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allthingsjeresa · 3 years

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So I don’t have AO3 account and apparently you have to get invited to have an account. Fun fact I didn’t know. I’m currently stuck in a week long queue but I wrote a Jeresa fic and wanted to post it somewhere so here goes nothing… this is a rewrite of the ending of 5x04. An additional scene if you will. The songs that got me through this chapter (majority of season 5 actually are Love The Lonely Out Of You by Brothers Osborne and Terrible Love By The National. I encourage you to take a listen- they are as heartbreaking as they sound!

When James made it back to the safe house that night, mission completed and his body count one soul heavier, there was a thick air of coldness as he reported to Teresa.

Cop killed. Check. Thumb print left on the ledger. Check. Feds made it to the scene first. Check.

He was nothing if not thorough at his job and they both knew he didn’t need to specify that any of these things had been handled. A simple “we’re good” would’ve sufficed. Yet there he was making a point to specify with Teresa, only because it felt like he’d been put into a time machine.

All of a sudden he was back in Dallas, climbing up the ranks and filling in precise updates to a certain jefa. One who donned red lipstick and killer heels instead of white clothes and curly hair. It was too close to home, what Teresa expected of him and the mission he had just worked. When he’d done important jobs in the past, Camila always wanted to know everything down to the last detail.

So there he stood across the room, delivering the news to his newest “jefa” like the compliant and meticulous cartel lieutenant he was. Because one thing about James- he learned from his mistakes. And when it came to Teresa, he had a bad habit of mistaking things for what they actually were. You could say his very wrong perception of their relationship was how he ended up in a small pantry for hours that night, clutching onto hope that she would shoot him a text and backtrack. She never did.

Well, his vision was clearer than ever now and he would not make the mistake of confusing anything again. The unfortunate truth is that for the majority of his adult life, James had been a lethal killing machine. He had never told anyone before, not even when he was newly enlisted, just how much it terrified him. It was one thing to be good at killing but what if that was your only purpose in life? That was what kept James up late at night. He never seemed to fit in anywhere unless it meant he had his finger on a trigger or a clip of rounds in his pocket. Wherever he went, it felt like that’s all anyone saw for some time- who he could kill for them. Eventually, it became his identity. It was more of a curse really. At one point, possibly right after working for Camila, James learned to accept this.

Then from out of no where, Teresa Mendoza was brought to the warehouse one sunny hot day in Dallas and the wiring of his brain slowly unraveled. It’s true what people say about your world getting flipped upside down when you least expect it. He never expected Teresa.

You’re a good person, James.

We can do things a different way.

You don’t have to hide from me.

We’re in this together.

Everyone deserves that.

For the first time in years he thought maybe… just maybe he could find a new purpose. One with Teresa. Back in Phoenix, when they defeated la comission together he finally felt like he belonged. For the first time in a long while, he fit in somewhere. And that’s how Teresa and her team became his people.

Then what happened right after in Bolivia… well, it happened. The outcome of it shattered him and he never really explained to her why. He didn’t belong again. She’d thought him capable of the unthinkable. He was only good for deceit and murder in her eyes. His self-worth was back to square one. It was hard for James to get over it but he did. He would’ve stayed by her side if not for Devon. That’s how malleable he was when it came to Teresa. Naturally the minute he was free from Devon, he high-tailed it to New Orleans. No matter what happened between them, he would protect Teresa like always. He thought he’d warn her of the impending danger and if things went well, then maybe they could have a clean slate. Work things out. Run the business the way they always wanted to. Purpose. That was how James ended up in Louisiana with a heart full of hope and bullet in his gut.

But what no one tells you about hope- it hurts as much as heartbreak once it’s gone. James would know.

He was simply a soldier, like always. A living weapon to further her reign and nothing more. Her comment about the CIA earlier that day had only cemented it. And boy, had it hurt. It hurt because he thought maybe, after everything he was worth more to her. Because she was Teresa Mendoza and she wasn’t like anyone he’d encountered before. She didn’t see people around her as tools or collateral damage that either served or threatened her power. She didn’t see James the way everyone else in his life had. Or so he thought. James was starting to find out that perhaps he knew nothing at all. He didn’t know much about what had happened between that time he was gone, and the only person he wanted to ask had just made it clear what he was good for.

Don’t question me. She didn’t have to say it but he heard it loud and clear. So with those boundaries reinforced, he made himself a promise to keep the hierarchy between him and Teresa strictly maintained. That meant no personal questions or conversations. He would only do as he was told. He would treat her as the superior she was.

Maybe it didn’t have to be an issue- what he meant to Teresa. Maybe he could try and compartmentalize things. After all, he’d been a weapon most of his life for people and organizations much lesser than her. The United States government, Camila… Devon. Granted the last was not by choice, but still. It was nothing new. He didn’t have to take it so personally. He could do it.

And he would. How could he not? This was Teresa after all. He’d assume his well accustomed position of diligent death-dealer while knowing that he might be worth nothing more than a loaded gun in her hand… knowing that he felt the way he did about her and that there wasn’t much he could do about it. He was bound to Teresa whether he liked it or not. One thing about James- he was good at eventually accepting things for what they were. With that rooted in his head, James didn’t dare look back as he made his way to his room, carrying the weight of the last year and now that day on his shoulders.

****

While James did his best to establish a new mindset, Teresa was struggling. He walked away from her and suddenly she was on the verge of tears. Again.

Wait.

She had wanted to cry out, beg him not to leave and try her best to explain. Instead she let him walk away because what she’d done was unjustifiable. It was a new low for her, reassuring him with promises of helping those boys after she’d ordered him to kill. Especially because it wasn’t true. Not really. She knew killing that cop wasn’t so much about helping anyone as much as it was about protecting her business. Maybe it was best they didn’t talk too much. All she ever did lately was lie to him after all. She lied about only wanting safety and legitimacy in New York. She lied about not having a choice with Marcel. She didn’t intend to, but it’s just what came out. Maybe it’s what she wanted to believe. Teresa wondered what that meant for her. Was she becoming that twisted, it already felt like second nature to tell people what she thought they needed to hear? She felt disgusting. She wanted to scream.

But nothing came out. That’s all she gave anyone lately.

Nothing.

Nothing but orders and vicious, petty blows.

Pressure was destroying Teresa. Pressure to keep the house of cards from falling down. While her business thrived, she crumbled. She was not only distraught but ashamed. Out of everyone she could choose to lash out on, she knew James didn’t deserve it. Not after everything in Phoenix. Not after a year of being a slave to Devon’s clutches and certainly not after getting shot and nearly bleeding to death just to make it to her in time.

While James tried to wash off his sins of the night in a shower across the house, Teresa silently cried again over a line in her closet. It was getting too repetitive, her little habit. It had started slowly. She had endless nightmares about cars exploding. Tony. Brenda. Birdie. Running for her life in Culiacan. Sometimes she was even back in that cage in Dallas. She wasn’t sleeping at all. That was how her relationship with cocaine began. A little bump here and there to get her through the day. It did what no amount of caffeine could ever. It gave her invincibility, strength and courage. When Teresa forgot just how capable she was, cocaine was there to remind her. When she had a tough night, and it felt like it was starting to become every night, it gave her the push she needed to go on. Right now she needed to remember why she was doing what she was. The coke made her more of everything. But perhaps she’d been wrong about that too. As she looked in the reflection in front of her, eyes puffy and bloodshot from her breakdown, she felt anything but strong. Maybe it was in her weakness she did what she did next. Or perhaps it was the coke ironically making her too confident, Teresa really couldn’t tell the difference anymore. But she cleaned herself up, removing any traces of tears and made her way to the other wing of the house.

When she knocked on his room door to no response she feared the worst. She gave it 30 seconds before she turned around to make it back to her wing when the door swiftly opened. Teresa’s eyes met James’ surprised face and she swallowed.

So much for cocaine-fueled bravery.

Hair slightly damp, clad in a muscle shirt and a cigarette perched between his lips, he’d guided her to the balcony attached to his bedroom.

For a good while neither of them said a word. He offered her a cigarette and she simply shook her head in refusal. In all honesty, she was scared her hands shook a bit too much to take it. It might’ve been seconds or minutes before anyone spoke. Teresa didn’t know. Then, finally James broke first.

“What is it Teresa?” His voice was scratchy and thick as if he hadn’t spoken in days. No beating around the bush or awkward tip-toeing. Just serious and straight to the point. She almost flinched.

Without looking at him, Teresa sniffed and gave her answer.

“I wanted to apologize. Earlier, what I said. I was out of line. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Her voice was soft as she pushed a curl back nervously.

They both knew exactly what she was referring to, so she was confused when James said nothing and instead nodded at her apology in acceptance. Or maybe hurt was the better term. Because while Teresa had come to appreciate his anger, even his disapproval most recently, she wasn’t prepared for his indifference. It was like a slap in the face. She wondered if maybe that’s what it was like being in her orbit lately.

Well… that’s that.

Shame flooded her once again and she fought to keep her composure, a wave of emotions threatening to hit like a monsoon. She rubbed her nose and sniffed again. Her voice was shaking when she meekly replied “I should go.”

Teresa barely made it a step before James spoke again.

“You know, at least make sure your nose is clean if you’re gonna give orders to end lives.”

This time it was James who didn’t look up. Instead he stared intensely out into the night, puffing out hits of nicotine. His face was an unreadable mask.

“What?” Teresa blinked. The air was suddenly chilly and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She thought she had an idea of how this conversation might go. This… this was not it.

James put out the cigarette and finally faced her. What he saw only confirmed his assumption. A deer stuck in the headlights.

“I pushed weight for six years in Dallas with Camila. I know coke drip, Teresa. I know it so well, I made a point not to associate with people who powdered their nose too often.”

He spat out the last words and it was only then Teresa realized her great failure of reading his temperament. It wasn’t indifference he’d been feeling, but rather pure anger. Rage disguised as calm silence. He knew. Of course he did. Probably from the moment he opened his door. If Teresa was a one way mirror he was the only one able to see the other side. Somehow she was able to compose herself enough to reply.

“It’s not what you think. It’s been a hard week, that’s all.” Teresa was feigning self-assurance. She had been on the run, encountered many terrifying people in her days and nearly died one too many times, but if there was a moment where she was struggling to look more confident than ever, it was right then. The sad truth is she only said that because she didn’t know what else to say. They both knew it was bullshit.

James sighed.

“Yeah, is that what you tell yourself? Listen, if you want to protect your business at all costs, I get that. And I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do. After today, you should already know that. But this… this is a hard limit, Teresa. One that will only end badly.” His words came out rough.

“Look, I have it under control.” Standing in front of him, pupils blown, feeling like a raw open nerve she wondered if he could sense just how much she was spiraling. James had killer instincts and with that came killer intuition.

Hard limit.

What did that even mean? If she didn’t get her nose clean he would leave? Oh no. She needed damage control. She couldn’t get hurt again like the last time.

“Besides,” Teresa didn’t know why she continued, “you don’t understand.” Maybe it was a cry for help.

There was emphasis behind her words and James was studying her closely now. His forehead slightly furrowed, eyes squinting as if in deep concentration. Then he laughed and Teresa’s stomach dropped even more.

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand?”James’ voice was a sardonic repetition of her own words laced in disbelief.

“You know that line might work with Pote, Kelly Anne or anyone else in this house but don’t pull that bullshit with me.” He pulled out another cigarette and lit it, while Teresa grabbed onto the balcony railing. She felt like she needed the support. This conversation felt too familiar. How many times had they stood on a balcony, angry and upset with the other, unloading and apologizing? James was losing count. His head spun.

“Teresa, we both know all I’ve done since I’ve stepped foot here is respect boundaries and follow your orders. That’s fine if it’s what you want, it really is. But you shut me out. You said you wouldn’t hide and yet here we are, and you have the audacity to throw in my face how I don’t understand? How could I possibly understand? You won’t give me the time of day if I’m not doing whatever it is you need from me. You haven’t even given me a chance.”

James was now the one doing his best to reign in his emotions. He had so carefully crafted a mask all day. Worked hard to lay out a gap of distance between them. And suddenly, here she was unstoppable. Trouble. Like a constant tornado in his life, from the moment she first appeared in that warehouse. Always showing up and tearing everything down. She was too good at it.

“You’re right. I haven’t been fair to you lately.” How do you show up to give one apology and end up with two? Teresa was in for it. With a deep breath she continued.

“Look, maybe it was a mistake, asking you to stay. If you want to leave after this, I’ll understand. And I promise I won’t hold it against you, James. You’ve done so much for me, for this business. But you deserve to be happy too.” Teresa said those words and her vision blurred. It was the most honest she’d been all night and she found herself letting him go again. He couldn’t be happy there, with her. Teresa wasn’t even happy herself. Declarations of “you deserve that” rung between them from that night in New York. The same night she let him back inside and shut him out all at once. “I know this hasn’t been what you expected when you decided to stay. For that, I’m sorry. I should’ve been honest with you, about things changing but I wasn’t. The fact is that it has to be different now. After the car…” Teresa choked up and stopped mid-sentence. “Look, the price to pay is too much. I can’t go back to who I was. And I can’t run this business any other way. Please understand.”

The underlying message behind that- she couldn’t be the person he wanted her to be as a cartel leader or as a lover. Her morals had to go down the drain and well, she wouldn’t be vulnerable with James because they could not have that kind of relationship. Not in this lifetime, as she had so sweetly put it.

There was definitely more to her latest revelation and he didn’t know the details behind it just yet. It didn’t matter. All he knew was that if she had been using for whatever reason, the last thing he would do was up and leave. No. He decided he would not be going anywhere, because as Pote had preached to him only a week ago, she might not want him to stay but she needed him. He just hadn’t realized how much at that moment or why. And James did not come this far, signing off a year of his life and fighting off death itself just to lose her to the very product she sold. As long as he remained flesh and bone, she would not destroy herself. He wouldn’t allow it. Not ever again. So he made sure to look her pointedly in the eyes when he sharply said “I’m staying, Teresa.”

And with that said, he walked off the balcony and into the bedroom dismissing her and any words of leaving.

#jeresa #queen of the south #james valdez #teresa mendoza #qots #qots spoilers #alice braga #peter gadiot #otp

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writingpuddle · 4 years

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“Don’t you ever get lonely?” Nicky asked, digging in his pack for a chocolate bar. To their left, the cliff dropped away precipitously, sheer granite cliffs like sentinels at the end of the world.

Neil stared at Nicky. “No,” he said.

“What, never?”

Neil looked out across the sweeping vista of mountains before them. A speck that could have been a hawk or a raven or a sparrow spun against the sky, too small and distant to judge. He’d stood in the middle of busy cities; he’d gone to school with hundreds; he’d even tried out for a track and field team once. He’d been surrounded by people, and he had been so ferociously lonely it had been like a knife in his chest.

“No,” he said, because he didn’t know how to explain—didn’t even want to, really. He’d felt more alone back in the so-called real world than he’d ever felt in the wilderness, miles from any other person. When there was no one around, there was no one to miss.

~~~The Long-Distance Hiker AU (A Bullet Point Fic)~~~

So after Neil’s mom died he kinda of ghosted around for a while and eventually ended up in a small hiking town in California

He met a bunch of thru hikers and figured, hey, my dad probably won’t find me if I’ve fucked off into the wilderness

So he starts hiking

And pretty soon he realizes it’s the best thing he could imagine

He spends all summer in the mountains and when winter rolls around he finds a temporary job in a skiing town working in a second hand gear shop

He’s an ultralighter in the most accidental sense possible

His gear is weird and cobbled together and his shoes are held together with dental floss

He sleeps under a tarp with a down blanket and a thin foam mat and he’ll eat the same shit day in day out without even registering it while he covers frankly obscene distances every single day

It basically gives Kevin an ulcer

Kevin’s an ultralighter, but in the stuck up, rich bitch way; his gear is probably worth thousands of dollars and he’ll lecture anyone who listens about ripstop nylon and is super snobby and elitist about who is a so-called “real” thru hiker (hint: anyone who doesn’t do it his way isn’t a real thru hiker)

(don’t worry he’ll get smacked around a little by people like Dan and stop being such a little bitch about it but he grew up rich so even though it might’ve been shit living with Riko he really doesn’t always take into consideration the context of how much fucking money gear costs when he’s preaching about ultralighting)

(yes I’m taking out my dislike for pretentious rich ultralighters on him, okay, but the difference is he’ll have character growth versus the people I met are probably still being preachy and self-important to this day)

Andrew’s like the exact opposite

His pack weighs like seventy pounds and he’ll pull a six-inch knife (a gross misuse of smart gear weight management) at anyone who comments

He has a completely contained single person tent that’s big enough to sit up in and a four-inch inflatable mattress

His sleeping bag is rated to like -20 even when he’s hiking in the summer

Nicky swears he once saw him pull a full-sized chocolate cake out of his backpack three days down the trail and everyone says that’s stupid and made up but secretly think its totally true

Andrew likes to hike alone but somehow he’s never more than a day away from Aaron and Nicky and when he keeps showing up near them it gets harder and harder to pretend like he doesn’t actually care about them

Nobody says anything, obviously, but Nicky gets a little teary when he starts to notice the pattern

It was Nicky’s idea; in this universe Erik got him into hiking when he was in Germany so he got the cousins into it as a bonding exercise and then it turned out it was the best family activity they had ever found

This is several years after they graduated and they’ve scrounged together enough time and money to hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Now the upperclassmen:

So Stephanie Walker is a trail angel: one of those people who lives near a long trail and provides snacks and rides and somewhere to stay and basically helps out anyone who comes by with whatever’s going on; she’s pulled a lot of people out of frankly dangerous situations and she’s not afraid of anything the trail has to offer

So Renee finds herself and her faith while living this life of meeting new hikers every day and it’s almost inevitable that she starts to hike and find solace in the wilderness

Allison is one of those Wild types: she’s done some hiking (much to her parents’ chagrin) but she’s never done a thru trail or even much overnighting before, but she’s ready to throw herself into it and doesn’t care how dirty she gets

She totally carries a tiny spa package though

The other women are very skeptical because they take pride in being free from societies expectations and make up and shaving but they come around after Allison pulls it out one time when they’re seven days into a ten day section and gives them face masks and they all have a little pedicure pampering session (so, so needed when your feet are being beaten and bruised by hard terrain all day)

She has a lot of new, expensive gear and is super touchy about people trying to help her (because a beautiful woman absolutely gets people trying to “help” all the time and it’s infuriating and condescending) but she learns to accept help from her closest friends

She was showing off near the beginning of the trail drinking with a bunch of guys and probably got too sloshed trying to act tough (alcohol hits you waaaay harder at high elevations dude, if you’re not expecting it you can get Fucked Up really fast)

It’s Seth who realizes things are getting out of control and pulls her out before the guys can do anything shitty which is how their friendship and eventually their relationship gets started

They piss everyone off with their constant breaking up and getting back together on the trail, sometimes hiking together for days and then splitting up and going to hike with other people but they find a lot of healing out there in the woods

Seth’s mom is totally dismissive and condescending of his hiking, she thinks it’s a stupid waste of time, but she thinks everything he does is a stupid waste of time so at least when he’s out there without cell service he has an excuse to not respond to her

Now Dan

Dan’s trailer trash, right

She’s got no fucking cash but she has this dream in her head to hike the PCT and she’s going to fucking well do it

Her gear is probably most similar to Neil’s except where his is a mess of weird priorities and held together by spit and twine

Hers is meticulously planned

It’s cheap, some of it’s over forty years old, but it’s hers

It’s probably the only stuff in the world that’s actually hers

She accumulated it over about four years, hitting all the second-hand gear events, saving up every penny, packing and repacking and writing everything out in great detail until David Wymack got wind of her plans at a gear event

He’s one of those guys who hiked the PCT thirty years ago back before anyone knew what it was except instead of feeling superior about that it means he knows exactly how much impact experiencing the wilderness can have for disenfranchised people

He approaches Dan and offers to sponsor her hike

She’s resistant at first; she planned this hike, she got all the stuff together, she was going to do it without anyone’s help

But he comes back and says he just wants her to write about her experiences and publish it on his website

He’ll pay her for the work, of course

And she wavers and finally caves because this will move her plans up by about two years if she can make money while she’s hiking instead of having to hoard up enough cash to take six whole months off

Her blog posts are a huge hit

She doesn’t preach about how the mountains saved her, or get too metaphorical about hiking or anything like that

She just talks about the real, raw experience of hiking

The friendships, the trials, the triumphs

The infuriating people whose mental image of the hiking community doesn’t include poor black girls who grew up in a trailer park, who say she’s an inspiration like they actually mean something else

She talks about the days that she flies up the mountains and the days that she can barely drag herself out of her tent and the day she realizes that Allison and Renee, these women she thought could not be more different from her, are the best friends she’s ever had in the world

And she’s takes fucking amazing pictures

She’s also very determined not to have a trail romance

That’s stupid and cliché

Look that guy Matt might be hot but she’s not interested

He’s clearly working through some stuff and she’s not here to be some guys savior or whatever

So Matt then

His mom helped him get sober a couple years ago and he’s been struggling with it ever since

She got him into hiking as an outlet and a healthy hobby and he took to it like a fish to water

He’s got legs for days and he doesn’t mind carrying a heavy pack, he can hike for hours without stopping

(The fact that he’s faster than her pisses Dan off a bit, but sometimes you gotta accept that you’ve got short legs and just hike your own hike, there aren’t any prizes for speed)

He relapsed again a couple months before his hike started and he and Randy weren’t even sure if he was going to be able to do it but he’s damned well going to try

So anyway

Pretty much everyone is trying to actually hike the PCT except Neil

He drives everyone bonkers

His motivation isn’t really about the trail so much as staying out in the wilderness where there are no gangsters to murder you

So he just does whatever he wants and keeps showing up at random points

He’s technically got one of the thru hiker permits but he frequently goes off on side trails not on the PCT and ends up hiding out in the woods so rangers won’t find him

He’ll just hitchhike straight through boring sections or anywhere that you pass through too many towns where he’d rather not be remembered

He keeps coming back to the PCT but it’s more like it’s a rough guideline of where to go than an actual route he’s taking

He’s got his natural colouring back because who’s dying their hair or wearing fucking contacts on the trail?

But also

Who would ever associate a runaway mafia kid with a guy with overgrown hair and a stained t-shirt who’s sitting serenely on a mountain pass in a photo on David Wymack’s website?

Nobody

That’s right kids, Nathan doesn’t have a role in this one because he doesn’t find Neil

Maybe he gets killed in a shoot out or something and some other gangster steps up and takes over, and in the shuffle Neil’s just kinda forgotten

Maybe he finds out months later and he just stares at the computer in shock because he should have known, shouldn’t he? He should have felt it when his father died

He should have realized that he was free

That happens later though

Who fucking cares what Riko’s doing honestly

Kevin has somehow attached himself to Andrew and is driving him up the wall with advice to improve his hiking/base weight/distance/etc and he sees this guy (Neil) who regularly covers like thirty or forty miles a day (obscene!) and is like YES this guy is my people!

Except when he starts talking to Neil he realizes he’s this total weirdo who doesn’t even have a cook set he just eats cold food (a common enough thing among ultralighters, but not like this. Oh god, not like this)

Neil’s just sitting there gnawing on a pack of uncooked ramen like a fucking animal

And he’s not! Even! Hiking! Properly!

You’ll never finish the trail if you hike like this!

Neil just gives him a blank look

He’s got no interest on getting on some “verified” list of people who hiked the PCT, he just likes hiking

Andrew likes him

I mean obviously he despises him what the hell is with that janky ass setup but also he’s so unconventional and unapologetic how could Andrew not be into that?

They’re the kind of people who give wilderness rescue personnel grey hair, but for completely opposite reasons

Neil keeps running into them because even though he covers so much ground every day, his meandering route means he doesn’t actually move down the trail very fast

They’ll be like wait weren’t you like a week ahead of us and he’s like oh yeah I heard about this cool waterfall and took a sixty mile side trail to visit it and nearly ran into a momma bear with two cubs, it was awesome

And they all start to grow on him, and each other, almost accidentally

Look none of them are out there romanticizing the trail as some kind of magical place where the problems of the real world disappear and the people are somehow more pure and true or whatever

People are people and they bring their issues wherever they go

But there is a paring down

When your daily concerns are just mileage and shoes and food and weather, a lot of other stuff fades into the background

And well the truth is a lot of people are on those trails to work through stuff

And they find each other

Gradually, without even really noticing

They team up in June, groups of three or four with crampons and ice axes to get over the Sierra’s.

Neil was planning to just do side hikes and wait for the snow to melt—he isn’t so reckless he wants to go over the ice alone, but Kevin insists he join them and for the first time he hikes in a group with Kevin and the cousins all together.

It’s weird

He’s not used to people talking to him when he’s hiking and he frequently doesn’t respond and it’s not because he’s being rude he’s just so focussed on what he’s doing and what’s around him that he literally doesn’t hear them

And then

Nicky slips

It’s not his fault, they did nearly everything right (Kevin may be a pretentious ass, but he does know his shit) but sometimes shit just happens for no reason

And they’re at the edge of the ice sheet so Nicky’s just untying himself from the rope that links them together, he’s not even moving, and the snow beneath him shifts and he doesn’t even have time to scream before he’s hurtling down the snow below the trail towards the cliff at the bottom of the ice sheet

Neil doesn’t even hesitate

He dives after him, ice axe in one hand like a fucking gladiator and gets his arm wrapped around Nicky’s waist

He slams the ice axe into the snow and it drags behind them, and it looks like it’s not going to catch, and the edge is getting closer and closer—

Until the axe catches something, and Nicky and Neil lurch to a halt, clinging to each other, hanging off of Neil’s one arm and the axe.

Neil looks up and sees Andrew, Aaron and Kevin in various places on the slope above them, their axes dug in and long gouge marks in the snow beneath their heels, strung together by a ropeline that’s still attached to Neil’s waist

That rope is probably the only thing that slowed them down enough that Neil could stop them without ripping his arm clean off

It’s hardly a by-the-book rescue, and in fact it was pretty stupid, but they’re okay, they’re okay, that’s all that matters

That night they light a fire down by a lake and Nicky cries on Aaron’s shoulder and Andrew keeps clenching his fists because he’s never felt so helpless in his life and it was Neil that jumped, not him

He knows that he was at the far end of the line and he would’ve made it worse if he had, but doing nothing while Neil risked his life to save Nicky

They don’t really talk about it

But you kind of can’t help being friends after that

And even after they’re out of the high mountains and back on solid trails Neil keeps tabs on them

And Nicky befriends the others and without even meaning to they start to develop a sort of loose trail family vibe

They’re not hiking together all the time like some of the groups they meet, but they check on each other all the time and wait up in resupply villages and bond over firepits and shitty hot chocolate mixes and swap tips on how to keep the butt-chafing at bay

Neil sticks to the outskirts, mostly, but he starts to open up a little, in fits and spurts, tiny non-specific things that wouldn’t even register to most people but that this particular group knows means more than that

He’s slowing down, too, sometimes hiking entire days with people and covering half his usual distance even when there’s no cliffs or glaciers threatening him

He likes hiking with Andrew the most, though

Because neither of them are big talkers when they’re hiking and Andrew’s pack might be absurdly heavy but he’s got legs the size of tree trunks and endurance to match, so he might not be fast but he can outwalk half the people on the trail by sheer relentlessness

They both like to camp up high, near treeline (so Neil can set up his tarp) and in the places that it’s legal they’ll start a small fire and Andrew will loan Neil his pot so he can actually cook his fucking ramen for once and sometimes they’ll watch the Milky Way rise and share secrets under the open sky, not looking at each other so they don’t break the illusion, and sometimes they won’t say anything at all but it’s okay, because they’re saying nothing together.

It’s nice

It’s maybe more than nice

The summer draws to a close and Neil is starting to realize that he doesn’t want it to

He never wants the hiking season to end but this time it’s different

This summer has been perfect

And he knows deep in his bones that once they leave the trail things will change

The others have lives to return to, and Neil…

The trail is all he has

And if he’s barely hiking alone at all these days, well, who’s going to call him out on it?

The others like having him around because he stops them from getting too fixated on the Trail to see the trail

He still takes side trips but now sometimes people will come along and he’ll stand at the base of a canyon staring up at the glossy white walls and Dan will snap a photo for her blog and smile, because the PCT is just a line on a map, but the hike is all of them; together

He’s hiking with Andrew in September when a storm hits, this time vicious

Neil huddles under his tarp in resignation

Storms suck, he always gets wet, no matter how much he lowers the tarp, but he’s used to it; he just waits it out

But it’s just getting worse

Hail lashing at the tarp and pummelling the ground and maybe for once he regrets camping so high up

And Andrew has to shout to be heard but finally Neil realizes he’s offering to let Neil come into his tent

You’re going fucking freeze, just get in here

Neil goes

It’s weird

It’s instantly weird

The tent is not built for two people, so they’re both sitting cross legged with their heads ducked to not press against the roof

The storms probably not going to let up soon, Andrew says

Yeah, Neil says.

Andrew sighs

Lie down, he says, and Neil does, and Andrew lies down next to him, shoulder to shoulder

It barely works, only because neither of them are very big people

Neil’s pack is outside wrapped in his tarp and all he has is his damp down blanket but he’s not cold anymore, not with Andrew bundled up in his ridiculous sleeping bag right next to him

The storm rages for nearly two days and what passes between them in that tent, nobody knows

If they’re barely ever seen apart after it, well. You only see people so often on the trail. It could easily be a coincidence

And if Neil doesn’t even set his tarp up on rainy nights anymore, well. They never camp near other people anyway, so who’s to know?

In early October the snow blows in, blocking the route to the finish.

They drift around a resupply village for almost two weeks, waiting for the trail to reopen, but finally even Kevin accepts that it isn’t going to

After all of that, none of them are going to finish the trail

It’s a disappointment—of course it is. For most of them, the end of their trip is now a nondescript exit into a village, no fanfare, no closure; they didn’t even know they were done for days

Still, it’s not so bad

They’re all together

Allison suggests Vegas, but they all laugh it down; they wouldn’t even know how right now, bearded and hairy and ravenous as they are

They go to South Carolina instead

It’s not really even discussed that they’ll stay together, they just all go; Allison hosts them at her resort and they laugh at the incongruous weirdness of seeing each other in real clothes, and it’s different, but it’s also okay

They stay for another two weeks, and they don’t hike another fucking inch

We should try the Continental Divide Trail sometime, Dan says

Her blog is so popular now that she’s got sponsorships from more than just Wymack waiting for her

She could make a career out of hiking and blogging and doing gear reviews and it’s a dream she’d never even realized she wanted until she had it

And if she accidentally fucked up and ended up with a hot trail boyfriend? Well, nobody’s perfect

And he has a great butt

(she has photos of it on her blog, from when they jumped into a glacier lake naked back in August)

Everyone is jealous

How about that trek in Iceland? Matt suggests

Or the whats-it-called in New Zealand, Allison says

Oh, I bet there’s some good ones in Europe! Nicky says. You guys can all meet Erik!

And it’s going to be different, but it’s not going away, and Neil feels calm in a way he never has at the end of a hiking season before

Eventually everyone has to start making plans to return to their lives, and jobs, and Neil sneaks out to the back of the house to sit in crisp fall air and watch leaves spiral down out of the trees

Andrew follows him

They sit together, watching the moon rise over the hills, and when Andrew asks Neil to come home, Neil says yes

#me? coping with my inability to go hiking by writing headcanons? its more likely than you think!#aftg headcanons #aftg au #andreil #bulletpoint fic #my writing #hiker au #gratuitous descriptions of hiker life #found family #this is like 3.5k idk man #this is very self indulgent lol

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nuclidic · 4 years

Note

Given that a lot of us are stuck inside with all this COVID-19 stuff, do you have any good TimKon fic recommendations to keep us more happily occupied?

Haha yes! I have this list from years ago but it is way past time for an update.

Disclaimer: these are just things I like, please heed all tags and warnings etc. I'm also not reccing any WIPs because unfinished fics kill me every time.

Crystal Clear by Merit andAnd I'll Tell You No Lies by caecily

Two short takes on soulmate tropes that have to go first because I love them so much, I love soulmate aus, Tim and Kon are soulmates, the end.

Where There's a Wish by LeeayreBeing Robin’s vessel is hard enough: the exhaustion, the life-threatening late night activities, the bruises and bullet holes and broken bones. Trying to hide all that from his incredibly suspicious, incredibly hot new roommate while maintaining his studies and placating his parents? Tim has never had it so hard. Especially since said roommate doesn’t actually know he’s Superboy.

So the setup for this is unusual, I'm not sure if it's based on anything but: superhero identities are Personas, independent (basically magical) personalities created by the wishes of a person or groups of people who act through hosts that have the will to manifest whatever that persona does. Basically: Robin is an independent persona, Tim shares his body with him and when Robin manifests the costume and all the gadgets appear. It's explained throughout the story, but just in case you start it and are like wtf is happening. This possibly should go in the thirds section because the actual pairings in this are: Robin/Tim, Red Robin/Tim, Tim/Kon, Red Robin/Tim/Kon, Red Robin/Superboy, and Red Robin/Superboy/Tim. Red Robin can also be kind of dubconny so watch out for that if it's a concern.

Wing Beats in Reverse by firefrightJason Todd is the third Robin, not the second, growing up in shadow of Tim Drake's death. Despite this, he still manages to form strong bonds with his new family. Especially Damian, who wishes to atone for his past mistakes with Jason's predecessor. But when he's fifteen, a mysterious red hooded figure kidnaps Jason from the rooftops of Gotham, and after that his life will never be the same again.

A Robin reversal AU (ie Damian is the eldest, Dick the youngest) that's Jason-centric but of course that doesn't lessen the Tim angst. Or the Kon angst when he finds out Tim is alive. Hopeful ending, but it doesn't fix everything.Other pairings: JayRoy, StephCass (barely)

Time Flies by by LaroyenaJon Kent is Superboy. Tim's gut instinct tells him that's wrong.(Timkon fix-it where reboot!Tim misses Kon like a phantom limb. And then he gets him back.)

Sometimes you just need to cry over the lack of Kon in your life and this fic provides the PERFECT excuse. Heartbreaking and then happy. (Also brings Colin back UNLIKE DC.)Other pairings: implied Clex

Not Completely Powerless After All by ChimaeraKittenNobody was quite prepared for the kid who runs the company to visit, but they manage, in fact, they might be pleasantly surprised; they weren't expecting him to be nice. Of course, they weren't expecting him to be a possible ninja either, but you gotta take the good with the bad.

Outsider POV!!! I have never watched Powerless so you definitely don't need to be familiar with it, this is just a glorious casefic told by someone who doesn’t know it’s a case.

Matters of the Heart by DMWith Clark off-world as an ambassador to Earth, Conner has to watch over Metropolis. Though it should be straightforward, there appears to be something amiss with seemingly random crimes happening around the city. Conner has a hunch that they’re connected and calls in his best friend to help. But as the two of them spend time together working the case, Conner realizes that his feelings for Tim might not be what he had thought.

A long casefic with feelings, basically everything I ever want.

Stumbling Home by bewaretheboojumIn his mid-twenties, Tim moves back to Gotham City after several years living abroad. He's feeling adrift, unfocused and a little off balance as he tries to re-establish a life in his home town.Kon is a fireman by day and superhero by night. When mysterious fires start cropping up in Metropolis, all signs point to arson. Who better to help him get to the bottom of this arson case than Tim? And really, it seems like Tim could use the distraction...

Another casefic with older TimKon. I didn't like the initial setup with Tim having abandoned his friends for years but it won me over in the end.

the honesty in your body by LaroyenaLuthor's tech saved Kon's life at the cost of his mind. Tim must take a feral Kon across space to restore his humanity... which is just as difficult as one may think.(Batman Omegaverse AU: unabashed TimKon porn detailing their original get-together in their early teens to their definite get-together in their late teens. But mostly porn.)

Yep, this is mostly omegaverse porn and it's excellent and I love it, I really don't know what else to tell you.Other pairings: BruDick

I'm Alone Here, I Think by unluckylokiSuperboy is fighting robots in San Francisco and remembers something that wasn't.There's a new priest in the Naxos temple appointed by Dream of the Endless.Kon is missing something. Tim is missing everything.One day Krypto practically drags Superboy to a remote island in Europe and there's a dark haired guy smiling at Kon like he knows him.Maybe he does.

Sandman crossover but I haven't read Sandman in 500 years so you don't need to know most of it. Kind of identity porn, but more...fraught. Excellent Tim angst (there...might be a pattern here) and I'll be honest I'm not very into all the witches and stuff but overall very enjoyable.

Nowhere But Forward by MishaBerryIt shouldn't have happened the way it did.When Kon finds Tim in Paris, it leads to a night that neither of them will ever forget, for better or for worse. Tim is then forced to confront something he's been denying about himself for a very long time, and Kon begins to question some things about himself. The road ahead is full of twists and turns, but there's nowhere to go but forward.

I really love long fics, but tbh I found this started to drag a little towards the end. I still enjoy it overall with delicious Tim angst.

Plus One SectionSometimes when pickings are slim we can try food we wouldn't normally eat, and sometimes it's delicious. Which is to say these are fics with Tim/Kon/Another Person. Don't go any further if this upsets your OTP soul, I completely understand.

TimKonBartTroika by glitterandlubeThis is kind of written like crack and definitely won't appeal to everyone, but it's a fix-it of preboot where instead of living with the Kents in Smallville and becoming the country boy of Teen Titans (2003) Kon moves to Gotham and then scores with Tim and eventually Bart. Follows the previous canon's timeline almost to the start of Red Robin. Some (honestly warranted) bashing of Steph but also of Lois Lane (???).Also contains explicit Tim/Dick.Other pairings: Clex, JayDick

TimKonCassieTrymmetry by glymrWhy do they feel like something's missing?

Set in a universe where Kryptonians form triad soulbonds. Kon and Cassie have both always been thinking about Tim when they're together, and after Kon comes back they can no longer deny it. They have to find Tim. I wish this was ten times longer.

JayTimKon

Heart of the Hoard by firefrightJason is a knight on a mission to save a captive young woman from a cruel and vicious dragon. However, when Jason reaches the keep the girl is kept in, it quickly becomes clear that not all is as it seems with his quest. For starters, Lady Timothea is actually Lord Timothy, and - as Jason soon discovers - he's hardly a prisoner in his tower.

Perfect because Kon is an ACTUAL DRAGON though it does lean on his YJ cartoon characterization.

I (Don't) Want to Believe by chibinightowl and strikeyourcolors

FBI agents Tim Drake and Conner Kent are sent to Arkham Heights High School to investigate a series of unexplainable incidents that have both staff and students on edge. Tim's firmly of the opinion the school is haunted while Kon is positive the occurrences can be explained in a more reasonable manner. After all, he doesn't believe in ghosts.Right? Right?

Horror casefic where Tim had a previous thing with Jason but also a thing with Kon so sharing is the way to go, especially when you're more (or maybe just equally) concerned about being murdered by ghosts in a haunted former asylum.

Okay I am stopping now because otherwise I will continue forever. I hope this satisfies some hunger.

#timkon #fic recs #missdirect #jaytimkon #timkonbart #timkoncassie #long post

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zigtheeortega · 4 years

Text

to hell and back

✿ pairing: logan x mc

✿ word count: 4174

✿ warnings: mentions of violence from book one & angst

✿ tags: @diamondsless ; @agentsewell ; @violinet ; @messofakind ; @hudush ; @roguemal ; @troublemakerinspace ; @choicesarehard ; @litgpop ; @auroraemery

✿ author’s note: i’m incredibly nervous to post this, as this is my first ever logan fic so please be gentle! i got the idea for this fic after watching portrait of a lady on fire, after being reminded of the myth of orpheus and eurydice, which if you haven’t ever heard of it, read up here! the idea of a forbidden love always breaks me but i’m a sucker for punishment, so i thought i’d apply that myth to future logan x mc (my mc’s name is raquel). i hit a follower milestone, too, so i thought i’d celebrate by pushing myself out of my comfort zone! woo![disclaimer: i’d never want to accidentally upset anyone by writing him ooc, so if you have any pointers, please dm me]

•─────────✦✿✦────────•

He was the last person she’d expected to hear from. It’d been years. Her life was finally getting back on track, and she was moving on.

She white-knuckled the steering wheel, her hands slick with sweat, and peeled out of the parking lot of her dorm, leaving her world to enter his again.

Some days, her time with the Mercy Park Crew felt like a distant dream, a day dream she’d conjured while bored at school. Other times, she’d reminisce on his specific features to make sure she’d never forget what he sounded like, how he looked, how he felt.

Some days, she’d zero in on his eyes, the way the brown tones were multidimensional, layered, and how dark and full his lashes were, shading his dilated pupils when he’d stare at her lips before leaning in for a kiss.

Other days, she’d focus specifically on his hair; the strong coconut smell of his deep conditioning mask, which he unabashedly used, a secret she swore to keep, and the silky feeling of his thick waves beneath the pads of her fingers.

She’d spent years mulling over her time with the Mercy Park Crew, spilling tears every time she came across her prom photo with Logan, so often that she had to lock it up in a journal she’d filled long before. She was used to the feeling of a choked sob, the tension in her lungs and the soreness that came after a good cry: a comfort so familiar to her that it was one of the only things that reminded her she was alive – that she was human.

She’d spent so much time grappling with her morality, the guilt of her involvement weighing heavily on her for her entire freshman year. The depression that came with it was unrelenting, the loneliness of moving across state lines settling in almost immediately. The nightmares were worse.

They came as quickly as they went – in short blips, interwoven with her worst memories. It wasn’t unusual for her to wake up in cold sweats, vivid details of bullets ripping through flesh, the metallic smell of blood burned into her memory.

She often woke up trembling, panting, always quick to muffle her cries with her pillow as to not wake her roommate.

She spent the majority of her first year in isolation, a self-inflicted punishment for the people she’d harmed in such a short span of time. Thankfully, her roommate was rarely there.

She was homesick, but not for Los Angeles.

No matter how much she wanted to go back, she wouldn’t allow herself to go. Not for holiday breaks or summer.

For the first year, her chest felt like a gaping wound, and she struggled with aimlessness, the thoughts of her purposelessness a constant mental burden. She toed the ledge, always close to jumping but never committed.

It took intense therapy to get her to a safe distance.

She slammed on the brakes, the red hue of the brake light in front of her the only thing warning her to stop. The burst of adrenaline she got from almost rear-ending another car was the most she’d felt in a long time.

She had chased the high relentlessly, either isolating herself completely during depressive episodes or throwing herself into high risk situations to feel something – anything.

Driving had become a utility to her, transportation and nothing more.

She associated the exhilarating sensation of pressing the gas pedal until her foot was nearly pointed, the smell of burning rubber, her tangled, windswept hair caught in her lip gloss – with Logan. It was wrong to try to recreate it without him.

When she’d left for Langston, she’d never looked back. Partially because she felt like she had nearly nothing anchoring her to L.A., but also because her last semester had a sense of finality to it. The crew vanished without a trace, and her inhibitions returned.

It took her five days of driving and stopping to make it to the campus. Her once intimidating, tightly packed car barely filled her half of the shared dorm room. And once she was on campus, she rarely drove anywhere, unless absolutely necessary.

She clung to the hope that she’d be able to find a crew of her own in undergrad, and that she’d hear his voice again. Envisioning Logan’s lips enunciating her nickname gave her a rush close to adrenaline, but not quite.

The soft pattering of rain on her windshield drew her out of her reminiscent thoughts. She blinked, glancing around the pitch black road, searching for a road marker. She flicked her high beams on, bouncing off of a distance marker. “Greenwood – 13 miles”.

He’d called at nearly midnight, his voice trembling, quiet, the bass of his voice keeping him from a true whisper. “Raquel, I need you.”

His tone was pure fear, the four words dripping with the subtext of a flubbed deal, a job gone wrong.

She kept the same phone number, clinging to the belief that maybe, just maybe, she’d hear her name roll off his tongue one more time.

It took three years for her to hear his voice again. And he was terrified.

She’d spent three long years dealing with the aftermath of the spring of her senior year of high school. A couple months of living in a new world had left a lifetime of damage, and she’d come out of it changed. The damage had festered, so much so that she had to seek help.

She’d promised herself that if she ever saw him again, she’d stand her ground, and try to pull him out of the deep end. She was strong willed, and well intentioned, that much she was sure. She learned so much about herself during that last semester, and she was grateful for it.

And all of that was abandoned the second he spoke her name.

She turned off the highway, and after a long stretch of backroads framed with gravel driveways, the bar came into focus. The open sign flickered, overshadowed by the numerous draft beer logos shining brightly around it.

The parking lot was nearly empty, a couple of reverse-parked pickup trucks scattered across the gravel. The muffled music met her ears, barely audible over the electric bug zapper near the entrance.

She still couldn’t get used to the muggy, swampy weather of the east coast, much less the mosquitoes and the irritating itchiness of a fresh bite.

The chill of the air conditioning hit her before her nerves did. With nothing but a few bills, her driver’s license, phone, and determination, she’d set out to save him. She hadn’t even prepared.

What was she supposed to say to the one person who burrowed his way into her subconscious and never left? The one that she was forced to live without, even though she craved daily him like the sweet bitterness of nicotine, the fleeting high enough to keep her coming back, no matter if it’d eventually kill her.

In the back booth of the dingy bar, she saw him.

She noticed the stubble first, so foreign from the smooth tanned skin she remembered running her fingers across. The dark circles under his eyes aged him, the years of trauma finally catching up to him. It’s like his light was dimmed; she thought he was broken before, but whatever healing journey she’d had, he’d endured the opposite over the years.

His cheeks looked hollow, like he hadn’t eaten in days. From the look of his greasy hair and dirt stained white tee, he’d been on the run nonstop.

“Logan?” She called out, just loud enough for him to hear.

He met her eyes, and for a brief second, they were empty, devoid of emotion, just long enough for her to notice, before they filled with tears. He jumped up from the tattered booth seat: grabbing her in a crushing hug, burying his face in her neck.

He murmured her name into her neck over and over, like he couldn’t believe she was real. She wrapped her arms around him, his familiar warmth bringing her to tears.

And they stayed like that, enveloped in each other, not a single thing around them mattering, except the feeling of being in each others’ arms after years apart.

When she pulled back to look at him, he stared at her lips, and ran his thumb across her chin. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she breathed, her arms snaking around to his front, and she grazed the tight muscles of his torso.

A drunken man shoved past them towards the restrooms, taking her out of the moment.

“Should we sit?”

He nodded, sliding onto his side of the table. “Do you… want a drink, or?” He asked, a bit nervously.

“No, I’m driving.” She fiddled with the braided keychain attached to her car keys, pulling at the frayed edges.

“That’s the responsible Raquel I missed,” he chuckled, breaking the tension a bit. He took a deep gulp from the beer bottle in front of him.

“I missed you so much,” she sighed, watching his face intently, committing every new detail to memory, tucking it away for later.

“I missed you, too.”

It was a hard conversation to initiate, much less navigate. She was still deciding if he was real – she’d dreamt of the moment she’d see him again, and it wasn’t anything close to what was happening.

She’d daydreamed of him pulling up to her dorm, parked out front like he did when they first met, as cliche as it sounded. Donned with the same white tee and jeans, he was leaning against the car (in her dream she pictured a convertible, so she could watch how beautifully the wind’s rough caress styled his hair, able to tousle it in a way a pair of hands never could), a smirk on his face, his arms folded, but his body language was never uninviting. He was relaxed, untroubled, as she kissed him, and they drove off into the sunset. A cliche, but at least they were both happy.

“So…” she started.

“I know you have a lot of questions, but I don’t know if I can answer all of them right now,” he finished, apologetic.

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say that… subter-fudge doesn’t always work to get you out of sticky situations.”

“You mean subterfuge?”

“Okay, truth be told I’ve never used that word in my life, but it was the word of the day on this dictionary app I have. And I was saving it for a good time, but I think I fucked it up,” he smiled, shaking his head.

She reached across the table, covering his hand with her own. “Let me get this straight. You not only learned a new word to use on me, but you have a dictionary app? You know you can just Google words, right?”

He shrugged. “I try to learn a new word as often as I can. It’s not much, but I feel smarter, even if I never use the word.”

“I thought it was cute.”

He chuckled, tracing his thumb across her knuckles. “You’re just trying to flatter me because I messed up.”

“No, I’m flattering you because you tried… and I missed you,” she said, squeezing his hand, the roughness of his skin comforting to her.

“God, I missed you more,” he whispered, eyes roaming over her face. “You really answered after all that time?”

“Yeah, of course. I knew you’d come back for me, eventually,” she smiled, burying the years of grief underneath the momentary gratification.

Her life since meeting and leaving Logan had been a probability. The numbers were infinite, the outcomes varied. She thought her psychology class would’ve been more rough on her mentally, but numbers didn’t lie.

Her calculus and statistics classes had been terrible – not just because she had to work twice as hard for a good grade in math classes, but because the problems so well translated to her life.

There were so many times that she could’ve died – so many times that she could’ve gone to prison for working with “criminals.” So many times that she jeopardized her future. And she was offered a way out, to start fresh.

But as many times as she tried to scare herself into feeling lucky and grateful for being steered back onto her path to success, she felt hollow. She had a one in a million chance of getting out of that life alive, but she had a one in a million chance of meeting Logan, too.

There were millions of people in Los Angeles County – she could’ve gone her whole life without knowing him, blissfully ignorant to the rough underbelly of the city she’d grown up in.

He changed her from the second he met her. Her probability split down the middle, branching into paths and subpaths, and multiple more until each move she made was critical. And the moment he left, she clung to him, despite the probabilities of them ever meeting again slimming more and more with each passing day.

He squirmed a bit, looking uncomfortable. She could tell that he was holding back. “Look, Raquel, I have to be completely honest with you, or it wouldn’t sit right with me. I know you haven’t seen me since you left for college, but… I’ve seen you.”

Her breath hitched in her throat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, all of the jobs I’ve taken since leaving L.A. have been on the east coast, so I could stay close to you. To protect you.”

It shouldn’t have been music to her ears, but witnessing those words fall from his lips filled her soul with a sensation she could only describe as tranquility.

Her first year of college was riddled with depressive episodes, but the ensuing paranoia that came after she was reminded of The Brotherhood was even heavy, even more suffocating. She watched her back so much that her body was covered with bruises from the times she’d run into door frames, trash cans, people, sometimes causing her to trip and fall.

She was so unhealthily fixated on all of the possibilities and outcomes that she withdrew, not wanting to be the reason anyone close to her was harmed. She spent so long worrying that it nearly ruined her.

But hearing that he was always there, close enough to keep her safe, alleviated her, renewed her, replenished her. It nearly undid the hurt, minus a critical detail.

“Why didn’t you reach out to me?”

“I couldn’t… hurt you. The crews I ran with… it would’ve –” he cut himself off with a shake of his head, throwing back the bottle to finish it off.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Logan,” she whispered, watching his labored breathing, like he was so close to crumbling before her eyes.

“No, I can handle it. It just might take me a few tries to get it out,” he smiled weakly, gripping her hand, and she held firm, grounding him.

“Truthfully, I wanted to call you. You don’t know how many times I typed your number out and deleted it. I know your number by memory now.

“I was already here by the time you moved in. I’d been recruited by one of Teppei’s old friends, if you could call him that. He seemed like a great guy at first, but…” he trailed off, pained.

“It got really bad. This guy said he never worked with the same crew twice, and I thought since he kept calling me back that I was special.” He laughed curtly, the familiar look of brewing rage bubbling beneath the surface. “It was stupid, but each time he kept pushing me into doing more than I bargained for. I did a lot of things I couldn’t stomach, but by the time I realized what I was doing, I was already getting orders for the next job.”

He watched her hand on his, refusing to meet her eye.

“I always thought I’d dip when things got too rough, but I couldn’t give up being so close to you.”

“You didn’t run?”

“I told you I was tired of running,” he grinned, and it seemed alien on his gaunt face – like it’d been so long since he smiled he’d forgotten how to do it.

“So, what are you doing now, then?”

“Running.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, so deadpan, so pragmatic, that she knew not to pry. He was at rock bottom, and she was his only way out.

“What can I do?” she asked, no hesitation, ready to throw herself in the line of fire for him.

“I just need a ride to the used car lot on the other side of town. I have cash and someone there waiting to sell me one, so all I need is a ride.”

“You could’ve just called a cab or something, though. Why do you need me?” She prodded.

“I don’t know if you’re gonna like what I’m gonna say,” he hesitated, clearly torn.

“I can’t like or dislike it if you don’t tell me.”

He sighed. “Well, this might be the last time I can see you… for a while.”

“Can’t you just hide out and wait out till it’s safe? You can’t leave now, I just… I just got you back,” she choked, panicking and grieving all over again.

“I have to. There’s a pretty hefty warrant out for me. And I’ve got people looking for me. I can’t drag you into that,” he said, solemn.

“No, you can get out, Logan, we just have to plan it out. We can beat this, we just have to try,” she whispered, vision blurring with tears.

“Hey, hey, Raquel, it’s okay, I’ve accepted it,” he soothed her, reaching out to stroke her face, swiping his thumb across the streaks of water the teardrops left behind. “I just wanted to see you before I left.”

“Logan, I can’t say goodbye again. I just got you back,” she repeated, the familiar sense of dread creeping in, her chest tight.

“I can’t. I’m in too deep.” And he left it at that.

He left a tip, and they walked to the car, hands intertwined. She wanted so badly to just talk – to catch up on the years he’d missed, to make him proud, but it wasn’t the time. There’d never be a time. Being together in that moment was precious, every minute counting.

She’d have to memorize every second; they would have to last her a lifetime.

“Do you want to drive?”

He chuckled in response, a spark of his old self coming back. “Nah, I’ll be doing enough of that. I really missed seeing you behind the wheel.”

They slipped onto the warm leather seats – the moist air left over from the rain had seeped into the atmosphere of the car. She cranked up the AC, sweat beading on the back of her neck.

She peeled out onto the gravel backroad, not knowing what to say next. Thankfully, he leaned forward to tap the volume knob, turning on the radio, but the soft hum of the engine drowned it out, white noise in their silence.

He slipped the dog tag from around his neck, ruffling his hair, and placed it on the neck of the rearview mirror. It dangled, catching the occasional light of the passing streetlight.

“Is that a new necklace?” she asked, watching it sway as she turned onto the ramp to merge onto the highway.

“I hope you don’t think it’s weird.”

“I think we’re past that.”

“After I gave you my last necklace, I wanted something of my own to remember you by, so I got this done,” he rotated the piece towards her.

“Troublemaker” and her phone number was carved into the metal, scratched and slightly rusty.

“Oh, Logan,” she breathed, gripping the steering wheel harder. She couldn’t tell him bye. She’d just gotten him back.

“I want you to keep it.”

“No, you need it to remember me by, like you said,” she forced through a sob, the composure she’d thought she’d had a grasp on crumbling with each syllable that fell from his lips.

“I don’t need it, Raquel.”

“If I take it it means that…” she couldn’t say it.

“That it could get ugly. And I might not ever come back for you.”

“I want you to, though, Logan. I’m so close to finishing college, and I’m going to start med school soon, and I’m gonna have a great job, and I can take care of us and I–” she cut herself off, crying, her body heaving.

“I’m so proud of you,” he whispered, and was met with the calloused pads of his fingers on her jaw.

“I can’t do this without you.”

“You can. You’re way stronger than you think. I know you made it through some hard ass classes without anyone’s help,” he joked.

“You are too.”

“This isn’t about me anymore. It was never really about me,” he said, tracing a hand down her shoulder to rub the nape of her neck lovingly. “I know you never moved on. Hell, I didn’t really let you move on since I was secretly playing bodyguard for years. But this time I’m serious. You’ve gotta let me go, Troublemaker.”

“You know I’ll never do that,” she laughed feebly.

“You have to at least try. For me.”

She didn’t answer him. She pulled off of the highway, begging for the car to break down, for some divine intervention to happen to prove that they deserved to be together.

When she parked in the empty lot, the only light coming from her headlights and the flashing streetlight, he turned to her, a softness in his haggard appearance.

They stared at each other, drinking in every inch of their bodies. She wanted to remember him as bright, more vigorous, more alive.

And before she knew it, their lips were on one another’s, fervent and hungry. He smelled exactly the same, and she breathed him in, lacing her fingers in his hair, taking full advantage of their brief moment of solitude.

He parted his mouth, tasting her, groaning. They kissed over and over, reacquainting themselves. It morphed into her breaking down, yet again, kissing and embracing him over and over, trying desperately to reclaim the moment as healing. But she couldn’t see it that way, even as he whispered affirmations in her ear, reminding her of all of the things he loved about her.

The rain picked up again, tapping insistently against the windshield, setting a much more soothing ambiance than the situation called for.

Finally, she leaned back, so unwilling to part from the warmth of his arms. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he breathed, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand. “I need to hit the road so I can make it over the state border by sunrise.”

“Logan…” she whispered, begging. “I know we can make this work.” She sounded like a broken record, proposing empty ideas with no solutions. She knew there wasn’t a solution, but she preferred empty words to the stinging slap of the truth.

“I’m a fugitive. You’re going to be a doctor. I can’t compromise that. It’s selfish.”

“But I want you to be selfish,” she clasped his hands in hers, holding it to her chest. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

“That’s the problem, Troublemaker. I can’t let you do that,” he brought her hands to his mouth, kissing her knuckles once, twice, before unlocking his door, and stepping out. “You were always too good for me, Raquel.”

He circled to the front of the car and smiled at her one last time, the tears in his eyes glimmering, reflecting the headlights. She watched the rain dot blotches all over his ratty tee, clinging to his form, and it made her wish she’d been able to see all of him.

Then he turned, and walked further and further into the lot of cars, his form becoming hazy before disappearing completely.

And she couldn’t stop him.

Probability always won in the end – the numbers didn’t lie. She could’ve seen it coming from a mile away, but she didn’t want to see it.

She was paralyzed in fear, knowing that there was no way she could save him from the hell that’d engulfed him, but refusing to believe it.

#playchoices #rod logan #choices rod #logan x mc #my fic #jade writes choices fics

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irelise · 3 years

Text

Fic “Behind the Scenes” - Alex Rider

Trying to dip my toes back into writing, so I thought I’d ramble about some fics I’ve already written! This started off as ranting about my title choice and how they’re usually Final Fantasy XIV songs I butcher in order to forcibly fit the fic, but it expanded into musings about things that didn’t make the cut into the final fic, and potential sequels/things that happen down the line.

Just doing Alex Rider fics for now since that’s my current active fandom, but drop me an ask if there are any fics you’re especially interested in from any fandom!

Starting off with: Time (2368 words, gen, Alex & Yassen focused) aka my untagged Inception-flavoured AU where the plot twist was that it was a dream all along That said, this title was probably one of the easiest to come up with and was obviously from the main theme of Inception, Time! Which is fantastic like the whole movie aaaa i love Inception AUs and this fic is probably the one I’m most likely to expand into longfic if I dredge up the motivation from somewhere. It would be a mission style fic, possibly a heist, where Alex and Yassen are seemingly working together in order to steal some valuable intel from another group. Of course, it’s all a dream! Through copious dream symbolism and mind fuckery the real mission was set up by MI6 for Alex to extract intel from Yassen, who by this point is steadily losing his grip on dreams and reality after months, possibly years, spent under sedation.

Yassen has a few tricks up his sleeve, though. He’s aware that he’s (probably) dreaming and he can see the fractures in Alex’s resolve after such a long time of being used and manipulated by MI6. It would only take a little nudge to get Alex to defect -- or, at the very least, to escape.

So while Alex is busy trying to extract information from Yassen, Yassen is trying to do the opposite: inception.

The rest below cut for length and also because they’re nsfw since most of my writing was for the kink meme! Warning for general fucked-upness and unhealthy relationships

at the end, on a dusty road (8154 words, Yassen/Alex) aka the reputation sabotage fic, aka where’s part 3b?!

Title from Origa’s Polyushka Polye:

The wind scatters your brave songs Across the green field. Songs of the past, Leaving them alone with your glory, And right at the end, on a dusty road…

i just wanted something wistful and Russian about past soldiers and fading glory ok....... I came pretty close to titling the fic leaving them alone with your past glory but decided it didn’t make much sense out of context.

ANYWAY my first Yalex fic! Very much inspired by a hodgepodge of comments on Discord about how MI6 would react if they ever saw Yassen paying Alex visits in the middle of the night - “Could they be exchanging information?” “The whole night? Maybe the answer is something more obvious...”

ANYWAY the ending at the moment is pretty open - there’s two main ways I see it going:

1) Yassen comes back shortly afterwards, realises he had fucked up colossally, stays and helps Alex rebuild even though Alex (very justifiably) no longer trusts him. Very slow reconciliation and healing but ultimately happy ending.

2) aka the one where I broke Nanibun’s shipper heart over Discord: Alex and Yassen eventually reunite, but it isn’t until years later, when Alex is nearing middle age and Yassen has faded into obscurity. Alex managed to pick up the pieces of his life and even moved on properly from MI6, and now lives a fulfilling life. Married, 2.5 kids, white picket fence, the whole lot. So what if his marriage is more for partnership than for love? He’s content with the direction his life had taken and has strong ties to his community. He even managed to forgive Yassen, even though it took him a long time.

He and Yassen meet for the last time in a sunlit cafe in spring. Alex looks at Yassen and sees only a stranger with lines crinkling under his eyes.Yassen is getting old, he realizes. He thinks he should be happy that Yassen even had the chance to get old, but all he feels is relief that their paths had diverged. Alex is done with that life and he can never trust Yassen again. All that old passion had burned away to nothing, not even a flickering flame. Even though the initial parting had been painful, Alex had managed to find peace long ago, and he hopes Yassen will be able to do the same. But it's a distant, unemotional hope, the sort of hope you'd have for a distant acquaintance you haven't seen in years. The type of well wishes that are etiquette more than actual sentiment.

He's glad when their drinks are finished and Yassen melts away into the chattering springtime crowd, one final dangling chapter of his life closed at last.

...............or, 3) Alex throws himself into increasingly dangerous situations in an attempt to feel something and dies young.

(part 3b is coming someday i swear! it’s the alternate path where Yassen has second thoughts, tells Alex the truth, and doesn’t send the sex tape to MI6)

---

Lemniscate (3562 words, Julia Rothman/Yassen) Not a whole lot to say about this one, except after I finished I realised it was really similar to another fic I previously wrote which also involved a young man desperate to reinvent himself completely being taken advantage of by his superior............ i have a Type

Title - I was jamming out to Locus while writing this which is a song all about an inability to escape from cycles - When fighting back right out of this system/Means falling back right into this space ; When falling back is better than simply/Falling back into pieces again - but it was long and unwieldy so I thought about shortening it to Moebius but that was a bit overdone... In the end I settled with Lemniscate which is also an infinity symbol, Moebius-like shape. Mostly it’s a reference to how Yassen never quite breaks free of his “cycle” even though he’s with Scorpia now - he was Sharkovsky’s slave and bedwarmer and...now he plays basically the same role for Julia Rothman. (Just with a bit more murder and moral erosion!)

---

This probably needs a special content warning - major character death (gun suicide from the second Russian roulette scene), gore, necrophilia

closing the circle (3650 words, John Rider & Yassen) aka is it still a gen fic if there’s offscreen necrophilia?

This was originally written for a kink meme prompt for corpse mutilation + necrophilia but then the John and Yassen plot thread kind of took over and I never actually ended up writing the gory stuff oops since it was too out of place compared to the rest. So everything below can be considered not “canon” since the fic diverged so heavily from its original plan (which is why the section numbers skip around - I cut out Yassen’s bits). But if you’re curious, here’s the details for what I originally planned to happen to Yassen (well, his corpse) and the Sharkovsky family, copy-pasted straight from my notes and full of as much karma as I could stuff in:

Yassen’s death, Sharkovsky shoves his fingers in the bullet hole and spits on the body in disgust. Yassen regains consciousness halfway through this; he can feel what Sharkovsky is doing

Ivan comes running in, attracted by the sound of the gunshot. Sharkovsky tells him to do what he likes with the body as long as it’s disposed of in the end. Necrophilia scene? Afterwards Ivan disposes of the body by locking it in the cellar alone with the Dalmatian for a few days

Yassen starts getting his revenge. Ivan is the first to go when he comes to let the Dalmatian out – the Dalmatian savages him and tears out his throat before it’s finally shot. Yassen’s bones get buried along with the Dalmatian. Ivan’s body is kept in the cold storage room in the basement where they kept the old food taster’s body while they decide what to do with him.

Maya, Sharkovsky’s wife, is next. She passes away in the middle of the night. Sharkovsky wakes up next to a cooling corpse.

There are whispers that there is some sort of curse. One of the maids talk about finding blood on the carpet of Sharkovsky’s study. She’s the next to disappear. Some other workers stop turning up.

Finally it’s Sharkovsky’s turn. He dies of poison. The dacha burns down that same night.

A Scorpia agent was sent to tie up loose ends (Scorpia didn’t know Sharkovsky is already dead); Yassen kills him too. He has no loyalty to Scorpia and just wants to be left alone.

Hunter is sent to investigate. He and Yassen talk, in the end, Hunter invites Yassen to come with him, Yassen agrees. But when they leave the dacha and Hunter looks back, he finds that Yassen is gone.

And an excerpt:

Yassen is dead. He does not remember dying. There are some things the human mind tries to shield itself from, and the memory of a bullet traveling through bone and brain to erupt on the other side in a shower of gore is one of those things.

Yassen is dead. He had hoped death would mean oblivion. At his most naïve and optimistic, he had hoped death would mean reunion. Happiness. A return to simpler days.

He discovers, instead, that death is not so different from life, except he is even more powerless now than before.

There is a body on the floor of Sharkovsky’s study. Its hair had once been pale white-blond, but now it is matted with coagulating blood. That same blood spreads in a dark pool against the carpet, clotting the fibres together into ugly clumps, stiff and flaking. The fire in the hearth is still burning sullenly. Its light glistens against the grotesque strands of viscera splattered against the ground, the furniture, the wall. A round hole had been punched into the side of the corpse’s head, piercing bone and brain. That was how the man who had once been Yassen Gregorovich had killed himself. The fingers of the corpse remain loosely curled around the old-fashioned revolver that had been the instrument of death.

The only living person in the room rises slowly from his wheelchair. Sharkovsky’s skeletal face is twisted into an ugly grimace of anger. He totters over to the corpse, nudging it with the tip of one polished leather shoe. “Waste of time,” he says coldly. “Ruining a perfectly good carpet, and for what?”

In a sudden fit of temper, he lashes out with a kick. Once, it would have been strong enough to break several ribs (Yassen knows from intimate experience). Now, the corpse merely flops limply to one side. It incenses Sharkovsky further. He drops heavily to his knees, breathing harshly, and backhands the corpse across the face with one shaking hand.

#fandom: alex rider #My writing #meta

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velkynkarma · 4 years

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When you have a plot bunny do you plot it out or do you just dive into it without planning at all? How do you prevent plot bunny from dying off. How do you feed it? Do you write your fics entirely and then post or do you write as you post?

So many questions anon! But I’m happy to answer them :) I love talking about this stuff.

I always plot out stories a lot before I start writing them, even for things like oneshots. I write out a bullet-point outline of the idea from start to finish, so I have an idea of how to get it started, what the broad stroke are, and what the eventual goal is going to be. If I had any ideas in mind for details—be they dialogue segments, a certain type of description, or a specific vision in mind that inspired the thing—I’ll write that down too and try to figure out where it goes. It’s never 100% set in stone for me, and I give myself some wiggle room to change things around or evolve the story as it goes. But it really helps me to know where I’m going.

Plotting a story out in full also helps a lot with placing key details or hints for something later better. If you have an idea for a Big Reveal and where it’s going to be, it’s a lot easier to figure out where to put the hints leading to that big reveal before it.

How do I prevent a plot bunny from dying off? Well, for me, planning is a part of that. Personally if I just dive into a story without planning it, I tend to meander, lose sight of where I’m going, and then lose interest in it. Having a map of where the story is going is incredibly helpful for me because I always know what’s coming next and what I’m working towards. The story I’m working on right now, I planned the key battle out weeks ago, and I finally get to write out all the ideas I came up with, and I’m so excited for it.

Going back to the source material helps a lot too, in the case of writing fanfiction. I’ll usually watch key scenes from Voltron, or sometimes an entire episode or two, just to hype myself up before writing Voltron fics, for example. Certain kinds of music can also really inspire good writing moods or ideas. Or sometimes, if I’m trying to come up with ideas or figure out a way around a writing block, I’ll do mundane things—go on a walk, take a shower, log into World of Warcraft and mindlessly collect materials or fish for a couple hours. It helps me zen out and think, and I usually get ideas then.

I completely, 100% write up stories before I start posting them. I know this isn’t for everyone and a lot of people like to post as they write. I used to do that too back in the day, but I stopped for several reasons.

If I do lose interest in a story (or more frequently, a fandom) halfway through writing something, I don’t leave an abandoned WIP out there for people to be disappointed over. I have a lot of abandoned, skeletal remains of fics in my harddrive from various fandoms I wandered out of halfway through the fic, but since I’ve never posted any of them, it can’t disappoint anybody to not have it finished. They don’t know about them.

It makes detail and editing so much easier. If I’m 5 chapters into a story and come up with a new theme or piece of information or idea that I want to use for the rest of the story, I can easily go back and incorporate it into the first 4 chapters it wasn’t in yet. I can also do this to sneak in foreshadowing and hints for twists better. You can’t really revise early chapters for fics that are already posted, since people have read them.

Posting is a lot less stressful, and can now be done on a schedule. All I need to do is copy/paste the story or chapter into AO3 and boom, done. If I happen to be really busy that day, people still get their chapter, because it doesn’t take much effort. Readers can also trust getting invested in the story because it’s guaranteed to be completed, and since I post on a schedule, they have something they can guaranteed look forward to.

Of course, like I said, this isn’t for everyone. And I’ll admit, sometimes it’s a wrench to have to wait. I have a fic I’ve been working on for over a year, that’s well past 250k, that I want to share so bad. But it’s not done, and until I can be sure it’s done, edited, cleaned up as much as possible, and ready to present, I’m not ready to put it out there. It’s frustrating to not get feedback sometimes, but man, it’s gonna be an absolute thrill when I finally get to share it with everyone and it updates regularly for a long time.

I hope that helps, anon. Good luck writing :)

#Velkynkarma answers #writing #fandom #Anonymous

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zoanzon · 3 years

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Hey, I like the bullet point fics you've put up on ao3, I'm on mobile so it's kinda hard to tell but is it just the 4 up currently? Do you have plans of adding more sometime?

Thank you!!! So I currently have five items up in that series, so I’m not sure what wasn’t visible... Up currently are three fragments from later in the series - they’re all excerpts from Book Three, actually - and those are you can quote me (cause I just said it) [Tony testifying regarding funding the F4′s mission to space which accidentally gave them powers], the world as it is (not as we'd like it to be) [Fury telling the UN that SHIELD might’ve been rotten but it filled a necessary role and so it needs a successor], and no version of this (where you come out on top) [a non-dialogue view of Loki-as-Odin actually using his deception to plan for Thanos’ arrival as compared to just lounging about]. Beyond that, I have two bullet fics up: Book One (which diverges Age of Ultron), and Book Two (which diverges The Defenders). I have four more Books planned for the series. Book Three will be a lot of ‘Tony and Fury try to set up a bulwark against coming problems’ such as trying to make the Accords into something more palatable, cutting off the Civil War before it starts, and trying to bolster Earth-Asgard ties for a proper coalition against the coming storm. It’ll also be where Tony finds out he didn’t so much travel /back/ as he might’ve accidentally ended up a timeline or two over, as events and faces start popping up that he has no memory of and don’t seem to connect just to the things he’s changed: Fantastic Four appearing, Norman Osborne being himself, dealing with the fact Incredible Hulk is actually MCU canon (hello Blonsky and Sterns), and so on. In general, this is where Tony & audience find out its not a fix-it fic so much as it is ‘new timeline, new disasters’. This will definitely have multiple chapters and currently-undetermined length, as before now I’ve had around 1.5 pages of bulletpoints and then just ‘...’ because I figured I’d fill stuff in as I went; but now that I’m doing it as a bullet point fic, I need to actually start filling in where things go! Book Four brings in bullshit from Agents of Shield: more specifically, it brings in the Framework, that Matrix-expy we see in AoS S4. Due to Reasons both Tony and Strange ‘wake’ inside the Framework with their memories intact, and that both sets them on course to finally start working together as well as finding out some other stuff going on they weren’t aware of until they see it from a different angle. It’ll eventually intersect with where the AoS cast themself enter the Framework, and will help dovetail AoS back into what Tony and Strange have been up to in the real-world. Book Five is where repercussions of Three and Four picking up some momentum, as well as more directly tying in the aftermath of Two (as compared to the ‘SOMETHING is happening but god knows what’ background references that’ll pepper through Book Three). Odin also ends up dying around this point and Hela is let loose onto Earth, Fury ends up seeing some old faces acting a lot more antagonistically than when he last saw them a few decades ago, Hand and Hydra remnants start ramping up their bullshit, and antagonistic aliens start arriving...that aren’t Thanos’ army but are still there to cause trouble. This is where that ‘bulwark against coming problems’ starts getting stress-tested, and we see other matters coming to a head. Book Six is the culmination and climax of everything, my response to the Infinity War. Instead of Thanos v. everyone else, the Infinity War has a bit more...complexity going on. Can’t really give more detail without spoiling stuff planned for the earlier Books (and tbh no idea what will remain the same or will change between my theoretical plans and posting the bullet point fics, so best to be light on details this far out). So, four more main Books - all of which will at minimum be two chapters if not more - as well as an unknown number of scenes/excerpts from places within the series that get written as the motivation for them hit me. (Same as those first three fragments actually; they’ll come whenever the full scene smashes into my brain, lol) Hopefully I’ll have at least a chapter for Book Three posted within the week: my outlines for One and Two needed a bit of alteration but were otherwise pretty complete, but Three kind’ve trails off like I said so I need to put a bit more work into fleshing it out before I can start posting content for it. However, said content should eventually be happening: I wimped out of writing the full +500K prose for this series by just going for a bullet point series, so it would suck if I couldn’t even do that lol. Sorry if this was a lot more than you were expecting, and glad to hear someone’s been enjoying the fics!

#the monkey speaks #used to the darkness #lunga-luume

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livlepretre · 4 years

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I'm so glad you decided to do this ask game. I love your writing style and have been curious about 4, 11, and 54 for a while. Thank you for being so interactive about your writing!

💙💙💙 honestly thank you for asking! I love interacting with all of you here on tumblr, and honestly, talking about writing gives me a lot of energy to see through really long projects (you all know which one).

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?

Yes! The most helpful habit I’ve developed is actually finding the right time of day (for me) to write-- I’m best in the mornings, so the first thing I do 2-4 mornings a week is caffeinate and open up my word doc with my wip. Often I’ll reread a few scenes from where I left off to get myself going, and then I write for an hour or two. My thoughts are so much clearer in the early mornings, before I head to work and exhaust my mental energies, that the work flows really freely-- I can often cover the same terrain by writing first thing that I might take all day to cover if I get started, say, on a Saturday in the early afternoon (sad but true).

I also do like to amp myself up with songs, but I don’t listen to any music WHILE writing-- only beforehand. I find music during writing to be way too distracting.

I only ever write sober, because I find even a glass of wine throws me way too far off my game (and I hate squinting at my screen). But the more caffeine the better.

Also, detailed below: I OUTLINE LIKE A FIEND

11. Describe your writing process from scratch to finish.

hmmm okay

so, often an idea will hit me and I will immediately have maybe 3-10 pages that flow really fast... but then I’ll stutter out

so after that comes the outline.

and I mean: OUTLINE

I put my outline at the bottom of my word document, below the scenes that I’ve already written-- for FE this started as a pretty basic series of like, maybe a dozen bullet points overall. As I kept brainstorming and writing and thinking about it, I started having more specific plot points. Every time an idea occurred to me, I added it to the outline. In the beginning this was a very flow of consciousness outline, not even bullet-pointed, just paragraphs and paragraphs detailing in often vague terms the broad strokes of what I wanted to happen and what the emotional beats would be. I think it really has helped me with FE that I had a lot of the BIG moments outlined before I started writing, including the ending, so I knew the narrative arcs and could foreshadow a lot of things, even if a lot of the chapters get written between updates and I have added in a lot of things that have just sort of naturally developed. The good news is that if you overall stick the outline, you can also add a lot of other things in.

I review my outline A LOT.

Before I write any particular chapter, I look through the outline, and figure out which pieces I want to include in the chapter. I then go through and MINIMUM outline by bullet point the scenes that will be in that chapter-- although, I like to have the next 5-10 chapters outlined that thoroughly so that I know exactly where I am heading. I cannot stress enough how hard it is for me to write without a blue print.

Sometimes I write a scene that I end up not using. Rather than deleting it, I move it to the bottom of my word document-- often these scenes can be revised later to fit into the story.

I also write at the bottom of my outline any scenes/dialogue that pops into my head that I know will happen later. This way, I have it on hand when I get to it.

For the actual writing, once I start writing a chapter, I pretty much work on it every day until it’s done-- sometimes all I do is tinker with the outline, or write a few sentences, and sometimes I wrote 4,000 words-- it doesn’t matter how much or how little, because in writing, every word is a victory.

I try to apply the same rule to my creative writing as to my essay writing--just get the idea/emotions/plot out, describe it as clearly as possible, and any finangling with words can be wrestled with on a later pass.

I usually reread each chapter 5 or 6 times before posting-- often it’s the first thing I do when I open the doc up to write. This is often a good chance to add in connecting scenes, change sentences slightly, or revise paragraphs so that they fit into any emotional arcs/discoveries later in the chapter. I often change lines because earlier writing contradicts something I want to say later in the chapter, or use the chance of the reread to change words/restructure sentences.

When I get lost, I make character motive charts. Like, I write down each character’s name, and I come up with a list of what each person’s motive is. I then try to come up with a definitive action each person can take to accomplish their goals. Hopefully at least some of these characters will be in conflict.

Whenever I get to a major inflection point in the story, like, whenever I am about to drop a major plot reveal or change the course of events in some way, I do a major reread-- I reread my whole fic start to finish and use the notes app to copy and paste any paragraphs that are important (from my view as the writer) into a note so that I can keep track. This could include any paragraphs with foreshadowing, plot threads that have not been tied up, characterization notes I’ve forgotten about... anything at all that will help me wrap up anything I may have forgotten about.

For that matter, the notes app on my phone is also where I punch in anything that occurs to me in the middle of the night or when I’m at work, running errands, etc.

I basically repeat this process, until I find myself at the end.

Long story short: It’s all about the outline!

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

Find your best time to write and take advantage-- when do you feel most mentally alert? when do you feel most inspired? for me it’s early in the morning-- I could potentially write 7 days a week if I wrote at night, but I find I can get a ton more done in 2-4 days of 1 or 2 hours of focused writing than I could blearily staring at my screen. So, even if your BEST window is only available a couple of days a week, that is still a HUGELY productive window of time that will lead to good things!

Outline. As mentioned above.

If you only write one sentence today, you’ve done the hardest thing: you’ve written. One sentence as often as possible will eventually make it easier to write two sentences as often as possible, and so on.

Writing is a continuous act of self-improvement. I try not to worry about revising my work too much after I’ve hit publish, instead recognizing that there are fics easily accessible on the internet that I wrote when I was sixteen and yes they are highkey embarrassing but they’re also kind of a badge of honor because wow, I’ve gone from struggling to write a short 2,000 word story to working on an epic length novel. And what people say is true: it is an agonizing process to hit publish, full of self-doubt and hand-wringing (I cannot tell you how often FE has made me NERVOUS because of the content), but the beautiful thing about writing is that when you put it out into the world, you’re giving it over as a gift for everyone else. So, try to let yourself just write as much as possible.

Be honest in your writing. Go ahead and squash that little voice in your head telling you to hold back on the emotions, to be more solemn, more restrained. So long as you write your heart, it will be true, and there will be people who will connect with the writing because of that.

#anonymous #ask game #on writing

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sleepless-in-starbucks · 5 years

Note

Consider if you will, Parent Losleep with kid Virgil and Patton

It has been CONSIDERED

damnit you’ve even started a bullet fic mysterious anon I have other stuff to do but also I love this idea thank you so much

When they got married Logan and Remy were more or less ‘nope. no kids.’ because Remy wasn’t responsible enough and Logan wasn’t sure he could offer the proper emotional balance

It’s been a few years since they got married when they’re in the city and Logan notices that after being roughly bumped into his pocket feels a touch too empty

His wallet’s gone but luckily Remy kept his eyes on the kid who ran into Logan so they follow after him

The kid’s wearing some ratty hoodie and he keeps glancing back at them as he runs, realizing he’s been discovered, and he eventually throws the wallet down, hoping to throw them

Logan grabs it quickly but they still follow because something’s up and they need to get to the bottom of it

The chase more or less ends when they end up in a dead-end alleyway, the thief kid stuffed in one of the corners and shaking and making choked noises while another kid is standing next to him and mumbling things in a calming tone

When calming kid realizes Lo and Rem are there he turns around and throws his arms out to block thief kid like ‘IF YOU WANT HIM YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME FIRST’

Logan and Remy, realizing these are homeless kids trying to survive on their own: fuck we’re getting kids

It is

A LOT of effort to do this

Calming kid (Patton, they learn) is open to the idea but thief kid (Virgil) seems to think being adopted will be the end of them

Patton manages to convince him with something along the lines of ‘I promise I’ll get you out if anything goes wrong’ and that gives Lo and Rem the opposite of fuzzy feelings as to why these kids are homeless in the first place and increases their Need To Adopt

Skip the adopting process they’re a family now!

And it’s fucking awful in the beginning!

Virgil keeps smuggling things into his room, stockpiling food and supplies like he’s always prepared to run (which he is)

Logan and Remy give them separate rooms but every night they find Patton snuggled up with Virgil anyways

Logan questions it one day and Patton’s immediately almost in tears begging that he and Virgil won’t be forced to sleep separately, Virgil gets awful nightmares if he’s alone, please please please don’t keep us apart-

Logan and Remy are just CHILL PLS it’s okay!!!! stay together!!!! we’d never keep you apart why would you think that!!!!!

Patton: ‘our... our parents did that’

Logan and Remy: ‘did these parents have names not for murder purposes no not at all we just wanna talk’

Turns out Virgil and Patton’s parents... really sucked. They don’t give full details, and there wasn’t any physical abuse, but it was a mess, which is why Virgil and Patton eventually ran away

Logan and Remy are just: alright we’re getting you good childhood memories

It’s not the easiest thing in the world

Patton’s... so excited, so feeling, so full of love... in a way neither of his dads completely get. Remy’s better with him, able to react to his excitement with just as much of it, but Logan feels unattached to the sunshine ball, and he feels bad at that

Virgil’s more withdrawn and snarky. Remy’s good with him, too, but Logan’s closer to him, if only because Virgil’s deemed him calming. Remy’s excitement seems to put Virgil on edge, whereas Logan’s quiet way calms him, like Patton does, but in a different way

So at first, the family’s together, but disconnected. Halved, in a way.

It all comes more together after the following two occurrences:

Logan noticing Patton’s been acting off, smiles seeming a little fake and smaller, so he goes to talk to him, refusing to take Patton’s immediate answers of ‘I’m fine! just as always!’ and ‘school’s just been a little busier than usual heh’ until Patton’s smile is so fake it hurts and he’s more or less begging Logan to leave him alone with whatever his problem is

Logan refuses and he comes and sits next to Patton on the bed and awkwardly puts an arm around his shoulder (that’s how one offers comfort, right?) and askes him to tell him what’s wrong, he’s his dad, he just wants to help

Patton looks at him and apparently he sees something genuine in those slightly confused eyes because almost immediately he tears up and wraps his arms around Logan and murmurs incoherently into Logan’s side

Logan’s even more confused but he just tightens his grip and even wraps a second arm around him so it’s a true hug and just tells him in a calm, collected, simple tone that he’ll be alright, it’ll all be alright

Patton admits he’s been stressed about Virgil and school and worrying about what happens if they have to go back to the streets because he can’t do it again, can’t do the cold nights and rude strangers and risky steals

Logan feels something tighten in his chest at that idea, and the emotion in his voice isn’t much but it’s so much more than usual that it rings out when he promises Patton that will never happen again, ever, not as long as he and Remy are around, he knows that Patton and Virgil have had it hard but they’re okay now, they have a real home now, and they’re not going to lose that ever

Patton cries harder at that, but the tears are different, they’re tears of relief and pent up worry that finally has a hopeful answer, and Logan holds him through all of it, because that’s what dads do

They’re closer after that; Patton more appreciative of Logan’s calm and restrained emotions- Logan’s more understanding of Patton’s emotions

Virgil and Remy’s getting close is the opposite way around, in a sense-

Virgil’s been trying to hole up in his room for hours. He’s tired in the emotional way, just sort of numb, refusing to even ‘bother’ Patton with it

Logan’s not sure exactly how to help other than to let him deal with it

A few hours later Virgil’s still in his room and Remy decides to very lovingly fuck Logan’s idea

He comes into Virgil’s room, like ‘alright boi we’re getting you some coffee’

‘I don’t wanna go anywhere tho...’

‘you’re moping too much and it’s sad come on we’ll get yours with a bunch of chocolate mixed in it’ll be fabulous I promise’

Virgil doesn’t really have a choice so he goes along and Remy gets them coffees and Virgil admits his tastes a little nice and it’s warm and he feels a little more awake

He thinks they’ll go home or smth but Remy takes them to a park across the street from the café and sits them down on one of the benches and is basically ‘alright now we play the Logan Is Better game’

‘the... the what game?’

‘we comment about all these passerbyers and how cute they look but then remember we’re married to literally the best man- or in your case, adopted to- in the world so it doesn’t matter’

‘see’ Remy points out one dude going by ‘him? he’s got some very nice eyes. even from here you can see how sparkly green they are’

‘...okay?’

‘but they’re not Logan’s eyes; Logan’s deep blue eyes that look like ocean depths and they’ve got little grey flecks in them that don’t make since but they’re almost like silver and they’re framed by his stupid nerdy glasses that shake on his nose when I can make him laugh and-’

‘Remy that’s gay’ Virgil jokes, because he’s not ready to call anyone dad yet but it is funny, and he’s smiling, and the numb inside of him feels a little bit lesser as Remy just grins at him

‘good’ Remy responds, pointing out another dude ‘your turn’

And Virgil’s uneasy because what if he does it wrong what if he picks wrong and Remy’s insulted and he gets him and Patton kicked out of their new shelter (and possible home)

So he more or less forces out, ‘he. uh. he looks serious like Logan? but- but uh, he isn’t like, like Logan’s serious, which is more attempting to be serious but not really, because Logan’s actually really nice????’

And it sounds fake and awful and stumbled and he hates it and Remy hates it and-

‘oh, nice one! psychoanalyzing them. neat. now do you see that dude over there he’s got a nice floof of hair but five bucks says it’s not as fluffy and fun to play with as Lo’s’

And they just... continue. Remy covers more than Virgil and he always agrees with the ones that Virgil does and slowly but surely Virgil feels better and better until he’s truly smiling

Remy finishes his drink and gets up and heads to go and Virgil’s shuffling a bit behind him and Remy’s just ‘what’s up hun’

Virgil ‘I uh... I just wanted to say...’ (softer) ‘thanks for today. it was... it was really nice’

Remy: ‘always happy to help’ and he says it lightly and half-jokingly like always but it’s also sincere and meaningful and nice and Virgil ducks his head to hide the shine of tears in the reality that maybe this is a good home and Remy just pretends he doesn’t notice them as they head home and he annoyingly and purposefully off-keyily sings along to all the songs

And now they’re closer, too!

There’s still problems- Remy and Logan are a great couple but slightly dysfunctional parents- but it’s alright, because they’re trying; they’re all trying, so much, to be a family, and at the end of the day, maybe that’s all that matters

Also bonus that I thought of but doesn’t fit in the story:

Patton/Virgil talking about how emotionless Logan is around Remy

Not in the bad way, just the observational way

And Remy’s just ‘babes he is as emotionless as a drama student he’s just good at faking it’

Virgil/Patton are like ‘are you sure tho’

Remy ‘alright bet’

And Logan wanders into the room a bit later and Remy’s immediately up and standing next to him and Logan’s just ‘??? did something happen while I was away???’

Remy: ‘only the utter crime of me not being able to see your gorgeous face’

Logan, turning red at an alarming rate: !!!

Remy just keeps complimenting him tho until Logan is all but a puddle in Remy’s arms and Lo’s just ‘pls pls Remy stop you’re embarrassing me in front of the kids’ and Remy’s just

*while pressing light little kisses all over Logan’s face* ‘shhhh we’re cute’

aka this scene is just Remy Proves Logan Has Emotions By Flustering Him because Logan deserves to be flustered godsdamnit

Tagging @sign-from-god-complex and @blinksinbewilderment (even if the latter is sleebing right now) because Losleep

#the cryptid speaks #the cryptid answers #I write too many bullet fics #and yet not nearly enough losleep #losleep #ts logan #ts remy #ts sleep #ts patton #ts virgil

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toomanyhobbiesandthisisoneofthem · 4 years

Text

Captain Levi Packs a Punch

So, uh.. This is a fanfiction oneshot... It’s inspired by that moment during the celebration/feast episode, where Levi punches Eren and Jean when they get into a row. I’ve never written a fanfic before, ever, and idk if I’m gonna make this a thing or not... but I had a fic idea today, and while I’ve had fic ideas before, I never really wanted to write them badly enough to actually go for it. But for whatever reason, this one hit me out of nowhere and said, “Write me!!!!! Please, please, please, please, please!!!” So... here I am. :P

Although I’ve never actually written anything for it, I’ve had this particular fanfiction universe running through my head for YEARS, so I need (yes, need) to give a little bit of a backstory on my AU before I jump into writing the actual fic. There’s a bunch of stuff in my AU that leads up to the point I’m going to write about in this story, and some things will make more sense if you understand those things.

If you don’t care about the backstory part and you just want to get on with the fic, here’s a TL;DR: Self-insert OC is an X-men-style mutant who travels through various fictional universes. Her mutant abilities involve redirection/manipulation of energy, whether it’s kinetic forces, electrical charges, heat/combustion energy, etc. Feel free to go straight to the fic. Just scroll down until you reach the end of the italics and hit the disclaimer.

I might upload another post at some point detailing a more extensive version of this backstory summary, but for now I just want to give you the gist of it.

Backstory Bullet Points:

1. This is a self-insert OC, though I’ll probably rename the character herself. I know these tend to have a bad reputation, but I’ll do my level best to make it not-dumb. There are still some self-insert OC cliches and whatnot,(she’s definitely a bit OP; I’m attempting to counteract that) but I’m trying to make the story focus more on the characters and how they interact, rather than being like, “OMG DIS GURL HAS DA POWER AN’ SHE’S GONNA SAVE DA DAY AND GET DA MAIN CHARACTER FOR A BOYFRIEND TOO!” sorts of things.

2. When OC was 21 or so, she was ported from her own world into a universe in which the Marvel Avengers, the X-Men, and all the Rick Riordan Universe books happen to be all mixed together. By the way, Percy Jackson is a mutant himself along with being a demigod, and he has a major AU backstory of his own, which will be explained if I ever write a full AU-background explanation. This is not relevant to the current story, but it is a part of this AU.

3. OC discovers that one of her ancestors was a carrier of the X-gene who was ported to OC’s home universe like a hundred years ago or so, but because OC was born in a variation of Earth-1218, her powers didn’t activate until she switched universes -(Earth-1218 is Marvel’s version of/explanation for the “normal/real world”-- OC’s home universe is similar to Earth-1218, but it’s not actually the same one, because inter-universe transportation is possible with this universe, and the genetics for superpowers are still transferred from parent to child. -OC’s home universe dampens people’s superpowers while they’re in that universe, unless the person with powers happened to be born there, are transferred to a universe where their powers activate, and then switched back to their home universe.)

4. OC’s mutant powers include but are not quite limited to: --Absorbing and/or redirecting energy within and through herself. She can’t directly manipulate energy which has no direct contact with her, so for instance she can’t turn on a lightbulb from across the room, and she can’t use telekinesis or anything along those lines. --She is able to sense everything around her, and feels the energy within it. Because of this, she has pretty strong empathic abilities along with a sort of touch-telepathy as a side-effect. --She is able to release a kinetic/thermal “pulse” of sorts, and if any sort of energy is directed at her, she can: a) absorb it and release it later (for instance, if she’s walking through a fire, she can absorb the heat energy and then later use the heat she stored in order to, say, melt snow), b) allow it to pass directly through her and into whatever is behind her, (if someone tried to punch her and she happened to be standing against a wall, the force of the punch would pass through her and hit the wall)-- this aspect of her mutation also allows her to fly. c) “catch” it and redirect it in a different direction (if Cyclops shoots her with his laser eyes, she could catch the laser and shoot it right back at him, or off the the side, or straight up, or whatever she happened to need to do at the time.)

There’s more to her mutation than this, but that’s the basic idea. For the sake of understanding this particular fic, keep in mind this would also apply to the force behind a Titan’s bite, meaning she’s practically invulnerable to most of the deadly AOT situations.

5. Due to Backstory Stuff, she ends up being practically forced by the Fates to travel to various fictional universes every few years. However, she is never able to go to the original version of that fictional universe-- there will always be at least one thing that’s different from what she knows as canon for that universe. Sometimes the difference is simply a minor plot point, for instance when she goes to the FMA:B universe, it’s basically just an “Ed still has automail and alchemy, and he stays in the military!” AU-- which is kind of big as far as post-canon stuff goes, but it doesn’t really change any of the actual events of the majority of the anime itself. Other universes will have, or eventually have, huuuuge differences. The first universe she travels to, the Mixed Marvel/Riordan universe, is just one example of this. Sometimes these differences may incorporate things I’ve seen in other fanfics; I’ll try to source them when this is the case. It’s not my intention to steal from other people’s works, y’know?

6. Due to More Backstory Stuff, although OC is always placed into fictional universes which she is very familiar with, the Fates place a voice-block on her in regards to the events of those universes, in order to prevent her trying to explain future events to the characters if she happens to land into the middle of the story/plot. She may be able to give some information, and she may be able to hint at things, and if she really fights against the voice-block-thing, she may be able to give them basic info on stuff that will happen soon, but she can’t, like, write out a timeline and have them follow events and try to prevent them, or anything like that.

There’s a lot more I could probably tell you about this, but I don’t think any of it is particularly relevant to this story, so I’m not gonna worry about it.

Disclaimer: I do not own, and have never owned, and do not ever intend to own Attack on Titan or the X-men/Marvel Cinematic Universe. The only character, scenario, universe, etc. in this work of fiction that belongs to me is my own OC, Allise Hart.

TW: There is punching in this fic. If the title didn’t give that away, lol! It is not meant as a hostile violent interaction, but it is still a punch. So I guess... minor violence warning?

Sorry if anyone’s OOC... Again, I’ve never written a fic before, so...

Okay, last explanation thing, I promise.... :P This fic takes place a couple weeks into the two-month break period between the first and second arcs of season three. It seemed to be the most reasonable point in which Allise could arrive, have time to explain who she was and how she got there, gain at least some semblance of the characters’ trust, and make bonds of burgeoning potential friendship with some of the characters. Plus, the second arc of season three is probably where she could help the most, if she were to help prevent any deaths in canon at all. Everywhere else is either too busy, or the deaths that happen in those arcs are too important in character/plot development for me to be comfortable preventing them while still remaining consistent with the main plot. Also, for ease of communication purposes, the characters of AOT speak English in this story.

I hope you enjoy. :)

Levi Packs A Punch

The Survey Corps initial strategy meeting for the retaking of Wall Maria was to be held in fifteen minutes. Hange and Erwin stood in the center of the room, speaking in hushed tones, and several members of Levi’s team hung around off to the side. A current of nervous anticipation ran through the recruits. So much had happened these last few months-- so many victories, hard-won though they were.

What would come of this daring venture? Would their winning streak hold out? Was it possible they could actually be... gaining ground against the Titans? For the first time in a long time, it seemed there could be hope in this endless struggle for humanity’s survival.

Even their leaders were not unaffected. There was an extra spring in Hange’s step as they worked on their experiments. There was a strange fire burning in Erwin’s eyes. There was a steadiness to Levi that wasn’t there before, a sense of gentle calm taking the place of repressed chaos, and he seems less apt to speak out against the optimism present in the recruits.

It was this atmosphere into which Allise entered as she opened the door and made her way to Commander Erwin. Hange was animatedly describing a new weapon they were designing with Eren, and as she drew closer, Allise was nearly hit on the nose by a flailing hand. Hange startled, and both commanders turned to face her.

She technically wasn’t supposed to be here. Not that she cared.

The silence continued for a moment before Commander Erwin cleared his throat and asked, “Can we help you with something, Miss Hart?”

Allise shifted back and pressed her lips together. She glanced from the commander, to the wall, to the floor, and back again. Her face went through several different expressions, moving from pensive to fearful to determined. Finally, she took a deep breath opened her mouth.

“Commander Erwin, sir. I... have a request. I want you to let me help you fight the Titans and retake Wall Maria.”

Hange raised an eyebrow. Erwin blinked. “You what?”

“I want to help you with this mission.”

Erwin frowned. “Absolutely not.”

Allise lifted her chin in a challenge. “Why not? You need all the people you can get. I’m sure I can help you. You-- I-- if I help, maybe I can... prevent--” her voice cut off. She coughed harshly, grimacing at the sudden burn in her throat.

Hange studied her for a moment. “You know something.”

Allise nodded, coughing again.

Erwin cocked his head. “You know something important about this assignment in particular.”

“Yes.”

He nodded slowly, looking thoughtful, then he straightened. “I still can’t let you go. You have no experience. You have no training. You wouldn’t last two seconds against a 5-meter, let alone a fifteen or twenty. I cannot in good conscience allow an untrained civilian to fight Titans. It would be futile, and a waste of a good life.”

Allise swallowed. “It’s true that I have no experience. I don’t know what I’d be walking into-- not really. All I know of Titans is what I saw on the show. However... You recall when I first arrived, I explained why my ears are pointed? As you know, I am not entirely human. I have special abilities. I believe that these abilities will protect me from the Titans.”

Hange perked up. “What sort of special abilities? Can you run at superhuman speeds? Are you a shapeshifter? Are you able to fly? Do you have to--mmph!”

Erwin placed a hand over Hange’s mouth. “What makes you believe your ability will prevent you from getting eaten? Prove that you truly have such an ability, and I will reconsider your request.”

Allise grinned. “Thank you, sir. That’s all I ask.” She turned to Hange.

“To answer your questions, since you asked first... My abilities are energy-related. I can occasionally run at superhuman speeds, though the factors are extremely circumstantial. I suppose you could call me a shapeshifter, since I have two different forms; however, my base abilities remain the same in each form, so it mainly just affects my appearance. And yes, I am actually able to fly.” “As for proving that I can effectively protect myself against a Titan...”

Allise closed her eyes and pressed her hands together. She considered what, exactly, she needed to show them. How could she explain this in a way that made sense, without going to the trouble of finding a Titan to demonstrate with? She pondered her options for a while, nothing definitive coming to mind, until suddenly... Her eyes snapped open, and she fixed her gaze on Levi. Of course! A grin spread over her face. This. This was perfect.

She straightened, then cleared her throat and asked, “Is there anyone here who’d be willing to get punched for the sake of a scientific demonstration?”

Her sudden question was met with startled stares. Several of the recruits backed away from her warily. Then Eren and Jean started nudging back and forth, trying to push each other into volunteering; this eventually devolved into a shoving match, with Mikasa and Armin trying to pull them apart.

The situation had grown to the point where it seemed the boys might start actually fighting, when all of a sudden both of them were shoved aside, as Captain Levi stepped forward.

“I’ll do it.”

Allise blinked. “You’ll do it?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“I... well... alright, then. Uh. Don’t... don’t get mad at me if this hurts more than you’re expecting, though.”

Levi gave her a level look. “It’s fine. I can take a punch.”

Allise gulped. “Right. So... Come stand over here, in front of me.”

Levi moved into the center of the room and faced her.

Allise smiled slightly. “Good. Now, ah... where would you prefer to be punched? I’d rather not the face, if you don’t mind.”

“The stomach is fine.”

Allise nodded. She stepped forward, close enough to reach out, curl her fingers into a fist, and rest it against his stomach. Levi gave her a confused look. “Was that supposed to do something?”

She glanced up at him, then, and smirked. “Not yet. First, I want you to punch me.”

“I thought I was the one getting punched?”

“Oh you are, but I need you to punch me first. As hard as you can. Doesn’t matter where.”

Levi was thoroughly baffled now-- Allise could feel the confusion radiating off of him-- but he shrugged it off, lifted a fist, drove it into her side... and stumbled backward barely half a second later, falling to the floor, as she allowed the force of his blow to flow through her body and out through the fist she had placed against his stomach.

Everyone stared. None of them had ever seen Levi laid out like that-- not even Erwin or Hange. He was legendary among the soldiers of the Survey Corps for his ability to take a punch-- and throw one. And now there he was, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling in stunned surprise with the wind knocked out of him.

Levi coughed and gasped, catching his breath, then sat up and looked back at Allise. “What was that? You didn’t even move. How did you do that?”

“I redirected your punch,” Allise explained. “That’s my ability-- any force that someone uses against me, I can just let it go straight through me, or I can throw it right back at them.”

Levi blinked. Blinked again. Tilted his head as he parsed through what that meant. “...So. What you’re saying is...”

“...I punched myself?”

She smirked at him. “Yep.”

A strange expression crossed his face. He glanced at Allise, then at his hand, and back to Allise. His lips twitched. He turned back to his hand, and then...

His shoulders started shaking. His hand trembled a bit, and he pressed it to his mouth. Erwin grew concerned. This was not normal. “Levi..?”

A sound escaped Levi’s lips, a sort of soft wheezing. Everyone was worried. What was going on? Was something wrong with him? Had he injured himself with that punch?

Then, the sound began to register properly. It grew in volume, as if Levi could keep it contained no longer, and suddenly burst out of him resolving itself as deep, throaty chuckles, which in turn shifted fully into...

Laughter. He was laughing. Captain Levi was laughing.

Erwin stared. “Is... Is he alright?” Hange was just as baffled. “I... believe so? Unless he hurt his head, but... he was hit in the stomach, so it shouldn’t have affected his brain.”

Levi’s team was similarly shocked. They had never seen him laugh... ever. They weren’t even sure he could laugh-- Historia had been lucky to get even a small huff of a laugh, after her coronation. To see him like this, it was...

Exhilarating. Relieving even, to see that he, too, could be affected like this.

It was contagious. Conny snickered. Armin started giggling too. Mikasa’s expression softened, and even Eren let a smile grow on his face.

After a minute or two, Levi managed to calm himself and pick himself up off the floor. His face smoothed back to its usual expression, though his cheeks were a bit pink as he turned to Erwin. “I--” he cleared his throat. “I believe Allise has made her point. Her ability to--” his lips twitched, and he cleared his throat again. “Her ability to manipulate forces should allow her to safely escape any Titan that crosses her path. If she really wants to go, I think she’ll be all right.”

Erwin shook himself out of his stunned stupor and turned to Allise. “I agree. You’ve clearly demonstrated that you are capable of... impossible things. I hereby grant you official permission to attend this meeting, and accept your offer of assistance in retaking Wall Maria.-- “--don’t make me regret this permission.”

Allise stood to attention, placing her fists fore and aft in the official military salute. “Sir!”

Later, when the meeting was adjourned and everyone was heading out the door, Hange turned to Levi, and said, “I look forward to seeing what exactly Allise is capable of against Titans. If she can do to them what she did to you...” Hange smirked. “They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

The last thing Erwin heard as he made his way to his desk, was a fresh burst of laughter from Levi echoing down the hall.

#aot #attack on titan #fanfiction #first fanfic #first fanfiction #self insert #levi ackerman #humor

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tepre · 4 years

Note

Hello! Would you mind if I ask you how you outline your fics? I’ve been trying to but I don’t know how to start

YEsSSSs OUTLININGGGGGG my favourite thing

ok this SO depends on the kind of fic/story you’re writing. For ‘Us, in Lieu’ for example I did no outlining because I wasn’t planning on….HAHA ANYTHING REALLY. But it was mostly because the progression of the story hinged on emotional/character development, and the plot/flashbacks were peppered in as supporting characters where necessary, for context etc, but that wasn’t what propelled the story.

I guess that’s the main question you start with: what propels the story? With GFD, it was this idea that they both had to go through various phases of NOT wanting and DESPERATELY wanting each other, and that it would take years for those to align. So the first barebones outline looked something like,

Harry –> hates D, is forced to be w him

Draco –> likes H, but H won’t give him a chance

Harry & Draco –> take distance

Draco –> is lovely and caring and H gets to see it from a distance

Harry –> OH NO now likes D

Draco –> has moved on, has someone else now

Harry –> pines for D/would do anything

Draco –> helpless for that vibe

Harry & Draco –> drawn back into each other’s orbit –> FINALLY COLLIDE

And over the course of a few days I filled in each bullet point with minor outlines for scenes, snippets of conversations I wanted them to have, etc. So if I’d have to write a fic where the PROPELLING ENGINE was, uhhhh, idk, they both want the DADA teacher position, and McG says OK you each a month-long trial to prove yourself, & you have to take turns teaching classes, my first question would be: why would either of them want to be a DADA teacher?

Answer:

Harry - has had a realisation that teaching is the only thing that makes him happy.

Draco - cares 0 about teaching, is bored in his life and with everyone and has had his OWN realisation that the only thing that has ever entertained him EVER was arguing with Harry Fucking Potter.

Conclusion:

Draco only tries for the job to be around/fight with Harry. We now have a dynamics where Harry cares A Lot about getting a thing, and Draco cares A Lot about annoying Harry. Ergo, Draco has a Secret Motivation. Ergo, the POV narration that would best suit this story is a Harry POV, where toward the end we get a frazzled confession from Draco that he just wanted to be close to Harry.

My second question would be, what narrative timeframe would best showcase these dynamics? Because we’re dealing with a story that comes pre-packaged in a time frame (”YOU HAVE 1 MONTH TO PROVE YOURSELF!!”), that answer is a given:

They arrive at Hogwarts.

A month at Hogwarts where they both try to out-teach the other

Something bigger than The Rivalry happens that forces Confession out of Draco

Resolution

This is the bare-bones of your outline. Now you can start asking questions that’ll fill in the fleshy parts. Like: what’s Draco’s teaching style vs Harry? Is Draco surprisingly good at teaching or not at all? How do we ramp up the tension so that it leads to an eventual conflict? Or even fun smaller details like: where do teachers sleep/what’s the accommodation like? Do they have to sit in on each other’s classes? Do we get to know the students well?? Will they root for either one of the teachers, will the students’ opinions be the ones that decide, in the end? And then you start getting an outline that looks more like this:

They arrive at Hogwarts [find out Harry’s motivation via flashbacks –> had a revelation last month, quit job as Auror, this is all he wants]. –> TURNS OUT –> SHARE GUEST QUARTERS?? Separate bedrooms but shared lounge space/showers. [D: “Oh a common room! Oh how nostalgic. Potter, quick, call me a brat and I’ll wrestle you to the ground, it’ll be grand, come on, I’m ready, do it.”]

Take turns teaching classes? Harry the Tues and Thurs classes, Draco the Weds & Friday classes. No DADA on Mondays. Harry –> thinks it’s a homerun. Turns out?? Kids are super INTO Draco’s DANGEROUS AS FUCK laissez faire approach [0 lesson plans, takes them out onto the fields and lets them blast clay pigeons in air wHILE EATING Bertie Botts in the stands and laughing & clapping whenever something goes wrong], whereas Harry is seen as the ‘safe by the books teacher’ [hermione’s helped him prep.]

TURNING POINT FOR HARRY –> needs to step it up!! –> STEPS IT UP (Bogart?? Brings in an animagus?? shows wandless magic?)

TENSION IN THE SHARED QUARTERS. Draco walking around in bathrobe?? Showers w door open?? Tries to get Harry to go to Hogsmead w him?? Harry is PISSED.

During one of Harry’s classes, Draco has a SNARKY COMMENT and Harry is like well if you’re so SMART come up here and demonstrate and idk stuff happens and it ends up being a DUEL full of SEXUAL TENSION and the students are all like :O :O :O

Back at quarters –> Harry is FURIOUS at how things got out of hand and he picks a fight and then it’s like they’re ABOUT TO DUEL AGAIN but instead of duelling it’s sort of a fight but instead of a fight Harry ends up pinning Draco to the door and then SUDDENLY TOTALLY UNEXPECTED they’re hardcore making out –> ILL ADVISED ROUGH SEX ON COMMON ROOM FLOOR.

Classes continue. Rivalry ramps up. They continue to have ill-advised sex in their shared lil space and then retreating to their private rooms & totally not talking about it.

They have ONE CLASS LEFT. DRACO DECIDES TO OUTDO HARRY ONCE AND FOR ALL. Takes his students too…?? Lake? Forest??? Favourite student gets accidentally HURT or in TROUBLE and Draco has to run to Harry for help and they RESCUE STUDENT, but after the whole adventure –> HARRY = SUPER PISSED W DRACO FOR PUTTING KIDS IN DANGER and if he REALLY wanted the job he’d never– Draco –> frazzled and FRUSTRATED and confession: “I didn’t even! I never wanted! I don’t care about the job! Who–why would I, god, I don’t–! I just–I just wanted to–!” / “What? You just wanted to what?” / “Be with you! I–I wanted–” [grimace like he’s angry, with himself or Harry or the mossy forest floor at large] “You. I was bored without you. God, life is boring. So boring! And I thought … I just thought …”

HARRY IS EVEN MORE FURIOUS OVER THIS CONFESSION. Avoids Draco for rest of day?? or two?? OR IT’s WEEKEND and that night Harry doesn’t hear Draco return –> 3am still awake, can’t sleep not knowing where Draco is?? –> GOES TO LOOK FOR HIM, STILL FURIOUS.

Finds him @ hospital wing, asleep by Favourite Student Who’s Now Recovering From Injury’s bedside (HARRY CANNOT BUT GO WEAK AT THIS). Wakes him up gently. INTENSE EYE CONTACT MOMENT. –> silent walk back to quarters. Then –> Harry kisses him and it’s gentle and sweeter than before –> takes him to bed in his own room and now it’s all sad and achy cuz Draco is hurty and wants him and now Harry KNOWS.

MONDAY!! McG calls them in to tell them results!! Draco tries to disqualify himself cuz he signed up under False Pretences. McG is like ABSOLUTELY NOT cuz guess what you’re actually a good teacher. Like your ass is CRAZY AF but the students love ya and they learn a lot. DADA is too wild for you but what’s up let’s put you on Potions, Harry congrats you’re our new DADA teacher.

Draco gets to have emotional moment over having found something he’s passionate about and realises that–fucking Harry aside–he hasn’t been bored AT ALL this past month.

THEY GET TO BE TEACHER HUSBANDS LIVING TOGETHER AT HOGWARTS YAY

THE END

This was the longest answer, I apologise, BUT I HOPE IT HELPED??!?!

❤️❤️❤️!

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h-styles-babes · 4 years

Text

This Way Comes (Pt. 2)

Alright guys! Here’s the second and final part of my Halloween fic. Thank you so much for reading their first part. The response to it has been amazing. Hopefully the end lives up to the rest of the story.

Words: 11.5k

Warnings: Animal sacrifice (not described in any detail)

The rest of the weekend saw Harry and Andromeda living in a sort of sexed-out bliss. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Harry woke up to Andie’s mouth around his erect cock, which led to another full round of sex. They woke up midmorning, and Harry made breakfast before they took a shower, where Andie was introduced to the wonders of shower sex. Then when they sat down in the living room for a movie marathon after lunch, Harry bent her over the arm of the couch while Pretty Woman played in the background. He laid her out on the kitchen table and sat in a chair to eat her out after dinner, then he took her back to her room. Sunday saw much of the same, only they ordered their meals in to avoid wasting time cooking.

Harry had class before Andie on both Monday and Tuesday, but they saw each other by late afternoon, controlling themselves enough to make and eat dinner before retiring to the bedroom. However, when Andie emerged from the room to go get a glass of water, she was confronted by the last person she wanted to see, especially since she was nearly naked and there was a mortal in her bed.

“Mum,” she gasped, pulling at the hem of Harry’s t-shirt she was wearing to better cover her bits. She had knickers on, but they didn’t do a great job of preserving her modesty.

The women who’d birthed her stood in her entryway, obviously fresh from stepping through the mirror portal. She was in the witch’s version of a power suit: a dark green, floor length velvet dress that draped around her shoulders and had a slit up to mid-thigh, exposing the spiked heels she wore. There were necklaces shaped in Wiccan symbols layered on her neck, and her earrings were obsidian marbles with amethysts in the center. Her familiar, a big, imposing raven, sat perched on her shoulder. Her eyes, that were the same pale shade of blue as Andie’s, peered on at her in a thinly veiled look of distaste and slight amusement. Annabel had been around long enough that she knew a walk of shame when she saw one.

“Hello, darling,” she greeted, the humour in her voice evident. “Classes going well?”

Andie rolled her eyes. “I went to class. I got out at four.”

Her mum hummed, stepping further into her daughter’s flat. She gave a low whistle and Lenore, her raven, flew to the top tier of Bub’s cat tree, peering down into the little hideout Bub was sleeping in the tier below. Bub hissed half-heartedly, realising belatedly that the intruder was a fellow familiar.

“Who is he, then? Sarah knows that nice boy from the American coven that’s here doing research. Mitch, I think.”

“No offense, but he’s not my type. And besides, Sarah is into him.”

“Then wh—”

Annabel was cut off by Harry’s voice coming down the hall.

“Where’d you go?” he called, spotting her at the end of the hall, peering into the living room. His brows furrowed. “Did someone knock at the door?”

“Uhh…” Andie stumbled, looking between Harry and her mum. This was definitely not the way she wanted her mother to find out she was in an intimate relationship with a mortal. She’d have preferred if it never happened, but she knew it would happen eventually, the way her and Harry were moving. This was just the worst way possible.

As soon as Harry came into her mother’s view, Andie could see the instant recognition that Harry is mortal. Her nostrils flared slightly, but she took a deep breath before arranging a contrite smile on her lips.

“Never took you as one to sleep with your wards, Andromeda,” Annabel said.

“Excuse me?” Harry asked, brows furrowed. The fact that he was only in his boxers made him less intimidating, but he was still the tallest, broadest person in the room.

Andie placed a hand on his chest, silently begging him to not get riled up or say anything else. “He’s my friend, Mum. He just so happened to get the attention of a wraith.”

Annabel pursed her lips as she looked Harry up and down before sighing. “Whatever. Would you two put some clothes on? We need to talk about what’s happening tomorrow.”

~*~*~*~*~

The American witch walked through Andie’s entryway portal at ten in the morning Wednesday. Sarah, Annabel, Mitch, Harry and Andie were already gathered in the living room when the mirror whirred to life. There was a shift in energy in the room when she stepped through the pearlescent haze of the portal, her tall, platform boot the first thing to emerge. Andie held her breath, waiting for the reveal of who this mysterious witch was. Sarah hadn’t ever mentioned her name, most likely on purpose.

When she finally completely tread into Andie’s entryway, her and Harry’s jaw dropped.

“Holy shit,” Harry muttered. Though, it had been completely silent in the room, so it was loud echoing off the wood flooring. “You’re Stevie Nicks.”

Her sage eyes landed on Harry, who was sat on the loveseat beside Andie, and she smiled softly. “Yes, I am. You must be the poor mortal we’re all worried about.”

Annabel made a grunting sound that sounded suspiciously like a “speak for yourself,” that everyone but Andie ignored. She shot her mother an annoyed look before turning back to their guest.

Stevie fucking Nicks was in her flat. No big deal.

“I suppose,” Harry agreed. “I thought the witch thing was just a rumour.”

“Me, too,” Andie whispered, still a bit awestruck. Never in a million years did she thin Stevie Nicks was a real witch.

“And you’re still tellin’ me your life isn’t like that American Horror Story season?” Harry asked.

Stevie laughed. “That was a little nod to my community. Keeping a secret for nearly a hundred years is hard work. Need to keep it fun somehow.”

“Can we get to business, please?” Annabel interjected. Her nostrils were flaring in that way she had when she was irritated. It was the same look she’d given Harry when she first met him a few days prior. It was a look Andie had been on the receiving end of many times in her life.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Annie,” Stevie admonished.

Annabel gave their guest a pointed look before rolling her eyes in submission. Andie had never seen her mother give up a fight so easily. They must have known each other pretty well for her mum, the pinnacle of the witch community, to acquiesce so quickly.

“And you must be Andromeda.” Stevie’s gaze turned to Andie, who was sat much more properly since Stevie walked into the room. “Your mom has told me a lot about you.”

“I won’t even ask if they were good things,” Andie grumbled. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Stevie shot her a knowing smile, like she was privy to something that the rest of them weren’t. Andie wasn’t really willing to dive into it right then with a room full of people.

“You too, sweetheart.” Stevie made her way around Andie’s living room, taking up the one free seat next to Andie and Harry, in the big cushy chair that Andie had bought on a whim at a flea market the previous spring. It was gothic and beautiful and definitely an antique, and she just had to have it. Stevie looked just at home in the chair, her diminutive stature looking grand despite the high back.

“Now, let’s talk about this spell.”

~*~*~*~*~

The spell had to be performed on a full moon, and the full moon that month was too close for them to properly prepare. There were ingredients to be gathered that were not exactly something that was sold at the local apothecary, so it took some investigating and some late night adventures into the forest. The had four weeks to get all the necessary items as well as mentally prepare themselves to undertake this task.

Stevie had showed them the spell. It was…intense, to say the least. The ingredient list was nearly thirty bullet points long and the incantation that needed to be said went on for nearly three pages. Not to mention the diagram of the set up was intricate and required Harry to be laid in the center of a giant pentagram thirty feet in diameter mapped out in the branches of an elder tree. The candles that sat at each point of the pentagram had to be made of beeswax and dyed with powdered obsidian (which was not easily come by). The instructions only got more convoluted and involved from there. Andie was already ready to pull her hair out trying to organise who was to retrieve what.

For what it was worth, Harry was cool as a cucumber. When he would come home from work or class and see Andie hunched over her copy of the spell and fifteen different tabs open on her computer, he’d simply come over, drop kisses to her shoulders and neck, before closing the lid of her laptop and pulling her up from her seat. He only ever distracted her when he knew she’d been at it for hours on end, knowing the work she was doing was important. But she needed a break every few hours, and he was more than happy to be the source of her stress relief.

Harry and Andie hadn’t put a label on what exactly it was they were doing, yet. Harry was afraid to ask, worried that he’d freak her out and make her backtrack. Andie was concerned with making it official just for his soul to be sucked out by a wraith if her attempt at freeing Harry from this supernatural connection failed. It was an odd balancing act that they had never anticipated having to figure.

Andie was able to handle a week and a half holed up in her flat, doing her research, aside from going to class, before she finally needed a longer break than the hour and a half her and Harry would be together whenever he tore her away. She’d sent out a fire message to an apothecary in Romania that was pretty good about acquiring rare ingredients for obscure spells about the powdered obsidian. Given the time difference, she knew it would be hours, if not a full day, before she received a response. Then was a good a time as any to take a proper break and get out into the world while she had the chance.

When Harry got home from class that evening, Andie suggested they go out to dinner and maybe take a bit of a stroll. It was a crisp day, but not raining or windy, and it was already beginning to get dark. It was the perfect time to get out, and maybe they’d stumble upon some weird fungus they needed while they walked. Andie wouldn’t be disappointed if they didn’t find anything, but may as well take the chance. Two birds, and all that.

Harry quickly agreed and they headed off to a local Thai place without much deliberation on where to eat. They both had been craving it, it seemed, so they set off, hand in hand, Andie using some of that natural energy she possessed to keep their hands warm while exposed to the chilly autumn air. Harry was thankful, his fingers nearly turning blue the second they made it out onto the street.

As soon as they turned the corner onto the main road, laughing at a story Harry was regaling her with about someone in his Twentieth Century Literature lecture, a chill ran down Andie’s spine, not caused by the dropping temperature. She felt the blood drain from her face as she looked straight on at the wraith attached to Harry, much closer than it had been in the previous weeks. It was getting stronger, she realised, the just passed full moon probably lending to its power surge. Where it had been lingering about fifty meters away since it first latched onto Harry, it was now considerably closer, probably twenty meters, at max. It was close enough for Andie to make out the hallow darkness that occupied where it’s face should have been and the bony, gnarled stumps in the place of hands under the wispy blackness of the cloak that covered whatever form of a body that it had.

Harry noticed the dropped look of horror on Andie’s face as she gazed over their shoulders. He stopped their walk, but Andie pulled them along, beginning to mumble under her breath in a rapid cadence in a language Harry didn’t understand.

“What is it?” Harry asked, but Andie shushed him with a finger to her lips, her own mouth still moving. Harry realised belatedly that she was muttering a spell under her breath, and Harry had a sinking feeling that it was because of the darkness that had latched itself to him those weeks ago.

“Should we just go back to yours?” Harry asked.

Andie shook her head and kept pulling him along. He noticed the heat emanating from her hand in his rise in temperature, surpassing the comforting heat she’d been giving off before. He went to pull his hand away, lest it get too hot, but she kept a firm grip on it, silently telling Harry that it was best if his hand stayed in hers.

They were nearly to the Thai place before Andie relaxed and the heat left their hands. She seemed to still be on high alert, but her hackles weren’t raised anymore.

“Quick update to the warding spell I put on you,” she told him under her breath before Harry opened the door to the restaurant. “It’s getting closer.”

Harry shot her a wary look before turning to the hostess with a smile and asked for a table for two.

When they sat, Harry hooked his foot around the leg of Andie’s chair opposite him and pulled her in closer. “Why can’t I see it?”

“Part of being a witch or other supernatural being is having the Sight,” Andie told him, picking up her menu, even though she knew what she was going to order. She got yellow curry every time. “It’s pretty rare for a mortal to be able to see this sort of stuff. Usually only children can see them, or if there was witch blood somewhere back in their lineage, if it’s close enough to the current generation.”

“I can sort of feel it, though,” Harry added, looking over his own menu. “Like, especially when I’m alone in public. Sort of like I’m being watched.”

Andie nodded and reached her foot out to press up against his under the table. She could see he was a bit anxious about the news that the wraith was closer than normal, so she was offering support in a way that kept her hands free. She could still see the cloaked figure standing outside the big windows of the restaurant.

“I’m not surprised. The energy they give off is…not pleasant. Makes my skin crawl when they get close.” She rolled up the sleeve of her jumper to show him all her little hairs standing on end. “Don’t be surprised if your anxiety starts shooting through the roof. They’re like happiness suckers.”

“Kinda remind me of dementors.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s where the idea came from for those,” Andie agreed. “Except I don’t have a fancy spell to banish them away or whatever. Or a wand.”

“Honestly, when you first told me you were a witch, I was waiting for you to drop one out of your sleeve at any moment.”

Andie barked out a startled laugh as she gave a soft kick to his shin. “Shut up.”

~*~*~*~*~

They skipped their walk that night, for fear of the wraith getting ballsy in the darkness of the night. Harry suggested a day time stroll after he got back from class on Thursday instead, in the hour they had before the sun started to really set. Andie agreed, and they spent the rest of their night curled up on the couch, watching The Nightmare Before Christmas with Halloween only a week away.

By the time Thursday came around, Andie was in a good mood because Sarah had called her earlier in the day to let her know she’d gotten her hands on two more of the ingredients for the spell, and Andie had gotten word from that apothecary in Romania that the obsidian had come in and was ready for delivery. She’d arranged a portal transfer for Friday morning and couldn’t wait to get her hands on it.

When Harry retuned from class just twenty minutes after her, she greeted him with a kiss and pulled him straight back through the door, Harry chuckling at her exuberance. Andie chatted to him about the Halloween party Niall was throwing on Saturday that they’d agreed to attend, as well as the progress they were making in getting all the things they needed for the spell as they walked out of the flat and onto the road. Harry was just as glad as she was that there was only twelve more items on their list after just a little less than two weeks of searching, and one of the items was all the elder wood needed for the pentagram. It was shaping up nicely, and Andie was more confident that everything would pan out alright once the time came.

They stayed on populated city streets where people were still walking around to classes and milling about around shoppes and restaurants, just to be safe. The wraith was still just as close as it had been when they’d gone to dinner on Monday, but it seemed to be more passive now, abated by the extra hulking Andie had padded onto Harry’s warding spell. She wished there was something stronger she could put up around him, but hopefully it would only be another two weeks before they got him free of this thing.

Forgoing a proper dinner, they stopped by the cafe and bakery down the street to get tea and pastries and took them back to the flat. They set up a little faux picnic on the coffee table, sitting on their bums with their backs against the couch. Andie lit her fall candles around the space, filling the room with the comforting scent of cinnamon and apples.

They were quietly munching side by side for a few moments, not really feeling the need to fill the silence. Andie could feel Harry looking at the side of her face as they ate, but she figured he was lost in thought more than anything, so she was a little surprised when he spoke up.

“What are we doing?”

Andie looked at him, furrowing her eyebrows. “Eating?” she offered, more than a little confused.

Harry shook his head and huffed in frustration, though he realised the misunderstanding was due to his own poor word choice.

“No, I mean, like, what are we doing together? Like, I’m not sure if we’re dating or you’re my girlfriend or we’re just fucking or what.”

Andie’s mouth popped open in a little ‘O’ shape when she understood what it was he was getting at. “Oh, got it. Um…” She looked between Harry and the carpet before slowly putting down the fork full of white rice and chicken curry she’d had halfway to her mouth when he’d surprised her.

“I’m not trynna push for anything, I’m just curious how I’m supposed to act with you around our friends. We’ve got that party Saturday at Niall’s, and I’m just not sure.”

It was quiet, save for the sound of Bub licking his paws on the lowest tier of his cat tree. Andie was looking into Harry’s swirling green eyes, trying to decide what the best course of action was in that moment. She didn’t want to lie to him, but she wasn’t sure if either of them were ready for the truth, either. Although, who was she kidding? She was sure Harry would be elated by the truth. The only question really was whether or not she was willing to take that risk and expose Harry to her life that much more. Though, she supposed he was already in as deep as any mortal she’d seen. She reckoned she owed it to both of them to be honest.

“I uh…really like you, Harry, obviously. I have for pretty much as long as I’ve known you. I just never did anything about it because…ya know. The witch thing.”

“But I know about that now.” There was a sort of hopeful glint in Harry’s eyes, one that Andie was really glad she wasn’t about to crush.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “So my reasons for staying just a friend don’t exist anymore. I’m still worried about you, but you’ve handled all this the last few weeks remarkably well.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Harry teased, that smirk the mad her all soft and infuriated her at the same time pulled up on his lips.

She rolled her eyes. “I’d really like to be in a relationship with you, if that’s what you want, too.”

“Andromeda, are you asking me to be your boyfriend?”

She shot him a withering look, daring him to make her rescind her proposition.

Harry snickered before reaching over to cradle the back of her neck with his hand, pulling her closer to him. He pressed a hard, closed-mouth kiss to her lips, smiling.

“I accept.”

“Wanker.”

~*~*~*~*~

Harry and Andie were already in Niall’s small kitchen before they saw the host amongst the throng of bodies already in the flat. Niall saw Harry immediately, his head of dark curly hair significantly taller than anybody else’s. Niall slung his arm around his friends shoulders, a little confused about his billowy, cream coloured shirt and strange trousers until he saw Andie standing on his other side, and everything made sense.

Niall started cackling, his head dropping back on his shoulder. “Oh God, this is great. I imagined you’d come dressed as Morticia or summat.”

Andie rolled her eyes at him. The choice to come as Ariel from The Little Mermaid hadn’t been an easy one, but Harry had pretty much begged her after she’d tried the costume on at the shoppe. He’d claimed her hair colour was perfect with it and that it would be great since no one would expect it from her. She had agreed that it would be pretty fun to be this girly, cute princess, something so opposite of her typical style. So, when she’d gotten dressed that evening, she’d been a little excited at seeing her in something that wasn’t her typical wardrobe. Harry had been appropriately shocked and giddy when he saw her once she emerged from the bathroom, especially with her face done up softly. He’d assured her he liked her how she normally presented herself, but it was novel to see her like she was that night.

Niall took a moment to cackle a little bit more before darting off to get them drinks. He returned only a minute or two later with two red cups, nearly full to the brim with some lightly tinged pink liquid. Andie was almost sure it was fruit punch before Niall completely watered it down with whatever liquor he put into it. When she took a sip, she knew for sure that it was about eighty-five percent rum and the rest of was fruit juice. One would probably be her limit for the night. It was never a good idea for a young witch to alter her senses while in a public place.

Harry, however, had no such qualms. He was a young college guy, ready and willing to let loose at the drop of a hat. And that was exactly what he was doing.

They were there only an hour before Andie realised that Harry was well on his way to being absolutely shit-faced. She noticed about half an hour in that his cup was never empty, but he was getting increasingly more giggly and droopy-lidded. She was sure Niall was behind the constant refills, and she didn’t want to reprimand either of them, but from previous experience, she knew Harry did not have the same tolerance that the Irishman did. She never got a chance to grab Niall and tell him to go easy on Harry’s next refills—or they’d be on their way to A & E before the end of the night—before she lost sight of her boyfriend. One second she had her eyes on him, hanging out with some of his other friends by the kitchen, then she’d looked around to try to find Niall, and when she looked back, Harry was gone.

A cursory glance over the room turned up nothing, which didn’t concern her much. Perhaps he’d gone to the restroom or disappeared into the crowd huddled in the kitchen.

However, after a solid five minutes, Andie started to get antsy, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach. She threw another look over the room, came up short, and then made her way to the hall where she knew Niall’s only restroom was located. Maybe he had finally succumb to the alcohol and was getting sick. That’s what she kept telling herself to try to keep herself calm.

She finally squeezed her way through the living room and to the hall. She knocked on the restroom door, calling out Harry’s name. When she received a female voice back, telling her she’d be out in a moment, Andie quickly moved on, down towards Niall’s room. Maybe Harry had went in to have lie down. Something was telling her that wasn’t the case, though.

Andie knocked on the door and pressed her ear close to the door to try to hear any type of activity on the other side. The only thing she could hear was what sounded like a very upset cat, so she opened the door just enough to peek her head in and look around. The room was empty, aside from Niall’s cat, Oreo, that was stood up on his desk, back arched, spitting and hissing and howling, eyes trained on the sliding door in Niall’s room that led to the small balcony that faced the pool area in the center of his flat building.

“What’s wrong, babe?” Andie cooed, stepping in and closing the door behind her to prevent anybody following her in. “You see another cat on your turf? I’ll go shoo ‘em off.” Andie reached out to try to calm her down, approaching from the front so she wouldn’t startle when Andie ran her finger over the top of Oreo’s head. However, the cat made no move to look away from the glass door, only seeming to get more worked up.

Andie finally turned to look over her shoulder to see what it was that had her so amped, and when she saw Harry stood out there, she gasped.

Harry had his back pressed up against the glass, seeming to be barely holding himself up, his knees bent and his head slumped back. She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to in order to know what was happening. Because she could see the wraith hovering just on the other side of the railing, the blank darkness of its face seeming to take on a sinister glow. A hazy, pearlescent stream of energy connected its face to Harry’s, the physical embodiment of the force it was drawing from its victim.

It took Andie only a split second to turn on her heel and make her way to the door. She pushed the door open with a flick of her wrist, letting a rush of wind gust into the room. Andie felt a rush of energy and adrenaline surge through her veins as she flung her hand out, pushing the wraith away in a way that she had never managed before without casting an actual spell. It was like a gust of wind erupted from her palm and blew it back a few meters, severing whatever control it had on Harry.

He slumped to the ground, obviously dazed as he blinked hard and looked around, eyes trying extra hard to focus on Andie when he finally spotted her. She was sure she looked like a frightened mess. She’d never been so close to something so dark before and it was causing a chill to worm its way under her skin. She grabbed Harry by his elbow and pulled him up, keeping her free palm up and extended out from her, keeping the wraith at bay. A bolt of light was raying out from her hand. She wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but she was just glad it made the wraith wary and keep its distance.

“You’ve gotta get up, love,” Andie urged, using all her strength to haul him up off the ground. “We’ve gotta get back inside. I need to get you back to my flat.”

“‘m so tired,” Harry mumbled, seeming to try to push himself up by his hands, but he was having a hard time maintaining his balance. She knew the wraith had seized an opportunity to start harvesting Harry’s life force, and it wasn’t helped by his state of inebriation.

“I know, Harry, but you need to get up. Fuck, just crawl inside for all I care.”

Harry hummed and bobbed his head lazily. He managed to get his legs under him and slithered his way past Andie, into the safety of Niall’s room. Andie was already summoning a portal under her breath as she slid inside, closing the door behind her and throwing the lock. That really wouldn’t keep a persistent wraith out, but it gave her a sense of security that she needed in that moment.

The shimmering veil of the portal emerged on the door of Niall’s closet. Harry was slumped over on the wall next to it, watching with hazy eyes as is swirled in its magnificent rainbow pattern of colours. Andie leaned down and pretty much shoved him through it before stepping through herself, stumbling over his prone body in the entrance of her flat. She waved her hand over her mirror to close it before sagging to the floor beside her very unconscious boyfriend. Traveling via portal was already pretty trying on a mortal body, but mix that with his run in with the wraith and the copious amounts of alcohol he’d consumed through their night, and he was down for the count. Andie’s fears were only mildly assuaged by the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders with every breath that he took.

She considered leaving him in the entrance with a pillow and a blanket, not wanting to disturb him, but she could only imagine how traumatised he’d be to wake up in the middle of the night on the cold wood floor, by himself, after the ordeal he’d gone through earlier.

So, with a sigh, she stood and grabbed him under his arms and started dragging him to her bedroom, glad for her unobstructed smooth floors, allowing him to just glide along in the soft material of his costume. Getting him up into the bed was a bit of a challenge, but luckily he roused just long enough to haul himself into the bed, and Andie had an easy enough time taking his shoes and trousers off before tucking the blankets up around him.

She sat with a tired huff beside him, rubbing her hands over her eyes. She remember belatedly about the makeup on her face, but she was past the point of really caring. She just wanted to curl up in bed beside him and sleep for the rest of her existence. Alas, she had to be responsible, considering she was mostly to blame for Harry being in this situation in the first place.

Andie fished her phone out of the waistband of her mermaid tail skirt, happy that it had somehow stayed pressed against her skin with the excitement of the night. She pressed the first name that popped up on her recent call log and waited impatiently for them to answer.

“I realise it’s Halloween, but some of us are old and like to sleep.”

“Sarah…”

Andie could immediately hear the shift in Sarah’s demeanour at the defeated sound in her voice. “What happened?”

~*~*~*~*~

It took the help of Mitch and Sarah for Harry to finally wake the next day.

If there was any question that the wraith had got its share of Harry the night before, there was none now. The only assurance Andie had that Harry wasn’t on the verge of death was the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed deep, like he was peacefully sleeping.

Mitch and Sarah walked through her portal at eight that morning after a semi-frantic call Andie had placed to them only minutes before when Harry still hadn’t woken up. He was the early riser out of the two of them, no matter the circumstance, so Andie was appropriately concerned.

Mitch had worked his magic, having been trained in magical healing. He’d set up a mini apothecary on Andie’s bedside table, liquids and powders of all sorts laid out. Andie watched in a daze as he did whatever potion-making he was trained to do, all her thoughts on whether or not Harry would wake and what on earth she was going to do if he didn’t.

She was a wreck.

Mitch had eventually sent her out of the room, fed up with her constant pacing and her concerned looks. Sarah had corralled her into the kitchen, offering to make her a cuppa so she would sit down and chill out. She assured her that Harry was in the best hands possible and it was just going to take him a bit to get his energy back up from whatever bad juju the wraith had imparted.

“You really love him, don’t you?” Sarah asked after they’d sat together in silence for several minutes. It was the first time Andie hadn’t heard a teasing in her friend’s voice when she was talking about Andie’s secret feelings for her best friend.

That was the first time Andie met Sarah’s eyes that morning. She swallowed hard before answering,” Yeah, I really do.”

Mitch emerged from the room a half hour later, closing the door gently behind him.

“I’ve done what I can for now. He should be awake in the next hour or so.”

So they waited. Sarah turned on Andie’s telly and found some mindless reruns of Call the Midwife to play in the background as she flitted around the kitchen, preparing breakfast for all of them. Andie was glad that Sarah was so comfortable in her flat, because there was no way she was up to being a good host that morning. She couldn’t seem to pull her mind away from the boy laying unconscious in her bedroom.

Finally, around ten that morning, there was a stirring from behind her closed door, followed by a groan. Andie was out of her seat like a shot, already opening her door by the time Mitch and Sarah even got themselves out of their place on her couch.

“Harry?” Andie asked delicately, poking her head in at first and then completely stepping through the doorway when she saw he was awake and attempting to sit up in bed. She made her way to his side, helping him to prop himself up against the headboard. “How’re you feeling?”

“Really fuckin’ exhausted,” he huffed, slumping back against the new support. “What the fuck happened?”

“The wraith got too close last night. Started doin’ it’s…thing.” She grimaced as what little colour he had gained quickly drained from his face. “I found you. You’re gonna be pretty tired for a while, though.”

“That means no class or work until you’re back to one hundred percent,” Mitch told him, leaning in the doorway. “I’ve already forged some doctor notes to get you out of stuff for awhile.”

“And it would probably be best you stay here or with Andie until the next full moon. Now that it’s gotten close, it probably won’t be satisfied lingering at a distance anymore,” Sarah added.

“At home with my girlfriend and no responsibilities for three weeks? What a hardship,” Harry groaned sarcastically, flashing Andie a cheeky grin when she rolled her eyes playfully.

“We’ll leave you guys for now. Ring if you need us,” Sarah said, parting with a soft smile.

Mitch hung back. “Just wanted to let you know that Stevie got her hands on that crystal we need. Think there’s only four things left on our list now.”

Andie nodded. “Thanks, Mitch. What’s left?”

“The wood, which I’m gonna go out and gather the rest of today. Sarah’s got a good lead on the Bauhinia from a Japanese coven, and your mom is going next week to arrange to have a local farmer provide us with a goat.” Andie tried hard to suppress her shudder over the mention of the goat. Poor thing. Thankfully, Harry was too tired and out of it to really put together why they would be needing a live goat.

“What’s the last part?” Harry asked, sounding like he was already drifting off again.

“You,” Mitch stated simply. He turned to Andie. “I left a healing potion in your bathroom. Give him a tablespoon every eight hours or so. You can mix it with food if he can’t handle the taste. Hopefully he’ll regain most of his strength in the next week.”

Mitch saw himself out after Andie thanked him again and she heard both him and Sarah step back through the portal, leaving the flat quiet.

Andie turned to Harry. “I’m gonna go to campus tomorrow and drop of your doctor note. You’ll be safe in the flat for that time.”

Harry shook his head, brows furrowed and his eyes darting back and forth like he was searching for something, though he was staring at various points on the ceiling. “I can’t believe I just…walked outside. I don’t even remember making the decision to walk out there.”

She grabbed his shin through the blankets, offering a comforting weight. “It’s what a wraith does, Harry. It entices you into vulnerability in order to get to you. Not to mention, you were absolutely sloshed. Just a bad combination all around.”

“Safe to assume the blaring headache is from the hangover, then?”

Andie chuckled softly. “Yeah. Want some paracetamol?”

“Please? And somethin’ small to eat? Gonna throw up if I take painkillers on an empty stomach.”

Andie patted him on the leg before going to the kitchen to make him some toast and grab the tablets. She came back with both and a glass of water, and some of Harry’s colour seemed to have come back.

“Get all that down and go back to sleep. Gonna be doin’ a lot of that until you get your health back up.”

“Don’t wanna be lazy,” Harry argued, his eyelids already drooping and his form already slumping back into the little throne of pillows he’d made around himself to stay propped up.

“You’re not bein’ lazy,” Andie assured. “You’re lettin’ your body heal. Now hush, and close your eyes. I’ll come join you in a bit.”

Harry was asleep before Andie closed the door behind her.

~*~*~*~*~

The next weeks leading up to the full moon were full of getting Harry back to his normal self and making all the final arrangements for their ritual. Harry slept pretty much nonstop for three days, aside from getting up to use the restroom and eat, and Andie made him shower once. By the fourth day, he was able to stay up for a few hours at a time and made it out onto the couch to watch the telly and keep Andie company while she was getting stuff together for the full moon. By the end of the weekend he was staying up all day with a short nap some time after lunch. The day he was finally awake before Andromeda was the day that she knew he had made it through in one piece.

Andie had gotten her mom to add an extra layer to the protective ward around her flat in order to keep the wraith out. There wasn’t a day that went by after the situation at the party that she didn’t see it lingering outside of her windows and the front door of her flat when she left occasionally to go the shoppes or show her face enough in class to not make her professors overly suspicious of her absence.

Harry had been relatively quiet about all of the preparations Andie had been doing, just casting an observant eye. It wasn’t until the full moon was five days away that Harry finally started asking questions. His most pressing one, however, was what the live goat was for. It was the question Andie was dreading the most, but she knew he’d have to be told beforehand anyway. It wasn’t something that you dropped on a person the day of the ritual.

“Part of the ritual is having you bathe in fresh goat blood while we do the incantation.”

The blood drained from Harry’s face, and he swallowed hard over the presumed bile that rose in his throat. He eventually licked his lips and nodded. “Awesome.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I didn’t want to freak you out unnecessarily.”

“No, I get it. I’m glad I only have five days to anxiously wait instead of a month.”

“Just close your eyes and pretend it’s a nice bath.”

He shot her a look that said he definitely wasn’t amused.

That was the most he’d asked about what was happening. When Andie had asked him if he wanted to know all the steps of the spell, he’d shook his head and told her he trusted her. That had simultaneously made soft butterflies fill her stomach as well as leave a heavy feeling in her chest. While she was very flattered that he trusted her so much—essentially with his life—, she was realistically wary of how everything was going to turn out. It was a daunting prospect.

In the few remaining days leading up to the spell, Harry was more clingy than normal. While he had always been the lovey, touchy type, he practically never left Andie’s side while they were in the flat together. She was sure he was getting stir crazy from being cooped up for so long, and she didn’t mind his undivided attention. But she was worried about his mental state, and she wondered if he was acting like this because he was scared of what would be happening that Friday night. She wanted to comfort him, reassure him that it would all be fine in the end, but she couldn’t lie to him. She didn’t know what was going to happen since she’d never done this before. Stevie had done her best to assure them that she’d seen this spell performed successfully once before. Andie didn’t necessarily like those odds, but considering the spell had only been done a handful of times in the history of witches, she supposed one successful account was better than nothing.

Friday morning, Andie woke up to the startling but very pleasant sensation of Harry’s face buried between her thighs, not yet at her center, but laving his tongue and teeth at her inner thighs, his thumbs teasing at the band of her knickers. He waited until he knew she was awake before pulling them aside and losing himself in the taste and smell of her. She came quicker than she ever had before, and she didn’t hesitate to flip Harry on his back and ride him until they were both sated and sweaty and in terrible need of a shower.

They lazed around until the sun began to barely set. They needed to meet the rest of their little group in the forest before the sun went down in order to set up their space while they still had daylight. The height of the spell wouldn’t be performed until the moon was high in the sky, but it was imperative that everything be in its proper place before that time came.

Andie made sure to bring lots of towels and heavy, weighted blankets for after Harry emerged from the blood bath. It was nearing the end of November, and the temperature was getting nearly to freezing in the middle of the night. While they blood itself would most likely keep him warm while he was in it, he’d freeze his arse off as soon as he stepped out. Andie didn’t want to traumatise him any more than necessary.

They walked hand in hand to the meeting spot in the forest, Andie keeping a wary eye on the wraith as it followed them, at a distance that was much too close for comfort. Although he couldn’t physically see it, she could tell Harry was aware of its presence, too, if not by the guarded stance Andie kept, then the way he shivered every few seconds while perspiring was a good indication. Even though they weren’t in direct contact, the wraith was still doing what it could to suck as much energy from him as it could.

Harry’s eyes were drawn to the large black boulder that had been the center of this whole occurrence. He hadn’t realised this would be the spot they'd be performing the ritual, Andie figured. It was the best place for it, though. The power it offered combined with the innate energy Andie and her mother possessed was their best bet and this going the way it was supposed to. They weren’t taking any chances by performing it somewhere where the harnessable energy was low.

When they got there, everybody but Sarah was already there. When Andie asked after her, Mitch nodded his head in the direction opposite where Harry and her had walked in, and she saw Sarah walking with a goat on a lead. She was sort of sad to have to drain the poor thing of its life, but they would be returning the carcass to the farmer so that he could do what they normally did to slaughtered animals. They would have just flushed the blood down the drain anyway, so it was no hardship on them to lend it out for a night.

Harry pressed his lips together tight when he caught sight of the animal, but he quickly diverted his gaze and watched as Stevie and Mitch worked together to arrange all the elder branches into a pentagram, the leaves and flowers stripped. Those were gathered in a bowl that would be used to mix into the bath Harry would be sat in for the ceremony. The elder tree had a sort of tie to earth in some mythology’s, so he wasn’t surprised by its use in this ritual.

“Oh good, I forgot to tell you to bring some stuff to keep him warm. Glad you remembered,” Stevie noted when she saw Andie with the stack of folded blankets and towels in her arms.

“Is there anything I can help with?” Harry asked, watching as everyone else started going around the pentagram and setting out items.

“Place one of these at each point, just inside the outer circle,” Stevie told him, handing him the black candles they’d made out of the beeswax and powdered obsidian. “They act as a spiritual barrier between you and the wraith.” She turned to Andie with a look of slight sorrow in her eyes. “You’re gonna have to drop your wards on him before we get started.”

Andie swallowed, hating the reminder. “Yeah, I know. Waitin’ until the last possible minute.”

Stevie nodded her understanding before going back to the satchel of goodies they were using in the spell. Harry went off to do as he was told, having a quiet conversation with Mitch, who was finishing the last bits of the pentagram, that Andie couldn’t hear.

Andie’s mum came up beside her as she was reading over the spell instructions one more time.

“If you don’t end up marrying this boy after all this, I will be very disappointed,” Annabel muttered to her as she grabbed more things out of the bag.

Andie looked at her mom from the corner of her eye, not raising her head from the spell book. “Thought you didn’t like him?”

“I don’t like that he’s mortal,” her mother sniffed indignantly. “Don’t like that you’ll be muddying our bloodline, mostly.”

“Who said I was having kids?” Andie asked.

Her mother gasped, affronted. She smacked her daughter’s arm when she smirked at her.

“Kidding. Kidding.”

“Anyway. Aside from him being a mortal, I do actually like him. And I assume you must, too, considering the lengths you’re going to in order to save his life.”

Andie was quiet for a long moment, not taking her eyes off the words printed on the page. Finally, when she was sure her mother was going to give up and walk away, she said, in a low voice, “I love him. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

She felt her mum rest a hand on her shoulder. It was gentle and loving in a way that Andie hadn’t gotten from her many times before. “I know. And that’s why I’m very proud of you for doing this. You’re going to make a very strong Head of Council one day.”

~*~*~*~*~

The butterflies filling Andromeda’s stomach seemed to take on a rapid flight as the moon rose in the darkness of the night, it’s brilliance and luminosity beaming down on their little clearing. She felt the power it leant surge through her veins, making the tips of her fingers and toes tingle like they were flowing with static electricity. The hairs on the back of her neck and her arms stood on end. Everything about the circumstances of the night filled Andie and her witch counterparts with nearly unbridled power.

“We need to begin,” Annabel called out, her eyes trained on the ever-rising moon.

Andie nodded and grabbed Harry’s hand to lead him to the center of the pentagram where a tub was set up, ready to hold Harry’s body and the blood sacrifice. She kept a towel with her, ready to offer it to Harry to cover him when he inevitably had to strip down in the briskness of the night.

“I’m gonna take the ward off of you now,” she told him quietly, helping him out of his jacket and draping it over her arm. “I have to do it before we perform the sacrifice. You’ll be vulnerable until we light the candles, but we’ll all be doing what we can to keep it away until then.”

Harry nodded his consent while he kicked out of his shoes and began peeling off the rest of his clothes. Andie offered him the towel she’d brought along to cover him before he took off his pants, poor thing already shivering in the cold. She wished she could do something to help keep him warm, but there’s couldn’t be any enchantments on him while the spell was being performed.

He slipped his pants off under the towel and handed them to Andie. He let out a breath he seemed to have been holding and looked at her. Acting on impulse, Andie reached a hand out to clasp around his neck and pulled him toward her. She placed her lips on his, letting his sweet, minty taste wash over her tastebuds as her tongue swept into his mouth. Harry bit gently at her lower lip.

Andie pulled her mouth away. They couldn’t waste time, but she couldn’t go into this spell without kissing him. It helped to boost her confidence, and she was hoping it was doing the same for Harry.

“Okay,” Andie sighed.

She looked back at her mother, who had the unsuspecting goat by the lead. Annabel walked it forward until she was beside Andie and Harry, waiting for Andie’s cue to start the ritual. Andie nodded to her before reaching her hands out over Harry, palms out. It was easier to eliminate the ward that she’d placed on him than it had been to place it, so with a few muttered words and less than a minutes time, Harry was as vulnerable as the day he was born. The five witches immediately took up a low stream of chanting, placing a temporary protection around the pentagram to keep the wraith at a safe distance until the obsidian candles were lit at the five points.

Both Harry and Andie looked away as her mother pulled out a sharpened blade made from the bone of wolf and pulled it with ease against the goat throat right above the basin. Harry jumped at the strangled bleat right before it went silent. Annabel magically pulled the blood from the animal until it was bled dry. She nodded her go-ahead to Andie.

“Step in,” she told Harry. She helped him maintain his modesty until he had submerged himself, taking the towel from him. Harry shuddered, both from the cold and from the very fact that he was sat in a bath full of blood. Andie summoned the mixture of herbs and the leaves and fruit from the harvested elder branches and sprinkled them into the bath until the bowl was empty.

She next summoned the large orb of alexandrite Stevie had acquired. “You need to hold this submerged under the blood for the entirety of the spell.”

Harry nodded and took it in both palms, watching it slowly disappear under the liquid crimson.

“Okay, we’re going to begin now,” Annabel announced, her eyes on the moon. It was nearly to its peak in the sky.

Andie nodded and backed out of the pentagram, giving Harry one last reassuring look over her shoulder.

Andromeda took her place at the head of the pentagram, the point that was oriented north. She took a deep, steadying breath as she look up, spying the wraith hovering a a few feet in the air above where Harry was submerged in the tub. The only thing keeping it at bay before the beginning of the spell was Mitch and Sarah chanting steadily, creating a temporary barrier. They had to time it perfectly between the cessation of the warding charm and the onset of the new incantation that would—hopefully—banish the wraith back to whatever hell hole it climbed out of and sever its tie to Harry.

Stevie caught Mitch and Sarah’s eyes, ready to count them down to stop as Andie got ready to begin reciting the new words. With a steady countdown from three, Andie took up the new incantation just a split second after Mitch and Sarah stopped. No magic could be present and active while the second one started, otherwise it would render their efforts useless. One draw back to magic: it didn’t do well to overlap major spells.

In the second between their chanting, the wraith surged forward, ready to dive straight toward Harry and begin its quick harvesting process. Andie’s heart jumped in her chest as she watched the cloaked figure race towards her boyfriend, vulnerable in the blood-filled tub, it’s weathered stumps of hands outstretched, ready to grasp Harry to it to quicken the process. Andie wanted to scream her protest, let anyone in hearing range hear her anguish, but she knew that the real way to keep Harry safe was to begin the incantation.

She raised her arms out to her side, palms up to draw the power of the moon and the soles of her feet tingled as the energy of the earth and the nearby boulder of obsidian. With a rush of breath, Andie started reciting the words she’d memorised in the weeks leading up the spell. Words that translated to a temporary opening of the portal between worlds, creating a tear in the fabric of space to access whatever depraved dimension from which the wraith had been drawn.

Her words felt like they created a tangible ripple in the atmosphere around her and she watched in relief as the wraith jolted back, less than a meter from having made contact with Harry. The wicks of the candles lighted simultaneously, taking up that magical flame that never moved or flickered.

The rest of the witches that made up the other four points of the pentagram began to chant in tandem with Andie after the first two lines, having also committed the words to memory. Andie felt the energy surge through her as they joined in, a buzz resonating in her chest as the brightness of the moon seemed to amplify. She could physically see the shining purple of her eyes illuminate the patches of grass in front of her.

Andie watched in wonder as the blood in the basin around Harry began to boil, rolling steadily. Harry looked down anxiously around him, wary of the sudden movement of the medium that held him. He didn’t look like he was in pain, so Andie’s own anxiety subsided for the time being.

The wind seemed to suddenly whip up around them, everyone’s hair lifting and seeming to be tugged in opposing directions. Andie was overwhelmed by the rush of it in her ears, unable to hear herself or the others chanting over the sound. It seemed to be creating a vacuum, Andie having to force the words out over the lack of oxygen suddenly in her lungs, like it was being sucked from her body from the force of the wind. Her rising panic over the sensation of suffocating was seeing Harry, completely unaffected by whatever was happening on the outer edges of the pentagram.

Suddenly and violently, the wind ceased and the flames of the candles went out, and a rogue cloud covered the moon, casting an impenetrable darkness over the clearing. The blood in the basin stilled. Andie’s heart sank, having the awful feeling that the spell wasn’t working, despite their continued chanting. She let her volume die down until she was just barely mumbling the words, looking first to her mother for reassurance. When Annabel just shrugged, her lips still forming the words of the spell, Andie looked to Stevie, who was already looking back at her. Stevie nodded her head, indicating that they were all to keep up the incantation, despite the sudden lack of activity.

She was terrified that something was wrong. She couldn’t live with herself if something bad happened to Harry if they had somehow performed the ritual wrong. That overwhelming dread of failure pitted her stomach and made her chest tight, like she was nearly to the point of tears. Witches didn’t cry in situations of stress, though, and she was push on until the end.

Even if the end meant the end of Harry. It would wreck her, but she would push on.

With the beginning of the next verse of words, Andie’s stomach dropped with the sudden sensation of floating. She continued her stream of words as she looked down, confirming that her feet were suddenly off the ground, and the distance between the two was ever increasing. Andie wasn’t afraid of heights, per se, but she wasn’t really willing to trust her safety of levitation when she wasn’t the one controlling it.

However, she didn’t really have a choice.

She felt a little better when she stopped rising, her feet about fifteen feet above the ground. She kept up her spell as she looked down at everyone else, still planted firmly in the earth. Despite her physical disconnection with one of her energy sources, she could feel and increased jolt of energy, and suddenly a splintering light shattered the dark veil of the sky. It nearly blinded Andie in its brilliance, and it radiated a heat like nothing she’d ever experienced before. The light that began as a shimmering white turned into a crimson red interspersed with flashes of yellow as the split in the sky broadened. Andie realised with a start that it was the fabric of space and time between dimensions that she was witnessing, tearing in order to suck back in the thing which it had birthed.

It was working.

Upon everyone’s realisation of what was happening, their enthusiasm for the spell increased, and they were all nearly shouting with the force of their words. Andie’s heart beat raced in her chest, and at first she thought it was just her excitement at the prospect of this all actually working and her and Harry being able to go back to their normal lives.

However, she realised after a moment it was caused by some sort of energy line that connected her with the wraith, her end connected in her chest and its connected to the void of its face. The connection drug the wraith up so it was eye-level with Andie, the light shining in her eyes from her magic illuminating it’s darkness. With a gush of wind from magical origins that Andie could more feel than actually know, the head covering of the supernatural entity blew back, revealing dark void of its face. A scream bubbled in her throat at the completely overpowering feeling of despair that shrouded her. No one was meant to look a wraith in its face. To do so meant certain death.

Blood rushed in her ears, her heartbeat reverberating in her head. If she hadn’t trusted Stevie’s account of the spell she’d witnessed, she could have sworn that the wraith had attached itself to her and was now doing what it needed to completely drain her. And the force of her magic would be more power than a wraith knew what to do with, most likely leading to some destruction that no one was prepared for. She hoped to whatever gods could hear her that Stevie’s account was correct.

She could hear Harry screaming her name from down on the ground. She couldn’t see him, afraid to take her gaze from the being, but she knew he was going to try to scramble from the tub, ready and willing to do what he could to get to her. She couldn’t let him ruin the spell, though. They’d put so much into it, and they were close to the end. Andromeda could feel it.

Without breaking eye contact or ceasing her stream of incantation, Andie shot one hand down, forcing Harry back into the basin. She heard his muffled sound of protest but paid him no mind as the spell was coming to the end. She only had two lines of words left and she was praying that something happened.

In the last five words of the incantation, there was a loud ripping sound, so loud Andie was sure she’d have some hearing loss. The once meter long opening in the sky opened into a large gouge, at least fifteen feet in diameter. The light and heat it emitted nearly burned her skin, and she was sure she’d have the shadowed image of it burned on her retinas forever.

The wraith gave a low screeching sound, like it was in pain. Andie would have smiled if she could focus on anything but completing the spell.

Upon the last word falling from her lips, the light that had been emanating from the opening burst with light, spitting out what felt like acid on both Andie and the wraith. She screamed out her pain, finally able to express her feelings with the words of the spell complete. The sound that the wraith gave out was like that of a thousand dying animals, completely drowning out Andie’s sobs. She watched through squinted eyes as the dark mass crumpled in on itself, the dark cloak swallowing its body as the darkness of its being paled and splintered. In some far place of her mind, Andie mused that he sort of looked like Voldemort when Harry Potter had finally killed him. She would have chuckled if anything other than the crippling pain would process in her brain.

A sigh of relief seemed to be breathed by the universe when that rip in the sky sucked the wraith into its depths, another brilliant flash of light surging before closing back up with a pop, like there was a change of pressure.

All the energy seeped from Andie’s body, all of her going limp while still being held in the air by the remnants of the spell. She didn’t even have the energy anymore to scream her agony. Her head dropped onto her shoulder as she started to slip into unconsciousness. She wouldn’t let herself fall completely, too stubborn to let her lights go out without making sure for herself that Harry was alright.

She hardly noticed when she started floating back to the ground. There was barely a register of panicked voices and the feeling of a body catching her before she hit the earth. Above the din of anxiety, she could barely make out Stevie’s voice.

“Get her in the tub with Harry. Completely submerged.”

When the skin of her arms first touched the still-warm blood, she flinched, the sting of her wounds flaring. Harry shushed her, barely keeping in his own sobs. His heart hurt looking at her. Her skin was singed from the heat and there were blotches of deep burns where the universes had spat that…stuff on her. He placed his hand over his eyes as he lowered her head back into the blood.

Everyone seemed to hold their breath as Harry pulled her back up. They way Stevie had instructed them, it seemed like this was supposed to heal her of her injuries. It was supposed to be like the final soothing solve to finish out the spell.

Being submerged in blood didn’t seem to register with Andromeda. When her face parted the surface, Harry was a little taken with her beauty. Even covered in the blood of a slaughtered animal and pale in a way that he had never seen her, she was absolutely stunning. He was sure the effort she’d made to save his life clouded his view, but he didn’t mind.

And behind the haze he was on at seeing her gorgeous face, he registered that the burns that had been there the moment before were gone. All that was left was the perfect smoothness of her skin.

Slowly, Andie blinked her eyes open, and the smile that broke across Harry’s face hurt his cheeks. He gave a relieved chuckle and helped her wipe the blood from her eyes. Her eyes seemed to first focus on the moon that was just behind Harry’s head, and then his eyes, the glowing green warming her soul.

“Hi.”

Harry’s chuckle turned into a full laugh as he wrapped both his arms behind her back. “Hi, darling.”

“You’re okay?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse from all the yelling that she’d done while she was in pain.

Harry nodded. “I’m okay. Thanks to you. And your mum and your friends.”

A soft smile flitted to her face, like she was too tired to do much more. “Good.”

“I love you,” Harry blurted. He was surprised at his candid admission, but he didn’t regret it. He’d been wanting to tell her that since they’d met.

Andie reached an arm out to grip the back of Harry’s head. He knew exactly what she was requesting, so he quickly moved his face to hers, letting their lips brush. He wanted to be grossed out by them both being covered in blood (and he would be later), but he was much too happy to be holding her alive in his arms to care.

“I love you, too.”

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