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samgirl98 · 9 months

Text

Wail of the Silent 6/?

Prev | Next

TW: Mention of Suicide

Spectra smiled as her latest victim patient left her office. She had only been in Gotham for ten days, but she already had a job in Arkham Asylum thanks to overshadowing and fake credentials. The whole place was a pit of misery.

So far, seven patients have killed themselves due to her feeding off them. Oh well, as the saying goes, you have to crack a few eggs to make omelets and all that. It’s not Spectra’s fault they were weak.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t get to the main rogues. They weren’t filled with misery, just madness. They gave her no nutrients, so she avoided them and went for the weaker ones.

Still, the patients in the asylum were nothing compared to the young man she had found the night before. She had left a piece of herself (a new development as her powers grew.) to feed off him when he felt miserable. It had already happened once that day, but he got over it quickly. The bite size snack left her craving more.

Spectra smiled as her next patient entered her room.

____

“You said you had an idea,” Danny asked as Jason led him into a room with three computer screens, some weapons lying around, and a bunch of wooden boxes.

Jason nodded; he had put his red helmet on again.

“Yeah. You know Arkham Asylum?”

“My sister has mentioned it once or twice, but I don’t know much about it. She wants to work there ultimately.”

Danny couldn’t see Jason’s expression but knew Jason was feeling judgmental.

“What? What’s wrong with that?”

“Casper—”

“Casper, wow, so original. I’m nicknamed after my high school.”

“Your high school is called Casper? What the fuck?”

“The elementary school is named Poltergeist elementary school.”

“Poltergeist elementary? No, you know what? That doesn’t matter. Arkham is where the criminally insane end up. I mean, these are people who have little chance of integrating into society, and those who do become ‘better’ usually end up reoffending again. I know of three psychiatrists who worked there who ended up being patients there. Your sister must be a special person to want to work there willingly.”

Hmm, it seemed Danny had to have a word with Jazz.

“You think Spectra is there?”

“There is no other place in Gotham that has as much misery as Arkham Asylum.”

“Okay, I believe you, but how will we know if Spectra is there.”

Amusement. Mischief.

“I can tap into the security camera and database.”

____

Bruce Wayne stared into his cup of coffee. There was guano floating in it. He sighed and looked back at the reports.

Something was wrong in the asylum.

An hour ago, he had gotten a ping of someone who had committed suicide in Arkham; the death had marked the eighth one in ten days, and no one else was worried or investigating it. He knew most people and law enforcement didn’t care for those who resided in Arkham, but to ignore something clearly wrong…well, Bruce wouldn’t be complacent.

He hacked into Arkham’s systems. Batman would get to the bottom of this.

____

Lady Gotham felt her being boiling with anger. Another one of her citizens had ended up dead by their own hands due to the interloper.

She sent the newly formed shade toward her favored knight and the ghost child. She knew they would help her lost ones. For now, she let her rage be known through the thunder and lightning in the sky.

____

“Eight suicides in ten days, and no one has reported on this?” Danny asked incredulously.

Jason shrugged; he knew how little people cared for the patients in Arkham. The only ones who probably noticed and cared were his family the bats. However, they wouldn’t know what could be happening, so it would take them longer to solve the problem.

For half a second, Jason thought about asking for their help but felt phantom pains in his throat.

He felt sadness and regret deep in his chest. (His core was humming out his emotions.)

Soon, he felt an overwhelming misery. It felt as if it was suffocating him!

“Jason! Jason, calm down!”

Calm. I’m here—calm, calm.

It took a moment, but Jason came back to himself. What the fuck was that?

“Spectra has found a way to feed off you even while far away. We need to find her and stop her.”

Anger, anger. I will stop her. Anger—she must be stopped.

Danny touched Jason’s shoulder, “Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”

Jason nodded, already feeling better. A part of him was dreading Danny’s departure, and it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since he met the guy.

Danny kept his hand on Jason’s shoulder, grounding him, while he looked through Arkham’s security camera.

“There! That’s her.”

Jason watched the camera as a red-haired woman left an office. She had on glasses and a red suit.

Jason looked into the records.

“Penelope Spectra. She started ten days ago, the same time the suicides started.”

“I bet if we look around, we’d find suicide rates have gone up in other places.”

Jason nodded and started looking into it. He wouldn’t let the bitch get away with it.

#wail of the silent #dc x dp #dp x dc

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hisuian-history-makers · 1 year

Text

“To not just glide but soar!”

—————————————————

‘My village retold the history of my world very religiously. And yet I was able to experience it from the Builders end. Me, a cleric’s mentee, of all people truly seeing the Beings’ work.

I don’t want to believe it. No, I can’t believe it.

The Beings were gods of infinite creativity that shaped our world. Unlike most gods, they were not infallible in the slightest. For better or worse they built upon each error made.

Even the Creeping Bombers—odd mistakes that they were—still deserved to exist.

Many years passed before the Beings were satisfied to let the world develop mostly on its own. Food never perished, monsters were kept at bay with light, caves never collapsed, tools including weapons could be made easily, and everything was suspended in static gravity.

Then they sent down the Builders, who came in two phases. Phase One was improving upon the simple designs. Why Guardians were creat

First Gen Builders left behind mineshafts, monster spawners, iron golems, witch arts, end cities, temples in the deserts and jungles. Portals to the eternally burning nether-scape always made me question why it was so easy to visit there. The Nether wasn’t our Hell.

Their second generation had a weaker link to the Beings. Perhaps that’s why they built less uniform creations—created complex red stone powered contraptions. Not. Not all of them were good-natured trapping my simple villager ancestors in farms/closets. We’re Enpecees.

Again, why’d I steal from one of their bases?

I. Wanted. To. Fly—‘

————————————————————

Huffing, the dimension traveler closed the old battered journal. A leather-bound book with only fifty pages that endured her first test flight.

Granted nearly falling into the void shook her past self up something fierce. It was ironic how cautious she used to be when now she was—Joycelyn Brewer, experienced dimension flyer.

The elytra wings might’ve had limited potential in how the Builders saw them in that game. Two pieces of fabric that granted the very limited ability to glide. But Joycelyn, she preferred Joy, modified hers past it’s original form. She was lucky Father Darren knew beyond the normal brewing knowledge of a Cleric. He had seen the second Builders enchanting things first hand!

Minecraft “Players” were so lucky villagers never revolted against them. Where’d they think all those trade offers came from after all?

Joy spent many weeks repairing the old Elytra she found displayed on an armor stand. It had nearly broken apart when she took the pair off, otherworldly scales flaking and dull. Not telling anyone that she ventured into an old Builder base was the most dangerous rule she broke.

Time and time again everyone warned her not to. “Builders were always a reckless sort. Some made games of trapping each other. From their closest allies to mortal enemies everyone was a free target. Lava pit-falls, skulk-sensors,” old guard Johnathan constantly reminded the kids.

Now though? Joy rolled her shoulders feeling the Elytra wings—her wings—blend seamlessly to her back through its enchantment. No longer was it simply two pieces of fabric but a frame covered in phantom membrane and feathers.

One amazing part about her travels was that she had met winged-races. Those who were born with them rather than creating them.

It was always fun seeing their reactions to her “hiding” her wings in someplace impossible.

Joy’s inventory helped hide the prized Elytra though she had far outgrown limited space in it. People who knew about Minecraft (the name of the game based on her world) were always so curious about how the inventory worked. Who knew they had access to a pocket dimension in-game? She kept a small laboratory for potion ingredients in her pockets. Still an apprentice cleric or not, she knew just how to brew several.

(She did miss the static gravity of her home.)

Pranks counted as tests of character, right?

———————————————————————————————————

[I made a character based on the Minecraft Comes Alive Mod, the main reason why her name spelling is so odd. Joy travels a lot via flying her Elytra wings. So much so that she has been mistaken for various winged species; an angel, Thanagarian, a goddess, harpy, etc… She enjoys flying.]

I plan to have her indulge in some shenanigans.

#minecraft #minecraft oc #minecraft comes alive mod #what they view us players as #dimension travel #dimension traveler #potion brewer #elytra #my oc #random ideas #imagine strangers knowing your entire life or the broad strokes of it #as a game #snippet #drabble #????

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wordsbymae · 2 years

Note

If you want more details about the cult au. Asmodeus(Clemont) was given the title known as The executioner. Asmodeus(Clemont) cuts down traitors in the cult. A traitor betraying the cult by being a snitch or trying to harm a member of the cult especially the leader. Asmodeus also deals with getting and sacrificing the sacrifices for the cult. Talon(Leroy) and Scratch(Boyd) were called the twin marks. They mark their targets with a three scratch marks on their window (talon) or door(Scratch) of the target. That is when they strike and leaving them in a Gorey mess with their hearts left open or make them look like they disappeared. The other kind is when Scratch locks them in a trap that believes they will have hope but then the hope was fake crashing the target into a deep pit of despair. They always avoid killing non targets as much as possible. This was how each of them discovered their lovers. Asmodeus was hunting a down a sacrifice for the next ritual. The heart of the pyrite heart or greedy. There was the teacher a woman who looked like his wife. He started to remember the memories of his wife. He remembered her smile. Asmodeus brought the sacrifice back to the cult. As he went home Asmodeus thought could this be his wife reborn. Talon was sent to assassinate a corrupt senator of a company. Talon watched as he saw the man screech at the waiter. He was interested in the waiter who was wearing a very scandalous bunny suit. Talon felt anger at seeing the server being mistreated. Talon watched as he saw the man left and went home in a limo. He saw the man was in his office. The mark was placed on the window then he strook killing the man then dismembering him to pieces. Scratch went to an opera there was an opera. His target was inside his own area where he was watching the singer. The singer was playing as Christine in the phantom of the opera. The assassin was enamored with the singer. His target was already dead. The two returned to the their leader with their father beside him.

I love the detail!!! I can tell you put a lot of thought into it and it really shows! I like the wife reborn idea. I've always liked that as a plot point, even more so when they aren't and they just happen to remind the person of their past love. The yandere quickly becomes obsessed and begins to call them by their past love's name, dress them in their favourite style (even if it's now old fashioned and vintage), tries to feed them their past lover's favourite food even though their darling is adamant they don't like it or are even allergic to that food. if the yandere wasn't so in love they could very easily see that their darling has nothing in common with their past love, but it's easier to say it's them reborn than to comprehend that they have fallen in love with someone new. Darling quickly becomes nothing more than a doll for the yandere to play pretend with, over time it becomes harder and harder for them to separate themselves from the past lover and over time they themselves begin to believe they are one and the same. It's easier to do that than to remember that the kind lover who keeps them here is nothing but a cruel monster.

I loved your thoughts and can't wait to hear from you again soon!

all the best and lots of love!

mae xx

#mae answers #yandere drabble #yandere fantasy #yandere imagines #yandere x reader #yandere #kinda gn!reader #first bit is fem #oc #yandere prompts

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missinghan · 3 years

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aria of an assassin ⤖ lee minho

❖ genre : assassin au; fluff; angst

❖ word count : 6,2k.

❖ warning : mentions of blood & violence, explicit language

❖ summary : minho hasn’t been fazed for decades throughout his bloodied career until the next target happens to be a black cat and he’s suddenly incapable of pulling the trigger.

❖ note : okay, so it’s been a year? this tiny, stupid blog is turning one year old today? yea I couldn’t believe it either. this is to all of my mutuals and readers out there, I don’t say it enough but I truly appreciate each and every one of you 🖤 I wish I could have written something longer but due to school, this random piece will have to do for now.

❖ the sequel : with felix is out!

one.

“Shit.”

Minho grits in a hushed tone although all that has been accompanying him is the pitiful moonlight and icy breeze dissolving into every fiber of his skin. Every minuscule movement suddenly becomes too irritating to his eardrums. The hustle and bustle life of the city at night. Terrible traffic. Even the sound of his own inhales and exhales.

What is that thing?

He thinks to himself, proceeding to expand his eyesight with the pair of scopes; confusion soon flares into curiosity, then faint anger and dead silence. He swears his heartbeat just paused awkwardly like a broken record for a split second there. Such strange, or odd targets are no stranger to him; nor do they stir something inside the coldness of his rib cage.

Not an easy kill, they say. And not easy it is.

Because whatever he’s watching with his very eyes is a cat. A goddamn cat with a coat as sleek pitch as the dark canvas upon his head and piercing golden eyes. The peculiar animal walks with its head held high like it’s lording over everyone else—such self-reassurance, such radiance some humans cease to possess.

It’s dangerous, they say. But it’s a fucking cat! Irritation bubbles up at the back of his throat, makes his skin crawl, and causes a bark of profanity to leave his lips once more. Has it not occurred to his client that he doesn’t kill children and animals? When it’s clearly been written on the contract? In bold, underlined, and everything?

They could have at least given him more details on what he’s getting himself to this time.

An exhale. He packs up his things, pulls his black cap down a little, and leaves the top of the building without looking back. If he did, he would have seen those starry eyes boring holes onto his back.

two.

The road Minho is walking through is more than familiar. For one, he takes the same path every day to grab a drink at his go-to place—a vending machine near an old, plain high school.

It’s fair to say he knows every corner of the neighborhood like the back of his hand—from the dark alley where bullies beat up their classmates to the small stall of lemonade of a middle school girl who waves at him every morning. He never reciprocates though; it doesn’t feel right. The amount of apathy in his heart isn’t enough for him to act normally when taking lives is what he does for a living.

For two, he used to have a part-time job at that particular high school for an old request. Due to his conscience, he did go out of his way to take the kill outside of the school—causing a catastrophe in such an environment makes him uncomfortable.

Just then, he stops. His brow raises. Isn’t that…

The black cat slinks through the crowd of nosy students in the direction of where he too is heading. It raises its nose and gives the air a rough sniff, making a face as though the general stagnant with exhaust fumes stench of the city disgusts the entirety of its existence.

Watching it take a slight dip to avoid being hit with someone’s bag, Minho holds back every urge to come running at the creature and wrap his arms around its small figure. He wonders how long it’d take for the cat to reach its final destination because it’s definitely taking some sweet ass time to stride through the front of the main gate like a supermodel. Meanwhile, he’s stressed to the core as if the harmless high school filled with teenagers is nothing less than a battlefield.

Is it testing him?

Something is oddly unsettling about an animal staring straight into his eyes. Paranoia fuels the forgotten irritation inside his chest, sets out to make him actually think those golden eyes are memorizing every inch of his feature. Then, they soften with what seems to be exhaustion, its tiny head turning and its tiny feet take it skipping gently away from the scene.

Minho finally acknowledges the knot inside his stomach and the breath he’s been holding. With a harsh gulp, he no longer takes notice of the fact if his cap is hung low enough or if he’s walking too quickly. For the first time in long, a rush of adrenaline hits him hard enough to make him speed walk through the herd of chatty teenagers.

Questions naturally pop up as his shoes kiss the ground, his shadow sprinting into a dark, though familiar alleyway. Was he hallucinating? But he’s been getting enough sleep and eating well. What makes him so certain that it was the same cat? Instincts or some sixth sense bullshit perhaps. If it was the cat that’s assigned to be killed off in a week, what’s so dangerous about it? And how long has he been running for? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? And to where?

“You.”

Half-way through trying to keep his thoughts off of his face, Minho stops himself when a rather feminine voice echoes through the narrow space. Unsure of whether the voice was reaching out to him, his legs stop moving while his eyes are peering through the dark. Much to his heart’s dismay, shivers run up his spine when something comes in contact with the warm flesh of his neck.

“What’s your name?”

Slowly, with his hands on the back of his head, he turns on his heels. “Excuse you?”

You retract your gun-shaped fingers into the pocket of your jacket, phlegmatic eyes gazing at him through the thickness of the night. “I want to know your name,” you try to make your point clear, utterly unfazed.

Minho stares you down for a good five seconds. Neatly dressed in the school uniform, an oversized jacket thrown over your body but no backpacks. There’s a name tag being embroidered onto the fabric in red “Shin Yuna - 1A”. Whoever you are, he’s certain that isn’t your name. That name doesn’t even suit you. That isn’t your uniform.

“What’s the point?” he questions, hands dropped to the sides in slight relief.

You tilt your head, expression neutral. “I have a habit of collecting names of people who tried or are trying to kill me. It’s quite relaxing to write it down on a list actually. You know, easier to keep track.”

He’s trying hard to not let any impulsive urges overthrow the rational side of his brain. Everything suddenly twitches in slow motion. His silence seems to bore you. Your eyes are more dead than angry, more done than irritated. Like you’ve been through this shit one too many times already to care.

“At least say why you’re sent to kill me.”

That, Minho can answer within a blink of an eye. “They sent me because I don’t exist.”

Your gaze glistens with a glaze of boredom. “Everyone said so.”

“Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Where’s your house, kid? I’ll walk you back. It’d be a pain in the ass if your parents found out how you’re wandering alone after school,” he brushes it off like you’re a slight nuisance (which you are). His heartbeat spikes up once at the mention of family, one that you’ve acknowledged with ease.

Your arms are folded over your chest now, to cover up the sudden stab of sympathy inside your chest. “There’s no need. I don’t have a place to go back to nor do I have parents who will nag me for staying out late.”

His mind automatically blackouts along with his senses, blurred with such peculiar feelings swirling at the pit of his stomach. You make it sound like it’s not that big of a deal like you’ve utterly been numb for so long. It’s tragic but understandable. This isn’t the first time he has witnessed a story like yours—your parents, dead or alive, he does not know; by the sound of it, you’re an orphan. Another unfortunate being to graze this planet like himself. This means you can’t afford school, so that uniform really doesn’t belong to you.

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

“It’s Lee Know. Call me Lee Know.”

“Don’t bother trying, Lee Know. No one has ever made it. They never did.”

You didn’t mean to expose anything about your life to a total stranger, or specifically an assassin. However, nothing matters when you most likely won’t meet him again nor will he succeed in taking your life. Even the fact that he chose not to give you his real name amplifies how much shit he does not give about you. You don’t expect anything more honestly.

“Alright, we’re done here,” you feign enthusiasm before clasping your hands together. “Go home. The sun is already going down.”

Strangely enough, Minho can only watch as your shadow shifts to the outline of a black cat before dipping into the depths of the starless night.

three.

To Minho it’s always just another day in the office. Except his office is a windy rooftop overlooking the mark’s exact location. His tools—rather than a computer—is a state-of-the-art rifle with a telescopic lens. A silencer isn’t very important since traffic and people are more than enough to drown out any suspicious noises. Most will mistake it for a back-firing van. He takes aim with no more qualms than one would gossip about a colleague, then pulls the trigger while thinking about what to order other than Chinese for lunch. When the work is done, he carefully packs everything up into an inconspicuous rucksack. And leaves the scene, like a phantom.

It’s always been the same boring, bloodied cycle.

Yet something’s changed since Minho met you.

He used to maintain a cool detachment to his targets. His conscience prefers not to think of them; whenever he does, it’s as if they’re already dead, mobile meat bags waiting to be laid on a cutting board. He doesn’t like to think merrily of his job, he doesn’t see it as helping them meet their destiny. None of that bullshit. To put it more nonchalantly, everyone will die one day. Minho considers it as a good way to go. Oblivious and in pain for one moment before completely gone the next.

Simple. Convenient. Much less agonizing than this brutal world.

Although that doesn’t mean he isn’t traumatized by the amount of blood that has stained his hands. On good days, he might get three to four hours of sleep. Bad days, few minutes to none at all. Terrifying nightmares gnaws at his soul every night, the ugly scar like a reminder of every single one of his sins. He can’t force himself to lose his sanity like any fools out there going down the same path.

“Shit…” Minho mutters, running a rough hand through his hair. He didn’t sleep well last night—like every other night; hence the bad temper and bitter taste at the back of his throat.

After a deep breath, he stares at his Hecate II with mischievous eyes—those of a hunter framed in the expressionless face of an executioner. His blunt hands are steady as they lift the shiny weapon over the concrete of a rooftop, drawing out a dry shot in his mind.

Through his scope, he watches as you’re crossing the road in your human form before stopping abruptly in front of a random tree. You then proceed to squint your eyes and look up in the opposite direction. Minho unknowingly holds his breath, waits for you to release your iron gaze, and move on with your life. But his expectations don’t prevail.

“What the fuck?”

Without much patience, he curses before shifting his scope to the same direction only to find another shadow creeping around on the balcony of a nearby building. No time to think of a rational solution—killing them is an ideal one—Minho feels his palms growing sweaty when a small, peculiar object comes flying toward his way. His head quickly moves away before the bullet pierces through his scope, shattering the glass completely.

“Son of a bitch,” he lets out a shaky breath. Crimson starts to drip down on the side of his cheekbone, but he can care less.

Because that’s the least of his problem right now.

Another subtle ‘bang’ can be heard in the distance, like a broken record scratching against his eardrums. Kid…! Minho’s heart collapses in realization.

four.

It’s not hard for Minho to do research on quite an amount of vital information about you. When he saw your body dropped to the ground lifelessly and an ambulance immediately drove by to pick up your body, he knew things weren’t going to end just like that.

“Don’t bother trying, Lee Know. No one has ever made it. They never did.”

He isn’t a believer, has never been one. Yet when he managed to take out your kidnappers in that ambulance, your weak breaths startled his heart and shook his mind into awareness of how serious the situation is. After that, he tracked down the hitman who delivered the hard blow, put a bullet through his brain, and found an USB full of detailed information about your existence. Which just makes things a whole lot more complicated to understand.

Apparently, you’ve been ‘killed’ one too many times before—there are photographs of your supposedly dead body in a bag, thrown into the deep, dark woods, other times into a nameless river. The thing about you is that you were once an experimental subject to your own biological parents who are sickeningly vile scientists. At the age of nine, you fell down the stairs and had a big gash on your head. They never knew because your wounds were quick to heal themselves. However, your whole life was flipped upside down when they saw you shapeshifting into a black cat while running around at the playground.

From then, your life became a living hell behind cold metal bars with needles stuck in your arms and strange pills being forced down your throat almost every day. Their sudden change only nourished resentment through time until you managed to cut down the laboratory’s power supply and fled from your own home.

You have no one to lean on. No place to go back to. No nothing. And you’re just a teenager.

Minho feels awful.

Usually, he isn’t the type to be empathetic nor does he have the energy to. It’s very out of character for him to let his emotions linger on a homeless kid with some supernatural abilities that will make his life that much more dangerous. Because to him, more often than not, people tend to give their condolences only to forget after brief moments of grieving. At the end of the day, it isn’t their own problem, it isn’t their own life. But now when it comes to you, Minho feels a strong sense of responsibility that if you end up dying, it’s on him.

It’s stupidly conflicted, it really is. His job—blowing people’s brains out—is the sole reason why he makes a six-digit amount of money for every job. Therefore, he isn’t sure what picking a random kid up from a fake ambulance and bringing her back to his shabby apartment is going to do him any good.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

You hate the fact that you can recognize that voice.

Just then, you wake as if it’s an emergency, as if sleeping has become a dangerous task. Your heart is pounding loudly inside your ears, the sound echoing listlessly to the pit of your rib cage. It’s always like this. It takes you some time to calm your nerves before gathering what exactly happened the moment you blacked out.

Right, you think to yourself, groaning slightly while pushing yourself up. You were shot right in the chest, and your body was probably discarded somewhere. After that, you’d grab a hitchhiker so they’ll drive you back into town. Like always. The only difference, this time though, is Minho placing your limp body on his bed with a blanket to warm you up.

His face appears within your eyesight when you’re done adjusting your vision to the bright room—you’re not used to this much light around. “You look calmer than I expected,” he mentions.

Minho grabs your face and scans it over. “Let me see. Did your wounds close up properly?”

The tender action, which has become weirdly natural to him although this is his first time, accidentally triggers something inside you. Your hand automatically slaps his away. It is an upfront refusal, but it doesn’t surprise him. He only offers you a comfortable moment of silence before placing a tray on the wooden nightstand.

“Eat up. I’m not going to feed you,” he cocks his head toward the bowl of porridge with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

You glare at him in suspicion. “Bringing me home. Giving me a bed to sleep on. And even food to eat. What are you trying to get at?”

“Nothing. I didn’t kill you only because you’re too young for my moral code,” he pretends to roll his eyes, voicing monotonously.

A frown adorns your tired features. “So you’re going to kill me when I get older then?”

“Probably,” Minho smirks faintly with a cock of his eyebrow. “That depends if you still remember my name, Y/N.”

One thing after another, this assassin only continues to baffle you. He was just going to shoot you the other day and now he’s giving you food? Preposterous! To put it simply, you’re unprepared for such kind actions, such gentleness from someone who takes lives for a living. You’re unprepared for dealing with people in general because they detest anyone who’s different from them—your kind, the kind with supernatural abilities and all. Hence, you’re left unwilling to befriend anyone and would rather be alone for the rest of your life.

Until such twisted moira pushes you to—what was his name again? Not his real name, the made-up one that he uses in the underworld.

You speak up softly after feeling safe enough to let your guards down, “Lee Know, was it?”

“It’s Lee Minho.”

“Pardon?”

He only smiles, “My real name. It’s Lee Minho.”

five.

“Y/N! A little help over here?”

“Coming.”

“Y/N, go check the fog machine!”

“Got you.”

“Y/N, can you put these boxes over there?”

“Alright.”

That’s all you’ve been doing for the entirety of your boring day. Getting yelled out at, having people ask for help nonstop, and responding with a two-word answer at max. You’re not complaining—they pay you well enough, the job is more on the down-low side because you’re nothing but a mere stage crew for an above-average theatre studio. So you simply hoist the three final plastic boxes into your arms with a jerk of your knees and place it where they asked you to. Thanks to your parents, their experiments along with skeptical-looking substances have efficiently enhanced your general strength and agility.

Another crew member perks up when you plop the heavy stack of cardboard boxes down with a loud thud. “Oh, can you carry those lights to stage left too?”

“Sure.” You could have pretended to pick up one box at a time and to drag your feet across the stage with difficulties to avoid being used. But you’re too lazy to repeat the same cycle two more times, so you really don’t have any other choice here.

Nevertheless, you suppose it’s not entirely bad to do all of this heavy handiwork. Because it keeps your mind off of unwanted things, such as Lee Minho for example. Lee Minho, the assassin, not the actor—you’d gladly fangirl over that certain celebrity rather than admit that you actually enjoy the hitman’s abrupt presence in your life.

The fact that you know he will find you even if it means traveling to the ends of the Earth and back doesn’t help to ease your insomnia. So for the past few days, you’ve been working extra hours along with picking up a job at a florist in hopes of not bumping into him. Stupid. You know it is. But how can you deal with a self-esteem crisis because the idea of being a burden just irks you so much?

It’s like you’re hopelessly proving that you don’t need anyone when you, in fact, want that kind of unconditional love that every other human yearns for.

After helping your colleagues out with the lighting, you simply sit behind those thick curtains until the show is over. Then, you head out, find a place to sleep, and head to an old lady’s place to pick up new clothes to change into for the next day. Since she’s been treating you with nothing but kindness, you’ve tried to pass by and helped her out at her son’s antique store too.

Your routine is supposed to go that way and stay that way. You won’t die because you don’t like overworking yourself. You’re doing just great.

“Hey, Y/N! Your brother is here to pick you up!”

Throwing your crewmate a blunt wave, you find your way out of the school’s theatre through a back door without shifting the expression on your face. You don’t have any siblings. And your colleagues don’t know anything about your family background either. So it, unfortunately, boils your guesses down to one.

Despite knowing who it is and why they show up, you open your mouth to speak, “How did you find me again?”

Minho shows up with a more casual version of his working attire—instead of the fully black, monochromatic outfit, he’s changing it up with a leather jacket, white t-shirt and jeans. He leans on his shiny motorcycle smugly like he knows something that you don’t, in which you very much dislike.

“Young lady, I’ll have you know that being an assassin helps me appear at places to do things I’m not supposed to do,” he ignores the fact that your question was purely rhetorical and chimes.

You attempt to throw him a glare which isn’t intimidating enough. “Call me ‘young lady’ one more time and I’ll put my foot where it’s not supposed to be.” Who are you kidding? He’s a hitman when you’re just a kid. Pigs would be flying by the time you managed to physically shoo him away.

“Am I supposed to guess where that is?”

“Enough. Go to work. Get out of here. Leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry, are you encouraging me to kill people?” Minho gasps, acting shocked and appalled. Clearly, he’s not good at it despite sharing a name with a well-known actor.

You can only retort harshly, “Don’t put words in my mouth, you ass.”

“Come on, kid. Let’s go get something to eat.”

“Why?”

His hand automatically reaches for your forearm. “Don’t people eat for pleasure? What’s wrong with you?”

Your heart leaps in, anger perhaps, pupils shaking when he closes in on you. Upon your reaction, Minho retracts his arm immediately. He should have thought better of it; you’re probably too traumatized to be dealing with him right now.

At that, your eyes round at the remorse on his face and you could have glared him off right then and there. But somehow, your basic human manners overcome your usual snappy self, letting you think that maybe he means no harm. Maybe he’s checking up on you one last time before going on about his life. You shouldn’t be too riled up about it just because he tried to kill you once.

Minho catches the familiar anxious gaze and sighs, “Okay, we don’t have to get something to eat. I’ll give you a ride back. Do you have somewhere to stay the night?”

It’s rotten work, whatever he’s trying to do. So you shake the harmless tingle inside your chest away before pushing past him. “No,” you answer dryly and leave.

six.

You go to work sick the day after because you couldn’t find a place to sleep in and had to make do with napping in front of a tattoo place. Yes, napping; because when you finally shifted into your cat form and allowed your eyes to rest, the sky started pouring waterfalls. The rain had soaked into your shiny black coat, making it frizzy and luring the sickness up your spine the moment you tried finding a different haven.

No one notices. No one.

Not even the mask, the extra layer of sweatshirt nor your hushed coughs every now and then. Despite downing the cold pills early in the morning, you’re only burning up harder by the second. Oh, you know! Maybe they just don’t care, that’s it. Because calling in off for work due to a minor cold isn’t a valid reason. However, you’re still shivering on the inside and burning on the outside. Enhanced genes or any of that bullshit isn’t enough to prevent you from getting sick like any other student. Perhaps something wasn’t complete, or they’d messed up somewhere. Perhaps that’s why they’re trying to get you back.

How foolish of you to think somewhere deep down, they still want you back. With a reason as blunt as you being their child.

Drowning in deep thoughts, you almost crash into a pile of boxes filled with equipment when your foot gets tangled to a random cable. Your eyes automatically screw shut as you wait for the impact but it never comes. Only a gentle pair of hands on your shoulders did. From that point on, you can’t hear or see properly. You don’t even have enough stamina to register who’s holding onto you so reassuringly. Whatever is happening gets hazier by the tick of a clock. It’s either you’re hallucinating or Minho is giving you that mirthful scowl of his.

Yep, you’re definitely hallucinating.

“Why didn’t you call in sick for work?”

“That’s a stupid fucking question.”

A frown adorns his perplexed features as his glassy eyes skim your face. He has a really pretty smile, he should smile more, you think. His hand latches onto your burning forehead, slides down on the side of your cheek with such grace as though he’s caressing you. A grumble leaves his lips at your dreadful state. This is why he should have never let you go in the first place.

“Come on, kid. Let me help you,” Minho says before giving your arm a light tug.

You don’t like what you just heard. “I don’t need your help.”

“You can barely walk.”

“Who said so-” As if on cue, he lets go of your arm bluntly. Caught off guard, your legs go weak without any remaining strength. You stumble and would have most likely fallen on your face if it weren’t for his grip on your arm. A gasp comes out inaudible when he hoists you upright, not planning to let go any time soon.

Minho scratches the tip of his nose with his ring finger, sniffing lightly. It seems like he’s arguing with a younger version of himself. He now knows how it felt like for those caretakers back then.

“You did,” he says with the same smirk when you woke up in his apartment for the first time.

seven.

That’s the only time you’ve ever allowed someone to help you with something. But Minho had to constantly check on you every two seconds, not wanting you to fall asleep on his bike while it’s speeding down the highway like a gust of wind. For a moment there, he really thought you would slip away into the night as he tried to find his keys because that’s just how you are.

Minho is no doctor, but he doesn’t go to one for a cold or a really bad fever. He can manage, he tries to convince himself.

After testing your temperature and giving you something new to change into, he slaps a cool gel patch onto your forehead before heading off to the kitchen to cook up something. You need to be full to be able to take your medicine anyway.

In the act of resting on his bed, you decide you can’t take staying in the same spot anymore so your body perks up in a sluggish manner. The aroma of home-cooked food wakes your senses almost immediately, causing you to look over at his busy figure by the marble counter. You think it’s endearing how he hasn’t bothered to change into something more comfortable. But he instead threw an apron over his working attire and dived right into the cooking process.

You have always felt like you were missing out on something whenever you looked at Minho. Perhaps it was how his striking eyes stared at you, whether mischievous or else. Perhaps it was how his lips were turning down most of the time with less than affectionate words.

Or it’s plainly how he has been trying to hide that he actually cares.

“Hungry?” He tilts his head to the side playfully once his sixth sense starts kicking in.

You can only nod. “Yeah.”

It takes Minho a lot of convincing yet you won’t let him feed you. Like hell, you would. Therefore, with helpless eyes, he watches you from across the table. He doesn’t laugh or get annoyed when your shaky hand drops the spoon and splatters the soup all over the table. His hand simply reaches for a piece of paper towel to clean up the mess, tossing it into the trash bin later. The same cycle repeats in comforting silence until you finish the entire bowl. The soup definitely wasn’t five-star worthy. But it’s enough to warm you up inside and out. Of course, Minho chooses to let the dishwasher do the job—his hatred for doing dishes is always at its finest.

Then, like the other night, he has already passed out on the table with a blanket draped over his body when you step out of the shower. Instead of plopping the weight of your exhaustion onto his bed this time, your legs stay frozen like cement on the floor while your eyes take in his reclined figure under the thin fabric. Minho is sleeping with his head buried in his arms, his glasses and messy files abandoned to the side. He’s definitely not a heavy sleeper because he doesn’t snore; only feather-like breaths can be heard through this endless beat of silence. The faintly blinking light from his laptop makes you feel exposed so you push yourself toward the balcony.

A hiss comes out hushed and quiet when your feet come into contact with the cold tile floor, bringing you across the studio apartment with small tiptoes. You peer over your shoulder, gazing at the only available source of light. Unconsciously, you ball your fists.

With a soft sigh, you slide open the glass door and step out to bathe yourself in the comfort of the moonlight. Despite the chilling air of the night, something warm fills up your lungs like an overflowed cup of wine. It suffocates you a little until the knots in your muscles and mind loosen; a sense of relief washes over you—you haven’t felt that in years.

Nothing makes sense.

A hitman hired by your parents shouldn’t be putting a roof over your head, tucking you into bed nor feeding you. Minho barely knows you; and your knowledge about him as a genuine person isn’t enough to convince you that this is reality. Because after years of wandering the streets, being tossed around like trash with plenty of a series of unfortunate events, you’ve made it a habit to sink into yourself.

So the longer you stay here, the more you’ll get attached to him. And the more you get attached, the more he takes away your default instincts to turn your back on everything.

Guilt wells up inside your chest as though it’s an old habit, a setting by default. If you ever try to go over the moderate line, you will break.

Holding back a croaked sob, you know that once you let it go, tears will only start flooding. With a push of your muscles, you effortlessly hoist yourself up the metal railings in one go. The wind combs through your hair like an empathetic hand but you ignore it, Minho’s sweater closing in on your skin.

You should leave, you try to urge yourself. You should jump off and dive into the depths of the night, let the allure cradle you in its emotionless arms.

Because after all, despite all those eyes on you out there, you’re ultimately alone within.

A foot dips out into thin air once the slump in your shoulders goes weightless. Immediately after, an incredible force pulls you by the ankle, and to the ground with a loud thud. Minho falls onto his back harshly, groaning slightly with you on top of him.

He knew what you were trying to do, he saw it the other night with his own eyes. Even under the knowledge of your capabilities, Minho still feels a rush of panic rising inside his chest. It’s only until his arms fully have a hold of you does his racing heartbeats slow down. Supernatural abilities or none, you’re still sick. And he’d be losing his mind if he woke up to an empty bed tomorrow morning.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he speaks with trembling vocal cords, in a tone you’ve never heard before. Strict but mellow. As though there’s a race inside his mind but he’s desperately trying to keep his cool. It’s fear. The moment he’s introduced to the idea of losing you—it’s genuine fear.

“Minho, I can’t die. Didn’t I tell you—“

His grip squeezes you in a breath tighter, cutting you off completely. “The fuck were you thinking? You can’t just jump off the balcony like that!”

“I already told you. I can’t die. Minho, I’ve done that plenty of times before,” you furrow your brows in a troubled manner, unsure of how to react.

Minho widens his eyes at you in sheer disbelief. Shock riddles his senses and gets the best of him. So now he’s fussing with his hands, incoherent profanity leaving his lips non-stop within the next thirty seconds or so. He’s usually very calm, collected, calculating, and cold. This is very unlike him. It makes you wonder why he’s acting this way. He knows that you can’t die from jumping off a building. So what’s there to worry about?

“You’re such an idiot! Try doing that again and I’ll kill you with my own-“

You truly don’t know how important you are to him. Frankly, he hasn’t even realized that yet.

“I’m sorry,” you say, pulling him closer. Since you’re bad at resolving any kind of conflict, you opt for the most rational solution—going with his flow until he’s calmed down. “I won’t do that again, promise.”

His lips fall agape at your words. He wasn’t expecting that. And even when you see how he’s reacting to your sudden change, you decide it’s no time to back down. This might be the only time you could show him that you’re at least grateful for everything he’s done.

He’s quieted down now. And when he manages to speak again without tripping over his own words, his voice comes out as a whisper. “Hey kid,” he looks down at you, wanting to stroke your hair but drops his hand in sheer defeat. “You didn’t answer my question earlier. Why didn’t you call in sick for work?”

“Who would do my job when I’m gone? Isn’t that irresponsible?” You exhale deeply before fluttering your eyes close, finding odd peace within the rhythm of his heart.

Minho says pointedly, “Well, you could have asked someone to help you with it.”

“No one would help me.”

“How’d you know? Have you tried asking them before?”

Your eyes shoot open and flicker around your surroundings, you’re at a loss for words for a split second there. Heat rushes to the apples of your cheeks in shame, your head hung terribly low. “I’m not used to asking for help. I’d hate to be a burden,” you confess.

Innocence glimmers in your eyes when you look up at him, waterlines threatening to break any second now. Your lashes are slightly damped and how lost you’re looking right now can physically draw crimson on his heart. At the end of the day, you’re just a kid. You had to grow up the hard way, with no one by your side telling you what’s right and what’s wrong, even simple things like how to react to non-verbal affection.

Don’t let her go, Minho. Not now. Not ever.

“Then fix it now.”

“What?” You pause.

“If you need help, ask for it. If things are hard, say it. I’ll be there to give you a hand.”

Tears well up in your eyes, croaked sobs shake your body, only prompting him to pull your closer. It’s warm. Damnit, why is it so warm? “I-I can’t sleep. Sing me something?”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Minho just knows that he would bleed with you even when the rain pours and the sky falls one day.

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warrioreowynofrohan · 3 years

Text

Today in Tolkien - March 4th

Hopefully a shorter post today, as it’s a bit of an in-between day.

I have to say, I’m amused by how cryptic Gandalf is, and I have to think he does it partially for his own entertainment. Before he rode off the previous day, even if he couldn’t explain Huorns and Ents and be believed, he could have said, “I’m going to find the remaining so,diers from the Fords and send them to join you at Helm’s Deep,” rather than riding off without explanation. And now he could say that Ents have destroyed Isengard, but he doesn’t. I think he likes the effect that surprises have on people.

The Rohirrim, with Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, rest for most of the day, recovering from the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Near sunset they ride off for Isengard, going through the Hurorn forest, and Legolas and Gimli agree to visit Aglarond and Fangorn together after the war is over. They ride at an easy pace to the Fords, into the night; but on arriving there they find the river is gone. On the eyot (small island) in the middle of the Fords, the Rohirrim that fell at the Battles of the Fords are buried. The previous night, Gandalf sent some of Grimbold’s scattered men to make the burial; when they were done, they rode to Edoras to join Elfhelm. The Rohirrim ride a ways further north after the Fords, then stop for the night, and see smoke and vapour rising from Isengard.

Seriously, see what I mean about Gandalf?

[At the Fords]: “This is become a dreary place,” said Éomer. “What sickness has befallen the river? Many fair things Saruman has destroyed; has he devoured the springs of Isen too?”

“So it would seem,” said Gandalf.

[Later, when they have camped for the night]: “There is ever a fume above that valley in these days,” said Éomer. “But I have never seen aught like this before. These are steams rather than smokes. Saruman is brewing some devilry to greet us. Maybe he is boiling all the waters of Isen, and that is why the ruver runs dry.”

“Maybe he is,” said Gandalf. “Tomorrow we shall learn what he is doing.”

In the night, the Huorns that were at Helm’s Deep go back north to Fangorn, passing by the camped Rohirrim. The river also begins flowing again in the night.

On the same day, Merry and Pippin watch the flooding of Isengard. In the night, the Ents stop sending more of the Isen into Isengard and send the river back into its original course; the water level in Isengard begins to fall from that time on, likely leaving through some underground passages.

Frodo and Sam reach the desolation on the outskirts of Mordor. (It’s somewhat reminiscent of the des ription of the Anfauglith in the Lay of Leithian.)

Frodo looked round in horror. Dreadful as the Dead Marshes had been, and the arid moors of the Noman-lands, more loathsome far was the country that the crawling day now unveiled to his shrinking eyes. Even to the Mere of Dead Faces some haggard phantom of green spring would come; but here neither spring nor summer would ever come again. Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains has vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.

They had come to the desolation that lay before Mordor: the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing - unless the Great Sea should enter and wash it with oblivion. “I feel sick,” said Sam. Frodo did not speak.

...They came to a wide almost circular pit, high-banked upon the west. It was cold and dead, and a foul sump of oily many-coloured ooze lay at its bottom. In this evil hole they cowered, hoping it its shadow to escape the attention of the Eye. The day passed slowly.

It’s worth remembering that this is the land that, during Aragorn’s later march on the Black Gate, some of the men of Rohan and Gondor can’t even bring themselves to enter. Yes, they’ve never seen any place so horrible before, but neither have Frodo and Sam. So the hobbits deserve a lot of credit for even being able to keep going.

In the evening Gollum has a major internal conflict, and decides to take the hobbits to Shelob in order to get the Ring. Sam overhears, and for the first time understands that the real danger is Gollum’s hunger for the Ring, not regular hunger and the risk that Gollum will want to eat the hobbits.

During the night, the hobbits walk the rest of the way to the Black Gate; twice, Nazgûl pass overhead. (It seems a little strange that Sauron is using his most dangerous and terrifying servants mainly as scouts and messengers.) Gollum is particularly terrified, and certain that Sauron has found them, and only keeps walking under duress.

#tolkien #the lord of the rings #today in tolkien #gandalf #frodo baggins #sam gamgee #gollum

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lordsisterxotome · 4 years

Text

By Firelight (Mozart x Reader) NSFW

Fandom: Ikemen Vampire

Pairing: Mozart x Reader

Warning: Smut!

Intended Audience: Female Audience

Word Count: 1,704

Requested by: @justdidabadthing

Other Notes: First post on my new sideblog, yay!!! I was seriously inspired by an ambience video while writing this. It was fantastic so here’s a link to it to listen to while you read --> Elegant Bedroom Ambience

Disclaimer: I do not own Ikemen Vampire or any of its characters. All of that goodness is the property of Cybird. I do, however, own the plot of this fanfic. Please do not repost this on any other website.

Tag list: @puffpuff300

If you would like to be tagged in future works, message me!:)

Bare bodies cuddled closer, ever-longing for each other’s warmth despite the fire roaring in the large grate and the silk covers long since thrown off. Firelight flickered against the creamy walls and furnishings and outside a heavy snow fell, blanketing the earth in white. Candles flickered faintly in the chandelier and on wall sconces, bathing the room in a warm orange glow.

Except for the occasional crackling of the fire, all was silent, the couple on the magnificent bed basking in the after-glow of another round of passionate love-making. Long fingers rubbed circles into your bare shoulder as your lover watched the firelight dance against your naked skin. Shivering, you cuddled closer, enjoying the feel of Mozart’s chest rising and falling against your own with each breath. A lazy smile tugged at the corners of your lips as the arm around you tightened, his hand stroking the curve of your hip.

This wasn’t either of your rooms. In fact, you weren’t even at the mansion right now. Mozart had been invited to play at a ball for a friend of le Comte’s, the invitation including a night’s stay at their estate as an honored guest. It had been a day-long carriage ride to reach the palatial estate out in the countryside, during which your lover had held your hand the entire time, tense shoulders relaxing a little when you cuddled up to rest your head on his shoulder. You had blushed when his hand found your thigh to give it a meaningful squeeze, perfect lips easing into a smirk as he wrapped an arm around you to pull you firmly against him.

As usual, he performed beautifully, enchanting the other party-goers with his graceful looks and magical fingers, and the more you watched, the more the butterflies in your stomach fluttered. The coil of anticipation in your stomach wound tighter as the evening went on, Mozart’s hands on you every spare moment he had. It didn’t help that your gown was off the shoulder, leaving ample opportunity for his talented digits to ghost over the exposed skin deliciously. The little touches and squeezes, seeming perfectly innocent to anyone who could have caught a glimpse, were anything but, making your pulse accelerate as your lover charmed you all over again.

His hand had gripped your side softly as you finally bid your host goodnight and were escorted to your room, your body warming in response to his as he walked close beside you down the hall. It sent shocks through you when his fingers tapped an impatient rhythm into your side, knowing how those fingers could play your body just as well as piano keys.

To everyone in attendance he seemed like the perfect gentlemen, but you barely had a chance to appreciate the luxurious room before he was on you, tearing through the lacings of your dress to get to your bare skin. Falling onto the bed with you, Mozart made love to you in a flurry of limbs and teeth and fangs before carrying you to the bathroom where he drew a bath in the grand, claw-footed tub and made love to you there too.

The soft orange light of the fire threw your shadows against the wall as he made love to you over and over again, bodies entwining until it was unclear where you ended and he began. You had long since lost count of how many times you had screamed his name tonight, your voice echoing back at you as pillows and sheets fell to the floor or water sloshed over the curved edge of the tub. His heat had long since pervaded your mind and body, leaving you feeling wonderfully full and loved as you rested against him, but he didn’t seem finished for the evening as his voice broke the quiet.

“Let me make love to you again,” he murmured, a familiar desire pooling in the pit of his belly and suffusing his limbs with heat. His constant need for you surprises even him, but he isn’t complaining so long as you're his and he’s yours. Looking up, you answered him with a long kiss, letting him roll you onto your back as he took his place above you once again tonight. You could never deny him, especially when you knew your need for him would never be sated for long. Mozart was ethereal as it was, but in the firelight he looked angelic, all haloed yellow and orange and silver. There was nothing angelic about the raw hunger in his eyes now though, the need dulled only a little by how many times he had already taken you tonight.

Your inner thighs are still sticky with his last release and Mozart purred as he watched his seed seep from within you. Pale hand grasping his flushed cock, he stroked himself a couple of times before positioning the inflated head against your heat. He slides into you easily and you sigh, closing your eyes as your body tingles pleasantly. You don’t think he’s ever made love to you so many times in one night before, and there’s a slight burn as his hips meet yours, his cock fully seated inside of you.

The pace he sets is slow, a gentle roll of his hips against yours as your walls massaged his length. Soft sounds of skin slapping against skin fill the room and his breath fans across your face. Lips descend on the sensitive spot just below your ear and your arms wrap around him to hold him close. Tilting your head back to give him better access, you moaned softly as the force of his thrusts changes - still gentle, but more punctuated now - slowly working your spent body towards release.

His pleasured groans as your walls squeeze him are music to your ears, rivaling his piano playing in beauty. Your neck and chest are already covered in his marks, but he eagerly adds more, drawing a mewl from you as he takes a sore nipple into his mouth and sucks softly. You feel so good, so tender and loved, and it brings tears to the corners of your eyes. How can he still make you feel so good when you physically shouldn’t be able to handle it anymore? Every touch, every gasp, every look has you going crazy for him.

This moment feels like a fairy tale, your silver prince loving you so softly it brings tears to the corners of your eyes as the snow falls in heavy flurries outside. Why does it make you so happy to realize you’ll wake up in this room with him in the morning? The mere idea of him being the first thing you see come daylight has your heart skipping, and you smile against his skin as you turn your head to nibble at his jaw and ear.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers in your ear as his member continues to delve into you, sending shivers down your spine as you gasp and moan for him. “You feel so good, meine liebe. Mmm, I don’t think I’ll ever have enough of you.”

The over-stimulation from so many previous orgasms has you nearing your peak all too soon when you wish you could stay in this moment of tender love-making forever.

“Wolf!” you murmur breathlessly, warning him of your impending release, but he already knows. He knows your body better than you do. He can feel it in the way your core tightens around him, see it in the way your eyelids flutter and breath catches in your chest. His tongue laps at the wounds on your neck, a phantom pleasure of that brought by his fangs making you cry out softly. Mozart’s already had his fill of your blood tonight and fears taking anymore will make you pass out. Right now he just wants to feel you come around him, wants to see the effects of his passion on your body.

With a thrust that buries him as deeply inside of you as he can reach, he triggers your climax. A soft cry leaves your lips, feeling his hips stutter as your walls clamp down on his throbbing cock. Burying his face in the crook of your neck, he cums inside of you with a muffled groan, his heat warming your insides for the final time tonight.

Mozart collapses panting on top of you, spent cock chased by his cum as it slips from your folds. You slip a leg around the back of his knee, holding him in place as his head rests against your breasts, hands rubbing circles into the skin of his back. He’s never felt more loved than he does right here, held in the arms of the love of his life, his muse. Already, new melodies bloom to life in his mind, all of them stemming from you, but he doesn’t move to write them down. To do so would be unthinkable when he’s so happy it aches.

Moving just enough to look up at you, he cups your cheek in his palm, a thrill of delight racing through him as you lean into his touch. Whether you know it or not, he’s always trying to tell you how precious you are to him through his music, each note dedicated to the love you inspire in him every day.

“I love you,” he murmurs, nose brushing yours as he brushes strands of hair off of your forehead. The look in his eyes is so raw, so tender, it’s hard to believe he ever looked at you so coldly when you first met. There’s love in every line of his face as he gazes at you, lips parted in awe and violet eyes shining with love as your hands reach out to draw him in for a smiling kiss.

“I love you too, Wolf.”

The words aren’t enough, not for either of you. To put what you feel into three words so simple feels odd, but it’s all you have.

Firelight continues to dance off the walls as you and he fall into a blissful sleep and the snow continues to fall like powdered sugar outside, the warmth of your love staving off any chill.

#by firelight (mozart x reader)#ikemen #ikemen series #ikemen x reader #ikemen fanfiction #otome #otome x reader #otome fanfiction #ikemen vampire #ikevamp #ikemen vampire x reader #ikevamp x reader #romance #ikevamp mozart #ikemen mozart #ikevamp mozart x reader #cybird

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trojantoast · 4 years

Text

Cold is the Night (Day One: Reunion)

Zutara Week 2020

@zutaraweek

AO3

“Once he's gazed upon her, a man is forever changed

The bravest men return with darkened hearts and phantom pain

Ages come and go, but her life goes on the same

She lives to see the sun and feel the wind and drink the rain

Her colors change to mark the passing of the days

No Earthly sight can match the beauty she displays

And when I die I want her lying by my side

In my grave, in my grave”

- La Belle Fleur Sauvage (Lord Huron)

___

The arctic wind was bitter cold, but the sight of the Southern Water Tribe as he rounded the iceberg filled him with warmth. Unlike its northern sister, with its white, impenetrable walls. Only a wide harbor filled with ships and sea birds, separated the frigid ocean from the village.

No great citadel greeted him, no sparkling palace. Yet, it was not the same tribe as years past. Gone were the huts and animal skin tents. A broad path in the snow led from the port to a neat cluster of igloos nestled at the snow covered foot of the mountains, cradled by a low wall. The only permanent settlement was the low rotunda of sculpted ice and snow that crowned the village. The home of the Southern Tribe winked with fire light in the eternal dawn.

Fire Lord Zuko breathed in the crisp, familiar scent of brine and metallic snow, as his cruiser dropped anchor in the harbor. In minutes his motor boat reached the shore, and his breath of fire was the only thing keeping him from shivering right out of his parka. Summer or not, Zuko was chilled to the bone.

Three figures greeted him on the docks of ice. All were male, tall and broad. One broke away and as he grew closer his voice carried over the arctic wind, until he was only a few feet away.

“Gran Gran will be happy to see you wearing the parka she made you, though… the matching toboggan seems to be missing.”

Zuko smiled as he was enveloped into an embrace, “Hello, to you too, Sokka.”

The warrior gave him a quick squeeze and pulled back, his characteristic grin plastered on his face. Zuko looked down at his previously mentioned navy blue parka. It was cut in the Fire Nation style, and lined with white fur. “Well, I couldn't refuse a gift from a foreign dignitary, especially one that was handmade for me.”

“Certainly not, parkas of that quality can take an entire winter to hand stitch. To have one made for you is a declaration of trust and allyship, sacred to our tribe.” Zuko looked up to the second Warrior, taller than Sokka, but narrower in the shoulders. The firebender bowed formally,

“General Bato,”

There was a bark of laughter, and the third man joined the group, “General... that’s a good one.”

The tall warrior rolled his eyes, “What would you prefer, Hakoda, ‘Igloo-maker in Chief’?”

The leader of the southern Water Tribe threw his arm around the warriors shoulders and smiled, “As long as it's not my igloo.”

There was another round of chuckles, and Hakoda grasped Zuko’s forearm in a formal greeting.

“You really should take care of that parka. Bato’s not kidding, they do take all winter and you know how long those are around here.”

“I’ll be sure to express my gratitude to Kanna when I see her.”

“Glad to hear it,” Hakoda smiled softly, but his eyes turned more earnest, and he placed a strong hand on Zuko’s shoulder. The Fire Lord’s guards didn't even flinch. Snow swirled absentmindedly around the group in the moments before the chief spoke, “I believe we have some things to discuss.”

Zuko nodded, his hand dipping unconsciously into the pocket of his parka, “yes, we do.”

___

Talking could wait, apparently, as Zuko and the rest of his crew were loaded up into sleds (recently reintroduced to the tribe's way of life, after they finally had enough food to feed arctic dogs as well as themselves) and taken to the village. It was bigger up close, but barely larger than the smallest of villages in his home country. Children trailed after them, and Zuko smiled as Captain Jee sent little spirals of sparks, like fireworks, towards their awed faces.

Sokka was giving him a very speedy tour, pointing out new landmarks and trying to explain who lived in what igloo, before they passed by in a shower of kicked up snow. The main gathering building of the tribe was circular and sprawling. Multiple branches and bubbles of different rooms peaked out of the drifts of snow. The ship's crew was taken to the temporary barracks to get cleaned up before the feast that the tribe's women had prepared. Zuko was led to the guest house he usually occupied on his visits.

Zuko tried to refuse any big ta-do about his arrival. It wasn't even an official visit. He knew that even if the tribe was quickly bouncing back after the war, that there wasn't much food to spare. However, the tribe members had been insistent, and he couldn't really argue.

He followed Sokka around the backside of the rotunda to the igloos and huts that Chief Hakoda’s family and visitors used.

He tried not to let his eyes drift to the home nestled between his and the chief’s. It’s doorway was dark, no smoke curled from its chimney, and from the snow drifted against the door, it had not been entered in a while.

That’s a good thing, he said to himself.

He wasn’t very convincing.

“You know, I'm surprised you haven't asked about her yet.”

Zuko stilled at the door of his igloo, a now familiar place. He let his eyes linger on the other home.

“I know she’s not here, and that’s how I wanted it to be, so…” he trailed off.

“What has it been? Six months?” Sokka continued past him carrying Zuko’s trunk with little effort. He set it down by the large cot and bed roll. Zuko sighed and followed suit. The space was immediately warmer than the outside air. The curtain of a door settled behind him.

“Seven… and three quarters.” He grabbed a tea kettle and set it on the small cooking fire at the center of the single room house. Sokka plopped down on the cushions around the pit, arranging them so he could comfortable lounge back.

“Hey, I haven't seen Suki in almost five months. I mean,” there was a grunt as Sokka removed his boots, “It's not quite the same, since me and Suki are technically married and you guys…” Sokka seemed to struggle for the right thing to say. In the meantime Zuko removed his own boots and parka, which had grown hot, and ran a hand through his unbound hair. He had kept it roughly the same length for the past five years.

“We agreed that this was the best thing for everyone. Katara’s where she's needed, and so am I.” Sokka raised a critical brow, but just shrugged.

“And, I'm sure your visit here has nothing to do with ‘being where you're needed’” Zuko shot him a withering look. Sokka had the decency to look sheepish.

“Hey,” the warrior raised his hands in surrender, “I only speaking the truth.”

Zuko wasn’t quite ready to face the truth.

He wasn’t ready, because the truth frightened him. It kept him up at night. It made him lose focus in meetings and it made him count the days between every time he saw her. He knew the truth, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“Well, buddy, I’m just glad you’re here.”

Zuko looked up from inspecting the tea pot, and smiled, ever so slightly,

“Me too.”

___

The meal was no feast or ball, but the entire village gathered in the largest and center-most room of the rotunda. The tribe’s numbers, with it’s warriors returned, and half a decade of peace, had grown to nearly 200. Yet, the room didn’t seem cramped as everyone piled onto cushions around low dining tables. Even when Zuko’s crew and personal guards (who where only there on principle, Zuko had never felt safer than among the Southern Water Tribe), joined the company, the crowded space felt comfortable and warm.

Zuko had been placed in the seat of honor, at the left hand of chief Hakoda, and the right hand of Kanna, the chief's mother, and the village’s elder. As per tradition, the youngest of the group and the unmarried women served the rest of the tribe before eating. Sokka told him once, that the action was to reinforce loyalty and represent how they serve their tribe first, until they marry, or become adults.

The food was traditional water tribe cuisine, made by collective effort of the women, both married and unmarried, of the tribe.

Platters of roasted fish, and savory rein-caribou meat was served, alongside various stews and cooked greens. sea prunes, clams, and other crustaceans were also distributed. The food, like the tribe who made it, was hearty. It was salty, and fatty, and so unlike the hot spices and complicated recipes of his Zuko’s homeland. The Fire Lord hadn’t had a meal as delicious in a long time.

The room was filled with chattering voices and laughing children, muffled by the animal pelts and cushions they all lounged on. Everyone had striped their outer clothes off, and the parkas joined the piles of furs surrounding the group. People moved from table to table, catching up on the day's activities and trading jokes and stories. The older warriors took special interest in comparing notes with his crew on sailing techniques. Every member of the tribe, from the oldest widow, to the mother’s with their tiny babies, came to Zuko’s table and greeted him formally. Zuko gave them a warriors handshake or a bow, according to their age. Some of the children brought him tiny, crude, carvings of bone, made in the shapes of animals or people. In return, he bestowed a carefully wrapped cake from the satchel at his side into their tiny hands. The pastries were crunchy on the outside and impossibly soft on the inside; shaped like lotus flowers. They were straight from the royal kitchens, and Zuko pretended not to notice when they came back for seconds.

Zuko barely had time to eat the food that had been piled onto his plate, between greeting the tribe, and joining into the discussions at his own table, but he made do.

“So, young man,” Zuko turned from giving a little girl her third pastry, to Kanna. The older woman had finished her bowl of stew, and was now working on the delicate and complex embroidery on a deep blue parka. “What is it you plan to do with all those carvings the children are giving you?”

Zuko smiled, and turned to look at the small army of animals he had absentmindedly arranged in rows next to his table setting.

“I’ll probably put them with the others. I have a glass bureau in my office that holds some of the gifts I’ve received from other dignitaries. The children’s carvings have their own shelf.” The carvings had become a sort of tradition every time he came to visit.

She chuckled, it was a rumbling, gravelly sound, “I can’t imagine these next to the rich items you must get.”

Zuko picked up the carving closest to him. It was a black wolf-whale. The little boy who had given it to him, had charred the bone to mimic the pattern of black and white splotches of the animal in real life.

“Yeah, but these are my favorite.”

He ran his hands along the upright fin on its back.

Kanna smiled quietly to herself and returned to her embroidery.

Slowly, as the night went on, the children grew tired, and their parents bid last goodbyes to the members of Zuko’s table. And as the kids were rebundled up and carried, sleepily, back to their own homes, the rest of the village filed out as well. The younger men and women left in groups, or pairs, laughing heartily together, to spend time among themselves. The widows and widowed warriors bore their own farewells. Soon, even the village elders grew sore of sitting and talking and eating, and went their own ways, wishing the guidance and protection of the spirits in the dreams of their chief, his family, and the Fire Lord.

The dishes had been cleared away much earlier in the night, so when Hakoda led them into a hall toward a small study, they left the gathering room quiet and empty.

Zuko rose from his seat, and extended his elbow to Kanna, who excepted it with a pat to his for arm and a smile.

“Such good manners.” She praised. Zuko felt himself blush.

The adjacent room was furnished with low couches and a stone fireplace that peaked out of the white ice walls. More thick pelts lined the floor. Zuko recognized the large maple shelves and desk as those he gifted Hakoda himself, made of the finest Fire Nation lumber.

Sokka, Kanna, Bato, and Zuko all settled into the couches, as the Chief pulled out a dark blue glass bottle from the bottom drawer of his desk. He poured each member of the group a drink of the clear liquid, before he sat another one of the couches, instead of his high backed desk chair.

Zuko took a sip, and tried not to wince as the alcohol burned his throat. Immediately, he was warmer than before. He watched the others. Zuko knew what was coming.

Hakoda took a very slow sip of his drink, and turned to the firebender.

“I’m assuming you didn't sail all the way down to the South Pole to take in the scenery.”

Zuko swallowed, as they all turned their attention to him.

“No, no I didn't.” he took another drink, stealing his nerves, then placed the glass down.

“Me and Katara have discussed it, at length.” Zuko found that Kanna’s stare was level and calm, he felt reassured. “She thinks it’s the best thing for us, and I agree.” Zuko looked around the room.

“We want, no… we're going to get married.”

Zuko didn’t know what reaction he would receive. He had been obsessing over what Katara’s family would say, what they would do, since the idea of marriage first entered his mind. He expected it would involve being forcefully thrown into the arctic ocean. The sensible part of his mind knew there was nothing to worry about, since almost immediately after him and Katara had announced their courtship her family, and her tribe, had taken him in as one of their own (Bato had even teased them about step-grand children). Yet, the other voice in his head still haunted him with fears of rejection. But, Hakoda only sat up, placed his glass down, looked into Zuko’s eyes, and waited for him to continue.

So Zuko did.

“We know that it’s not going to be easy. We know that it will be dangerous. We know that we each have responsibilities and duties, and I respect hers and she respects mine. We’ve been considering it for a while now, and it's what we both want. I know that relations between my nation and yours, are...tense, but they're getting better, and there's people where I’m from that won’t like it, but I think that together, we can show that the four nations can coexist and that the Fire Nation cares about reperatio-”

Hakoda held up a hand, Zuko went silent, he swallowed again.

The chief looked deep into his eyes, Zuko didn't break the contact.

“I don’t care what your union means politically. I don’t care what message it will send to the other nations, what message it will send for your people, son. I just want to know one thing.”

“Anything.”

“Do you love her?”

Immediately, he answered, “Yes,” his hand settled on his chest, between his two lungs, where he knew the scar sat, “with all my heart.”

Zuko looked around the room, each pair of bright blue eyes were fixed on him.

“I don’t know when I started to, maybe it was the day of the comet, maybe before, maybe after, but when I asked her to come with me to fight my sister and regain my throne, I knew it had to be her that came. I love Katara, but before that, I trust her. I trust her with my life. I trust her with my people and my country. I would die for her.”

Zuko felt it then, the ghost of the pain, the exhilaration, the fear as he watched Azula take aim. “Taking that lightning was the easiest thing I’ve ever done, and I would do it again, ten thousand times over.”

Bato spoke next, “And she feels the same way?”

Zuko thought, for a second, replaying the last five years in his mind. The image that lingered in his mind was the flashes of blue fire through clear water as she battled Azula, risking her life to defeat the most dangerous firebender in the world, just to save him.

He smiled, gently, “Yes, I know she does.”

Kanna’s face was stone, “You swore an oath to serve your people and your country? Is that correct Fire Lord Zuko?”

He nodded. The elder looked him in the eye. He felt like she was looking deep into his soul.

“In our culture, the marriage vow outweighs any oath to lord or land. Katara must come first, before your throne, before your crown. The binding of two souls is far more ancient than any border or king, as old as the very first marriage of the spirits Tui and La. The promise you will make to each other trumps any other loyalty, and will last beyond your last breath, into the next life. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.” he instinctively reached into his pocket, “The only reason Katara doesn't know I’m here is because she would say that asking for permission from the bride's family was an outdated tradition” Sokka smirked at that, “but I also know how much your good opinion means to her, and I don’t want to hide anything from you.

“I want to do this by the book, so I’m here, to ask you personally,” he looked from person to person, “do me and Katara have your blessing for our union?”

There was silence in the room. No one moved. Zuko barely breathed.

Then Kanna rose, slowly. Instinctively Zuko moved to help her but she held up a withered hand and crossed over to him.

“Kneel, and close your eyes.”

Zuko did.

He felt her brush her fingers across his forehead.

“Now,” he looked up, “I, Kanna, matriarch of the Southern Water Tribe, mother to Hakoda, grandmother to Sokka and Katara, grant you my blessing, and the blessings of the spirits for your union.” She looked behind her, “Does anyone present of the bride's family object to the bestoying of the blessing?”

The only response was Sokka’s wide grin. Kanna nodded, and returned to her seat. Zuko stood, he couldnt hid the joy on his face, he bowed, low, to each person in the room.

“So,” Hakoda dawned a smile for himself, “have you carved the necklace?”

___

Later that night, Sokka walked Zuko back to his igloo. After Zuko’s announcement there were multiple rounds of celebratory drinks, and the pair was distinctly drunk. The southern warrior threw his arm around the other man’s shoulders as they neared the entrance.

“You know, Zuko…” He burped, “we all knew it was a matter of time before you asked her. Dad just put you through all those formalities to make you sweat.”

Zuko chuckled, “Well, it worked.”

His friend, and soon to be brother-in-law, turned to him, seriously, "You also have to know Zuko, that if Katara was here she would object to you asking us not just because it's and 'outdated tradition' but because there's no question that our answer would be 'yes'."

The Fire Lord looked at the ground, "I just... wanted to be sure."

Sokka shook his head, placing a hand on Zuko's shoulder, "We love you, Zuko. Everyone does. Honestly, I think Gran-gran likes you more than me, which hurts, but whatever," he shrugged, "bottom line, your an important part of this family, and you were long before you an Katara started sucking face." Zuko couldn't hold back a snort of laughter,

"I know, but sometimes it's hard, I'm not used to the whole 'unconditional love' stuff." he looked back, across the shining tops of the tribe, "you all just make it look so...easy."

Sokka laughed, "Yeah, tell that to dad the next time I loose blueprints."

He ruffled Zuko's hair, and returned to his position leaning on him.

“So, when are you formally popping the question?”

Zuko’s eyes traveled over to Katara’s igloo next door, then to the lights of the harbor beyond, and the twinkling stars and moon reflected in the still water.

“She comes back from Ba Sing Se in three weeks, so I figured as soon as she got home.”

Katara’s brother nodded, then grasped each of Zuko’s shoulders, making him look into his eyes, “That means you're staying long enough for bro time?” his brow was furrowed in absolute seriousness.

“I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”

___

!!PLEASE REBLOG WITH THOUGHTS AND CRITICISMS!!

You guuuuuuys... it’s officially Zutara Week!!! YEE HAW!!!

Anyway, I’m sorry there was only indirect Katara in today’s submission. That will be rectified tomorrow. My plan for this year (though I haven't followed any plan for Zutara Week yet) is that all of my submissions will be apart of a linear narrative. It starts with today’s prompt, five years after the war, and goes from there. All of the submissions can be stand alone, but thay can also all be tied together. The only day that won’t follow this is Day Three: Celestial. I really love that particular one so its special. All of this could change, so don’t quote me on that. I hope you enjoyed :D

P.S. I’ll be tagging all my Zutara Week submissions for this year #ems zkw2020

#ems zkw2020 #Zutara week #zutara week 2020 #zutara #Zuko and Katara #atla #Avatar The Last Airbender #avatar fanfiction #zutara fanfiction #Zuko #katara #sokka #hakoda #bato

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thatfuckinjester · 4 months

Text

phantom locking himself in his room when they're back from the tour, everyday he forgets the meaning of words because he hasn't been taught really, he taught himself the language topside, and then as long as he doesn't use it he forgets it, and almost a week later aurora is knocking on his door and tries to talk to him but he can't understand her and she just leaves in the end

#ghost #the band ghost #nameless ghouls #phantom #phantom ghoul #phantom ghost #aurora #aurora ghoulette #aurora ghost #phantom believing that he's being sent back to the pit

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jonathananubian · 4 years

Text

Phase: Ponds & Mace [SWs Fic]

Part 2

Waking to the bright lights of the medical bay aboard the Endurance Ponds winced. There was a small chuckle above him and the light dimmed, revealing the Corps' chief medic. "Alright there, vod?" Waving the man away he slowly sat up, feeling weak as a newly decanted cadet. Closing his eyes he focused on himself and felt a faint ripple in the force around him. Memories flooded into his mind and he let out a small gasp. Turbo reached for him, concerned, and Ponds held onto the medic's hand as if he were a drowning man.

"Turbo, where's the General?" Ponds asked in Mando'a. Turbo's eyes widened in surprise for a moment before his expression softened and he smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, vod, the General was sent back to his quarters after a quick dip in bacta. You've been out for three days." Turbo said, also slipping into Mando'a. Ponds' alarm grew. He knew he'd pushed himself trying to save Mace but he didn't think he'd pushed himself that hard. It must have been the force exhaustion Haat'buir warned them all about. "What has you so spooked vod? The General wouldn't tell us what happened down there." Ponds felt a familiar pang of warmth in his chest and bit the inside of his cheek to keep the feeling in check. "The General was trapped under a collapsed building. The whole thing came down n our heads. He pushed me out of the way with the force to save me." Turbo winced in sympathy, knowing exactly how that must have felt for his commander. Not everyone knew about which brothers were force sensitive, or what their abilities were. Only the highest ranked vode who knew how to keep that information out of enemy hands and the chief medics of each battalion knew exactly who was force sensitive. It was just safer that way. Turbo knew every vod that was force sensitive and what their powers were. So he could easily put two and two together and figure out exactly what Ponds must have been feeling watching tons of rubble fall on the man he wanted so dearly to protect. If Mace hadn't chosen to throw him out of the way Ponds would have been perfectly fine. His ability would have saved him. "I dove in after him." Turbo's eyes went wide and Ponds' shoulders fell slightly. He knew it was a risk and yet he couldn't just leave Mace to suffocate or worse. "Vod... does he... does he know? Did he see you?" The further slump of Ponds' shoulders and the way his head fell forward in defeat was enough of an answer for the chief medic. "Fuck, vod, what are we going to do?" Ponds heaved a sigh before sitting up straight, jaw clenched in resignation. "We call the Rid'alor." Turbo blinked at him for a moment before frowning at his suggestion. "I know you lot want to believe your buire can fix anything but this is the head of the jetiise we're talking about here." Ponds gave Turbo a dry look, shaking his head. "I meant he could get me transferred. Maybe fake my death and have the medics produce some false autopsy results. We could play my force sensitivity ogg as some sort of weird fluke." Turbo's mouth snapped shut with a click. "You don't want to be transferred, vod. You... you love working with the General." Ponds didn't respond, though his face did color slightly and he swallowed bitterly. "You can't even lie to the General on a good day. How are you going to fake your own death? Knowing that he would be grieving for you would tear you apart." He was right, force dammit. Ponds was terrible at lying to Mace. The idea of faking his own death and leaving both the General and his men made something sickly pool in the pit of his stomach. These were his men and his General. He didn't want to just leave them. "I'd hate it. But I will do what I must to protect my vode." Turbo squeezed his shoulder in sympathy and understanding. They all did what they had to in order to keep one another safe. "I'll see if I can get someone to-" Something at the edge of his senses brushed against his mind and he turned to the door just as it opened. Turbo froze, mouth still open, as Mace stepped inside. His dark eyes were searching and Ponds felt his mouth turn dry as his hands began to tremble faintly with nerves. "Turbo, I'd like a word with Ponds for a moment." The man said, never looking away from his commander. "Alone, if you would." It wasn't quite an order, but it wasn't a request either. After a year at war they had come to understand Mace's subtle moods. Turbo gave him a look and he shook his head minutely. There was no reason to deny the request. The chief medic hesitated a moment before standing up from the chair next to him. At the door he gave Ponds one last concerned look before the door closed behind him. Mace stood near the doorway quietly, not stepping further into the room, and Ponds didn't dare look at him. After a long silence that seemed to last forever he felt, as well as heard, Mace quietly cross the floor and settle in the chair Turbo had left vacant. The man let out a slow breath before carefully reaching out with the force. Ponds flinched slightly as the cool shadowed calm that was Mace's presence in the force gently brushed against his shields. Knowing that there was no way Mace had missed his use of the force earlier he lowered his shields and let the man in. "Oh." Came the almost breathless word from the Master of the Order as he, for the first time, felt the true depth of Ponds' presence in the force. He wasn't quite sure what the man would be able to sense of him. Ever since they were small his brothers had a hard time describing how he felt in the force. He was elusive, fleeting, and hazy. Fading in and out of existence- like a mirage. Tentatively Mace lay a hand on Ponds' wrist, as if trying to make sure whether or not he was actually there. Ponds moved his arm and carefully caught Mace's hand in his own, giving it a tight squeeze to show that he was there. That he was real and not some phantom. Then, with barely a thought, he pulled his hand through Mace's, watching his face for any kind of reaction. "What the kark?" Ponds can't help it. The blatant confusion on the man's face makes him crack up a little. "I don't know how to explain it, and neither does anyone else either. It's just what the force blessed me with at birth." Looking into Mace's dark eyes he could see a wealth of understanding there that he wasn't quite sure what to do with. He pulled his hands into his lap. "You asked me how I was able to get to you while you were trapped." He swallowed. "This. This is how. Solid matter means nothing to me. If I need to get into a room no door can stop me, except anything made with force repelling materials." He'd used it a few times when his men or civilians were captured and needed to be rescued swiftly. There was an added bonus where going through electronics had a tendency to short them out. It was all too easy to override door locks by just shoving his hand into the wall and pulling it back out again. Mace placed a hand on top of his and Ponds can't help but look back at him. Their gazes locked together and Mace's hand tightens on his. "I swear to you, Ponds, that I will tell no one about this." Ponds' chest feels warm and his throat is tight. "You risked your secret to save my life." There was something fierce in his eyes, determined and strong. "Besides, I would never willingly betray your trust." Ponds wants to believe him so, so, badly. Mace must be able to see his indecision, either on his face or in the force. The man leans closer to him, his voice a gentle murmur, smooth and soft like always when the two of them are alone. "Ponds, please." There is a slight waver in his voice that makes the commander's heart thump heavily against his ribs. "I don't want to lose you." Had he overheard them speaking? Did the man know Mando'a? After a year at war with his troops he suspected that Mace had learned more of their language than he let on. The admission that he didn't want to lose Ponds made the force feel warm and comforting around them, almost approving. A blush creeps over his face, coloring his cheeks and ears. Bashfully he looks down at his lap. Turning his hand over he tentatively laces their fingers together, feeling a little too overwhelmed to look Mace in the eyes. "I don't want to leave you either Mace." His General, no, his jedi lets out a ragged breath. "I know the code you hold yourself to, both as a warrior and a jedi. I don't want to distract you from your path or cause you pain but..." But. It was such a small word. Yet it was filled with so much promise, and so much danger. Being one of the few force sensitive clones meant he had a duty to his brothers, to protect them. If it came down to it he would kill himself rather than let anyone find his brothers. That didn't even touch on the idea of light or dark sides of the force and what might happen if either he or Mace fell. As if sensing where his thoughts were heading Mace tightened his grip. "The Code is not absolute. There is a difference between love and attachment." Ponds' heartbeat was loud in the silent room, beating against his rib cage. Trying to push away the well of feelings that had sprung up within him he felt Mace's calm touch against his mind and shuddered. With both of their force presences intertwined like this there was no way the man could not feel everything Ponds was feeling. "Ponds." Using that soft tone of voice on him just wasn't fair. Neither was the steady kindness and determination threading through him and shoring him up, filling him with strength. "Will you show me the difference?" His voice sounded so far away to his own ears but it was clear he had been heard by the surprised warmth that flooded through him. Finally looking up he sees the small smile on a normally stern face. "I promise. We'll walk this path together." Leaning forward Mace presses their foreheads together and Ponds' closes his eyes. It is the first time he's felt so sure of himself since leaving Kamino. "Ner jetii." Ponds whispers quietly, reverently. Mace laughs joyfully and the force sings with happiness. This is a side story to a bigger project. If you’re interested it can be found here; https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608202 Tagging, since you seemed really interested. @lyumia0202

#mace windu #commander ponds #mace/ponds #cc-6454 #force sensitive clones #91st battalion #comfort

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imagine-loki · 4 years

Text

Atlas: Space, Mercury

TITLE: Atlas: Space

CHAPTER NO./ONE-SHOT: 2/12

AUTHOR: fanfictrashdump

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine narrating episodes of Loki’s life with the Avengers based on the songs from Sleeping At Last’s “Atlas: Space” album.

RATING: T-M

NOTES/WARNINGS: Welcome to my Sleeping At Last’s Atlas: Space challenge, aka Another writing project I do not have time for, but my brain insisted on doing.

This series will be less like a multichapter fic and more of a one-shot compendium, but that they all interconnect in one way or another. It will revolve around Loki and Becca’s relationship (Taking Turns, Glow, Helmet Heists–don’t worry, more Loki-Charlie stuff will be along) and I will use those one-shots as reference to the timeline. Each chapter will be one song, used as inspiration for the story.

Warnings include: language, maybe, and morally grey debates about killing bad guys, angst (so much angst), and a thoroughly confused Loki.

Chapter 2: Mercury

Summary: Becca did not expect to feel this way after her first official mission. Loki did not expect to care how she felt, one way or another. Takes place after Helmet Heists.

“Heya, Lokes. How’s it going?”

Loki looked up, brow furrowed in a calculating expression. Tony Stark was not one to casually strike up a conversation with him unless it was of the utmost importance and he had no other choice. Therefore, the almost cheery way he had plopped himself down beside him on the couch was a matter of extreme curiousness.

Loki was having none of it.

“What is this?”

“I only asked how you were?” Tony sounded unsure, put looked all around innocent until he let out a long puff of air that made his cheeks inflate. “OK, I wanted to ask you how Becks was.”

Loki rolled his eyes and turned the page on his book, his attention now on the tight script before him. “I daresay she’s your employee, Stark, not mine. Why would I know?”

“Maybe because she’s the only person you talk to, and you’d be able to tell if she were OK. And the fact that you’ve been sticking to her like glue since we got back from the Hellhole. I don’t know, it gives me the inkling that you do, indeed, know.”

Stark wasn’t wrong.

Rebecca was the only human that Loki seemed to find bearable most of the time. She wasn’t loud or brash or mindless. Her taste in literature wasn’t half bad, either.

But she was human. And mortal. And beneath him.

For the longest time, he had tried not to get too attached, but this last mission certainly became a turning point in their relationship. It wasn’t bad, per se. They understood each other’s body language in a way that only two introverts could, and they worked together well as a team, but… she was so soft and innocent and everything he was most certainly not. Loki tended to scoff and ridicule humans such as this, not attempt to ensure their safety and their ongoing wellbeing, even after the fact.

Those eyes, though…

“Lokes?” Apparently Loki had been silent for much longer than was considered normal. He tended to do that a lot, as of late, always in relation to that dreary mortal.

Loki shifted uncomfortably at the memory of Becca’s eyes on the jet ride back. “I would say she takes issue with the moral ambiguity of killing an enemy. Regardless of whether or not they deserved it.”

Rows of houses Sound asleep Only streetlights Notice me

He nearly wanted to laugh at himself. Taking issue was probably the understatement of the year.

More than once, while he was doing his nightly walks, he would find Becca on the roof, staring at the world below–at the forests, the darkness, at the nothingness. She would stand, shivering in the night air, as she tried to make out shapes in the inky black abyss. It would take him two or three mentions of her name to rouse her from contemplative stupor. And, even then, Loki could tell she was not all there.

She always smiled, pushing through the oppressive chaos in her head and ask him about his day. As if she had not been fixing to fall apart a second before.

Damn her and her empathy.

I am desperate If nothing else In a holding pattern To find myself

I talk in circles I talk in circles I watch for signals For a clue

More than once he had swallowed whatever irritation would bubble to the surface in an effort to get her talking. Instead of his usually acidic demands for her to get on with it, he simply nodded in what he hoped was an encouraging manner and waited for her to spill her thoughts, as repetitive as they were. Not that he could blame her.

He remembered the first time he had killed something. He was seven. It had been a rabbit while on a hunt. He cried for three days, afterwards, until an Einherjar had scoffed and told him that was how life worked and he needed to accept it. Loki hadn’t cried when that particular soldier did not come home from a siege in Vanaheim a hundred years later. Nor for the hundreds that had been lost in battles, since. What was the point? Creatures lived and died, sometimes by his blade. That was life.

How to feel different How to feel new Like science fiction Bending truth

“Why do you keep asking that, Loki?” She had whined, pulling the edges of his cloak, which he had laid over her bare shoulders to shield her against the wind. He had asked if she was doing alright. “You know I’m physically fine. You made sure of that.”

He had not meant to inquire after her physical well-being, and Becca very well knew that. She also knew that he would die a fiery death before insisting “but, how do you feel?” Loki had made an annoyed noise and stormed off with the intention to hide in his room. He had doubled back, halfway there, only to watch her wipe away tears from the corners of her eyes when she thought herself alone. He still went back to his room, but he felt like a rock was lodged in his stomach all the way there.

“Could you do me a favor and keep an eye on her? She’s been really jumpy and anxious at work, but she keeps telling me she’s fine.” Tony sighed. “I just worry about her, man.”

Loki offered a sympathetic look, despite his initial reaction to sneer back at the Iron Man. Breaking old habits was hard. “I know. I will.”

No one can unring this bell Unsound this alarm, unbreak my heart new God knows I am dissonance Waiting to be swiftly pulled into tune

The Asgardian prince had found his friend in a hidden corner of the library. It looked like she had started to read one of the many tomes on Asgardian technology he had lent her, before her mind betrayed her. Becca was staring straight in front of her, brown eyes empty of any emotion yet full of doubts and insecurities.

“Rebecca.” His whisper clapped like thunder in the eerie silence of the library.

She snapped out of her trance and offered him a smile. “Sorry, did you say something, Lo?”

Gods above, help me.

Loki sighed, pulling a chair beside her and sinking down. Even seated, he was still significantly taller than her, but she found that she felt a little less nervous when he tried to get on her level. It was a kindness, she knew, but the concern buried deep in his gaze did little to make her feel better. If anything, she felt worse. If she had stayed in the jet, if she had followed directions, who would she be today? Could she be able to sleep? Could she stop waking up in cold sweats at all hours of the morning?

“Dearest, talk to me.” The use of pet names were few and far between with Loki. He much preferred calling anyone “hey, you” or “imbecile come here”. So the use of a term of endearment…

Did she really look in that dire a state?

“Tony sent you, huh?” Becca thought she might as well deflect until he felt uncomfortable. That usually worked.

“No, I sent myself,” he assured, frowning. The expression he received in exchange screamed you’ve gotta be kidding me. “Though Tony expressed interest in also knowing how you were,” he admitted and Becca rolled her eyes. Swallowing whatever shard of emotion that was attempting to convince him to let the whole thing go, he craned his neck until his gaze could easily fix on hers. “You cannot go on like this, you know it. You cannot keep replaying scenarios in hopes of finding a loophole to villainize yourself with.”

I know the further I go The harder I try, only keeps my eyes closed And somehow I’ve fallen in love With this middle ground at the cost of my soul

Becca groaned, the sincerity in his voice making the pit in her stomach grow larger. The edges of her perfectly crafted calmness began to fray and she was sure that the god could easily feel it unraveling under his stare. “It can’t be this simple, Loki.” She couldn’t live her life without feeling guilty, she meant. Surely, she had to spend the rest of eternity purging herself of these demons before she could allow herself even a morsel of comfort. If not, was she not just a monster?

Loki chuckled drily, placing a hand on her shoulder and its weight felt like a welcome balm to her shot nerves. “Who said anything about simple? You took lives. Nothing about that is simple. Believe me, I understand. But, on rare occasions, the ends do justify the means.”

Her head fell, hanging between her shoulders in a sign of defeat she should have never had to deal with. Stark shouldn’t have asked her to come on the mission, but she saved ten of the two dozen from dying in battle due to faults in their equipment. She saved him from what she thought was certain death (and might have been). Her heart was too good for this dark, sludgy world of his, he knew.

He wanted to hate it, to scoff at her naivety, at her hopefulness for the rotting lump that was her world. He couldn’t. He craved it, instead, and wondered how he had ever lived his thousand plus years without that little beacon of hope.

His chest hurt. Loki supposed that was the place his heart was meant to be, and the phantom organ had clenched at her tears, once she had managed to face him again.

She sniffed. “I don’t know if I can live with that.”

Yet I know, if I stepped aside Released the controls you would open my eyes That somehow, all of this mess Is just my attempt to know the worth of my life In precious metals

“I can,” he said simply. The surety of his voice and the clear lack of remorse made her something inside her feel warm like lava, rather than a fireplace’s hearth. She shuddered at his set expression and the glimmer of bloodlust in his stare. “I would have killed a hundredfold more, if it meant bringing you back safe. I will never live to regret that.” Loki was surprised to find that none of these words were a lie. He didn’t want her dead. He wanted her to thrive. He wanted her not to feel this gnawing emptiness that followed the taking of life. “You are my friend and you’re worth many more than that.”

“I don’t think that’s true, but thanks, anyway,” she muttered.

“Would I lie to you?” Never in his life had he wished for someone to ignore his nature and reply in the negative, than he did right now.

Becca’s mouth twisted in a reluctant smile. “Absolutely.” His heart clenched again, and this time there was no doubt about it. “But I don’t think you are.”

A long stretch of silence encompassed them.

“I want to return.”

“Return?” He frowned.

“To the field.” She sighed, pulling her shoulders back and sitting up straight. He had seen that pose before, when she was resolute to solve an issue or dissect a conundrum. He saw it when she had run from the jet and skidded to a stop beside him. “The reason I’ve been feeling so miserable is that fact that I feel awful about what I’ve done, but I can’t ever leave you guys out there alone, again. Not after what I’ve seen. And I’ve never felt this conflicted.”

“It’s what we signed up for, dove,” he assured, tucking a strand of her long brown hair behind her ear with incredible gentleness. “You needn’t worry about us. We’ll be perfectly fine as long as you’re there to greet us back.”

“That’s like telling me I don’t have to worry about the sky suddenly turning green. I’m going to do it, anyway.” Becca wasn’t sure why, but she followed up his silent question. “I’m going to get my training certifications back up-to-date, log in some time on local raids, and I’m joining missions.”

“Darling, you don't–”

“I’m going back! That’s final!” Becca snapped so loudly that Loki jumped, startled, and leaned back ever so slightly.

He blinked a few times to live down his surprise and offered her a nod. “Then, I will dutifully follow.” He smirked, nudging her side playfully. “Someone has to keep you alive.” Lest I attempt to destroy this pathetic planet, once more.

He hated that this was his first thought, but he knew he would follow her to Helheim and back to see her through. He needed to protect that light, that shine, that glow.

I’ll go anywhere you want me

#Loki #Angst #Others #Submitted fic #submission #atlas space #mercury #Fanfictrashdump #chapter 2

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iamreykylotrash · 4 years

Text

Have you ever heard the tragedy of the Skywalkers?

It was a bloodline that was tainted by a phantom emperor who wanted nothing but to rule the whole galaxy and engulf it in darkness. He created Anakin Skywalker in the womb of his mother, Shmi. Later in his life, Anakin met and fell in love with the beautiful queen, Padme Amidala. They got married and Padme had become pregnant. Anakin was happy that he was going to be a father. But one day, he dreamed of losing his true love in childbirth. He became afraid and the emperor used this fear to lure him closer to the darkness. It worked. The queen later died, not cause of childbirth, but because the loss of her husband was too much for her heart to bear. And once her husband found out of her death, and knew that he was the cause of it, his heart would be struck with intense grief. Anakin Skywalker died that day, but that same day was the birth of Darth Vader, the man who would become the most feared sith lord in the galaxy.

But years later, on the sandy planet of Tatooine, there lived a reckless and stubborn boy who knew that he had a greater purpose in his life. That boy would be known as Luke Skywalker. He wanted to become a Jedi, knowing that his father was one. But he did not know the dark truth in his family. He would later confront Darth Vader, who told him that he was his father. Luke did not want to believe it, but deep down he knew that it was true. Then Luke would find out that he had a twin sister. It was the princess that he rescued, Leia Organa. Even though she did not complete her Jedi training, Luke vowed to protect her. In the last confrontation with his father, the emperor tried to tempt Luke into killing him, but he did not let the darkness win. Then the emperor, knowing that he would not be able to turn him, tried to kill him instead. Darth Vader saw his son cry out to him, begging him to save him, and he did. He threw the phantom emperor to his “death”, saving his son but he was not able to save himself. Luke knew that even though his father committed horrific acts, the light still shined through him at the end of his life.

Then as the years passed, Leia Organa would have her own son with Han Solo. She named him "Ben" after Obi-Wan Kenobi, who she considered her only hope at the time when she greatly needed him. Ben Solo, the grandson of Anakin Skywalker, was a happy little boy, wanting to be just like his father. But when he grew older, the darkness was growing inside of him. He was sent with his uncle to train to become a Jedi. But eventually, Luke would see the darkness that his nephew had and he feared it. He took out his lightsaber, thinking that killing Ben would be the only way to stop it, but he immediately regretted it. Then he saw his nephew look at him with shocked and afraid eyes. That day would be the birth of Kylo Ren, the Jedi Killer.

Kylo Ren was ruthless and feared by everyone. He was a man who intended to get anything that he wanted and if he didn't, there would be consequences to those who did not accomplish their orders. One day, he heard that there was a girl with the droid that held the coordinates to the location of Luke Skywalker, who was in hiding. He found the girl and took her, thinking that she would tell him about the droid, but she fought, locking him out of her mind and exposing his fear of not becoming strong as Darth Vader was. But Kylo, being focused on the power that he wanted, ultimately led him to kill his own father, who wanted nothing more for him to come home. Kylo knew that the girl held power and that would be confirmed when they fought for the first time and she beat him. Then they would be bonded by the Force. Of course, at first, they did not want to speak or look at one another. But the more they connected, the more they knew that they were the same. Kylo began to fall for the girl and she for him. Kylo and the girl defeated the person who supposedly haunted his mind and they fought alongside each other. The girl, thinking that Kylo changed back to Ben Solo, saw that he wanted nothing to do with the Resistance or with the Sith. Instead, he wanted to bring a new order, but with her by his side. She refused and left him. That same day, Luke Skywalker died.

Now being the Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren went to look for Emperor Palpatine, who eventually admitted creating Snoke and being the person who was haunting Kylo’s mind. Palpatine tried to lure Kylo to his side by tempting him with power if he killed the girl, but in reality, that isn’t what he wanted. Kylo went to look for the girl, knowing who she really was and the power that she held. But after chasing her for so long, they both confronted each other and fought. But when she was on the ground and he was about to strike again, he heard his mother call out to him, and he knew that she was dying. In that moment of distraction, the girl stabbed his own lightsaber through him, but immediately regretted it and healed him, telling him that she wanted to take Ben’s hand. Moments later, after she left, he would still be on the wreckage and then see a memory of his father, who ultimately would bring his son back to the light. Then, as the fight raged on Exegol, newly redeemed Ben Solo would go there to save the girl that he cared so much for. He would fight his way through, not caring who stood in his way. But then, at the moment he needed her, they bonded and the girl saw the man that she had fallen for.

He would go to her and they would see each other face to face and prepare to fight the ultimate evil that stood in front of them. But Palpatine threw Ben down a pit, leaving the girl to fight alone. The girl won but the overwhelming exhaustion was too much for her body to bear and she fell over and died on the concrete floor. But Ben Solo would climb out of the pit and go to her. He held her in his arms and then embraced her lifeless body, feeling as if his life was not more important than hers. He placed his hand on top of her stomach and transferred his life force into her, reviving her. The girl looked up at him with sparkling eyes and smiled at him. His eyes gazed around her face, focusing only on her. Then she said his name and he smiled. The girl hesitated at first, but then placed her lips on his, giving him a loving and passionate kiss. And when they broke apart, she grinned and so did he. Suddenly, his eyes closed and he fell to the ground, his life leaving his body and his body disappearing all at once.

Emperor Palpatine was responsible for creating this family and he succeeded in destroying it, which is exactly what he wanted.

The Skywalker bloodline is no more.

#reylo #bensolo #rey #starwars #anakinskywalker #lukeskywalker #padmeamidala #leiaorgana #hansolo #skywalker #palpatine #kyloren #darthvader #anidala #hanleia

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misskikuwrites · 4 years

Text

Pretty in Pink (2/3)

Bede/Gloria (dressedinpinkshipping)

Two days.

It had been two days since the incident with Gloria in the Glimwood Tangle. Two days and Bede couldn't get the tender press of soft lips against his cheek from his mind. That split second of warmth. The moment as fleeting as his gasp. Gone with a final smile and a wave goodbye.

The memory persisted in his mind with the tingle of heat left on his cheek from her kiss.

It didn't make sense. Her kiss. The fact that Gloria had kissed him. Confusion swirled in the pit of his stomach at the recollection. Sure, she was known for being physically affectionate with her friends, Hop especially. She hugged Hop eagerly for every greeting and parting, going so far as to launch herself into his arms at times and they'd sway in a tight embrace when they hadn't seen each other in a while.

She was a hugger. Someone who displayed affection so easily, so casually, going in for full-body hugs like it was as simple as a handshake.

She hugged all her friends, even if they weren't particularly close. She'd started hugging the other Gym Leaders as she got to know them. Bede had seen her giving Ms Opal a brief embrace the other day.

Yet she hadn't hugged him. Not once, not counting the desperate way she'd clung to him in the Glimwood Tangle as she'd cried, not in all the many long months he'd known her. It had already been more than a year since their tumultuous relationship had begun, starting as fierce rivals then begrudging friends and now… whatever they were, and they had never hugged.

The most Gloria had given him in all that time had been brief handshakes after their matches. Handshakes that had started off as stiff and reluctant, forced with a sharp tug, became gentle and pleasant as time went on. His hand began to linger in hers. Never too long, not enough to bring attention to the fact that he was drawing the moment out. He'd make some comment about their battle to distract her - and sometimes himself - from their hands.

Handshakes and nothing more. Not hugs.

Definitely not kisses.

It made no sense. Gloria wouldn't hug him, let alone even try to, and yet she'd kissed his cheek which was infinitely more affectionate. He hadn't ever seen her kiss anyone else. Not even Hop.

Though that didn't mean she hadn't…

Stop. He had to stop thinking about that. About her. He had Gym Challengers to defeat, to solidify himself as a serious contender for the strongest Gym Leader in Galar. With Gloria's Mimikyu added to his team, Bede stepped out on the pitch for the first battle of what would be another long day of forcing her from his mind.

He greeted the young trainer and they took their places opposite one another. The hum of excitement from the crowd buzzed palpably in the air. Bede's blood blazed with determination. Eyes set forward, he barely paid attention to the announcer introducing the challenger. He had a match to win.

And then-

"We have a very special guest joining us today! The renowned Champion of Galar, Gloria!"

Her.

Gloria's bashful smile flicked up on the huge screens set high above the stadium. A silent laugh, a nervous wave at the cameras after being caught. Bede's heart stammered and he snapped his gaze to the VIP stand where she sat.

She'd come to watch him. Waved at him across the pitch. Bede stole his eyes back to the challenger, rueing the fact he'd looked to her as a blush creeped up his neck.

What was with her and randomly appearing! Shouldn't she have better, more important things to do than watch his match?

His match.

Had she come here to watch him…?

Bede steeled himself. If she'd come expecting a match then he'd give her one. A fierce spark flickered to life in his eyes as he chose his lead Pokemon.

The challenger confidently sent out his Lampent, bursting forth into the arena with a flare of blue fire. The kid had a smirk on his face. Bede revealed nothing in his expression and sent out Gloria's Mimikyu.

The challenger paled.

Not the Mawile he was expecting. It was Bede's turn to smirk, a smug confidence building in him. That's what they get for assuming he wouldn't change up his team when challenger after challenger unoriginally started with a Fire type.

"F-Flamethrower!" the challenger cried and the Lampent inhaled a breath, blue candle flames roaring to life as the Ghost pokemon readied its move.

Too easy.

"Phantom Force, Mimikyu!"

Mimikyu chittered happily. A stream of fire burst forth from the Lampent, shooting fast in a wash of heat. Mimikyu disappeared beneath the blast in ripple of dark shadows. The crowd roared. The challenger gasped in panic. Lampent whirled around in the air, flames dancing this way and that as he and his trainer searched desperately for a sign of the disguised pokemon. Bede smiled and let the Mimikyu strike.

Too quick for the trainer to react. For the Lampent to turn as Mimikyu emerged in a fountain of darkness behind the lamp pokemon. A black claw swiped from beneath the Mimikyu's disguise and sent the Lampent flying across the pitch. The flames on its candles flickered and went out as the Lampent fainted.

Cheers erupted from the stands. A clean one-hit KO. The challenger recalled his Lampent, his face now a ghostly white. He sent out his next pokemon, the Intelleon standing tall and composed as it emerged from the pokeball's flash.

Too easy.

"Liquidation!" the challenger called. Intelleon shot forward with a surge of water, crossing the pitch with alarming speed.

Exactly what Bede was expecting.

"Wait for it," Bede directed and the Mimikyu chittered in acknowledgement.

Intelleon slammed full-force into Mimikyu. Water sprayed in all directions from the impact, Mimikyu's disguise wobbling before collapsing to the side. The challenger pumped his fists in a cheer. Right as Mimikyu swung its dark arm around and smashed a Wood Hammer right onto Intelleon's head.

Intelleon staggered backwards, grasping his head as he stumbled. And a well timed Shadow Ball launched into his chest.

The challenger recalled Intelleon before Mimikyu could attack a third time.

The match was simple.

The kid's Gloom fell to Mimikyu's Psychic. Corvisquire defeated by another Phantom Force in combination with a Shadow Ball.

Intelleon was the last to fall. Wood Hammer did it's job.

The crowd lapped it up and went nuts. Screams and cheers roared all around Bede. With a friendly, post-match handshake, he gave the challenger a few words of advice. He didn't know if the pale-faced kid heard him over the buzz of noise even though he nodded stiffly. The kid trudged away and Bede finally looked towards the VIP stand again.

Where Gloria was watching him with a grin, elbows propped up on her knees, chin in her hands. He managed a nod, heat trickling through his body from her smile, and he stalked to the exit before the warmth could spread to his cheeks. The last thing he wanted was for his full-faced blush to be broadcast on the screens for all to see.

She was in the waiting room when he arrived. With her pink dress still in his possession she'd worn a pink tartan skirt, a casual black shirt with a Espeon curled on the front and dark tights concealing the cuts and bruises on her legs. More pink.

It suited her.

Bede swallowed that thought when she smiled at him, standing from the bench without wobbling.

"Great match out there!" she praised. "Smart idea leading with Mimikyu. You two worked really well together!"

"Hardly. That wasn't what I would consider a match at all," Bede said. He brushed off her praise, feigning boredom as an excuse to look away from her.

Gloria laughed. "Still aiming to be the strongest Gym Leader?"

"Of course. What do you take me for? I'm not going to stop until I'm recognised as the strongest Gym Leader - no, trainer - in all of Galar."

A sparkle of challenge glimmered in her eyes. "I look forward to it!"

Bede's stomach flip-flopped at her determined, excited smile. Eager. Interested. He swallowed again. "Hmph, I'm not going to go easy on you the next time we battle. Don't expect me to hold back just because you haven't been Champion for long. I plan on being the one to take that title off you!"

"I don't plan on losing that easily," she countered. That grin - the one she always wore to her battles - flashed at him. He'd never seen it this close before. Not with her standing a few feet away instead of opposite sides of a pokemon battle.

"Speaking of battles," Gloria said, changing the subject as that grin of hers faded. "How's Mimikyu going? You were really in sync on the pitch out there! Hard to believe you've only had her for two days."

"See for yourself." Bede released Mimikyu into the waiting room. She looked around, saw Gloria, and launched into her trainer's arms.

"Hey, I missed you too!" Gloria giggled happily as the Mimikyu snuggled into her chest.

The sight had an immediate but strange effect on Bede, he stiffened at the flutter in his stomach, the spiking of his pulse in his chest. He tore his eyes away as if he was witnessing something he shouldn't.

"She getting along with the rest of your team?" Gloria asked, nuzzling her cheek on the top of Mimikyu's disguised head.

"No issues there," Bede said. "Despite being completely uncultured, reckless and mischievous - I can't think of where she would have gotten that from - she's performed better that I expected."

"Hey!" Gloria huffed. "Hang on… was that a compliment or not?"

Bede made a non-committal noise in his throat, shrugging with a coy tilt to the corner of his mouth.

Gloria rolled her eyes with a short, frustrated huff. "I'm never going to get a proper compliment out of you, am I?"

"I don't give compliments out for free unlike a certain someone who I'm not going to name." He looked pointedly at Gloria.

"Well, sorry that I like being nice to people! You should try it sometime!" She pouted and Bede's heart squeezed at how damnably cute it was. Her lips curled, arms wrapped tightly around her Mimikyu as she peered over it at him, cheeks rosy with indignation.

Utterly, damnably adorable.

"And here I thought I had been nice to you after carrying you all the way through the Glimwood Tangle on my back the other day," Bede countered, raising a smug eyebrow. "Or does that not count in your books as being nice? Weren't you the one who said you 'didn't know what you'd have done without me?'"

Gloria flushed. Her Mimikyu squirmed in her arms as she hugged the pokemon tighter in embarrassment. "Okay, okay. That was… very nice of you. And sweet. And… unexpected. All of it."

Now Bede's cheeks began to colour. He found something else to say, something to distract himself from how adorable she looked peeking over her Mimikyu at him.

"Unexpected? You thought that I would have ignored you and left you there in the woods? I didn't realise you thought that little of me."

She paled. He'd gone too far.

"N-No, not that! I mean… everything after. You were… so sweet to me. I'd never seen that side of you before. It surprised me."

Oh.

Everything after. The bath, letting her borrow his clothes. Tending to her ankle and the cuts down her legs. Washing her dress.

The kiss she planted on his cheek.

No, no, no, no! Now was not the time to remember that!

"Well, I don't make a habit of doing that for just anyone."

"Oh." Her eyes widened fractionally.

Bede realised with a start, with a surge of heat, what he'd just said. "Y-You're the Champion. It wouldn't have been right to have done anything less."

"Right. Okay." She nodded into her Mimikyu, her response muffled in the pokemon's disguise. He could still see the tips of her ears burning pink.

"A-Anyway, how's your ankle doing?" Bede asked, desperate to change the subject. "Should you really be walking around like this? Here I thought you might finally take your self-preservation more seriously."

"It's not too bad, actually." She wiggled her foot in the air for emphasis. "I already took two days off and I'm taking it easy at the moment but it hasn't been giving me too much trouble." She sat down on the bench, cuddling her Mimikyu who happily snuggled into the embrace. She planted a gentle kiss to the top of Mimikyu's head.

Bede flushed as if he'd been the one kissed instead. Damn Mimikyu was so lucky-

No. No, he was not jealous of her pokemon.

"When do you finish tonight?" Gloria asked.

Bede's heart skipped. "Depends on the amount of challengers. Why… do you ask?"

"Well, I wanted to return your clothes and pick up my dress sometime if that's okay with you. But if you're going to be busy…"

"Tonight is fine."

Gloria smiled at him. "Great! Text me when you're free then."

"That would be rather difficult considering I don't have your number."

"Oh!" Gloria's eyes widened in realisation and it made Bede's heart flutter strangely. She dug around in her bag before pulling out a shiny card and handing it to Bede. "Here, it's my rare League Card. It's got my contact details on the back."

It was not what he was expecting. Her card. The picture on the front, a glossy heart pattern shining in the light. It was Gloria alright - the glamourous woman in the picture had her smile, the same spark in her brown eyes, the same long chocolate brown hair - but it was so far removed from the Gloria he knew.

Gloria lounged on a regal white couch, long legs extended out before her. She wore a fancy pink dress, the same shade as her favourite. Intricate lace decorated the close fitting bodice, down to where the skirt flared at her waist. Her right arm slung over the back of the couch, Gloria faced the camera with a knowing smile. Her hair flowed in graceful waves over her shoulders.

"It was Nessa's idea," Gloria chuckled nervously. "I'd never worn so much makeup in my life! My face actually felt heavy!"

Makeup. Right. That must be why her eyes, her gaze, looked so alluring. Why her pink lips looked so glossy and tantalising. Why he couldn't stop staring.

"O-Oh, it's you? For a moment, I couldn't tell who it was." He cursed the tightness of his throat. It was so hard to speak, to form words on his fumbling tongue. Bede slipped the card into his League Card case as Gloria huffed, jutting out her bottom lip in a pout.

"I don't look that different."

Oh, that pout was adorable. A spear of heat shot through Bede right to the tips of his fingers. Damn it, the dusting of pink on her cheeks filled with that infuriating warmth again.

"Well, I'd have to study it closely to see for myself…"

"Please don't!" Gloria flushed and covered her face with her hands. "It's hard enough just handing those out…! It's so embarrassing!"

"Then why'd you go along with it? You're the Champion. Hardly think that makes you a pushover."

"It was fun, I really enjoyed the whole process… I just didn't think about having to actually give them to people…" she lowered her hands slowly, peering at Bede over the top of her Mimikyu. "Please don't show it to anyone else! I'm only giving them out to the other Gym Leaders and my close friends. I wouldn't be able to cope if other people saw it!"

Close friends. That meant Hop…

Bede sobered instantly. "I won't."

"Oh, and while we're at it, you can have my updated League Card! I got a new one done since I'm the Champion now." She brought it out and handed it to Bede.

He feigned disinterest. "Never said I wanted it but if you're handing it out…"

She snatched it back. "Well, if you don't want it…"

"I didn't say that." Bede's brow twitched into a frown.

Gloria tilted her head, dangling the card between her finger and thumb. Toying with him. Waiting for him to admit what was burning on his tongue.

"I… suppose there is a part of me that does want it…"

She raises her eyebrows. "Good enough, I guess."

Bede took it from her before she changed her mind again and glanced at it briefly. Enough to see that it showed Gloria in her Champion's uniform, cape and all, sitting on what appeared to be a throne painted in the same colours of her uniform. She had that stunning, dangerous grin on her face that she would reveal in the heat of battle. That blaze in her eyes. One foot resting on her knee, she leant back, hands poised on the arm rests, and she grinned at the viewer.

Now that looked like Gloria.

Even though it was a quick glance, the intensity of Gloria's gaze set something aflame inside Bede's chest. His heart hammered against the cage of his ribs. He tucked the card away.

"That's it? No snarky comment?"

Heat had risen up his neck and began to pool across his cheeks. "It's not bad, I suppose. For you, that is."

Gloria huffed. "There's no winning with you, is there?"

She'd already won his heart.

Gloria rolled her eyes and shifted Mimikyu off her lap to stand. "I've got to get going, Hop's expecting me soon."

Hop.

Again.

Clarity crashed over Bede in a cold wave of reality. He recalled her Mimikyu and pocketed the ball. He was an idiot, letting his heart run after her when there was another who had her attention. Another who had the advantage of a whole childhood, of tight hugs and honesty, over him.

Gloria gave him a parting smile, her eyes crinkling slightly. "I'll see you later tonight. Remember to text me when you're free!"

She left with a bounce in her step and Bede cursed the way her smile and those simple words made his heart flutter.

He was an idiot. A complete and utter fool. He loved someone who was in love with someone else.

He hated it. Hated being second best.

But his heart wouldn't listen. He watched her leave, eyes following her as she disappeared through the door.

It hurt.

But he didn't want to be in love with anyone else.

Bede composed himself and headed out the same door Gloria had left through, ready to greet the next challenger and send them off to the Gym mission.

Gloria was still in the lobby, Rotom phone to her ear. "Yeah, I'm in the Gym," Gloria said. "What? Here?"

"Gloria!"

Bede stiffened at that voice. As Hop burst through the Gym doors and swept Gloria into a tight hug. She laughed in confusion and happiness, eagerly returning the embrace.

A sliver of ice dug into Bede's heart. Before he knew what he was doing he tugged Gloria out of the hug by the back of her shirt.

"What are you doing?" The venom in his voice shocked him, running like ice through his veins.

Gloria startled, glancing over her shoulder at him, before flushing darkly.

"B-Bede!" She tore herself away from him, brushing down the back of her shirt.

"That's called a hug. Maybe you've heard of it?" Hop scoffed, folding his arms. "Pretty sure I'm allowed to hug my best mate without your permission."

"You're making complete fools of yourselves." The words burned his throat like acid. "Maybe you should pay attention to your surroundings before people tell you to get a room. This is a Gym - if you're not here for the Gym Challenge then you need to leave."

"S-Sorry Bede!" Gloria squeaked. The crimson blush on her cheeks made his stomach churn. "We were just leaving!" She grabbed Hop's wrist and tugged him out of the Gym before they could argue any further. It left a bitter taste lingering in Bede's mouth that poisoned his thoughts for the rest of the day.

With the last challenger for the day defeated and the Gym clearing out, Bede stared at his Rotom phone. Gloria's rare League Card in hand, he input her number into his contacts and paused. Stared at her number. Opened a blank text and paused. Again. His stomach was a heavy weight in his belly.

What was he doing?

Bede huffed and put away the card, his mind drawing a blank. He had to text her. Let her pick up her dress so he could finally bring the matter to a close.

The sickly churning in his gut swelled with trepidation. He didn't want to see her.

He wanted to see her.

Two sides swirling together in his gut, in his mind. It wasn't right to feel this way about her, to have this searing irritation towards her for spending time with Hop. A burning, burning frustration she didn't do anything to deserve. A cold, heavy weight sank onto his shoulders, knowing he wasn't the one to make her smile like she had earlier, to make her laugh as she had in Hop's embrace.

He tasted bile. Swallowed it down and typed a curt message.

Bede: I'm free

There. He'd done his part. Bede pocketed his phone and gathered his stuff to leave, having already changed from his Gym Leader uniform into his casual clothes and pink jacket.

His phone buzzed to life in his pocket. Bede jolted, a spike of adrenaline coursing through him as he tore his phone from his pocket and saw Gloria's name on the caller ID.

She was calling him?!

Bede tightened his jaw, answering the call and placing the phone to his ear as he tried to calm the rapid crescendo of his heart.

"Wh-What?" Bede barked, scowling as his cheeks began to burn. He tugged at the collar of his jacket, hitching it higher. Damn it. Why did she have such an affect on him?!

"Hey, Bede!" Her voice sounded the same; light-hearted and bright. Right into his ear. "I got your message - I can be over in like, fifteen minutes if that suits you? I've just got to grab a sky taxi and I'll be over."

So soon? At least he had a warning this time.

"That's fine," Bede said, trying to sound as casual as he could through the tightness in his throat. He felt too warm, too flustered, too sweaty all at once.

"Great! I'll see you soon, then!"

Bede muttered, "Bye," as she ended the call and hung his head.

Arceus.

A few simple words, just hearing her voice, was enough to awaken a torrent of emotions inside him.

Damn it. He was too far gone.

Those next fifteen minutes were the longest in his life.

It would have been better for her to have dropped in randomly, unannounced and unexpected, than to have anxiety crawl up his throat with every minute that passed. He paced nervously in Ms Opal's quaint living room.

It was different, having her come over this time. There was no sense of urgency. No task for Bede to focus on. Sure, she was coming here to get her dress and return his clothes but the whole thing was so simple. The way it was between friends.

It was getting harder and harder to hide the fact that he saw her as more than a friend.

Knocking on the door, three times in quick succession, broke Bede from his thoughts. He strode over and opened the door for Gloria before gaping at her.

"What is that?"

Bede stared at the cap she had on, the Fairy Gym logo emblazoned on the front. His Gym.

Gloria beamed at him. "It's cute, isn't it? I saw it when I was in Wyndon and just had to get it!"

Bede felt his cheeks burn. It was just a stupid hat, nothing more.

"It looks ridiculous." Bede turned away from her, closing the door after ushering her in, so he didn't have to face her. Her and her love for all things pink.

Gloria laughed. "Wait 'till you see what else I got!"

There was something in her tone, in that laugh of hers, that made him pause. He watched her warily as she set her black bag on the couch and opened it up, searching for something inside.

"Tada!" She pulled out a plush doll, holding it up with glee. With a cheeky grin. It took a moment for it to sink in. The doll had a mess of fluffy white hair. A Fairy Gym uniform. Not just that but one that hung a bit long and was tied back.

Bede paled, face going white. The pink. Then finally scorching red. "That's-?!"

"A mini Bede! It's it adorable?" Gloria chimed, holding up the monstrosity. "There's so much merchandise of us! Oh, and there's more!"

There's more?!

Bede's head spun. Heart pounding like thunder in his ears, he couldn't think straight. Couldn't breathe properly. Why did she buy something like that?! How was he supposed to take this?!

"Look! He's even got your jacket!" She held up a miniature version of the pink jacket he was wearing. "You can change their clothes too!" She tugged open the back of the mini Bede's shirt with the sound of Velcro tearing.

"What are you doing?!" Bede's heart stopped.

She didn't look at him. "Changing his clothes. I like the jacket better."

Bede burned with indignant embarrassment, glowering at the wall to the side so he didn't have to watch Gloria strip and change a doll version of him.

"You are unbelievable…" Bede muttered. His cheeks ached as he flushed darkly.

"What? I think he's cute! He's even got a little scowl too!" She laughed again, pointing at the doll's eyes, sewn in with violet thread. "Pretty accurate if you ask me."

Bede had to wonder if she was trying to make him combust to death the way she was going on about that stupid doll.

"They're so soft and squishy," Gloria noted. "Pretty good quality for merch if you ask me!" She gave the doll a few squeezes as if to prove it.

"Why would you even buy something like that…" Bede sighed. He brought a hand to his brow and shook his head. Pretended it didn't feel like his heart was ricocheting around in his ribcage. "It's utterly ridiculous and a waste of money."

"Aw, don't say that! Mini Bede's so cute though! How could you say that to his adorable face?" She wiggled the doll's plush arms up and down in the air.

Bede frowned. "Very easily." He leant closer to the doll, trying not to notice the way she cradled it in her arms. "It's ridiculous and a waste of money."

Gloria puffed out a breath of air and turned away, hugging the Bede-doll closer. "Fine then, be like that. I happen to think he's cute." She put the doll back into her backpack and pulled out a cloth tote bag. She held it out to Bede. "Here, your clothes. Thanks for letting me borrow them. I made sure to wash them too, so you can't complain that they're gross or anything."

Bede rolled his eyes and took the bag off her. "I'll go and get your dress then. Give me a moment." He headed off to his room and Gloria took the time to peruse the display of tea in the kitchen.

"Ooh! There's so many types of tea!" Gloria exclaimed in awe, clasping her hands together in glee. "Roselia tea, lavender, oh - there's an Applin blend too!"

She was so excited that it stopped Bede before he retrieved her dress. An eager sparkle lit up her eyes. Her attention bounced between the different tea blends that Ms Opal had, each time finding something new and interesting to chime about.

"Would you like to try one?" Bede headed into the kitchen, his offer making her whirl to face him.

She gasped. "Oh, can I? Is that okay? Are you sure Ms Opal won't mind?"

"She won't. She's always forcing them on me anyway." Bede shrugged and stood beside Gloria in the kitchen. "I'm sure she'll be glad to know someone else enjoyed it. Besides, if I didn't offer you any then I'd be reprimanded for not being a good host."

"Oh, then can I try the Applin blend? Apple and cinnamon tea sounds amazing!" Gloria bounced on her toes in excitement. Bede bit back a smile. She was so obvious in her emotions like a child. Innocently happy.

It made him relax. Loosen the tension in his shoulders and breathe easier. Seeing her so happy and bright, despite all the pressure she'd endured as the Champion and Hero of Galar, then it gave him a sliver of hope.

Everything would be alright.

Bede filled the kettle with water, enough for two, and set it to boil on the stove. Gloria opened the Applin tea pack and breathed in the scent with a euphoric smile.

"It smells so good!" she sighed happily. "Like an apple pie!"

"You're not meant to inhale it," Bede chided lightly, rolling his eyes at her with mirth, and took the pack off her.

"I know!"

"You sure about that?" Bede scooped a measured teaspoon into the waiting teapot. "It looked like you were about to bury your nose into it for a moment there."

"I was not!"

Bede chuckled softly at her flustered pout. He glanced up, looking briefly out the front windows, about to quip back at her before his heart leapt into his throat. He practically dropped the tea pack on the counter and snatched Gloria's wrist. Without so much as a word of explanation he tugged her into his room and shut the door.

"Now of all times?!" Bede muttered under his breath.

"What's going on?" Gloria asked. She blinked at him in shock before her eyes began to wander around the room. Bede's bedroom.

"Hey! Eyes front!" Bede stepped in front of her before she could study his room. A bashful scowl narrowed his violet eyes. "Don't you dare gawk at my room."

Gloria raised her eyebrows but nodded in confused surrender. "Okay, okay. But why'd you drag me here in the first place then?"

"It's Ms Opal," Bede whispered in a hushed tone, craning his ear to the door. "If she knows that you're here, she won't let me here the end of it."

"Right…" Gloria trailed off and then gasped, "oh, wait! My bag's still out there!"

The front door clicked open.

"Shh!" Bede hissed. Focused on the door, he didn't notice how close they were standing until then, until Gloria leant over in order to hear what he was listening for.

A bark of complaint rose in his throat and he caught it before it escaped, before he could snap something he'd regret. Right as his door swung open.

Bede blanched, turning white as Ms Opal cased her keen eyes over them.

"Now, I don't mind you having your girlfriend over, but I would much rather you let me know in advance so I don't accidentally intrude on a private moment between you two," Ms Opal said, a twinkle in her eyes.

"S-She's not my girlfriend!" Bede barked, a rush of crimson washing over his face.

Ms Opal smiled knowingly. "You say that, yet you're holding hands." She tapped at their joined hands with her umbrella casually. Bede yanked his hand away. "And I believe I saw her dress in your room not a few days ago. Your affections towards each other are fairly obvious, my dears."

Gloria coloured pink and gaped at her shoes.

"Th-That's not…!" The words left Bede at the sight if Gloria smouldering beneath a blush. His blood felt electric. Jolting like fire through his veins.

Ms Opal chuckled. "Ah, young love. I don't mind you having her over, just make sure you're careful. We wouldn't want any unfortunate surprises on our hands."

Gloria sounded an embarrassed squeak in her throat.

For the final blow, Ms Opal tapped Bede on the shoulder lightly. "Make sure you use protection. You can't always afford to trust your judgement in those circumstances!"

"E-Enough! We get it you… you…! Wh-What are you here for anyway?!" Bede brushed Ms Opal's hand off his shoulder. He wouldn't look at Gloria.

"Oh, I just came by to grab something I'd forgotten. Then I happened to see lovely Gloria's bag on the couch and wondered where she was." She pottered away, collecting a container of sweets from the kitchen. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything." The insinuation in her tone sent a score of heat right down Bede's spine.

"You didn't! There was nothing to interrupt!"

"Oh? Then you won't mind if I stay and have a word with Gloria here?"

"Don't you have somewhere you need to be?!"

Ms Opal chuckled again. "I'm just kidding, my dear. I'll leave you two alone." She winked at Gloria who flustered and stared intently at her feet again.

The click of the front door closing left the house in a stiff silence. Heat prickled at the back of Bede's neck. His ears burned. He forced a glance at Gloria, who was still fascinated by her laces.

"So… that's what you meant…" Gloria mumbled quietly.

Bede snapped his gaze away. It was hard to breathe. The air was too thick. Too warm. The kettle whistled and gave Bede something to do, to focus on, as he desperately tried to settle his thundering heart.

"Ms Opal is always like that. You don't have to take anything she said seriously."

The sound of hot water pouring into the teapot filled the silence. The lid clattered, teacups clicked as Bede retrieved them, letting the tea slowly steep.

"You seem to get along well." Gloria quietly stepped over, out of the doorway to his room and into the kitchen. "It looked like she enjoys teasing you."

Bede huffed. "You have no idea. Living with that woman is absolute hell at times."

Gloria breathed a soft beat of laughter. "You say that, but, to me it looks like you're happy here."

Bede paused. He looked at the teapot, a golden hue slowly blending into the clear water, his expression growing pensive.

"...Perhaps. It's not the worst place I could be."

Gloria scoffed, blowing out a puff of air. "You're so not honest with yourself. It's not going to kill you to admit that you actually like living here. There's nothing wrong with that."

Bede began to pour the tea. "Isn't there? She's not my mother. She's not family. I have no right to be here, to be mooching off a stranger and owing her a debt. I should be finding my own place. Being independent."

"Bede, you're only sixteen."

"Seventeen," he corrected her.

"Ugh, I missed your birthday again?! Wish you'd just tell me when it is so this doesn't keep happening." Gloria huffed. "Anyway, that's not the point. It doesn't matter if Ms Opal's not your blood relative - she cares about you. And family is more than just genetics! It's whoever, whatever you want it to be. Whether that's pokemon or a strange, persistent woman who makes you her successor of the Fairy Gym."

"You're saying Ms Opal is my family."

"Only if you want her to be. It's up to you."

Bede looked at her now, the concern in her eyes sinking something strange into his heart. A strange feeling of tightness. A warm squeeze. It was somehow fuzzy and light. Not uncomfortable.

"You make it sound so simple," Bede said, shaking his head. He brought the teacups and teapot over to the dark wooden table before taking a seat.

"It can be," Gloria said as she sat opposite him, bringing her cup closer so she could breathe in the rich scent.

"You're meant to drink it, by the way."

"I know that!" Gloria puffed out an indignant breath. "Just let me enjoy the smell for a moment! Sheesh!"

Bede's lips quirked into an infinitesimal smile which he hid behind the teacup as he brought it to his lips to cool it with a gentle breath. "Just checking."

Gloria rolled her eyes. She blew on her tea for a few breaths before speaking again. "You know, I consider my pokemon part of my family. We've been through so much together, it just feels natural to have them there." She took a tiny sip of her tea, flinching at the temperature. "I think family is whoever makes you feel safe and loved. It feels like you're home when you're with them. That kind of thing."

"Hm." Bede answered with that ambiguous noise and nothing more.

Gloria's heart sank slightly. She'd hoped to get Bede to open up to her, even if it was just slightly. Every time she'd tried to get closer to him, to peel back the layers he was hiding behind, she'd hit a wall. Just like this.

"Mm, this tea is pretty good!" Gloria hummed in delight, changing the subject. "I'm so jealous that you have all these incredible teas lying in front of you every day! You can just pick and choose from then anytime you want…" She sighed whimsically.

"They're not going anywhere."

"What?"

"The teas. They're not going anywhere. They'll be here next time too."

Gloria put down her cup and stared. "Next time? Is that… is that an invitation? I can come here again?"

Bede drank his tea slowly so he didn't have to feel her gaze on him. She was still staring at him when he placed his cup down.

"You've still yet to return my Rapidash, remember? I wholly expect I'll be seeing you again at some point. You have a way of turning up out of the blue."

"That's right! They sent me a picture!" Gloria excitedly for out her phone and flicked through it for a moment before the Rotom phone hovered over to him. The image on the screen showed two Rapidash resting on lush grass, snuggled up close.

"The message said they're getting along really well. I don't think it'll be long now until they find an egg!" Gloria beamed happily. Her Rotom phone flew over to her and she pocketed it. "You'll have your Rapidash back soon enough."

"Good."

Gloria rested her chin in her one hand, smiling at him. Her eyes softened. "You really love your pokemon, don't you?"

Bede looked at her questioningly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing really, it just makes me so happy when I see such a strong bond between trainer and pokemon."

Her smile set off wild butterfrees in his stomach. A warm feeling remained in his chest as they leisurely drank their tea and chatted. Time passed too quickly. The tea disappearing too fast. It wasn't long before Gloria huffed that she had a few busy days ahead of her and Bede knew she would stay much longer. When he stood and gathered their tea cups, he noticed the sun had begun to set.

Had it really been that long?

Bede retrieved Gloria's dress from his room as he'd meant to earlier. He grabbed his own clothes from inside the tote bag she'd brought them in and handed it back to her with her dress.

"Wait, did you iron it?" Gloria gaped as she held up her neatly folded dress. "You didn't have to!"

"It's not a big deal. I was ironing my own clothes and just happened to do yours as well."

"Still. Thanks, Bede."

Again. That smile of hers toyed with his heart, sending it fluttering. He purposely ignored it. Purposely stuffed those emotions away into a deep corner of his mind.

The sky taxi came sooner than Bede would have liked.

"Thanks for the tea," Gloria said as she headed out the door. "It'll probably be a couple of days, maybe a week, until I'll be free enough to come by again. Hopefully there'll be some eggciting news by then!"

Bede huffed. "Really?"

"Aw, come on! That was a good one!"

"No, it wasn't."

Gloria rolled her eyes dramatically and climbed into the sky taxi. "Whatever. It was funny."

Bede bit back a smile at her forcibly sour expression. "Bye, Gloria."

"See you!" Her smile returned. Just like that.

And just like that she was gone.

Bede felt strangely warm the rest of the evening. Fuzzy and warm. He kept thinking back to Gloria's visit, both to the Gym and his place. The Fairy-type cap she wore. The Bede plush.

If he'd been any more conceited he might have thought she was trying to flirt with him. That she'd deliberately chosen things that represented him.

But Bede had already been shot with a dose of reality that morning when Hop had come by the Gym. She'd hugged him so tight, laughed in his embrace.

It was so obvious her heart already belonged to another.

Bede's phone buzzed as he got ready to sleep and he lazily grabbed it, seeing a new message from Gloria. There was a picture attached.

Gloria: they're all ready for bed!

The picture attached was focused on a bed, four plush dolls sitting side-by-side propped up on cushions. It was obvious who they were meant to represent. He'd already seen the Bede-doll before. Next to it sat one with brown hair, wearing the Champion's uniform and cape - Gloria. Beside the Gloria-doll there was one representing Hop and then Marnie.

She'd bought all of them. Not just his.

Bede's heart dropped. The warmth drained from him like a bucket of water emptying as the bottom fell out. He absently scanned the rest of the image before he froze. Was that…?

Oh.

Bede: maybe you should clean up your drawers before taking a picture with them in it.

Silence.

Bede's phone buzzed to life with a call from Gloria. He smirked and answered it.

"Hey-"

"Delete it!" Gloria shrieked into his ear. "Oh, Arceus, Bede! Delete it! Now! You didn't see that!"

"I believe it's a bit late for that."

A strangled noise came from the other end. "Of all the times I forget to put my bra away…" she muttered faintly, the phone barely picking up the audio. But it did.

Bede smirked despite the blush on his cheeks. He'd never heard her so panicked before. Not like this - horribly embarrassed and flustered.

It was worth teasing her a little to hear it.

"Bede…!" she drew out his name in a pleading whine. "Please, put me out of my misery and delete it! Please…!"

"I wasn't going to save it. Consider it deleted. Though it'll be quite a bit harder to delete it from my memory…"

"Forget you ever saw it!"

"What, you mean you don't make a habit of sending pictures of your underwear to guys?"

"No!" she shrieked again.

Bede stifled a laugh. "I'm sure I'll figure out a way to remove it from my mind."

Her reactions were worth it. Worth the embarrassment of pointing it out in the photo. Worth making it obvious that he'd noticed it in the first place.

A cute, lacy pink bra hanging out of the open drawer to the left of her bed.

Pink. Again.

Was everything she wore pink…?

"If you forget it then… then I'll owe you! Anything you want!"

Anything…?

Bede's cheeks warmed. "You already said you owed me for helping you in the Glimwood Tangle and for lending you my Rapidash."

"Oh, shoot."

Bede chuckled.

"Hey! Did you just laugh at me?"

"Who would've thought I'd have the Champion at my bidding. Now, what should I have you do…?"

"Arceus, put me out of my misery already…"

"I'll think of something." Bede's cheeks ached from the grin on his face.