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4pfsukuna · 5 months

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Prof. Nanami puts his two smartest students together for a research project and you just can’t help teasing him…until he teases back.

Black coded reader, cause black af.mdni.

Tapping my long red french tips on the library table i let out another long sigh irritated with my (not chosen by me) partner.

We had been sitting here in silence a dimly lit corner in the back of the library our only exchange was “hey” so what could he possibly be typing.

“So i was thinking we could do our project on—“ i begin to speak taking my hand out of my leather jacket pocket only to be cut off by the dark eyed assailant.

“No. I’ve already decided” he mutters out not moving his attention from the screen. Resting my chair forward so im no longer leaning i scrunch my nose.

“Theres no way you decided because i didn’t agree” and from the slight view i have of his face i can tell hes rolling his eyes.

This was exactly why i didn’t want to work with him… or anyone. He was quiet, closed off, known as a loner and had these deep dark eyes that felt like he was stairing into the pits of your soul.

“Are you going to do all the work?” I ask with a raised brow before noticing not once has he even looked at me. Pushing even more forward to see what he was typing im unaware of our proximity until i notice the slight red blush covering his cheeks right under the mark on his nose.

Ive completely invaded his space my boobs nearly pouring out of the top of my black crop top and im pressed completely onto his arm.

“Am i making you uncomfortable” i tease and i couldn't help it when you grow up with step brothers like Sukuna and Yuji (our dad wanting to step out of his marriage and explore with an american woman actually explore his kink for black women which in all actuality he had a poor taste in women their mothers who decided it was time for her to live her dreams so she just up and left and mine who shipped me off as soon as she had the birds and bees talk which is all irrelevant since choso is storming out of the library laptop in tow and the last thing i need is to fail this final paper.

Grabbing my oversized purse and slinging it over my shoulder i chase after him and catch him in the hall.

“Wait wait wait” i huff out of breath because these heels were not made for running and he turns around facing me with a bored expression, you wouldn’t even think i offended him.

“Alright that was completely inappropriate and i shouldn’t have joked like that, but i also don’t want to fail or push all the work on you. I want to work on this project together” i breathe out standing infront of him blocking his path but as large as he was compared to me im sure he could step over me if he seen fit.

“What makes you think i want to work with you” he bites out and i let out the arrogant smile that solidified i was Sakunas half sister.

“Do you actually think professor Namami would place the smartest person in the class with a idiot and have them do all the work? Come on now its Nanami he would put his two smartest pupils together to challenge another and write a final paper hes actually happy to read” i say as if its common sense cause it is.

Its NANAMI.

I watch the debate in his eyes as he thinks over what i just said before his shoulders drop in defeat. I grin widely sticking my hand out as a form of truce which he painfully takes.

I force myself to bite back the smirk at his clamy hands knowing it was all my doing and use the grip to yank him closer.

“And i would love if you could send me what you have so far so i can begin doing research” i utter lowly licking my lips watching his glare never falter almost as if he's painfully keeping his eyes avoiding my mouth before bidding him goodbye a devious plan forming in my head.

The next afternoon when we meet in the library i offer sweets from a local bakery as an official truce which i can hardly read his expression at.

“Im sorry now that i think about it you dont seem much of a sweets guy” i feel foolish of course he didnt like sweets— my train of thought is interupted by him picking up a creme filled chocolate pastry.

“Shouldnt judge a book by a cover, every smart person knows that” he quipps quickly and my lips twitch in a smile. Ah so he does bite back.

“Did you call me dumb?” I scoff playfully dropping bait which he quickly takes.

“Does the shoe fit?” He bites back and when i dont respond only send a playful glare i watch as the corners of his lips twitch up feeling proud i could get a smile. “Come on show me your work”

And we spend the next two hours talking theories and sharing ideas conspiring every concept as his long fingers type away my thoughts later to be put into essay format.

Its not long before he lets out a yawn breaking our silence and i look up at him noticing the bags forming under his eyes slowly being covered by his bangs.

He was actually begining to look disheveled. Two signature buns drooping from running his hands through them bangs more full from the pueces of his buns and the bored expression— actually that was very on brand for him.

“Come on let’s wrap up your tired” i say softly twirling a stand off his bangs around my finger and i knew it was when he was too tired to cover his blush he was exhausted.

Yup, still got it.

He swats at my hand sending me a pointed look to which i innocently bat my eyes up at him from the seat next to him.

And thats how it goes for the next few weeks smart remarks met by his even more quick witted remarks sometimes followed by a half smirk, my harmless flirting/ teasing which i may have taken too far the day i rested my palm on his inner thigh and he flew out of his seat claiming he needed to use the bathroom only returning 10 minutes later saying he had to leave.

Or the day he asked me to proof read a page leaning away from his computer so i could take it instead i lean forward hand resting on his shoulder unaware just how close his face was to my—

Both occasions i had to bring apology pastries.

And the more time we spent together the more i learned about Choso. How smart he is, what makes him tick, his favorite foods, what makes him blush the way i thought he was a boob man but ive caught his gaze on my thighs several times and i may purpousely wear shorter skirts on days i know were going to be together.

Today was no exception.

The only thing i hadn’t planned on was the air conditioner being on full blast. Probably my karma from the universe wearing the tiniest of clothes to tease him.

“Oh no were going to have to finish another day its freezing in here” i shiver crossing my arms over another trying to huddle into myself for warmth. The black (extreme) mini skirt with short sleeve white shirt that had bows tying the back together with Sukunas red varsity jacket was such a cute look until he realized i was wearing his jacket and took it . He was now my least favorite brother and yuuji was in the lead, which he typically always was given his competition.

“What?!” Choso nearly begins to foam at the mouth. “Its our last day and were so close to being done we can actually submit it now and im sure we would get an A still” he quickly rambles out dropping our stuff on the table we usually took up. The library was nearly empty so him being loud was no bother at all to anyone probably because most students didnt know where the library was.

“So submit it, I dont do the cold” i shrug ready to grab my bag when he begins taking off his jacket placing it on my shoulders pulling my hair from put under the collar and going to his work.

“Probelm solved, now sit” he bites put and id never seen this side of him but it was kind of a turn on and probably karma rearing her head into me again because through all the teasing i developed a tiny crush on Choso. Like tiny though.

Super tiny.

Extremely tiny.

So tiny i couldnt help but flirt with him every chance i had and notice all his favorite things and Damn did his jacket smell good.

So tiny i knew every detail of the scar on his face and how it swerves slight over the bridge of his nose not just cause it curves but—

Damn his jacket smelled… good wasnt a strong enough word. I was feeling intoxicated from how sensational his jacket smelled.

My crush was so tiny i made sure to bring his favorite pastries every tuesday and thursday because the way he smiled could brighten up my whole day.

My crush was so tiny i wasnt thinking about using my rose tonight to the smell of his jacket and the way he demanded me to sit down.

Imagine hearing that in the be—

Feeling a tight grip on my thigh my head snaps over to him and his eyes give me that bored yet slightly annoyed expression.

“Stop fidgeting, its driving me insane and just let me finish typing the rest of what you wrote” he says like he cant wait to be done and i pout knowing this would be the last time we’d get to spend together. My crush would stay just that.

My eyes trail down noticing his buff arms veins sticking out something id never notice before. Has he always worked out. Going down even further i notice the silver rings spread across his fingers and almost choke.

I was going to need 10 minutes in the bathroom if he didnt move his iron grip. I just had one question.

“Have you ever fingered a girl with all your rings on?” I blurt… and this time it was a genuine mistake. Of all the shit ive said this was the one i completely wish i didnt. I was actually okay with us never speaking again, Sukuna says we should never have shame but i bet he would never do something like that.

Ok yes he would.

“Do you want to be the first?” I hear and nearly fall off the table if it wasnt for his iron grip on my thigh. I thank God for my brown complexion because my cheeks feel hot and I’m lost for words completely. Its when he begins to chuckle that i realize he was just giving me a taste of my own medicine. The weeks of comments and sexual innuendos id thrown at him and couldn’t handle one.

I feel the proud smile grow on my face and unknowingly squeeze my thighs together slightly squirming the idea still playing in my mind.

“What if i said yes” i retort watching as he becomes flustered and that adorable blush comes back to his cheeks.

“Would it make you stop… moving your thighs so much” he struggles his hand moving to my other thigh squeezing and i grin knowing he had a thing for them and he can no longer hold back. His eyes meet mine until i lean forward placing a few soft kisses on his lips.

“Promise”

Ok that was a lie. It was all a lie.

Sitting on his right leg, my back pressed up against his chest and 2 of his fingers buried inside me the squirming absolutely hasn't stopped but it doesn't seem to affect him one bit as he edits the last bits of parts i wrote for our project.

“This is so good sweetheart, how about a third finger?” He ask rhetorically lips brushing against my ear and i'm so close to cumming at Dom!Choso cause whewwwww what a turn on. He curls his two fingers up as if he’s trying to pull the orgasm from inside of me and my legs clench together trying not to make too much of a mess.

He chuckles right against my ear and I'm losing myself at the stimulation, Biting my lip as he uses a third finger on my clit. My vision begins to blur and I feel myself about to cum for a second time.

“Look at you trying so hard to hold back those gorgeous moans after you spent the past month teasing me, fucking with me… mmm so wet” he groans in my ear spreading my lips causing the squelching sound to be louder. His fingers brush a particular spot deep in my core making me fall apart as I bite my lip harder cherry lip gloss mixing with the iron taste of blood.

“I love every little sound you make Why try and hide it from me, would you really deny me?” He kisses up my neck using his other hand to pull my bottom lip from my mouth releasing a string of curses, his fingers never stopping their exploration of my walls.

He did show mercy, slowing down other hand snaking up my shirt cupping a boob until his fingers found my nipple.

“You're so wet for me… just me” he groans his teeth leaving marks down my neck to my shoulder and the idea of him being slightly possessive wanting to mark me so everyone knew i was his? My insides clench and he hums at the feeling.

His fingers pick up the pace once more and I have to close my eyes to hold on to every drop of restraint I have left between the way his fingers are moving expertly inside of me, the contrast of his warm hands to the cold rings on his fingers. I could stay here forever, one hand clutching his bicep the other on his thigh.

“Ch-choso i—mmmmm” i try to get out feeling my hips have a mind of their own grinding down on his fingers needily unaware of how he had me completely wrapped around them. He bites onto my neck and my release follows earning a groan from him as im left panting in his lap. What i dont expect to hear is the wet sound of him licking each of his fingers and the sight has me wet all over again my heart racing.

He chuckles pulling my chin toward him as he places his lips on mine i instantly kiss back gently sucking on his bottom lip earning a groan from him. He doesnt hesitate as his hands rub my thighs gripping and squeezing our tongues dancing together until he slowly pulls away lips and cheeks both red.

“Lets go” i murmur placing another soft kiss on his lips only to receive a confused look.

“Yuji and Sukuna both are going to a party so they wont be back until 7am… i have a free house where i dont have to worry about being quiet”

#choso x black!reader #jjk x black!reader #jjk smut #jjk x reader

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honeymoonfemme · 1 year

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Part IV - To Slay a Dragon || Catradora

ao3 link to come when entire work is posted

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V

Rated M

Tags: alternative universe - magical kingdom, angst, fluff, humor, hurt/comfort, getting together, happy ending, kissing, mild violence, ooc Micah, Adora is a knight, Scorpia is a dragon

Once upon a time in the far away kingdom of Bright Moon, a brave knight is given a quest: to rescue a maiden and slay a dragon. But how can Adora rescue someone who doesn't want to be saved?

1485 words

Weary and covered in filth and sweat, the group limped into the village. Night had fallen, but the villagers were dancing and singing around a large campfire in the centre of the clearing. Adora’s stomach rumbled. She hoped the village could spare some leftover food for them.

“Welcome, travellers.” A tall woman greeted them. She had brown skin and blonde hair, and wore a pink and green dress that draped over her like petals on a flower. “My name is Perfuma. What is your business with our village?”

“Me and my companions need a place to rest for the night,” Adora said. “The King told me this village would be accommodating.”

A spark of recognition appeared in Perfuma’s eye. “You must be a knight of Bright Moon. And you must be the Princess Glimmer. I’m not sure about you,” she said to Bow. “But you are all welcome here. Please, come and rest by the fire. I will get my sister to prepare some tents for you.”

The trio squeezed onto the end of a log facing the campfire. Adora took off her armour and massaged the knots in her muscles.

“Stew?” A man with a large moustache and an apron ladled some into a bowl for her. Adora thanked him and tried it. It was nice and hot, with a rich, meaty flavour. As she ate, the stew warmed her from the inside out. She’d almost finished the bowl before Glimmer and Bow had been served.

“So, you’re from Bright Moon? News travels fast here. I myself have sailed to Bright Moon many a time, back in the day.”

“You’re a sailor?”

“A captain.” The man brandished the ladle. “Captain Sea Hawk!”

“Are you harassing our guests?” A woman with long black hair walked up to them. “I’m Mermista. It’s, like, cool to meet you. Or whatever.”

“My darling Mermista.” Sea Hawk tried to snake an arm around her waist, but she evaded him. “I was just talking to them.”

“Do you by any chance have some more of that stew?” Adora asked. Sea Hawk refilled her bowl.

“You’re the Bright Moon visitors.” Mermista wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like it there. Too many people.”

“We’re on a quest,” Bow said through a mouthful of stew.

“A quest? Do people still do those?”

“We’re going to slay a dragon.”

“I’m going to slay a dragon,” Adora corrected. “The actual quest is to rescue a maiden. The dragon will only be slayed if necessary.”

“A ‘maiden’? Wait, are you talking about Catra?”

“Catra! A veritable beast in her own right,” said Sea Hawk.

Adora was confused. “You know this maiden?”

“Catra used to live here,” Perfuma said, joining them. “We tried to welcome her into our community, but she made things, well, difficult.”

“She was a bitch.”

“Mermista.” Perfuma tutted. “I don’t think Catra liked us very much. She never adopted our peaceful, harmonious ways. Then one day she just disappeared. We thought she’d chosen to leave our village, but then we hear that a dragon has taken her and… I just feel horrible.” Tears welled up in Perfuma’s eyes. “Poor Catra, alone with a dragon. She must think we abandoned her.”

Mermista patted her sister’s back. “I keep saying to you, Catra isn’t thinking about us at all. If she’s still alive, that is.”

Perfuma sobbed harder.

“So… that dragon is a piece of work, eh? Remember that time it burned down my ship?” Sea Hawk said.

“You burned down your own ship,” Mermista said.

“No, that was a different ship.”

“Tell me more about Catra.” Something about this distressing damsel intrigued Adora.

“Ugh, what more do you want to know?”

“Why didn’t you get along with her?”

“There was that time she ripped up my flower beds.” Perfuma sniffed. “She told me she thought they were weeds.”

“She told me I wasn’t a real captain. She said real captains don’t burn down their ships.”

“She just had really bad vibes.”

“Catra sounds really mean,” Glimmer interjected. “Why even bother rescuing her?”

“Because she is a citizen of Bright Moon,” Adora said, affronted. “You can’t just not rescue someone because you don’t like them.”

“The dragon also has bad vibes,” Mermista added. “Did we tell you about the time it barbequed our sheep? If I had to compare whose vibes are worse, I’d have to go with the dragon. But it’s a close call.”

“Maybe Catra was just misunderstood,” Adora ventured. She stared into the dancing yellow flames of the fire. It was hard to believe anyone could be that nasty for no good reason.

“Oh no, she always made sure we understood exactly what she was thinking,” Sea Hawk said. “She never wasted an opportunity to tell me how stupid she thought my moustache was.”

“It is a stupid moustache,” said Mermista.

“Ouch. You do wound me, my love.”

“Does Catra have any family here? Anyone who might know her better?”

The three villagers exchanged looks. “Catra arrived here on her own,” Perfuma said. “We’re the only ones here who tried to get to know her.”

Adora got the feeling there was something they weren’t telling her, but she didn’t want to jeopardise the hospitality of her hosts. The only way to find out was to bypass the dragon, march into the abandoned castle, and ask Catra herself.

Bow yawned loudly. “Is our tent ready? I’m already falling asleep by the fire.”

“It’s ready.” Mermista showed them to the tent. It was a standard A-frame tent constructed out of thick canvas and rope. “It’s not really meant for three people so it might be a tight fit. I guess that’ll be your problem.”

Glimmer and Bow eagerly crawled inside. Adora peaked through the flap to make sure they weren’t doing anything untoward, but they were both out like a light. They’d left a space on the right for Adora, which touched her. She whispered ‘goodnight’ before heading back with Mermista.

Perfuma was putting out the fire, which sent thick plumes of smoke and steam into the air.

“Can I discuss something with you?” She asked the two sisters.

“Of course,” Perfuma said.

“I’m going to leave very early tomorrow morning. While the Princess and Bow are asleep.”

“So you’re going to leave without them?”

“It’s far too dangerous. King Micah will have my head if his daughter gets hurt. And I’m sure Bow’s fathers will be next in line.” A pause. “And I don’t want them to get hurt. They almost did today and it was terrifying. A dragon isn’t something to mess around with.”

“It’s okay.” Perfuma laid a hand on her arm. “We understand. We will make sure that Bow and Glimmer don’t follow you.”

“I mean, we could tie them up to stop them from escaping. Y’know, if you want us to,” Mermista said, sounding completely serious.

“Hopefully that won’t be necessary. Just please look after them until I get back.” She swallowed thickly. If I get back.

“We will look after them, I promise.” Perfuma smiled, the moonlight reflecting off her pale blonde hair. “For now, you really should get some sleep. You’ll be safe here overnight.”

Adora was walking back to the tent when a bony hand grabbed her and pulled her into an ivy-covered shack. Inside, the surfaces were covered in lit candles, which allowed her to see her captor. It was an old woman with wild lilac hair and round glasses that magnified her eyes.

“Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“I am Razz. And you are She-ra.” The woman pointed a shaky finger at Adora, the bangles on her wrist clinking together.

“No, I’m Adora. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“We’ve met,” Razz said. “In another lifetime.”

This poor woman was old and probably half mad. She had to be mistaking Adora for someone else. “Who is this ‘She-ra’?”

“The key to the lock. The answer to the question. The one we’ve all been waiting for. She will fulfil the prophecy.”

“Prophecy? What prophecy?”

Razz began to recite what sounded like an ancient riddle. “When day turns to night, and when friend turns to foe, She-ra will return to restore balance to a fractured and unstable world.”

“But the thing is, I’m not She-ra. I’m Adora. A-D-O-R-A. And I don’t know how to restore balance to anything.”

“She-ra knows. Trust She-ra.”

“But who is She-ra?”

Razz picked up a broomstick and used it to shoo Adora out of her house. “Trust She-ra. She-ra is the key. Trust She-ra.”

Thoroughly rattled, Adora climbed into the tent and laid down next to Bow and Glimmer, thoughts of She-ra and Razz swimming in her head. It had to just be the deluded musings of an old woman. There was no way Adora was involved in an actual prophecy. She double-checked the knife in her boot—just in case—and let Bow’s soft snores lull her to sleep.

#catradora #catra #adora #she-ra #she ra and the princesses of power #spop #glimmer #bow #mermista #perfuma #sea hawk #fanfic #fanfiction #fic #spop fanfic #lesbian #wlw #wlw fanfic

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january-summers · 2 years

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Devil judge episode 5. Trying out a one post ‘live’ blog.

I love the framing and lighting they use for some of these shots. Devil Judge’s nightmare looks like a godsdamned painting.

Devil judge, stop playing baby judge, he’s not stupid, he’s gonna catch on. I do wonder how much of anything is the truth.

Also, the bracelet necklace devil judge is wearing with the crucifix, was his older dopplebrother wearing that in the flashbacks??

Flashback case!! Yeah, I have daydreams like that too.

Lady minister, if you’re there on official business why are you covering your face?

Guard knows that means tlc care right? Not shank him in the kidney for clout?

So mean to… is she the maid? The nanny? The housekeeper? Whomever she is, stop being mean! Or she really will poison you!

Omg live-streaming from the green house XD

Minister has some A+ acting I’ll give her that.

Who’s side are you on pink secretary?!?!

I love Lady Judge. She so bubbly~ and nice and charismatic~ (ooohhh do you think she’s into cops? Cause cop friend likes judges I’m just saying: free GL ship. Oh gosh, I ship them already.)

Cop friend! Doing a bust, don’t get hurt! … YAS slay! She’s so cool~

Okay so wait. Is this guy in the turtle neck the one from last ep when devil judge was telling minister to confess to pushing that politician or whatever to suicide because she framed him for bribes? Is he also the one who was there when devil judge was beating up that dude by the furnace and not a doppelgänger ghost? So many shows would be easier if i was better at faces 😞

Awww baby judge cooked for devil judge. This butler is was smarter than siri and alexa. I like devil judges vest with the shimmery blue purple back panel. I need the vest.

Foot chase with baby judge and cop friend!! Oh shit did that dude just- oh no, he’s alive.

Childhood backstory!!! I love them your honour. Omg she just wants to protect him, the little delinquent.

Ooph, this is not a fun case to have chosen for them. Gonna be a whole load of he said she said.

He confessed?!?! Just like tha- ah. Blackmail, that makes sense… so did he actually commit the crimes? He has the attitude of someone who knows he’s about to get away with something. Aaaand there it is. Piece of trash.

As someone filled with much rage: cut him up. As someone who has the viewer’s perspective and knows this is a trap: oh shit it’s a trap!!!

Playing baby judge again :(

What the shit is going on in devil judge’s psyche? This is the most twisted version of “we become the one who could have saved us the time that no one did” i have ever seen. But also good for him. Baby judge! Come back and give him a hug!!!

Bonding!!!!

Baby judge had a bike?! A motorbike?!?! Aww the little delinquent~ rip bike.

(Also: “while ive been living with him I’ve discovered my true passion! I want to be a house husband~”)

“Accomplice.”

Awww, the kids are playing corporal punishment. That’s terrifying. Baby judge legit scared by how much power and influence they have.

“Why does baby judge get a waifu army while i get mutilation cults?” Oh jee I wonder why (sarcasm)

Baby girl is so smart~

!!! Lady judge!!! Definitely needs a girlfriend who’s allowed to legally shoot some fools!!!

Poor baby judge, he’s really conflicted. On the one hand: this actor is a monster, on the other: human rights must apply to everyone or they soon apply to no one. On the third hand: what is the ability to punish people with mutilation going to do the the country’s psyche?

Oh that some next level scribbles of extreme ire. … wait? What? Really? That’s all? Huh.

Enjoy getting shanked in prison asshat! !!! Wait, poison? … can you chemically castrate someone like that?

“Appendicitis” sure it is. Oh this is sus. Dude is just cutting em off, how the hell did he sneak into the theatre? What is he from devil judge’s cult? … omg it’s devil judge! (I am even worse with faces when there’s masks an-)

Dream sequence?!?! It was a dream sequence? Wait, how much of it?!?!?!

The whole sentencing? … 20 years and the worst prison they could find!!!! (Not super comfy about the “we’re waiting for you sweetstuff~” rape is never ok not even as punishment for rapists. Imma just pretend they’re only saying it to scare him and that he will live the rest of his life in fear like his victims would have.)

Baby girl~ she’s so clever~

Oh i know that envelope.

The car’s gonna stop before it hit- RUDE

Creepy recreation of his house.

… pink secretary isn’t actually his sister in law after cosmetic surgery to hide the extensive burns on a crusade of revenge is she?

Ohhhh!!! A maid!!! Wait. Is she the maid he “convinced to throw herself from the roof” in his tragic backstory?

BAD TOUCH!!!! BADTOUCH BADTOUCHBADTOUCH!!!!!

All respect for her lost!

And i get the feeling i know why he got her to jump if she is the jumping maid. (Assuming he was even responsible for that) >:( grrr

(Why’d she have the necklace though?)

#devil judge live blog #devil judge #january's watching things today

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just-dreaming-marvel · 3 years

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Out Of Time ~ 133

MASTERLIST

< previous chapter

Word Count: 3,000ish

Summary: Tony finally comes home, but that doesn’t make the problems go away. (Please read the note at the end)

Y/N completely unconscious for a whole 24 hours. The remaining team members never wandered far from her side, too scared to lose another person. When Y/N finally awoke, she knew what had happened. She could feel the change inside her.

“They’re gone…” She croaked, looking at Steve with teary eyes. “The Stones are gone…”

“What do you mean, Y/N?” Steve questioned. “Like you don’t have your powers anymore?”

“I mean, they’re gone.”

“Y/N, I think you’re tired,” Thor said. “If your abilities have left you, then you must be exhausted.”

“No. You have to believe me.”

“Okay,” Bruce interrupted. “I think we need to leave her to rest some more.”

Y/N knew that they didn’t believe her. But she could feel it. The Infinity Stones had been destroyed. Her abilities were gone.

~~~

Y/N was alone in the med-bay when the building began trembling ever so slightly. Concerned as it continued, slowly getting worse, Y/N slid out of bed. The others were not too far in front of her as they all quickly headed out to the yard. Looking up as they all continued to walk, they noticed a ship being carried by a glowing Carol. She carefully landed the space craft, looking at a new shaven Steve with a nod.

Y/N froze, heart pounding wildly in her chest as the stairs of the space craft lowered. Tony, being supported by Nebula, walked out. She couldn’t stop the tears that began to cascade down her cheeks. Tony was alive. Yes, it was clear that he was barely alive, but there he was.

Steve ran up to Tony, taking him from Nebula to help him stand. Tony gripped Steve’s arm as he joined him.

“I couldn’t stop him,” Tony told Steve.

“Neither could I,” Steve responded.

“I lost the kid.”

“Tony, we lost.”

“Is, uh…? Y/N…”

“I’m right here,” Y/N said, running up and embracing him.

Tony practically melted into her arms, kissing her head and Y/N cried. “It’s okay.”

“You’re alive…”

“You’re alive.”

Y/N and Steve helped Tony inside. Bruce immediately got an IV in him and told him that he needed serious rest and food. While Tony sat at the table, his insisted on knowing everything. So the team began explain as a holographic casualty report listed the names and faces of those they lost.

“It's been 23 days since Thanos came to Earth,” Rhodey stated.

“World governments are in pieces. The parts that are still working are trying to take a census,” Natasha explained. “And it looks like he did... he did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Thanos wiped out fifty percent, of all living creatures.”

“Where is he now?” Tony asked. “Where?” Y/N, who was standing behind Tony’s wheelchair, gave his shoulder a slight squeeze.

“We don’t know,” Steve answered. “He just opened a portal and walked through.”

Tony looked over at a sullen-looking Thor, who as sitting outside on a bench. “What’s wrong with him?” Tony pointed.

“Oh, he's pissed. He thinks he failed,” Rocket responded. “Which of course he did, but you know there's a lot of that's going around, ain't there?”

“Honestly, until this exact second, I thought you were a Build-A-Bear.”

“Maybe I am.”

“We've been hunting Thanos for three weeks now. Deep Space scans, and satellites, Y/N was even searching Titan over and over, and we got nothing. Tony, you fought him.”

“Who told you that? I didn’t fight him. No, he wiped my face with a planet while the Bleecker Street Magician gave away the Stone. That's what happened. There was no fight.”

“Okay.”

“He’s unbeatable.”

“Did he give you any clues, any coordinates, anything?”

“Steve—“ Y/N called, waiting to stop this before it got too bad.

“Pfft! I saw this coming a few years back,” Tony continued. "I had a vision. I didn't wanna believe it. Thought I was dreaming. So did Y/N, ya know? She saw this coming too.”

“Tony, I’m gonna need you to focus,” Steve pressed.

“And I needed you. She,” Tony pointed back at Y/N, “needed you. As in past tense. That trumps what you need. It's too late buddy. Sorry. You know what I need?” Tony stood, pushing things off the table. “I need to shave. And I believe I remember telling you—“ Tony went for Steve, only for Rhodey to try to stop him.

“Tony, Tony, Tony!” Rhodey said.

“Tony!” Y/N added, though she knew it was no use.

“Alive and otherwise what we needed was a suit of armor around the world!” Tony continued, taking his IV out. “Remember that? Whether it impacted our precious freedoms or not— that's what we needed!”

“Well, that didn't work out, did it?” Steve retorted.

“I said, "we'd lose". You said, "We'll do that together too." And guess what, Cap? We lost. And you weren't there. But that's what we do, right? Our best work after the fact? We're the Avengers, we're the Avengers. Not the Prevengers.”

“Okay,” Rhodey said, trying to get Tony back into the wheelchair with Y/N’s help.

“Right?”

“You made your point,” Y/N said. “Just sit down.

“Okay…”

“Okay?”

“Nah, nah. Here’s my point. You know what?”

“Tony, you’re sick,” Rhodey said, finally able to guide him back to the wheelchair.

Tony pointed to Carol. “She’s great, by the way.”

“Sit down. Sit.”

Tony finally gave in. We need you. You're new blood. Bunch of tired old mules!” Tony sprang back up and walked right up to Steve’s face, voice dripping with venom. “I got nothing for you, Cap! I got no coordinates, no clues, no strategies, no options. Zero. Zip. Nada. No trust. Liar.”

It was clear that Steve was affected by Tony’s words. The old friends just gazed at each other in tense silence. After a moment, Tony ripped his arc reactor from his chest and shoved it into Steve’s hand.

“Here, take this,” Tony said. “You find him, and you put that on. You hide.”

Tony fell to the ground. Y/N was by his side instantly.

“Tony!” Steve exclaimed.

“I’m fine,” Tony slurred. “I… Let me...” He quickly fell into an unconscious heap on Y/N’s lap.

“You shouldn’t have pushed him,” Y/N whispered harshly at Steve. “But that’s what you do, right? To get what you want?”

“Y/N—“

“No, Steve. Just, no. Tony’s always been blamed for everything. Always. But, you know what, you’re not perfect either and are to blame for a lot as well.”

“I never said—“

“I don’t want to hear it, Steve. Not anymore.”

~~~

Tony was brought into a private glass room, where Bruce was getting him situated. Y/N was seated by his side, while Rhodey stood by the door.

“I gave him a sedative,” Bruce informed them. “He will most likely be out for the rest of the day.”

“Thank you, Bruce,” Y/N exhaled shakily.

“Of course. I’m going to run a few more tests and give him some more meds.” Y/N nodded, staring at Tony.

“Y/N,” Rhodey called for her attention. She glanced over at him. “I need to know… would you have chosen Tony in the end?”

Y/N pursed her lips. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Rhodey… the choice was made for me…”

“I just don’t want him hurt.”

“I won’t. Trust me.” Y/N rubbed her fingers over Tony’s hand. “I love him. And… he’s all I have left.”

~~~

Rhodey walked out to inform the others about Tony’s condition.

“Bruce gave him a sedative,” he told them. “He's gonna probably be out for the rest of the day.”

“You guys take care of him,” Carol said. “And I'll bring him a Xorrian Elixir when I come back.” She walked away.

“Where are you going?” Natasha asked.

“To kill Thanos.”

Steve and Natasha shared a look before quickly walking after her.

“Hey,” Natasha called after her, “you know, we usually work as a team here, and between you and I, morale's a little fragile.”

“We realize up there is more your territory,” Steve added, “but this is our fight too.”

“You even know where he is?” Rhodey questioned.

“I know people who might,” Carol responded.

“Don’t bother,” Nebula said, standing behind Carol. “I can tell you where Thanos is. Thanos spent a long time trying to perfect me. And when he worked, he talked about his great plan. Even disassembled, I wanted to please him. I'd ask "where would we go once his plan was complete?". His answer was always the same: "To the Garden.””

“That's cute, Thanos has a retirement plan,” Rhodey commented.

“So where is he?” Steve asked.

They grabbed Bruce and gathered in the common room. Rocket stood on the table with a hologram of a planet.

“When Thanos snapped his fingers, Earth became ground zero for a power surge of ridiculously cosmic proportions,” Rocket explained. “No one's ever seen anything like it... Until two days ago.” A shockwave visibly traversed over the planet in the hologram. “On this planet.”

“Thanos is there,” Nebula confirmed.

“He used the Stones again,” Natasha stated. She looked at Steve. “That’s what happened with Y/N. She was feeling the Stones. We have a chance, we could—“

“Hey, hey, hey,” Bruce interrupted. “We'd be going in short-handed, you know.”

“Look, he's still got the stones,” Rhodey said. “So—“

“So let’s get him,” Carol stated. “Use them to bring everyone back.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah, just like that.”

“Even if there's a small chance that we can undo this…" Natasha said. “I mean we owe it to everyone who's not in this room to try.”

“If we do this, how do we know it's gonna end any differently than it did before?” Bruce wondered. “And how do we know that Y/N’s not right? That the Stones are destroyed.”

“She can’t be right,” Steve stated. “Not until I see it with my own eyes.”

“And this will be different because last time, you didn’t have me,” Carol stated.

“Hey, new girl, everyone here is about that superhero life,” Rhodey said. “And if you don't mind my asking, where the hell have you been all this time?”

“There are a lot of other planets in the universe. And unfortunately, they didn't have you guys.”

Thor, who had been eating in the back all this time, stood up and walked over to Carol. She looked behind at him. Holding his hand up, Thor summoned his ax. He caught it as it flew over to him, missing Carol by inches. But Carol didn’t even flinch, instead giving Thor a small smile.

“I like this one,” Thor smiled.

“Let’s go get this son of a bitch,” Steve ordered.

~~~

Y/N was sitting beside a still unconscious Tony, reading, when Steve slipped into the room.

“How’s he doing?” Steve asked, awkwardly staying near the door.

“Fine,” Y/N responded, not bothering to look up from her book.

“Look, Y/N, I…” He sighed. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then go.”

“The team knows where Thanos is.” This got Y/N to look up at Steve. “We’re going to go get the Stones back and reverse this.”

“I told you, Steve, the Stones are gone.”

“You don’t know tha—“

“Oh, I don’t? I just wasn’t, I don’t know, connected to them for years? But go ahead. Try and fix this. But I’m telling you it’s too late.”

“Don’t you want to try and get everyone back? Get Bucky back?”

She paused, searching her mind for how to answer. She knew Steve wouldn’t believe her if she told him that she had seen the future. The battle wasn’t over.

“Things happen for a reason,” she replied. “We have to accept it—“

“Unbelievable,” Steve scoffed. “I can’t even—who are you?”

“I could ask you the same question, Steve.” He clenched his jaw. “We are not the same people we were before we froze, Steve. And I don’t know if we’ll ever go back to that.”

“I’ll let you know when we’re home.”

~~~

When Tony woke up, he was all alone. He was groggy from all the drugs, but he knew he was back at the compound. Looking around the room, he saw Y/N coming towards the room with a tray of food. Her eyes lit up ever so slightly when she met his opened ones.

“Hey, sleepy head,” Y/N greeted with a soft smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a moon landed on top of me,” he responded, voice raspy. “Oh, wait. It did.” He grunted as he sat up more.

“I brought some food.” She set the try on a table in the room. “I didn’t know what you’d be feeling like, so I got a little bit of everything.”

Tony carefully watched as Y/N got his food ready. Knowing her for so long, he knew when something was up.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

Y/N sighed, knowing she couldn’t keep anything from him. “The Stones are gone.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, they’re destroyed. I don’t have my powers anymore. The team also found Thanos, they went to try to reverse what happened.”

“But the Stones are destroyed.”

“They don’t believe me.”

“What? Why? You’re connected with the Stones.”

“I know… they still didn’t.”

Tony could see how everything that had transpired was weighing down on Y/N, whether she admitted it or not. “We’re leaving.”

“What?”

“We can’t stay here. We need to move on. Start our live together.”

“We can’t just leave.”

“We can’t? Why?”

“Well, they… I… I don’t know.”

“Exactly why we need to go. I’ve already got a secluded piece of land with a small lake on it. We can build a house there. Try to find some normalcy.” Y/N looked out the window, biting her lip. “I can see the weight you’re carrying about all this… it’s not solely your fault. Don’t take all of it on yourself.” He reached out his thin, trembling hand. “Let me bare it with you.”

With a teary nod, Y/N set her hand in Tony’s. He tried to pull her towards him. She sat beside him on the bed, brushing his hair off his forehead.

“I love you, Tony,” she whispered.

“I love you too.”

~~~

By the time the team came back, Tony and Y/N had already put together a house plan. The team came back with the news that Thanos was dead and the Stones were gone, not to Y/N or Tony’s surprise. The two left the compound to Tony’s apartment in the city that night.

They were both extremely sadden by how destroyed and seemly empty the city was. The first night was harder for Y/N than it was for Tony. Due to still being malnourished, Tony spent a lot of time sleeping. Y/N was the opposite, not getting much sleep at all. She was haunted by what happened in her dreams and too scared that if she closed her eyes, Tony would disappear.

It was dusk, when Tony woke up from a nap. Usually, Y/N would lay beside him or still be somewhere in the room. But this time, he couldn’t see her anywhere. He pushed himself up to get a better look at the room.

“Y/N?” He questioned. “Honey? Where are you?”

No response. With a grunt he stood up, grabbed his cane, and headed out of the bedroom. He kept calling out her name.

“Y/N? Y/N?”

He stopped when he thought he heard something. And he was right. He heard sobs that were clearly trying to be concealed. Hurrying as fast as he could, Tony turned the corner, he heart shattering further than he thought it could at the sight. Y/N was on her knees, in the middle of the living room. Her hands were pressing a blanket to her mouth, trying to conceal her retching sobs. Who knows how long she had been like that, but the blanket was drenched in tears.

“Oh, honey,” Tony hurried over, getting down next to her. He pulled her into him, but she fought it. “Don’t fight me, hun. Please.”

“I’m so-sorry, Tony,” Y/N sobbed. “Please just go… I’ll be fine…”

“It’s clear that you’re not.” Tony pulled her back in, not caring that she was fighting. “You’re carrying too much on your own. Like I said before, let me bare this with you…”

“I-I can’t… cause it’s my fault… if I had tried any harder or pushed myself—“

“Until what? You died? You know that I wouldn’t have been able to handle your— I-I can’t even think about it.”

“It’s just… it’s so hard, Tony… it hurts so much… I watched them dust right before my eyes… the power I was given to stop this, failed me and now it’s gone… I’m—I’m useless.”

Tony’s frail hands took Y/N’s face firmly in his hands. “You are not nor ever will be useless. Especially not to me.”

“I’m so sorry, Tony… I’m so sorry…”

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s okay…”

He placed a soft kiss on her lips before going in for other, more hungrily. Y/N welcomed it, letting him have entrance into her mouth. When they finally separated, panting, Y/N and Tony locked eyes.

“Help me, Tony,” she whimpered. “Please… take this feeling away…”

Tony nodded before pressing his lips firmly against hers. Y/N guided herself so that she was laying down as Tony hovered over her, pressing kisses down her neck.

“I will always help you,” he whispered against her lips. “Always.”

It was a beautiful, long awaited night of love and passion. Both of them were beginning to feel whole again, completed, in each others holds. Healing was starting to take place because, as long as they had each other, everything was going to be alright.

next chapter >

My dearest Team Bucky, many of you have been so patient throughout this whole series and I ask you to continue to do so. I have a surprise coming your way (and to Team Tony’s). Thank you for your support and please keep reading.

If you want to be added to the tag list, please dm me or send in an ask.

#tony stark x reader #steve rogers x reader #the avengers x reader #avengers x reader #marvel x reader #tony stark imagine #iron man x reader #marvel imagine #marvel imagines #tony stark #avenger endgame #endgame #Avengers #The Avengers #avengers endgame

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medusinestories · 3 years

Text

Black Sails, IV (S1, ep 04)

- Silver's horrified face when he finds out he's going to have to roast pigs is a Journey, starting with shock, then fake smiling, and then this horrified shuddery expression. It's just as interesting when they drop the dead pig at his feet and he clearly doesn't know what to do with it and also finds it disgusting. I can absolutely see where all the Jewish John Silver headcanons come from, especially since it's unlikely that a London urchin has never seen a dead pig and raw meat in general before.

- Here we have the first performance of Cassandra DeGroot: he knows that the bay they'd chosen to do the careening was too dangerous, and warns the crew. He's immediately countered by Flint, who has much more persuasive arguments to get the careening done fast but in a risky manner. (this whole thing reminds me of our current COVID/climate situation, where scientists get talked over by politicians, and people prefer listening to the latter because they seem to offer much better prospects than the “catastrophist” former)

- In this episode Billy is now quartermaster and he shows himself to actually be really good at disciplining the crew, something Gates, DeGroot and even Flint recognise. However, he also agreed to do the careening only because he's afraid to say no to Flint and allowed the men to have a fuck tent, which he feared would distract them - and it did, the two men who placed the rope on the wrong tree decided not to follow his orders and go fuck instead. This all weighs on him enormously after the disaster with Randall and Morley, who accuses him minutes before his death of already being in Flint's pocket. It's pretty clear that more responsibility doesn't do Billy's mental state any good.

- Morley's story about the Maria Aleyne gives some idea of a timeline, albeit a faint one. The incident took place "a number of years back", before Billy joined. This means that Billy is a somewhat new addition to the crew. We know that Randall was bosun when Billy joined. This also establishes that Lord Hamilton has been dead for several years, which now begs the question: who is the Lord Proprietor that Richard Guthrie is now in touch with? Did Thomas have a younger brother who inherited the Bahamas? Was someone new appointed? Was there a gap between Proprietors that allowed the pirates to establish themselves even more after Lord Alfred's death?

- I just adore the fact that Miranda actually went to stinking, violent Nassau because she was just too impatient to wait at home and wanted to be there when the Walrus came in and immediately hear the news of Lord Alfred's death. She is that vengeful and angry and I love her <3

- Speaking of which, this episode gives us the Passive-Agressive Sex Scene which makes so many people doubt of Flint's attraction to Miranda. Just look at Flint’s face: this man isn't uncomfortable or sad he is PISSED. He plays starfish and glares at Miranda all through it (while maintaining an erection all the same!). Miranda must be hella frustrated (or determined) because she manages to get off in spite of all of this (also, how uncommon is it for a sex scene to end when the woman climaxes rather than the man?) It's only when it ends that both Flint and Miranda are both shown as vulnerable and sad and reflective, with Flint reaching up to touch her but not quite getting there - imo because he's still angry but knows that she (and he) needs comfort.

- This leads into the argument over Meditations, and Miranda explicitly talking about Thomas and not wanting to forget him. The book hasn't been touched in a long time, confirming the idea that Miranda shared it with Richard Guthrie because Flint refuses to touch it. Her grief, her loneliness, are incredibly poignant in this scene, and we see Flint shift from bristling and stonily glaring at her, to absolutely melting (Toby's facial expression shifts here are just *chef's kiss*) and finally being gentle and tender with her. However, even though he promises to make things better, Miranda clearly doesn't believe him anymore.

- This brings in a big theme in the episode: betrayal from people you care for/trust. Mr Scott asks Eleanor not to do anything rash in order to get the Andromache’s guns, only to discover her Plan B: to kill Bryson if he didn't comply. In the meantime, Richard Guthrie tells (a very sceptical) Miranda that he can only support Eleanor and Flint, because he pretty much has no choice in the matter. He then proceeds to betray his daughter by making a deal with Bryson and with Mr Scott, who’s still smarting from Eleanor’s betrayal and who Guthrie tries to convince by saying that Eleanor's endeavour will lead to her death and Nassau’s destruction (considering what we later find out about Mr Scott, Eleanor’s safety is probably not be the argument that actually compels Mr Scott - but he certainly doesn't want the Navy searching the area and finding Maroon Island, and needs a stable Nassau to continue supplying his island).

- The Undercooked Pig scene and Silver's attempts at communicating with Flint will never not be funny. Silver looks so small when Flint glares him down, but that doesn't last all that long: once Flint has taught him how to cook the pork, Silver seems much more bold, asking Flint how he learned to glaze the pig, insisting that Flint should trust him and not Billy. This is also a moment where Silver shows that, unlike Flint, he is incredibly perceptive: he noticed that Billy is "straining at the seams" because of the lie he told. And while Flint spits a "there is no we" and calls Silver a rodent, it's obvious that Silver's words still have an impact on him. Their collaboration is sealed when Silver hands him the cleaver so that he can save Randall (and himself). When Flint returns the cleaver to Silver, he's ready to accept that Silver is actually on his side (albeit for selfish reasons) and listens to him for the first time.

- Max believed that she could charm Vane's remaining crew into being kind to her - and overall it seems to have worked. While again I hate this plot, it does give an interesting insight into how even the worst pirate crew is portrayed: most of the men are happy to comply with Max and get sexual rewards "for gentle obedience". Most of them, basically, aren't violent monsters deep down. However there's always one, in this case That Big Bastard (I'm sure he has a name, I just can't be bothered to google it), who clearly gets a kick out of torturing/raping people and hates the idea of a woman taking the lead.

- Fuck You Jack is another theme of this episode. Vane is high on opium and booze and has basically lost the will to do anything. Anne has been courted by several other crews, but Jack hasn't received any offers (note there's no loyalty to Vane here, Jack’s ready to leave, but nobody will have him) and nobody is willing to help him after the pearl cock-up. Then Noonan wants Max back, which Jack refuses because she's the only thing keeping the few members of his crew loyal - and Anne isn't on board with that, leading to her telling him to fuck himself. This, btw, might have crossed Jack’s mind considering the position she was in when he found her. I think it’s easy to forget that Jack is portrayed as pretty callous and happily willing to treat people like pawns too.

- When Richard Guthrie talks about Nassau, he describes it as a place "a place where she [Eleanor] matters, a place where you [Mr Scott] matter", and adds that a place like this isn't meant to last. Nassau, then, is currently an utopia where women and black people can have some semblance of power - and he doesn't believe that this will ever be allowed to exist because this kind of story never has a happy ending in their current society. But when Flint talks to Eleanor about their project, he's of the opposite view: people don't believe that it's possible, but when they succeed, they'll say it was inevitable. It seems Flint is firmly in the camp of "winners get to tell the story", and that the story will influence how the rest of the world sees them.

- When the Walrus tilts and squashes Randall, Flint stops Billy from intervening and rushes to rescue Randall himself - even though he knows the ship will be cut loose at any moment. He puts himself into incredible danger in this moment. Why? Theoretically, it could be for a manipulative purpose: to look good to the crew, or to get rid of Morley. But Flint seems genuinely involved in the struggle to save Randall, and he barely had time to think before he ran off. I feel that this is a rare spontaneous moment for Flint, where instead of thinking about his plans or his position as Captain, he just thinks like a person in an emergency who wants to rescue someone else. He absolutely could have died out there. And while Billy seems to suspect him of having killed Morley, I don't find that reading compatible with what we're shown of Flint trying to save Randall. True, he may have kicked/pushed Morley at the very last second, but we’ll never know that for sure.

- Back to the theme of people betraying their loved ones, we have Richard Guthrie getting back to Miranda, telling her he knows who she is and revealing the "Thomas went mad because Miranda and Flint cheated" story which he heard from Lord Alfred himself. So now Miranda knows that her identity has been revealed and that Richard could spread the story to, say, Pastor Lambrick (let's not pretend this didn't cross her mind, she keeps her identity secret for a reason). And then Guthrie offers her a way back to civilisation. This, right after a kid threw a stone at her, calling her a witch. This, after Flint has promised to make things better, even as he goes deeper into reckless/utopian plans of fortifying Nassau. Backed into a corner, was Miranda ever going to refuse, if she could be safe and have him be safe? And obviously, Richard Guthrie isn't doing this out of the kindness of his heart. He apparently figured out that Miranda was a way to get in touch with Pastor Lambrick and that ridding New Providence of Flint and winning over the “good”, normal inhabitants would be a perfect beginning to buying back his influence on the Island - the end goal being named Governor, of course.

- If there was any doubt that Vane’s tough guy thing is part of an act, his opium hallucination of Eleanor makes it crystal clear: "you're alone, you don't have to pretend with me". That is, pretend that he's not afraid and that he's not vulnerable. The hallucination also offers Vane an explanation for why Eleanor is how she is: like him she's afraid of appearing weak. He's actually spot on, a big problem in their relationship is that they're too alike and are struggling for dominance. Which is probably why Vane wants to overcome his fear and weakness, and regain power by confronting his old slave master (btw, nice parallel with Flint haunted by Miranda in S3). The scene where Vane kills Noonan also shows him in a very animalistic light - at first he's cornered and somewhat pathetic, beaten, throwing up, only saved by the fact that a gun misfires. Then he turns violent: quick, instinctive and relentless, deaf to Noonan's plea to leave him alive, even if theoretically it could have been profitable for him.

- I have to say, I snickered quite a bit when Pastor Lambrick sees Richard Guthrie and tells him "God teaches us not to cheer when someone stumbles, in your case I may ask his forgiveness". I mean, I really see his point. He leads a group of Puritans who are trying to make a life for themselves on this island. Historically, people who lived and farmed in New Providence were constant targets for errant pirates, who robbed, raped and killed a lot of them. This is what the Pastor is trying to protect his congregation from (and Miranda, since he doesn't understand why she's with Flint and is likely terrified that a pirate lives so close to his congregation, hence the spies he sends out). There's a bit of a parallel with Billy, where both Lambrick and Billy are presented as being very preoccupied with the well-being of the group they're responsible for, and both are presented as, well, Goody-Two-Shoes - (self-)righteous, loyal, honest, caring. Except they're both human, and sooner or later they falter.

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clanoffetts · 3 years

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someday. | paz vizsla x fem!reader

Chapter V

masterlist

synopsis: Paz Vizsla finds himself stuck on Dantooine with a broken ship and no credits. Luckily, he finds you, a mechanic that will fix his ship for passage to Hosnian Prime. Over the course of your time together, a courtship blooms.

warnings: none? i think?

word count: 2.5k

Han Solo could be punctual when he really wanted to. He really didn’t care to be, though. Leia had told him they had guests, and she’d like him back on Hosnian Prime in time for brunch. Han Solo didn’t care to have brunch with what he’d assumed were diplomats or royals. And diplomats and royals didn’t really care to dine with Han Solo.

“I’m sorry Han is so late,” Leia said, sitting next to you on the couch as you wrapped a braid around the crown of her head. “I should’ve known, I guess.”

You laughed a little. “I counted on him being late. I don’t know Han like you do, but I know him well enough.”

Leia smiled. Of course you knew Han well enough to count on him being late. Leia blames her forgetfulness about you on pregnancy, but she knows it was the time apart. She’s more than excited to bridge those gaps.

“I don’t want Mando to feel disrespected,” she said. “I know he’s important to you.”

You smiled at the mention of Paz. “He won’t feel disrespected, Leia, I promise. He knows who Han Solo is, you know. He’s a bit of a hero to those who do, uhm, illegal things.”

“Mando does illegal things?”

You shrugged. “He has.” Paz had smuggled things when the Tribe was really struggling and bounties were low, he had told you as your conversations got deeper.

“Well, I guess we have, too, technically,” Leia says. “And Alderaanian girls like bad boys. That’s what my mother used to say.”

You laughed and shook your head. “Let’s go ahead and eat. I don’t think Han would be mad if we started without him.”

“Alright, I’ll go tell Threepio we’re ready,” she said, standing up and smoothing her grey dress. “You go get your Mando, if he’d like to join.”

“I’m sure he will,” you say, standing up as well. Earlier that morning Leia had brought some comfortable lounging clothes to you, and you’d chosen loose grey pants and a matching crop top. You’d slipped on some house shoes to go with them. You and Leia had been braiding each other's hair while waiting for Han, something sisters on Alderaan held sacred and learned to do for all hair types and lengths. The braids both of you wore in your hair carried a deeper meaning today.

You caught a glance of yourself in the hallway mirror as you went to get Paz. You looked like a woman from Alderaan again. It was bittersweet, reminding you of years past. But it was also comforting, being wrapped in Alderaan again was daunting when you first arrived, but maybe it wasn’t so bad.

You knocked on the door of the aptly named Blue Room. “Paz? Can I come in?”

“One second,” he calls, voice unmodulated. You could hear him walking across the room to put on his helmet. A moment later, his voice rings through the vocoder telling you it’s safe.

You open the door as he’s strapping on his thigh plates, cuirass and pauldrons already in place. “I don’t think all that’s necessary,” you say. “Leia says it’s very secure here.”

“Maybe it’s not,” he says, fiddling with the clasp. “But this is the Way, kebiin’ika.” You nodded. You still didn’t know much about this Way, and you doubt you’ll ever fully understand it.

His visor is trained on you, he’s looking you up and down. Paz’s face grew warm as he admired your clothes, new and soft and classic Alderaan white. And your hair, kriff, it’s beautiful and intricate. You look very different to how you looked on Dantooine when he first met you, but just as beautiful. And even more relaxed. “You look very nice,” he said, silently cursing himself for saying something awkward.

Your face grew hot now. “Thank you, Paz,” you smile up at him. “That’s very sweet.”

“Just telling the truth, mesh’la,” he says.

“We’re going to eat breakfast, if you want to join,” you say, changing the subject away from yourself. “Han isn’t here yet, though.”

“Yeah, yeah I’ll join you,” he says, motioning you to go out the door first. Paz was relaxed today, and you wish his clothing could reflect it. He deserved to wear soft flowy fabrics so he could feel the breeze of Hosnian Prime and feel the soft fabric of Leia’s many couches and chairs. But maybe that wasn’t what he wanted, what he wanted was to wear his armor.

Leia was sitting in the sunroom at the back of the house, plates of small sandwiches and eggs cooked all types of ways and plenty of other foods lay out on the table before her. She stood up when the two of you entered the room, royal protocol continuing to persevere after all these years. “Good morning, Mando,” she says.

“Goodmorning, your highness,” Paz says with a bow of his head.

“Good!” C-3PO says as he brings in a kettle of tea. “You’re catching on, Master Mandalorian.”

Leia shakes her head with a laugh. “Don’t worry about the protocol, Mando. I don’t want to be too proper in my own home.”

Paz just nods, moving to sit in the chair next to yours. He’s eyeing the sandwiches, wishing he could have one, but in his four decades he’s gotten used to the temptation of food and to the long days without food.

You pick up a sandwich, some fruit, and some eggs to start with. Leia is working on doing the same when the sound of a ship gets deafening above the house. “Han!” Leia exclaimed, setting her plate down.

She went to the door of the sunroom that led into the back yard, watching as Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon settled down in the yard. As the ship hits the ground, Leia throws open the door and runs outside.

Han emerges from the hull, and you’re shocked to not see Chewbacca with him. Han and Leia hug and kiss, and Leia starts explaining something. You know Leia’s tells, the woman explains with her hands. You assume she’s explaining your and Paz’s presence, probably giving him a heads up that Paz is a Mandalorian, like Boba Fett.

Paz watches you watch your friends. A smile grows across your face as you watch Han’s hand splay across Leia’s pregnant belly, telling the baby something. His mind drifts as you start to eat, he imagines the two of you on Yavin with little Vizsla foundling running around as his hand splays across your belly, telling your baby something.

“Why if it isn’t my favorite mechanic!” Han says as he walks in.

He pulls you into a hug as you say, “You only flatter me when the Falcon needs fixing.”

“She’s good for now,” Han says, letting you go. “But if she ever isn’t, I know who to call.”

“Where’s Chewie?” You ask. Paz doesn’t know who Chewie is, but if he had to guess, it was the Wookie that always appeared with Han in holos.

Han took a bite before answering, but Leia was tired of scolding him for talking with his mouth full. “Back on Kashyyyk, helping them rebuild.”

“Good, that’s good,” you smile softly at the fond memories of the Wookie. “And congratulations, Han. On the baby.”

He smiles and his eyes flit to Leia’s stomach. “Thank you, it’s hard work for me, this baby.”

Leia slaps Han’s shoulder with one hand while the other caresses her stomach. “Oh, hush,” she says. “Hard work,” she mocks with a roll of her eyes.

“So, Mando,” Han says, turning to face Paz. “You’re with our prized mechanic, or so Leia tells me.”

Paz turns to Han. “I am.”

“Man of few words, this one,” he says, pointing his thumb over to Paz. “You know if you hurt her in any way, you’ll have pissed off almost all of the New Republic, right?”

Paz nodded. “I don’t plan to hurt her, Han Solo. I plan to keep doing the opposite.”

“Good, good,” Han says. “She’s like our sister, that one.”

“You know I’m right here, right?”

Han scoffs. “I haven’t lost that many brain cells.”

You laugh, taking a drink of some water. “Can never be too sure with you.”

The brunch went well, Han’s banter was a welcome change to conversation. Han even got Paz to talk more, engaging in conversations about racing and smuggling stories. It was nice to hear Paz converse, not as natural as he was when he was alone with you, but he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Now you and Leia sat on the couches in the study again, and Paz was out with Han, being shown the Millennium Falcon. You knew Paz probably didn’t care as much as he let on, but Han was always excited to show off his ship.

“They seem to be getting along,” Leia says.

You nod. “I’m surprised. I didn’t think Han would like him.”

“Han can get along with anyone, if he wants to,” Leia says. “He’s really excited about the baby, you know.”

You nod. “I can tell,” you say. “Though I figured he’d want to name the baby Falcon or something.”

Leia lets out a belly laugh, throwing her head back. “You know,” she says between laughs. “He did consider the names Millie and Falcon.”

“Maker, of course he did,” you laugh with her.

Once the laughter dies down, Leia speaks. “I’m not wanting you to leave,” she starts. “Just wondering how long you’ll be here. The senate session starts again in a week, and I’m going to be gone a lot.”

You shrugged. “I didn’t really have a plan. I’m sure he’ll be wanting to get back to Yavin IV soon, though. His tribe will need him. Maybe we’ll leave tomorrow.”

“I don’t want you to leave so soon, you could stay here, if you wanted.”

You shook your head. “I don’t know…I want to be with my Mando. He told me last night he planned to marry me.”

“You know I love you, right? I care about you?” You nod. “Ok, good. Because you barely know this man, and you’re going to marry him?”

You felt yourself getting defensive. “I’ve known him for a week, I know that it seems insane, but I am getting to know him. He’s very sweet, Leia. And it’s not like we’re getting married now.”

“I know, I just worry,” she sighs.

“I know, and I’m glad,” you say. “We spent three days alone in hyperspace, he’s an open book if he wants to be.”

The rest of the day was relaxed, but you could tell Paz was exhausted from Han’s talking when the two of you finally retired for the evening. Paz was stripping his armor off and stretching when you came out of the fresher in a nightgown Leia gave you. It was white, somewhat sheer if the light hit you right. And it took Paz’s breath away. He still had his thigh plates on when he approached you, hands falling to your waist as he looked down at you. His gloves were off, and you saw the small scars that covered his deep brown hands as they rested on your hips. “This is really pretty,” he says.

You giggle. “You like sheer things. Noted.”

He chuckles a little, too. “You’re just really beautiful is all. Especially in that,” he’s looking you up and down again, the helmet moving dramatically as he takes you in. “I really wish I could kiss you, you know.”

Your hands find his forearms, rubbing circles with your thumbs. “I wish you could, too.” The two of you are standing so close. Sure, you’d cuddled, you’d reclined between his legs, but this feels so much closer.

Paz must’ve been thinking the same thing, and it must’ve scared him, because he took a few steps back. “Sorry,” he apologized quietly.

You tilted your head, brow arching. “Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, even quieter. He turns around and goes back to the chair where he had stacked his armor, moving to unclasp the thigh plates and add them to the pile.

“You don’t have to be sorry about wanting to kiss me,” you tell him, walking over to the bed and starting to pull the duvet back. “Or telling me you want to kiss me. It’s not strange, it’s hot.”

He laughs a little at that. “It’s not weird?”

You’re shocked at this forty year old man asking you a question like a teenager. “No, Paz, it’s not weird. It’s good, giving people a heads up.”

He’s nodding, obviously not completely convinced. “Told the droid I needed our clothes washed,” he says. “Don’t have my sleep pants. Is it ok if I wear shorts?”

You’re a little confused, but you try not to show it. “Yeah, love, that’s fine. I don’t care.”

He enters the ‘fresher, shorts and sweatshirt in hand. When he returned, it was your turn to ogle. His thighs, kriff, his thighs. Paz was a big man, obviously his thighs would be big, too. But seeing them without the armor or the sweats was something else.

“You look nice.”

He laughed. “Haven’t had my legs out in a long time.”

You smile. “I like it. It’s hot.” He makes his way to the bed, sitting next to you. You look at his legs, and they’re littered with a few deep scars, blaster wounds, and a few smaller scars.

“I’ll tell you about them someday,” he says when he realizes that you’re staring. “Not tonight though.”

You nod. “You know what you should do tonight?” He hums. “You should kiss me.”

“Kebiin’ika,” he says. “You sure?”

“Paz Vizsla, you told me last night that you planned to marry me. I’m sure,” you say.

“Close your eyes,” he says, and you obey. You hear the lights click off and the helmet land with a clunk on the nightstand. You feel his hand on your cheek, large and warm and comforting. “You’re so pretty, mesh’la,” he whispers.

You smile. “Just kiss me, Vizsla.”

He’s the one who obeys this time, closing the gap between the two of you. His lips are large and soft and warm, and they fit so well between your own.

Your hand wanders to his cheek, feeling his stubble under your palm as your lips find a rhythm with his.

He breaks the kiss first, resting his forehead against yours. “We call this a keldabe kiss in Mando’a,” he says, a little breathless. “Because Mandos can’t kiss with their helmets on.”

You smile, your hand still on his cheek, thumb slowing caressing him. “I wish I could see your face.” Your thumb stops, you freeze, scared that you’d offended him.

“You will, mesh’la, you will,” he whispers. “Someday.”

tags: @remmysbounty @snipskixandbeskar

#paz vizla x reader #paz vizsla x reader #paz vizla #paz vizsla

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mari-beau · 3 years

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GIVE ME A REASON: PART FIVE -A Rogue One fanfic

I honestly don’t know this was going to take the detour it did, but hey, that’s fine. Anyway, Jyn is very confused about her attachment to Cassian, and his own messy feelings.

Also on AO3

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Title: Give Me A Reason: Part Five

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Characters: Jyn Erso POV, Cassian Andor

Pairing: Cassian/Jyn (mostly pre-ship?)

Spoilers: Rogue One; Episode IV A New Hope

Setting: Post-Rogue One AU (Cassian & Jyn live); Also during/post A New Hope

Warnings: Implied Bi!Cassian; References to Naked Times in the Shower; Characters being hot messes and confused about Feelings

Words: 3,226

Story Summary: Jyn’s entire universe has been turned on its head, so maybe she’s clinging a little too hard to the one thing she feels certain of (strangely enough) as she tries to figure out her place in the galaxy. And maybe she’s being a little overprotective of a wounded captain.

Also can be found on AO3.

The energy level in the large mess hall was an incongruous mix of highs and lows. Quite a number of people were congregated at various tables, but it wasn’t at capacity. Some groups were chattering away, with a happiness and lightness Jyn honestly couldn’t recall witnessing in anyone in a long, long time, on any planet or moon. But there were other groups, and individuals, that were quiet, lethargic, mostly just nursing cups of restorative drinks and pushing bland food around their plates. Hungover.

Jyn supposed that made sense. Either way, no one was really in a down mood. They were either still excited about the Great Victory, or suffering the consequences from being too excited about it the previous night.

Why did she feel like Cassian and herself were the mopiest pair in the entire mess hall? Yes, it was really gratifying to know that their suicide mission hadn’t been entirely in vain. They had more than succeeded, the plans had been transmitted to the rebels, and the rebels had used them to destroy the Death Star. But still… The feeling of loss weighed heavily on Jyn. And she sensed it was yet another burden laid on Cassian’s shoulders. In a vulnerable, pained moment, he’d told her that maybe it would’ve been better if she’d left him on Scarif when they’d miraculously been spared from the blastwave. And perhaps near the end there (what should’ve been the end), he’d embraced the release from his conscience as hard as he’d embraced her.

She understood. She’d felt the peace there on that beach, as well.

The thing was, she still felt it, with him. Even when filled with other confusing emotions, some of which he was the cause of, she still felt… content… even happy? Was this what happy felt like?

Well, no, maybe not this, not still half-mourning a father she’d lost decades ago but then lost again, mourning the loss of the friends she’d made in just a matter of a day but who had been truer than any others in her life, coming to terms with the guilt of leading so many on a suicide mission, which she then survived.

And Cassian had survived.

“I’ll get the food,” Jyn said after they’d found a table tucked in a corner and Cassian claimed the seat that allowed him to put his back to the wall. (Of course). Jyn would’ve chosen it herself, but she didn’t protest that she would be forced to sit with her back to the entire mess hall. He was rubbing at his leg. The memory of the surgical scars running down his hip and thigh, barely a week old, a fresh pink against olive skin, popped abruptly into her mind. She shoved them aside. “Is there anything specific you want?”

“No.” He was smiling even as he shook his head. “Beggars can’t be choosers. I’m not picky.”

“Me, neither.” Force, sometimes they were so much the same, their lives filled with the same sort of deprivation, that it hurt. It hurt to think of the little boy Cassian had been, not having a favorite food, because having food at all was something to be grateful for. Something Jyn had known herself, still knew, and would never unlearn her associated habits of eating too much (if given the opportunity) and too fast.

“I’ll be right back,” she said and headed towards the serving line.

A couple people stared as she added more than two helpings of everything to her tray, but she thought it was more out of shock over the disproportionate amount of food to her size than anger that she was maybe taking more than her share. By the time she’d collected enough to feed an entire unit of Wookies and headed back to Cassian, two humans in non-uniforms (which wasn’t uncommon for the rebels) had sat down at the table.

They were the type of people who took up more space than they needed. An amateurish attempt at intimidating others through establishing dominance. Jyn had learned to be more wary of those who drew no attention, who lurked in the shadows, who had unassuming appearances disguising a lethality the brazen could never hope to possess.

So it was really just instinct that had her assessing gaze passing over the two trying-too-hard-to-have-swagger rebels to the slight man sitting quietly in the corner. He was a killer, undeniably. But not by choice. And Jyn knew something she thought most didn’t remotely suspect; Cassian Andor was soft deep down inside. And every terrible thing he’d done tortured him. Which made him even more dangerous, especially to Jyn, who she feared may be the only one to have ever seen his vulnerability, his humanity. To everyone else, he was just some Rebel super-spy-assassin, a good little soldier.

He’d locked eyes with her, but neither of his companions had seemed to notice, instead going on about some miraculous feats of badassery during some mission or other.

“You’re in my seat,” Jyn said, interrupting the bigger of the pair mid-sentence.

The man who was easily twice her size froze, puffing himself up when he looked at her, not that he needed to with that bulk of muscle, but his first instinct was obviously to meet her firm tone with aggression. She knew the response of those who’d survived on the streets well. And even if this was no seedy back alley or dive, this was her territory. And she wasn’t going to be the one to back down.

“Am I?” Big man said.

Before Jyn could respond, Cassian’s quiet voice cut in.

“You are.”

The big man looked at the wounded captain and his entire demeanor changed. Apparently, the soldier knew Cassian for the dangerous creature he was.

After a brief moment in which the expression on Cassian’s face gave nothing away, Big Man’s attention returned to Jyn.

“Uh, sorry,” he said, vacating the chair. Setting the heavily-laden tray down, Jyn plopped into the spot opposite Casian as the big guy lumbered off to find another chair, seemingly to rejoin them. Ugh.

Jyn slid the tray across the table in front of Cassian, then dragged her chair to sit directly beside him. There was no way to lift any of the dishes off the tray without losing some of the impressive pile of food. They could share.

She reached across Cassian and grabbed some sort of bread roll and- oh, force, he smelled good, like the cleanser from the shower and freshly washed skin that was silky smooth except for the scars and- she shoved the roll in her mouth before she did something embarrassing like hop onto his lap and bury her face in his neck.

The very large rebel’s companion had remained at the table, and was staring. Yes, at Jyn, but also at Cassian, at the pair of them, at the pile of food she’d torn into but Casian was contemplating eating with an actual utensil like some sort of civilized person. And the man’s gaze dropped, but Jyn knew it wasn’t to assess her attributes, none were visible beneath the loose-fitting clothes she was wearing, Cassian’s clothes. Oh. Right.

“You must be Jyn Erso,” he said and held out a hand, which was surprisingly clean, so Jyn shoved the last bite of roll into her mouth and shook it. Firm but not too firm, and his dark brown eyes were surprisingly soft as they met her gaze, a little guarded and very curious. This one was obviously the more intelligent of the pair.

“That I am,” she said after swallowing the large piece of bread that threatened to lodge in her throat. “And you are…?”

“Oh,” he laughed self-consciously. He had a nice, easy going smile. “Sorry. Yeah. I’m Tarrek Zin.” His large friend returned with a chair. “And this is Utto.”

The giant known as Utto nodded, grunted in response, before sitting down in the chair that was obviously ill-equipped to handle his bulk. A man of even less words than the spy.

“And you’re… friends of Cassian?” she asked, trying not to appear too interested. Who were these people? Cassian didn’t have friends. Not that she’d known him all that long, but she was pretty certain the man was a resolute loner. Aside from K-2SO, who was lost to him now.

“Yes,” Tarrek said at the same time Cassian said, “No.”

She withheld her laughter because Tarrek Zin seemed genuinely a little hurt by the terse captain’s response.

“We’ve worked together before,” Cassian gave as further explanation. “They’re…”

“Freelance,” Tarrek said.

Cassian gave a little snort of laughter. “That’s one way to put it.” He took a larger bite of the mystery protein.

“Oh, what does that mean?” Now, Jyn was intrigued. They were an odd sort to find on a military base, even amongst the ragtag collection of rebels that formed the Alliance. They were both human, Jyn thought, although there could be a bit of something else in the big man, who was surprisingly not unattractive for a bruiser type, with thick brown hair and a symmetrical face with a square jaw and only a small crescent scar on one cheek. The smaller man was by no means small, taller than Cassian, well built with flawless brown skin and a friendly, appealing face with just a hint of scruff neatly trimmed into a goatee. And a charmer’s grin, which he turned on Jyn.

“We find things.”

Again, that ironic little half-laugh from Cassian, who finally looked up from the pile of food.

“They steal things,” he said, pointing his fork at them. “Don’t let Tarrek try to pretty it up. They’re nothing more than thieves.”

“So’s your girl, from what I hear,” Tarrek said. “Didn’t you all find her in Wobani, serving time for forgery and assault amongst many other crimes?”

“She’s not my girl,” Cassian said, not denying her criminal record. And Jyn would be lying if she claimed the denial that she was his girl didn’t hurt a little. Even though it shouldn’t. She wasn’t a possession. And neither was Cassian, so she could stop feeling possessive of him, as well, really-

“Then you’re a free agent?” Tarrek flashed that charming grin of his again, with an edge of mischievousness. And a bit of something else in his eyes as he lookd at Cassian. “Because with the Empire scrambling after the destruction of their favorite new toy, no one’s going to notice if some stray things get found. We could use your skills on at least a dozen different jobs I can think of…” Tarrek shot a brief glance to Jyn before returning his attention to Cassian. “And Not Your Girl for that matter.”

“I think I’ve made it very clear I will not be going on any jobs with you,” Cassian said. “Even if the Alliance thought we’d need someone with your skillset again for some reason, I’d find someone else.”

Oh, wow. That seemed a little harsh, even from the jaded captain. The hurt on Tarrek’s face was blatant, and he looked away. Jyn couldn’t help but think there was some sort of complicated history at play.

“May I…?” Utto asked, indicating the crispy poultry leg sitting near the edge of the tray, the big man oblivious to the undercurrents of the conversation.

“Uh… be my guest,” Jyn said and large, burly fingers snatched it right up. Unsurprisingly, the whole drumstick fit in the man’s mouth. He ate even faster than Jyn, chewing a bit then pulling the bare bone out, picked absolutely clean in less time than it took Cassian to cut another bite off the brick of vegetable-thing or whatever it was. Food. That’s all Jyn needed to know.

“Well, we better get going if we want to get a good seat at the ceremony, seeing as we’re not guests of honor,” Tarrek said, seeming to have recovered from the hurt feelings enough to tease. Cassian made a displeased noise but said nothing as Tarrek got to his feet and locked eyes with the rebel captain. Some sort of weird exchange passed between them, that seemed almost- “The offer always stands if you change your mind.”

“I won’t,” Cassian said, then went back to studiously eating.

Tarrek rolled his eyes but then gave Jyn a broad grin, leaning over to whisper loudly, “You think about it, too, Jyn Erso. Maybe you can convince the captain here not to throw his life away for the rebellion.”

Jyn just gave him a nod, disconcerted about the man’s extremely accurate knowledge of Cassian. Or maybe his unwavering loyalty was just that obvious.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tarrek said to his large companion, who appeared about Wookie-size when he stood up, only beefier.

Utto lingered a moment as his friend walked away, and Cassian frowned at him, that furrow forming between his brows. Jyn’s curiosity was also piqued as the moment stretched out awkwardly long, Utto’s fierce blue-grey gaze scouring Cassian’s face.

Cassian broke first, dropping his fork onto the tray with a clatter and sighing loudly.

“You have something you want to say, Utto?” he asked.

“You hurt Tarrek,” he said. “Don’t change your mind about joining us. Unless you mean it.”

“Understood,” Cassian said. “Is that all?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

Utto glanced at Jyn, then gave Cassian another assessing look before grunting and shaking his head, then stalked off after his partner.

Cassian returned his attention to the food in front of him, like nothing had happened at all.

“What was that?” Jyn asked, her mind racing, trying to put everything she’d just witnessed into some sort of context.

“Nothing,” Cassian said. “Just two of many I’ve pissed off.”

“But they’re angry because they want you.” Jyn was pretty sure about what she’d just witnessed, albeit confusing.

“The Alliance used them to break into an Imperial facility. We were after intelligence stored there. Tarrek and Utto made out like the bandits they are by stealing the tech stored there and selling it on the black market. It was their most lucrative job ever. They still pick up odd smuggling tasks for the rebellion, but they want me to help them with more heist like that again.”

His face was closed off, but Jyn needed to know if she was right, needed for Cassian to continue to let her in, needed his trust and confidence.

“I get that,” she said, “but they want you… like physically. At least, Tarrek does.”

Cassian met her gaze, slowly closed his eyes, sighed and shook his head.

“I never should’ve kissed him.”

“Oh.” Well, that explained both the heat and the chill in Tarrek’s gaze when he looked at Cassian. Apparently, it hadn’t been just one-sided. And maybe she’d been reading Cassian’s looks, the way he touched her, all wrong. Maybe the intimacy they’d shared in the shower, naked but not uncomfortable, washing one another with tender caresses, had only held sexual undertones on her side. Maybe he wasn’t attracted to her in the same way she was to him. Maybe he- “You er… kiss males?”

“Sometimes,” he shrugged. “When it’s necessary to complete a mission.” He licked his lips. “Sometimes just because I want to.”

Jyn stared at the pile of green puree of what she hoped was a vegetable of some sort, trying to swallow down the stupid feelings clashing inside of her; jealousy and possessiveness, hurt, and even a little bit of titillation contemplating Cassian’s sexual history.

Long fingers skimmed the back of her hand and curled around hers, squeezing gently until she met those rich, dark eyes of his.

“Sometimes I kiss females, too.” He held her gaze so she resisted the urge to stare at his mouth.

“When it’s necessary to complete a mission?”

“And just because I want to.”

Did he want to? Jyn felt like he did, thought everything in the way he looked at her indicated a deep affection and need for her. But at the same time, she knew he wouldn’t, not here in a public place, not when he hadn’t even kissed her when they were alone. Not even when they were naked, standing under the spray of water, his hands buried in her hair, rinsing out the cleanser, her hands wrapped around his waist, helping to support his weight, her skin prickling with the closeness of his body, the caress of his fingers on her scalp, the feeling of his-

“We should get moving,” he said, releasing her hand to push his chair back and stand, looking only a little unsteady on his feet. “We need to find you some clothes that fit.”

“Why?” Jyn said, standing as well and brushing her hand over the front of the loose shirt. At least Cassian wasn’t an extremely large man, or else his clothes would fall right off her. As it was, she’d had to roll up the sleeves of his shirt and tuck as much as possible into the fatigues that she’d belted to cinch in at the waist, which would’ve been entirely hopeless if he wasn’t a lean man. She’d also had to roll up the hems to her ankles. She had no other option than the infirmary shoes. Okay, she looked ridiculous. But she didn’t care. The clothes smelled like Cassian and made her feel perpetually wrapped up in him.

“It’s not exactly fit for being presented to a princess.”

Cassian reached to pick up the tray, which Jyn felt a little bit of guilt for not having completely cleaned of its contents and wasting food, but there had been unforeseen interruptions. She grabbed it before he could, doubting his ability to walk and carry a laden tray a few days after major surgeries and with bones still healing. But had he said,

“Princess?! What princess?”

“Princess Leia will be hosting the ceremony.”

“Oh.” Jyn headed across the mess hall to bus the remains of their meal, perhaps moving a little too quickly for her wounded companion, a sort of panicky nervousness fluttering in her stomach as their potentially being the center of attention approached. It would be brief if they were, she tried to tell herself. The last time she’d been the center of the Alliance’s attention hadn’t gone well. Had, in point of fact, ended in a rogue suicide mission.

“You’ll be fine. She’s Bail Organa’s daughter. Sensible woman. Fierce.”

Jyn shoved the tray into the reclamation unit a little harder than necessary. “And how do you know her?”

Cassian laughed, light and genuine.

“I don’t know her, not personally.” His hand went to her shoulder, seemingly to guide her but she knew the request inherent in it and snaked her arm around his waist to let him lean a little of his weight on her. “Let’s see if we can track down your missing clothes.”

Jyn didn’t care if they couldn’t. Let the princess see her in Cassian’s clothes, let everyone think they were together. Because whether or not he kissed her, whether or not it was romantic, Cassian Andor was hers. Even if he sent her away and she never saw him again while she lived, he would always be hers.

Force, she needed to get a handle on this possessiveness. Because it owned her. He owned her.

His palm came to rest on the back of her neck as they left the mess and headed towards the storage and supply wing of the base. His thumb stroked along her nape and she leaned into him, relaxed as a Savarian cat being petted.

Dank farrik, did she ever belong to him.

#fic: give me a reason #Rogue One #fanfiction #rebelcaptain #Cassian x Jyn #Cassian Andor #Jyn Erso #my fic

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waiting4inspiration · 4 years

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To be Evil IV: Loyalty

Summary: Thanos now has two more Infinity Stone, but refuses to send you on missions to get the other stones. His reluctance is probably a good thing. Especially when you learn what you really are.

Warnings: I don’t know if this makes sense anymore but oh well, angst, strong language, Infinity War (rewritten), I feel like I’m just rambling at this point

Word Count: 1,991

To be Evil Masterlist II Marvel Masterlist

You traveled across the universe with your new team in search of the other Infinity Stones, and yet, you have done nothing but wait for orders from Thanos. He had gone to Knowhere to find the Reality Stone, brought back one of his ‘daughters’ who you’ve heard be called Gamora, and then took her to Vomir to retrieve the Soul Stone. He came back from that mission alone and deep down, you knew why.

With two Stones left, both of them on Earth, the ship makes its way back to your home planet.

Each time a stone is placed in the gauntlet, it’s as if a part of you fixes in place and your powers buzz inside you. Your dreams change, but you can never remember what they are when you wake. All you know is that it is about the Stones. The Time Stone and the Mind Stone are all that remain and you’re eager to get out of this spaceship and retrieve the Stones.

Though, there has been some advantage of having nothing to do while Thanos hunts for the Stones. You’ve had time to focus on your powers, work on them without having to focus on control. In that time, you’ve learned to do things you’ve never done before, things that will allow you to fight more than one person all while standing in one place. And it’s no longer using curses. Not really.

Now, with Earth in sight, you wait for your orders from Thanos, so sure that he will give you an important task, especially after you have proven yourself by retrieving the Tesseract and the Space Stone. But he left you out of obtaining either the Time Stone or the Mind Stone. Those tasks were given to Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, Corvus Glaive, and Proxima Midnight,

“There is a reason you are leaving me out of retrieving the Stones, isn’t there?” you question Thanos after the meeting, walking up to him as the others walk away to prepare themselves.

Thanos doesn’t look at you. All he does is carry on to stare out the window at the nearing planet and it slightly irritates you. “You have done enough-”

“I want to do more,” you cut him off, stopping just behind him as you clench your hands into fists. “I’m sick of sitting around, doing nothing. Let me go after the Mind Stone.”

“No,” Thanos quickly objects, turning around to face you as you shift on your feet at the firm tone in his voice. Almost as if he’s hesitant about you going after the Mind Stone. You could read his mind to find out why, but you won’t because you know he’s too powerful with four stones in his possession for it to go unnoticed. It wouldn’t be a good idea. “I have not given you a mission so that your loyalty can be tested,” he explains, but you don’t believe it.

You shake your head, glance over his shoulder at Earth and fold your arms over your chest. “You think I’m going to go back to that team after everything they’ve done to me?” you question, chuckling as you look at him with a sarcastic smile on your face. “Do not treat me as they did,” you warn, your eyes taking on the yellow glow that you’ve grown used to. And with your powers becoming stronger, the glow is almost permanent.

Thanos knows your connection to one of the Infinity Stones. He knows the source of your powers comes from the Mind Stone, and he knows he doesn’t want to be in your way when you use your growing powers.

He sighs, steps towards you and nods his head. “Go after the Time Stone. But do not engage an attack unless needed,” he orders.

And though it is a mission, you scoff and roll your eyes. It’s a babysitting job. Make sure Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian do their jobs and not interfere. “Very well,” you mutter, thinking at least it’s a reason to get off the spaceship and get some fresh air.

Joining the two of your companions on the Q-ship, you make your way to what you know is New York. Maw gives a basic plan of attack, but you know that you aren’t to do anything unless something should go wrong. And with Maw and Obsidian working together, the chances of things going wrong are very slim.

You end up sitting on the roof of a building, looking down and watching everything from a distance. Seeing the Time Lord, Doctor Strange, alongside Tony and Bruce, you perk up in interest and take a step slightly closer. You can feel the presence of the Time Stone and you have a deep desire to be united with it.

Watching the fight beneath you, how Cull Obsidian was blasted away with ease by Tony, Bruce going with in Hulk form to fight the colossal member of the Black Order and Ebony Maw is defeated and sent away from the scene through a portal created by Strange, you smile at the realization that your time has come. Thons said not to interfere unless needed. Well, now it is needed.

Using your powers to alleviate yourself off the roof of the building and to land gently on the ground in front of Strange. It would be best if Tony remains out of this so you can take the Time Stone. You know Strange will put up a fight, so you’ll need all the strength you can muster up.

“I’m sure you know what I want,” you say, stepping forward as your eyes glance down to the Eye of Agamotto hanging around Strange’s chest that holds the Time Stone. “And if I must, I will fight you for it,” you add, holding your hands out and lifting pieces of rubble from the previous fight, a new trick you had learned.

“You must be (Y/n),” Strange speaks, and you expect him to prepare himself for a fight, but he doesn’t. Still, you keep the rubble floating behind you just in case. “Tony has spoken about you, about your powers.”

You scoff, roll your eyes at him and take a step forward. “About how dangerous I am? Well, I’ve learned so much now that I don’t have him telling me to hold back,” you mention, smiling proudly at yourself as you take another step forward. “I’d be happy to show you,” you chuckle before sending everything you have levitating behind you towards him.

Strange uses his magic against your move, making the rubble turn to dust and fall at his feet. “I don’t want to fight you, Guardian,” he says, making you freeze and frown at him in confusion. He sees this, tilts his head and steps closer as you slowly lower your hands to your sides, their glow dying down. “I know you come from the Mind Stone. You know that too. But it seems you do not know what your purpose is,” he mentions, walking closer to you as you stare at him. “You don’t know whose side you’re supposed to be on-”

“I know whose side I’m on,” you snap, throwing a large piece of debris at him with a wave of your hand. He counters your attack, destroys the block you sent to him into pieces as you glare at him “And it sure as hell isn’t yours,” you sneer, stepping forward again as you conjure up a barrier around him, as you did with Wanda.

And yet, Strange doesn’t fight back. He gives in to your hold on him, and it’s probably the thing preventing you from knocking him out and taking the Time Stone from him. “You haven’t been collecting the Stone for Thanos. Deep down, you’ve been collecting them for yourself because you were chosen and created by them to protect them from those that would use them for good or bad,” Strange mentions, making your face fall and freeze in your tracks.

That’s exactly what that feeling is. You couldn’t explain it, until you heard someone else say it. Lowering your hands and breaking the barrier around him. Still, you shake your head at him as he walks towards you. “I have seen because this has shown me,” he explains, moving his hands to open the charm protecting the Stone.

The Time Stone floats towards you like it’s drawn to you. And you reach out for it, glancing up to Strange to make sure it’s alright. He nods his head.

As you close your hand around the green stone, it’s like you’re taken back to the time just before you burst into life from the Mind Stone. You remember the threat the Stone felt as HYDRA started their experiments, you remember getting an order to protect it and to protect the other Stones if things come to that.

Glancing down to your hand as you open it, you stare at the Stone and suddenly know what you have to do.

After your curse triggered Bucky’s Winter Soldier programming, he went to Wakanda to make sure that the work Shuri did on his mind wasn’t reversed. He went with Steve, Wanda, and Vision because knowing now that Thanos is looking for the Infinity Stones and the Mind Stone hasn’t been taken yet, they have a plan to destroy the Stone without killing Vision to stop Thanos from getting what he wants. It was Loki’s plan.

Thankfully, Bucky’s mind is all good. There’s no chance anyone can trigger him with those special words. But all he can think about is why you did what you did. He thought he knew you well enough not to do something like that to him. And though he knows you didn’t mean to do it, that your curse was meant for Steve, it still hurt him.

“We all know that Thanos is gonna come for the Mind Stone and he’s probably gonna have (Y/n) at his side,” Steve says, looking between each member of the team, including T’Challa and Vision and they plan for an attack from Thanos. “She’s more powerful now and will probably be the one to take the Mind Stone-”

“If that happens, she’ll be unstoppable,” Bucky cuts him off, making everyone look at him. Bucky takes a deep breath, runs his tongue over his lips and drops his gaze to his hands. “The Mind Stone is the source of her powers. She’s basically the Stone in human form,” he explains, closing his eyes as he recalls the memory.

He was there when you showed up, assigned to protect one of the scientists. He remembers the flash, your figure appearing out of nowhere before you raised your hands to destroy the room. The only ones that got out were you, Bucky, and his assigned scientist. Then you disappeared, and Bucky found out years later when he met you again that you were found by Tony after that, but you forgot everything that happened.

“If she gets in touch with the Mind Stone, the chances that she could tap into the power of the other Stone,” Vision mentions, making Bucky nod his head when he looks at him. “Then there’s no knowing what she’ll do. Whether she’ll fight Thanos or fight with him.”

“What you’re saying is that she could side with us, but if she doesn’t, we’re screwed,” Natasha says, simplifying it and making Vision nod in confirmation. “What would make her side with us?” she asks, still look at Vision because he’ll be the one to know with the Mind Stone in his head.

Vision glances at Wanda for a second before he looks over to Bucky. The Winter Soldier knows what that looks means. The only way they can get you to side with them would either be some major sucking up, or if someone really close to you appeals to you.

Someone who knows how to calm you down.

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esther-dot · 3 years

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I would be really surprised if Sansa doesn't have a romantic arc in TWOW and ADOS even if she ends up single at the end. She is arguably GRRM's romantic self insert and no way I see him not giving her a love interest no matter who, when characters whose arcs are not at all associated with romance, marriage or children would be getting romantic interests .

I agree! I accept the endpoints of the show as Martin’s (I know, I know) as in, I do think Sansa will rule and rule alone, but I think her story is incomplete without a romance.

There’s a journey from this:

"There are gods, she told herself, and there are true knights too. All the stories can't be lies.” (ACOK, Sansa IV)

to this:

“The servants looked aghast, but when Littlefinger saw what she'd done he laughed. "If the tales be true, that's not the first giant to end up with his head on Winterfell's walls." "Those are only stories," she said, and left him there. (ASOS, Sansa VII)

The followup to tearing away hope from a character isn’t to bang that same drum for the rest of the story. I think it’s about getting Sansa to a low point, and then we will get to see an upswing. A lot of people accept that Sansa will defeat her own “giant” in Winterfell, as in, we believe her dismissal of stories is directly preceding the realization of them in a unsuspected way. That makes sense to me because we’ve already seen something very similar happen for Sansa. This is answered

"Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes...” (AGOT, Sansa VI)

with this

Janos Slynt twisted his neck around to stare up at him. "Please, my lord. Mercy. I'll … I'll go, I will, I …" No, thought Jon. You closed that door. Longclaw descended.” (ADWD, Jon II)

This is a direct, very specific, contradiction to Sansa’s despair. So, if there are heroes, if the stories are true (in a manner of speaking), won’t we also see this moment refuted as well?

"No one will ever marry me for love." (ASOS, Sansa VI)

Tyrion already married her not for love (plus he’s a villain), Harry is doomed, I don’t think Sansa will meet Aegon, Martin was surprised that people ship Sxnsxn...process of elimination, who do we have left as a romantic partner for Sansa?

If this story isn’t about punishing Sansa (which antis desperately want) then what is the point of Sansa’s realization that what people are after is her claim, that she will never have what she dreams of, unless it is (as with the previous example) to give the experience of being loved for herself to her? To be loved by someone who has nothing to gain from it, like say, someone who has been chosen as KitN?

I think all the set up for why a romance needs to happen is there, and it can happen in a meaningful way, even without a happily ever after.

#ask dot #sansa stark

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bookofmirth · 3 years

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i really love what you said in the comments of your elucien post and agree entirely - lucien needs someone who will choose him. pick him. and i would love for their journey to have a narrative like this.

people get so caught up with elains perception of the mating bond, reasons why she struggles to accept it and if it’s something she would even be open to exploring. and forget to think about lucien - we know he feels a strong sense of longing, which makes sense as lucien has grown up in a culture where reveres the mating bond and therefore understands how special and rare it is. this doesn’t mean lucien doesn’t struggle with it also - we see his shock at the revelation that he has a mate, after so long truly believing that jessminda ( god i still fucking hate that name ) was it for him. and we know how much he loved her, he killed his brothers in anger and grief, and has not had another love since.

i don’t think the mating bond with elain was something lucien would have chosen, and I also think that more than anything he wants someone to choose him. fight for him. the way his brothers and tamlin never did.

elain ignores and runs away from her problems - we know that this is an inherent part of her character. running to azriel I feel is a sign of this. if she has approches lucien in the slightest, tested the waters of the mating bond and then decided against pursuing him - I would support elriel one hundred percent. but she hasn’t and right now her attraction to azriel just feels like another one of those times where she is running away.

elain doesn’t do well under pressure and she caves under the expectations of others, the mating bond puts so much pressure on her and lucien. they need to come together and get to know and understand each other before anything else. and eventually choose each other regardless of the mating bond or not.

i am so excited for her book, and her journey and I really really hope that lucien is a large part of that.

on top of everything ive said - wouldn’t they just be the cutest granola couple you have ever seen in your life !! taking a week away from court life to go hiking and camping in the wilderness - lucien would catch wild fish with her bare hands and elain would forage for mushrooms and wild edible plants. i just love them so much !

I agree with so many of your thoughts. Like all of them! Except for one, which is that Elain runs from her troubles. I have other thoughts about that, but I’ll discuss them elsewhere I think. I do think that she might be going to Az as a sort of running away, but I don’t think it’s part of a pattern. idk if that’s confusing and I can explain better if it is. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about who Elain is based on her comment about people worrying about how her trauma affects them, and it’s how I’m coming to a lot of these conclusions.

I think it’s funny how people who ship the other couple act like shipping elucien means taking away their choice - NOPE. That’s literally not why we ship it. I have argued that so many times over the last four years, I’m tired of saying it.

Elucien shippers want Elain to choose Lucien because she loves him. We want Lucien to choose Elain because he loves her.

As one of the most vocal critics of the mating bond trope in general, I cannot believe I have to say that I don’t want two characters forced together. The only thing I can assume is that people are willfully misreading our arguments. And as a person who doesn’t really like the bond as a trope, I wonder if others are also projecting their dislike of it onto elucien? But then people will turn around and love feysand and nessian’s bond. idk.

I agree that Lucien probably wouldn’t have chosen the bond, if he’d had a say. He had a woman whom he loved and was willing to sacrifice everything for. Why would he want someone he doesn’t know? Someone who was human, and was afraid of fae, and was engaged to someone else? On the surface, it’s not appealing. And he told Feyre that he wants to know if Elain is worth fighting for! He wants to be chosen. He would never force the issue (and hasn’t!) because that’s literally the opposite of what he wants.

I love your comment about Elain and how the bond puts her under enormous pressure. Her character is so defined by what others want and expect from her, that the bond was just a step too far. It wouldn’t matter who she were mated to, she would detest the bond on principle. I mean, Nesta did too? Nesta saw being mated to Cassian as the last bit of her humanity that was gone. I’m not sure if Elain was as tied to her humanity in the same way that Nesta was. Maybe once we know more about her, we’ll know if that’s something she would reject on principle. But it could explain a lot about why Elain is shying away. It’s nothing to do with Lucien.

My impression of Elain is that she is much more traditional than Feyre and Nesta, and so she’d be the one to read a romance novel and romanticize a mating bond. That’s pure speculation, though!

CUTEST GRANOLA COUPLE I’M. I want to start writing headcanons in the next few days. Elain knows exactly what is edible and they could literally go out into the forest and have a picnic without having to bring anything!!!! Just relaxing in the sunshine and the grass and foraging food and then cooking for one another. asldjalsjdlasdaaaaaaaaa

#acosf #acosf spoilers #spoilers #elucien #a court of silver flames #a court of silver flames spoilers #ask #anon

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honeylikewords · 3 years

Text

uneasy lies the head (poe dameron)

In the wake of her passing, the official, if somewhat symbolic, royal title of Alderaan has passed to from Leia Organa to her chosen heir, Poe Dameron. Along with his elected position as the Galactic Senate Represenative for his home planet, Yavin V, Poe is now burdened with the responsibility of a political office he never imagined holding, and is called to attend a summit of the galaxy’s leaders that will be held aboard the Starcruiser Halcyon.

This piece is based on a few things: one, me liking the idea of Prince of Alderaan Poe, two, my interest in Begrudging Politician Poe, and three, the new details that have come out about the real-life Halcyon experience that will be opening up at Disney World in Florida, which you can read more about here! I’ve been really excited about it for a long time, and just thought it’d be fun to tie one of my favorite characters in to this amazing new experience that will be coming soon!

(Content Warnings: mentions of Leia’s de@th, some slightly risque flirting between Poe and his wife, and a little bit of making out, but that’s about it! Word count is 5k.)

Poe stands in front of the mirror, anxiously adjusting the epaulets of his tunic. They don’t seem to sit right on his shoulders, he thinks, passing a hand through their silvery fringe and watching them brush the snow-white fabric of his sleeves. This isn’t his kind of uniform, and when he looks at himself, he sees more a child wearing the spoils of a raid on their parent’s closet than the Senate representative he was meant to be. He tries tightening the high, pale collar of his tunic against his throat, swallowing thickly and watching his Adam’s apple bob beneath the colorless fabric. That didn’t help much dignify the image, he thinks, eyeing himself morosely.

He looks older. His beard is fuller, having let it grow out to appear more… wise, he supposes, and the grey streaks running through it match the ones appearing more and more every day at his temples. His tan fingers tease lightly at the end of his beard, trying to stroke it like he’d seen other, more senior politicians do when lost in thought (or at least trying to come across like they were). It makes him look pretentious.

Sighing loudly, he slumps his taut shoulders and rolls them a few times to loosen the aching muscles. He turns away from the mirror and steps out of the dressing room, entering the stateroom and collapsing onto the edge of the bed, his face in his hands. He hears a door hiss open and looks between his fingers at the emerging figure.

She’s still fidgeting with her hair, which is now lifted from its former looseness into a series of intricate looping braids. Letting out a huff, she takes her hands away, seemingly having resigned herself to leaving the hair as it was. Poe lifts his head a little, resting his chin on his palm as he watches her pat her dress and check the mirror in the dressing room, just as he’d been doing mere moments before.

She looks much, much better than he does. It’s an objective fact. Her air is stately and refined, with her gown framing her regally. The fabric is a delicate, pale blue, trimmed with fine threads of gold that interweave and flow, like braided ivies, trailing up her waist in a way that guides Poe’s wandering eyes to the loveliness of her figure. She seems to belong better to this world, with its mannerisms and socialites, its political politenesses. He never had the patience to be so diplomatic, even though that is his job, now.

He watches her pull a face at herself in the mirror, frowning at some flaw he’s oblivious to, and he stands up, coming to her side and placing his hands on the small of her waist, leaning his head on her shoulder and kissing her cheek amiably.

“You look like a princess,” he purrs, hoping his flattery will encourage her confidence. He hates seeing her unhappy with herself.

“I wish,” she responds, voice tinged with something wan and far away. “I… I really do wish.”

He knows what she’s thinking about: he’d been thinking about it, too. Dropping the air of adulation, Poe reaches for her hand and gently knits their fingers together, pressing their locked hands softly against her belly for reassurance. He meets her eyes in the mirror, and the two share expressions of loss.

“I miss her, too,” he murmurs. “I don’t feel like… like I can do what she did. What she left for me to do.”

He feels his wife squeeze his hand intently, causing him to lift his head up and meet her gaze as she turns to look at him, unfiltered by the mirror. Her eyes, clear and sharp, stare at him as she nods, then kisses his forehead warmly, taking her free hand and brushing it softly across his cheek.

“She chose you for a reason,” she whispers, soft and sincere, just like she always does. “Leia left you her seat and title because you’re the only person fit for the job. She trusted you.”

Her hand dips to his jaw and she lifts his head up from its morose slump. He cannot look away from her, even if he wanted to.

“I trust you, too.”

Poe takes in all the angles of his wife’s face, knowing that no single word of what she said was untrue, but searching for the possibility of a lie anyway in some small giveaway of her expression; after all, how could he be the one fit to carry on in the shadow of his predecessor? How could his shoulders carry the burden of her greatness, much less improve upon it? But there, in her eyes, Poe sees the truth, reflected over and over again: he was chosen for this job, chosen to carry on a legacy he had no option but to strengthen. He is the only one who could, whether he believes it or not.

He straightens his back a little, standing up taller, and squeezes his wife’s hand in silent thanks, taking a moment to press their foreheads together and breathe in the scent of her. She is wearing perfume-- something they’d never had access to during the scarcity of the war-- and he marvels at how something so small changes the entire atmosphere of her presence. She truly embodies the grace and elegance of the woman who came before both of them, looking every inch the part of an Alderaanian royal.

Glancing back at himself in the mirror, Poe huffs; while she may look, indeed, just the way Leia would want the nation to be represented, Poe does not. He looks stuffy in his garb, at times like an old man in the too-tight clothes of his youth, and, at others, like a scrawny teenager in the baggy trappings of someone he was only pretending to be. She seems to sense his dismay, as she takes the initiative to comfort him, this time.

“You look dashing,” she smiles, adjusting his lapels and the ribbons of decoration on his chest. “Prince Poe Dameron, Senate Representative of Alderaan and Yavin IV. You’ll knock ‘em dead.”

At that, Poe lets out a playful, exasperated huff, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ll be great,” he grimaces, eyeing his form in the mirror. He raises his voice into a mocking lilt, swaying his head from side to side in an intentionally cartoonish parody of a stuffy bureaucrat. “Oh, Senator Y’Barra, your engagement commission is most dreadful! Shall we discuss its heinousness over tea and crescent crumpets? Garcon, we need more gold-dusted butter for our scones if we are ever to pass this bill!”

She covers her mouth to hide the beginnings of a smile and tries to reprimand Poe, affectionately slapping his chest.

“It’s nice that we’ve been asked to attend the summit, Poe. At least try to make some--”

“Don’t say friends,” he groans. “I don’t want to make friends with these people. They’re politicians; they don’t want to do anything other than profit, and post-war reconstruction is a hell of a time to make money for slime bags like these people.”

That seems to take her back for a moment, and Poe watches her expression shift as she sorts through her thoughts, her lips pursed, eyebrows arched. She then shrugs and nods, acquiescing.

“Probably. But there are probably also people like you: people whose service in the war and dedication to their people, all across this galaxy, led them to this job. People who just want to rebuild. Do better. You’ll find them, dear: you’re an excellent judge of character.”

She taps her fingers against his nose playfully.

“After all, you picked me, didn’t you?”

“If I remember correctly,” Poe teases, lowering his eyes to her lips and smirking, “You were the one to get a crush on me first. All butterflies and nerves anytime I so much as passed you in the halls. More like you picked me, huh?”

Poe catches her face take on the familiar cues of embarrassment and flustering; he can just tell he’s got her all a-twitter, and she pouts her lips, looking down at her shoes shyly as he starts to chuckle. It’s adorable to remember how flighty and skittish she was in those early days, and how enamored of her he himself was, and remains. Getting her all shy like this is a sweet harkening back to that early, giddy tension, and he dips his face down, hovering his lips just above hers, feeling her draw in a breath of neediness and--

“Senator Dameron,” a robotic voice announces through the commlink in the stateroom, freezing Poe in place. “The ferry is beginning docking procedures with the Halcyon. Please proceed to the boarding area. A droid will be sent to collect your luggage as you leave.”

“Ah, shit,” he growls. He’d completely lost track of time.

Dodging back out into the stateroom, Poe glances out the window and sees the looming mass of a gigantic starcruiser, a sharp body of glimmering steel and inky black portholes contrasted against the star field behind it. It is massive-- far larger than any ship Poe had personally piloted in the past-- and spans more than the distance his window could afford a view of. They are extremely close, and within minutes will be aboard the behemoth, where Poe will have to eat, sleep, and breathe senatorial and princely dignity.

He turns away from the window to see his wife making sure everything was packed and prepared for departure, checking the bathroom and dressing room before giving him a confirming nod: everything is where it needs to be. They are ready to go.

They walk towards each other and Poe places his hands on his wife’s arms, stroking up and down the bareness of her shoulders to steady himself. As he feels the warmth of her skin beneath his rough palms, Poe blinks with awareness and gives her a quick squeeze, darting off to the dressing room. He opens a trunk and lifts up the topmost layer of fabric, running back into the stateroom with it carefully laid across both his forearms, then turns his wife to face him and gently lays the upper corners of the fabric on each of her shoulders.

“The cloak,” he mumbles as he fastens the pale silver silk around her neck, “Don’t wanna forget that. A princess is set apart by garments like that.”

“Right,” she hums, admiring his hands as he fusses with her collar. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that since you’re the prince, now, and I married you, I’m the--”

“Princess, yep,” grins Poe. “Princess Dameron.”

“By marriage only,” she teases.

“And I’m only the prince because she left an essentially honorary title to me,” Poe wits back. “But it suits you, at least.”

“You think?”

“Mm. Now, I think the prince owes his princess one of the tenets of royal responsibility: unadulterated affection towards one’s spouse.”

“Is that a tenet of your responsibilities?,” she smiles, brow cocked.

“I just made it up, but I like to think so.”

Once again, Poe presses his palms against the soft curves of her upper arms, squeezing in the grounding manner he knows she likes, tracing his thumbs along the creamily-smooth fabric now covering her, and he leans in close, admiring how the light shifts against her skin as his shadow draws nearer. He parts his lips, ready to feel the gentle swell of her soft ones against his, when, as if by divine interruption, the hydraulic hiss of the stateroom’s door fills the room and a silver-plated protocol droid peers at him through the now-open door. He grits his teeth to resist letting out a completely undignified expletive aimed at the droid and stares at it pointedly, trying to silently communicate that it had interrupted a private moment.

“It is time to board the Halcyon, Senator,” it chimes in the lilting manner all protocol droids seem to have, seemingly blissfully unaware of his frustration. “Please, come with me to the boarding area.”

Behind the protocol droid, a cargo lifter droid rolls by, seemingly waiting until Poe and his wife leave the cabin to enter. Poe sighs, but can’t resist letting a small chuckle out: both droids, despite their different purposes, both seem polite, in their own sorts of ways, and he always finds that endearing.

Looking to his wife, Poe gives a little bemused half-smile and shrugs his shoulders, as if apologetic but resigned. She takes his hand and turns, nodding to both droids with an impassive but gracious expression, one that Poe notes is more than befitting of an official such as herself. Distanced, but not dour, regal, but not recalcitrant. He loves it.

“Thank you,” she says, coolly polite. “Please, lead the way.”

The protocol droid begins its stiff-jointed hobble towards the boarding area and Poe and his wife trail behind, arms linked at the elbow as Poe fidgets with her fingers. He twiddles her marriage band as they walk, always comforted by the feel of it on her hand. He admires it as they silently proceed; it’s somewhat rough-hewn, made from hammered durasteel, a little uneven and dented in some places from the haste in which it was made, and Poe loves it.

He loves how it contrasts the delicate, fragile jewelry common amongst royals, how it’s not meant to glitter and shine and grab attention, how it ties her to him and he to her, with no regard for image or pomp. It is heavy and solid and made purely for the sake of love and belonging, and she wears it everywhere she goes with pride, as if it was the finest-cut Oshiran sapphire, or the most carefully sculpted gold. It is one of the crown jewels of Alderaan, now, and the thought of it-- of his parent’s simple, quickly-made wedding ring, forged in a time of war, without promise of any moment past the one they were in, now being a royal regalia-- makes his heart ache to bursting with unadulterated love.

Poe tugs her hand up and kisses her knuckles as they finally round the corner into the boarding area; somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers the droid saying something about how their luggage will be sent directly to their stateroom aboard the Halcyon, but he’s hardly listening. He’s looking at his wife, his rock, his tether, as they begin their socialite dance, seeking steadfast comfort in her as he prepares to have to play his part in a world he was never born to be in.

The droid gestures to a corridor formed between the two ships: passengers traipse from the shuttle onto the boarding area of the Halcyon, representatives from a myriad of species in a breadth of costumes and liveries. Poe and his wife exchange glances, knowing that these people will have some hand in forming what comes next in the political landscape of the galaxy, and that they, too, will be instrumental in forging the new governments of the rising Republic.

“Come on,” she smiles, trying to coax him along, tugging his hand and taking a step forward, “It’s gonna be fine. It’s not like my flyboy to get cold feet, hm?”

Poe chuckles and shakes his head, trying to dislodge his clouding worries, and walks in time with his wife, joining the throngs of senators and royals and presidents and diplomats making their way aboard the Halcyon. Some of them exchange pleasantries, others are locked in conversations: some even look at Poe and his wife and nod in acknowledgement, or turn to their compatriots and whisper.

Poe feels an embarrassed heat creep up the base of his neck; he knows rumors have circulated about his particularly unusual position as a representative for a dead planet and a living one, and about how he’d been named the next in line for a royal title he was not born into. He tries not to let it get to him-- let people think that they think, and do your job, Leia had always told him-- but the feeling of alienation and disbelonging hangs over him, shaming him into silence. He tenses, and keeps his eyes fixed forward, which grants him an ever-nearing view of the grand foyer of the massive starcruiser.

The Halcyon is unlike any other ship Poe has ever been on. He’d heard about starcruisers like this, meant to be enormous cruise ships travelling in luxury and style from one planet to another, filled with sprawling cabins and indulgent amenities, and had never even pictured himself aboard one. The thought hardly appealed to him: days, weeks, even, of doing nothing? Just wandering aimlessly around, decadent and opulent in one’s revelry? The mere idea disgusts him. Still, as he steps into the expansive entry for the Halcyon, he finds himself feeling something other than disgust: he feels strangely at home.

The area is bustling as ship workers and bellhops collect luggage and transfer it to droids, as greeters guide guests to check in areas and hand them keycards, as officers check passports and documentation against databases, all lit under the glow of thousands of lights, which reflect off polished durasteel and marble surfaces. Holo projections provide information about travel destinations and the cruise itself in hundreds of different tongues, while a massive projection of the captain glows a familiar blue and greets the boarding politicians.

Poe turns in awe, gazing at the dozens of porthole windows affording views of distant and nearby star clusters, at the navigational crew high above, checking maps and charting courses, and takes a deep, steadying breath in through his nose, squeezing his wife’s hand tight. The hum and thrall of the ship, with its thousands of moving parts and requisite workers, feels exactly like all the ships he’d served on during the Rebellion. He half-believes that if he closes his eyes and turns around, he’ll open them and see Leia there, giving orders and directing the workflow.

The memory sits on his heart, but instead of a heavy, lingering pain, it kindles a warm, growing fire: she lives on in him. She would be proud to see him carrying on the mantle, working to do what no one else has the skill, speech, or stones to do. She is never really gone. Never can be.

Instilled with strength and purpose, Poe looks to his wife, who is staring at the gargantuan hub of activity before her, almost taken aback by how bustling it is. He leans down and gently pecks her cheek, tugging her along and breaking her out of her trance. They’ve got places to be, things to do, royal engagements to avoid, after all. As they begin to move closer to what Poe believes is the reception desk, a Twi’lek in a sleek, almost military-looking white uniform steps in front of Poe and his wife, grinning from green ear to ear.

“Senator Dameron, Princess Dameron,” she greets, bowing at the waist respectfully, “I am Lyna’ame, and I’ll be directing you regarding your stay on the Halcyon. Thank you for honoring us with your patronage.”

“Uh, thank you for having us,” Poe stammers, unsure of how to conduct himself in such a position.

Lyna’ame looks up at him with a quizzical eye, but seems too well-trained to respond with anything more than a polite smile and a nod. She produces from the pocket of her grey-trimmed suit a pair of infochips, extending them towards Poe and his wife.

“You will be staying in the royal suite on Deck B, unit number eighteen,” Lyna’ame smiles. “These chips will act as your keys to the room and to any amenities you should wish to access, and will remind you of upcoming engagements or conferences you should be in attendance of.”

As if on cue, the small screens on the infochips light up and read “19:00: Senatorial Dinner In Ballroom One!” Poe blinks at it, then flashes Twi’lek a cordial but slightly cold smile, taking the chips from her hand and tucking them unceremoniously into his breast pocket.

“Alright, thanks. I think we can get it from here.”

She seems not to register his attempt to tie off the loop of the conversation, continuing anyway.

“You will also have access to all the facilities of the ship, including the swimming areas, dining areas, lounges, bars, activity centres, spas and--”

“I’ll check the brochure in the room,” Poe smiles, searching for an exit. “I appreciate it, but, uh, my wife is very tired--” --Poe nudges her with an elbow and she balks, then understands his intention and mimes a yawn, nodding sympathetically-- “--And I’d love to get her some rest before any hobnobbing, y’know?”

“Of course, your highness,” Lyna’ame says, again accompanied by a civil bow. “The elevators are to the left. Press your infochip to the pad and it will take you to your floor. Your luggage should already be in your room, and please,” she smiles. “Enjoy your cruise.”

Poe bows back, then leads his wife by the elbow to the elevators, where they tap their key card and the doors hiss open. As they board, just the two of them, Poe’s wife turns to face him and raises one eyebrow, haughty.

“Really threw me under the bus there, Poe,” she smirks. “‘Oh, my wife wants to leave this conversation because my wife is awkward and doesn’t know how to handle subordinate behavior from service workers’. Real nice.”

Rolling his eyes, Poe can’t help but smile, and instead of replying, drops his hand to the small of his wife’s back, grazing his fingers there for a moment before dipping slightly lower and--

She jumps, then giggles, hitting him with a shocked but not at all displeased expression.

“Did you just pinch my ass?”

“Maybe,” he smiles. “Why?”

“You just seemed so…” She touches his arm, searching for the right word, chewing her lip thoughtfully. “Severe, before. Lost.”

“Feeling better. Feeling… like I can do this, maybe. Or at least do what I need to do, even if it doesn’t look exactly like how everybody else might expect me to.”

At that she purses her lips and nods, and he can tell she’s happy for him: he’s not entirely out of the woods about this whole ‘galactic representative’ thing, and certainly not used to all the expectations that come with being the heavy head that wears the crown, but he’s going to be alright. At least, he feels like he is, at this moment, and that’s all that matters.

Poe finds himself allowing his smile to grow wider as he dips down and nuzzles her temple, teasing his lips over her ear, tempting and toying.

“I still hate the suit,” he whispers, sending her shivering, “And I don’t want to talk to these people like we’re all buddy-buddy--”

“--Acknowledged, Senator,” she teases, rubbing his arm in the way that lets him know she’s itching to get more handsy.

“But we’re gonna have a private room,” he continues, “And a lock on the door, and at least--” --He checks the infocard, which reads “17:05”-- “--About two hours before anybody’s gonna need us, so I say we shimmy out of these nice duds…”

Poe’s finger trails down the silky rivulets of her collarbones; he has to admit, he does find her massively attractive in this royal robing, but he figures it’ll be less hassle for both of them to assure he doesn’t get too rowdy while they’re wearing some of the best (and irreplaceably expensive) fineries in the galaxy, so he’ll have to bid her pretty little dress and luxurious cape adieu for their stateroom rendezvous. Not that he minds: the dress might be pretty, but the woman underneath is ten times more so. Besides, she can always put it back on again for the dinner, anyway.

“We go see what kind of minibar we’re looking at,” Poe teases, watching her roll her eyes, “Hop in the bath, and see where those two hours take us.”

“Mm, we’ll see,” she demures, patting his chest. He knows she likes to dance around it, never say anything too scandalous where someone else can hear, and he loves that; she extends the tension, making him wait for what he wants. He may not ever have been a patient man before, but she forces him to slow down, savor it, work for it. And that’s delicious.

The elevator doors slide open as Poe leads his wife out into the hall, kissing her jaw as he checks the suite numbers. They shuffle along, exchanging little pecks and touches in the graciously empty hallway (what would the other representatives think, she reminds him in a hushed tone as they pass rooms, if they saw the new prince of Alderaan and Senator for Yavin V hanging off his wife like a pubescent teen?) before arriving at suite eighteen. Poe fumbles in his breast pocket, keeping his lips planted on his wife’s neck, then slaps the infochip haphazardly against the door. It clicks open, and Poe doesn’t even bother to look inside: he just coaxes his wife in, and tumbles in after her.

The lights in the room slowly turn on automatically, rising from a low dim to a sunny brightness, illuminating white-panelled walls and a lush, wide bed, all the furniture sharply clean and sleekly modern, trimmed in shades of black and silver. A massive window shows the endless expanse of space beyond the double-layered transparisteel, and while Poe would normally be more inquisitive and peek around the room to admire it, he’s more than occupied as he pushes his face deeper in the warm, scented crook of his wife’s neck.

“Careful,” she warns as his hand starts to pet at the base of her head, eking dangerously close to the beginnings of her hair roots, “These braids took me hours. I don’t want to have to re-do them, Dameron”

“I get that,” he breathes heavily, “But you look really hot with messy hair and--”

“If we’re going to go to that dinner, I’m not going to go with my hair flying everywhere! I’ll look like a… well, you know!”

“Like a woman well-loved by her husband,” Poe teases, nipping at her jaw. “But, fine, we’ll skip the dinner, and I’ll just keep you all to myself. Nobody else has to see. In fact, I’d prefer they didn’t.”

His eyes glimmer with wolfish promise as he sets his wife down on the edge of the white-blanketed bed, staring at her as her skirts form pools of silver and blue. He’s serious: the summit dinner all but disappears from his mind as he looks at her; how beautiful she is. How elegant. So poised and pretty and his, all his, to love until all the suns swallow themselves and burn out. All these representatives won’t miss him at one measly, lousy dinner, right? Not when he has the love of his life to attend to, surely.

“What’s gotten into you?,” she giggles, kicking off one of her sophisticated shoes as she sits on the bed. “You’re acting like we’re on our honeymoon!”

Poe leans in and places his hands on either side of her hips, bumping his forehead to hers as he takes long, weighty breaths, feeling the heat radiate off of her.

“I just… This is a lot, right?”

“Mm,” she acquiesces.

“And you’re kind of… what I go back to when I’m in too deep. So, right now, all this summit stuff and the Senate and the council? I need that to take a backseat to me being with you. The person I love. And letting that be what guides me in what I need to do for… everybody else.”

She lets out a soft, appreciative “aw”, her eyes softening as she cups his cheek, and Poe leans into her hand, allowing a little lasciviousness to leak into his smile as he stares down at her.

“Plus, it’s kinda… you know, a little sexy, being somewhere so new and ritzy. I’m not used to this kind of stuff. That, and we barely got a honeymoon, if you remember--”

“Yeah,” she recalls, sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose, clearly vexed by the memory, “I remember. The day after we got married, that First Order outpost tried to open fire and you were up and out of bed and back in deployment after less than twenty four hours of being a married man.”

“Duty never sleeps,” he shrugs. “But… We can make up for lost time here, on this big, shiny, fancy-ass ship, huh?”

Poe wiggles his eyebrows with playfully rapacious intent, sending his wife into a fit of good-natured laughs. He adores when she laughs; it sends his heart racing, every inch of him alight with the joy of knowing that her smiles are because of him, the sound of her voice bouncing up and down with glee all caused by some silly little thing he’s said or done. Unable to contain himself, Poe leans down and kisses her, cutting off the sounds of her laughter, a deep, satisfied groan emanating from his chest.

“God,” he rumbles as they part for a quick breath, “I haven’t gotten to do that all damn day.”

“It did feel really good,” she sighs, clasping her arms around his neck. She seems to take pause, etching his face into her memory with her eyes, then comes to a decision: Poe would recognize that resolute gleam in her expression anywhere. “Alright, we’re staying.”

“...You mean it?,” he chirps.

“Yep. You tell them your poor, defenseless wife is laid up ill and needs your constant and most doting attention,” she smiles, kissing the tip of his nose. “Then when you’re done calling the front desk, you come over here and you help me get out of this dress and into that bath you promised.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckles, then catches himself. “I mean, yes, Princess.”

“Mm,” she beams, teasing him with a pinch on the thigh. “Much better.”

They share another deep, drawn-out kiss before Poe manages to wrest himself away from her and off to the side of the room with the comm built into the wall, but glances over at her as he taps at the screen to connect with the front desk. She grins coyly from the bed, kicking one leg out in a pseudo-sultry, semi-silly way from beneath her sumptuous gown. Poe can’t help but feel a swell of endearment.

As the call connects, Poe sighs dreamily to himself; if all else failed, at least he had her, and with her by his side, he was definitely going to enjoy a very, very pleasurable cruise.

#poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #long post #original #OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVEEEEE i actually sat down and wrote this? dkhfhdkf #im a little rusty but! felt good to finish a project! i hope you guys enjoy!!#star wars

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pomegranates-and-blood · 3 years

Text

Right, Wrong (500 Celebration)

500 Celebration Masterlist

Pairing: Ubbe/Reader, mentioned Ubbe/Margrethe, implied Ivar/Reader I’m sorry I can’t help myself

Prompt: From the Quotes category: “Angry, and half in love with you, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”

Word Count: 2818 (I had my reasons to say these were not drabbles, y’know)

Warnings: A horrible amount of angst, lost love, unrequited love, passing mentions of injuries/violence.

A/N: Hi, first Ubbe piece of this celebration! I hope this is okay, I apologize in advance if it isn’t. Also, not the fluffiest or most Ubbe-positive of fics, fair warning.

“I want you there with me.” Ivar tells you, and though you are surprised, you try not giving it away.

“Why?”

“Why should I have any reason, hm?”

“You expect me to stand next to you, much like Astrid does next to Harald, without any explanation as to why?”

His smile is cold, they always are. And cruel, and they usually are that too.

When the day comes and you do stand next to Ivar as he faces Lagertha and his brothers, you cannot help but wonder if it isn’t Ivar the cruel one, but the Gods. Or, at least, not the cruelest, not when you can see the face of a dead man in Ubbe, and hear his voice when Björn speaks.

For all the certainty you hold that the choice you made that day so long ago was the right one, you still fail to hold Ubbe’s gaze for anything more than a few moments.

You approach slowly, moving seamlessly in between the warriors and shieldmaidens that load their belongings onto the ships; and you take those few moments -those last moments- to look at him.

The evidence of the Saxons’ violence is still on him, in the eye so swollen you could think of Odin then, in the bloodied wounds that are still to heal. In the bruised pride that makes his shoulders stiff and his posture straighter.

Hvitserk is the first of the brothers who notices you standing by the pier, a few feet away from the ship. His warm eyes meet yours before travelling down your figure, stalling on your hands.

Your empty hands.

It is something like sadness, and something more, something like hesitance, that clouds Hvitserk’s features before he nods his head once in acceptance and turns back around to let you say goodbye.

Ubbe doesn’t turn around, he continues working on the last preparations for the trip, and you almost don’t want to know if he is unaware of your presence.

If he is, then you remain as insignificant as you have always feared. If he isn’t, then he believes you remain as malleable as you never intended to be.

You grit your teeth, and turn your back as well.

When you walk by Ivar, who sits there watching his brothers leave, his hand reaches to grab at your forearm.

You do not care if it is a command to remain so Ubbe knows you have chosen to stay or a recognition of what you have left behind, you still wrench your hand from his grasp and continue walking.

It doesn’t matter, the world will never stop for the sake of a shieldmaiden’s helpless heart. And, in your own way, you are grateful it doesn’t.

Because your heart may want some foolish things, but you are more than your heart.

And when they announce the war for Kattegat is inevitable, and the time comes when the tension tightens like the old cords in Sigurd’s oud and you have to bear your sword against the man you once loved; you do.

____

He should know better by now than to try and go past the greater forces and speak directly to an enemy. That is what you are, after all. You chose the side he believes is wrong, and when the battle dawns you will be nothing but another shieldmaiden to strike down.

If you ever were anything more than that, even before this.

Still, Ubbe is here, sitting next to the fire with his elbows on his knees, his face grave and serious, his eyes unnaturally blue even against the warm hues of the flames.

And you take a seat at his side, even if only because this might as well be the goodbye you were too angry to give him that first time.

“Why did you do it? You were supposed to come with me,” He starts, and even if you feel the piercing blue of his eyes set on you, you cannot turn to meet his gaze. “What reasons did you have to stay with Ivar?”

You wonder why it is now that he wishes to know your reasons, now that war is inevitable, now that there is no turning back.

A deep breath, and, “The same reasons I had to leave with you.”

Your voice is colder than you intended, and a cruel part of you is more delighted than you intended when Ubbe recoils as if you had struck him.

But the softer, compassionate, meek woman Ubbe once promised to love is dead, if you ever were her in the first place. If she died, she did so piece by piece, when her sister died in Kattegat, when the man she loved married another woman, when the people she knew her whole life died before her in battle. But maybe, maybe you won over her, when you were promised revenge by dangerous blue eyes and were granted it, when a chest made up of a broken heart met one that was hollow to begin with, when with each battle the taste of blood started being sweeter and sweeter.

“You didn’t even ask me if I was going to leave with you, you didn’t even doubt that I would get on that damned boat,” You tell him, turning to meet wide eyes and trying not to grit your teeth at the misplaced betrayal that shines in them. “I heard you telling your brother how you would leave and take me with you.”

“I thought yo-…”

You interrupt him, because you truly have no interest in hearing what he thought when he had another sharing his bed and his heart, when in his grief he decided to forget you were a person too.

“You thought wrong. You thought I would follow, you thought I would do as you wished.”

“I did,” He confesses, voice grave and low. That wasn’t what you were expecting, but when you turn to look at him, Ubbe looks pointedly ahead. “I was wrong, and I regret it.”

“Yet you still come here, expecting me to follow, expecting me to do as you wish.”

“Fighting to defend Kattegat is the right thing to do. Ivar only wants to pull us all apart. The sons of-…”

“Defending Kattegat is no more righteous than attacking it. Do not try to make this about right or wrong.”

“But you are on the wrong. Ivar is on the wrong.”

The shrug you give speaks the words he doesn’t want to hear, I don’t care.

He offers the only answer he can, “I do not want to fight you, I do not want to face you in battle.”

You shrug, “It isn’t your choice to make, though.”

A twitch of anger in his expression, but that is all he gives away. A part of you wants to push until you see anything human, anything that isn’t this façade of a smoke figure of a man long dead, if he ever existed.

You look so much like your father, they always tell him, and even you see Ragnar in the shape of his face, in the blue of his eyes.

A long time ago, you would have argued he was not like Ragnar in any other way, at least not the Ragnar you remember, the Ragnar of empty eyes and bruises on his wife’s face. The Ragnar that left, the Ragnar that returned with smoke to fill his sons’ heads with and nothing else.

Now, you aren’t so sure, if only because of how much he wants you -and them, it is always them. Them who always speak of legacy, them who always remember a dead man as something more than what he was, them who always insist all sons are good for is retracing bigger footprints- to believe that he is like his father, that he is keeping him alive by just existing. And what you have now is talks of dreams he never had, and people left behind -you, overlooked you to chase after her even when you offered him your heart and so much more, and her, left her alone for so long even if she deserved someone that stayed-.

You are so much like your father, you want to tell him, if only to hurt him, but you aren’t so sure it will anymore.

“This isn’t your choice either, you are following Iv-…”

“I am following no one.”

There it is, the slightest quirk of his mouth that speaks of rage and a strange brand of cruelty. It is human, even if it is painful to see. It is him, even if it isn’t like him at all.

“I always knew you had your arrogance, I never thought you’d be blinded by it.”

“If I am blinded, then I will be easy to strike down in battle,” You stand up, spare one last glance, “I guess we will see when the time comes, hm?”

____

Focused on the mead you swirl in your cup absently, you barely notice the man that takes a seat at your side until he speaks,

“You love him, don’t you?” Sigurd asks, his particular kind of gentleness lacing his words, but something more, something like longing, making the question something more.

You lift your gaze to the newlyweds, smiling absently at the sight of their happiness, and you understand the longing in Sigurd’s voice.

“It does not matter what I feel.” You tell him, but in the humorless curve of his mouth you hear the words he does not retort with.

Standing up and signaling your goodbye with a squeeze of the Prince’s shoulder, you walk up to Ubbe and his wife.

He turns to you with a wide smile, and it is in that oblivious happiness that you can find it in you to not feel bitter about the course of Fate, it is in that open blue of his eyes that you do not find any cruelty. You bow your head, a greeting, a congratulation, and turn to his wife.

Margrethe is more guarded, and her smile is more a façade, but you understand that too. She knows, you know she does.

“May the Gods bless you both, and give you many happy years together.”

Before you are to turn around, the girl’s hand reaches for you, and grasps your forearm gently. You meet her eyes, and Margrethe leans closer, smile small but warm as she whispers,

“Thank you.”

Your hand covers hers for a moment, before you let go and continue walking.

You still wonder what she thanked you for. You still wonder if she curses you now, for not having done something to stop that union, if only out of selfishness, to spare her the pain you suffered then and she suffers now.

You still wonder, after so long, if you should have thanked her instead.

Kattegat is enveloped in shadows, distant fires doing nothing to stop the darkness that approaches at a fast pace. The few that are planning on leaving are frantic, loading their belongings onto their carts and their horses.

You find him much like you did that time, the mark of battle still present on him and the strain of loss making his shoulders tight with tension.

Only this time you stand behind him and find it in you to call his name.

Ubbe turns around immediately, eyes searching for you and almost immediately finding you. You have no time to understand the emotion that shines in familiar blue eyes before his big hands are on you, moving you back against the shadows.

He looks around before he focuses on you, trying to gauge whether anyone saw you. You almost want to ask him why he thinks you are important enough for any of these people to recognize you, but he beats you to a question.

“Why are you here?”

“You don’t have to die with them, you don’t have to run.”

“Ivar won’t accept me here, and you know that,” Ubbe retorts, though he still walks closer to you. With the shadows as heavy as they are, with the veil of night as enveloping as it is, you have never seen him stand taller, have never felt smaller. “You heard him, you were there, when he said I am no longer his brother.”

“I-I can-…”

“You can come with me,” He tells you, and though you are thankful for the interruption, because you had no answer to give; you are stunned into silence by the offer, “The Bishop will help us find refuge in Saxon land. Come with me.”

For a moment, a moment too alike that sharp breath of a warrior that feels the cold iron of a sword go through him, you are once again madly in love, willing to risk it all. You are once again foolish, and malleable.

For a moment, you want to say yes.

Yet the sharp breath leaves your lips, and you are once again standing behind the man you love, hearing him speak so surely of how he will take you from the world you know. You are once again standing on the steps of that damned boat.

And your answer never changed, because you never did.

Because he did.

“No.”

It is in the soft breath, in the widened eyes, in the mix between surprise and grief; that you find nothing but more certainty in your answer.

“I will not follow you, Ubbe,” You tell him, softer now. Though, this isn’t a softness born out of gentleness, born out of love. This is the shallow and slow breaths of a dying woman, the one that would have been able to make the right choice. “I can’t.”

“Of course you can, you have no reason to stay in Kattegat.”

“I do,” You promise, but your voice still holds that defeated softness, that unwilling gentleness. “I have my own ambitions, my own dreams.”

“At Ivar’s side?”

The smile you offer is bitter, and maybe a tad cruel, “Of all the ways I imagined I would become Queen of Kattegat, this wasn’t it. But I do not resent the Gods for the path they have woven for me.”

“You have chosen your own path.” He doesn’t hesitate to accuse.

“Maybe so,” You concede. It isn’t worth the fight. “And you have chosen yours.”

Maybe that is the goodbye you should have said that day when he left for Kattegat, or maybe before then.

Maybe it isn’t a goodbye at all, because there is nothing but memories to say goodbye to.

Maybe it is something else, a new beginning to the lives you will lead, a first meeting between the people you have both become long ago, but neither was brave enough to admit seeing in the other.

“I truly loved you,” You tell him, not sure why now of all times you choose to let him know. “Maybe in some way I love you still. But it changes nothing.”

Familiar, the twitch of his mouth when he looks away, the fire in his eyes in the low light, the way he receives your love without uttering a word.

You are the son of Ragnar Lothbrok, just like us; he would tell Ivar, so often it seems that he still talks about it, about how Ubbe insisted on reminding him he was the son of a legend as much as any of them.

We are the sons of Ragnar, is that not enough for any man? He insisted on that last calm before the storm, pretending he hadn’t spent so many nights with you confessing he did not know the kind of man his father was but still knew he had to admire him.

In the name of Ragnar! Björn had bellowed as the battle for Kattegat commenced, and Ubbe echoed the call, as if the man they called a father had been something other than human, something other than a man, as if they had forgotten of his failings in their loss.

You take a step back, feeling like it should be reversed when you walk into the light and leave him enveloped in shadows. Ubbe watches you raptly, his eyes so unnaturally blue as they trace your movements; but says nothing.

You smile your last goodbye, “You are a son of Ragnar, before you are anything else. I hope that is enough, Ubbe.”

He reaches for you when you move to leave, but you both know it is inevitable. His hand is warm, warmer than it has ever been, on your forearm, and his eyes are sad, sadder than they have ever been, as they gaze upon you.

Your hand reaches for the side fo his face, and the kiss you press against his lips is more of a parting gift than it should have ever been.

His hand drops from your arm, and you walk away. And continue walking, all the way back home.

____ ____ ____

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this was okay even if it wasn’t that Ubbe-positive. I would love to hear your thoughts! Stay safe, love ya!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @xbellaxcarolinax @1950schick @ietss @peachyboneless @encounterthepast @maggiescarborough @chibisgotovalhalla @fae-sedai @zuxiezendler @crazybunnyladysworld @stupiddarkkside @northumbria @sagyunaro @aprilivar @ritual-unions-gotme

#ubbe x reader #vikings ubbe #ubbe imagine #ubbe #500 fucking hell thank you ily

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ryukoishida · 3 years

Text

Qian Qiu / Thousand Autumns Fic: [Ch 4] In which SQ drinks with YWS and YA barges in.

Title: You’re a Problem I Encounter Fandom: Qian Qiu / Thousand Autumns Characters/Ships: YanShen Rating: NSFW eventually Chapter: 4/? Summary: Yan Wushi was the proud leader of Huan Yue Group, one of the most influential syndicates in the underground world, who wanted nothing more than to see the world burn. His accidental encounter with the pure-hearted school teacher Shen Qiao was a problem he didn’t expect to get entangled in. A/N: So, funny story, I didn’t plan for this AU to be more than just snippets of scenes and vignettes, so now that there’s actually a Plot, updates might be sporadic at best. Sorry folks :’) List of Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4]

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iv. Fake Love

In the end, Shen Qiao conceded to at least meet with YuWen Yong and his son once before deciding whether or not to completely turn down Yan Wushi’s proposition. That was his begrudged way to make up for the stab wound that was still bleeding merrily on Yan Wushi’s upper arm.

At Shen Qiao’s defeated declaration, the leader of Huan Yue Group looked pleased and seemed unable to hide his grin despite his injury.

With a weary sigh, Shen Qiao reminded him that this was only because he didn’t want Yan Wushi to get any other weirder ideas.

Yan Wushi was completely okay with that.

(When Yan Wushi got back into his vehicle, Bian Yanmei’s brows immediately gathered into a concerned frown at the sight of his superior's injured arm and ruined shirt.

Yan Wushi was known to be a painstakingly meticulous man – everything from his speech, his gestures, the way he fought, the way he dressed – he would not allow anyone to see him in such a disarrayed state. Besides, who would even have the guts and the capability to leave a bloodied mark on the leader of one of the most feared organizations in the syndicate world?

“Yan-dangjia, is… everything all right?” Bian Yanmei helped him clean and bandage his wound. Thankfully it wasn’t a deep one, but it was definitely going to leave a scar.

“Oh, it’s more than all right,” Yan Wushi said with an amused grin, and left it at that.)

Almost an entire month had passed before Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi crossed paths again. They agreed to meet up at a high-end urban lounge in downtown called Indigo Palace, which coincidentally turned out to be one of Yu Ai’s favourite drinking places in the city, and as one of his closest friends, Shen Qiao had long been familiar with the establishment though he rarely partook in alcoholic drinks.

His last visit here had been an unpleasant one, to say the least, and to return to Indigo Palace after that incident instilled a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if the moment he entered this place, he’d be swallowed up by abhorrent memories and be reminded of the once pure and innocent relationship he shared with Yu Ai had now been poisoned by betrayal and tainted with distrust.

Shen Qiao half-wondered if Yan Wushi picked this place on purpose; knowing his twisted personality, he wouldn’t be surprised if the leader of Huan Yue Group had found out about the connection between his kidnapping and Indigo Palace, and had specifically chosen to meet Shen Qiao here precisely because he wanted to see how he’d react.

No matter, he thought to himself with a bitter smile as he pushed the glass door and strolled in, jazzy lounge music immediately surrounding him like silken sheets, providing him a sort of mundane comfort that he found hard to explain.

Upon seeing Xuan Du Group leader’s adopted son, the concierge in charge of taking care of patrons at the entrance and filtering troublemakers and drunkards instantly plastered on a striking smile and lowered himself into a respectful bow in greeting, to which Shen Qiao warily nodded in return.

“Is Shen-shaoye meeting a friend here? Will you require a private room at all?”

“There’s no need, thank you,” Shen Qiao replied and was about to head straight into the seating area when he changed his mind and turned to ask, “do you happen to know if someone of Huan Yue Group is already here?”

“Speaking of the devil…” the concierge’s face twisted into an expression akin to a mixture of aversion and dread at the mention of such person, “Yan Wushi came in about fifteen minutes ago, claiming he’s here to meet someone. What does the leader of a rival group want from us? Is he trying to pick a fight with Qi-dangjia or something?”

“Where is he seated?” Shen Qiao hoped the clueless boy didn’t actually say or do anything to irate Yan Wushi for real, or he was certain the concierge wouldn’t survive even if he were given ten extra lives to spare.

“At the far end of the bar,” the concierge informed him with a sour look, “Gu-jie is keeping an eye on him in case he starts something.”

A good call on Gu Hengbo’s part, Shen Qiao mused with approval, and thanked the concierge before heading in.

Unlike a lot of pubs and bars in the downtown area, Indigo Palace boasted of tasteful décor, delectable drinks, and professional service. Most patrons were here to relax after a long, grueling day at the office nearby and just wanted to relax with a drink and some venting to their friends and colleagues; others through connections with Xuan Du Group might be here in one of the lounge’s VIP private rooms to deal business of the clandestine and illegal kind. Tonight, it looked just like any other evenings of a workday: men and women in loosened ties and wrinkled blouses chattered quietly in their own secluded circles, expensive drinks in hand.

Shen Qiao meandered his way to the far end of the room where the bar was located, the wall of colourful bottles of alcohol and syrup gleaming with a mystical glow under the subdued lighting of the lounge.

“Shen-dage!” the bartender was the one who spotted Shen Qiao first, and she greeted him with a bright grin and a friendly little wave after putting away the last glass she was wiping clean.

“Hengbo,” Shen Qiao smiled warmly at the young woman, who was like a little sister to him since she started training and working under Qi Fengge’s tutelage. The four of them – Shen Qiao, Gu Hengbo, Yu Ai, and Tan Yuanchun – shared a close relationship like siblings due to their ages being relatively close. Though as they grew to have their own group of friends and social obligations, Shen Qiao would never think to abandon or cut ties with the three of them no matter how differently they lived their lives.

Gu Hengbo rushed to the side of the bar closest to Shen Qiao and began to prattle away, “Shen-dage, what have you been up to? It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve seen you! And you know Yu-dage, he wouldn’t tell me anything even if I’m being my most charming self.”

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to come in to see you sooner,” Shen Qiao smiled apologetically, petting the younger woman on the head with the kind of gentle affection that he only allowed when he was with people that he felt comfortable with. “Work has been… well, you know how it can get.”

Shen Qiao wasn’t good at lying, so the best he could do was avoiding the topic all together. From what he could surmise, Gu Hengbo still didn’t know that he’d been fired from his previous job, nor did she seem to be aware of the kidnapping incident.

“Ah-Qiao, you’ve kept me waiting.”

Before Shen Qiao could continue his conversation with Gu Hengbo, they were rudely interrupted by that oh-so-familiar drawl that could only belong to one person.

“Shen-dage, you know that man?” Gu Hengbo was actually about to tell him to stay away from Yan Wushi. She’d never met the infamous leader of Huan Yue Group herself, but she’d heard enough about the man, and given his dubious reputation, it didn’t make her feel any easier to see her beloved sworn brother getting acquainted with such a dangerous and controversial character, even by the standards of Xuan Du’s lawless nature.

“Unfortunately,” Shen Qiao only said drily, “don’t worry about him. He’s here to see me.”

Shen Qiao sighed, already feeling the start of a headache brewing in his temples, but his upbringing dictated him to greet Yan Wushi with as much courtesy as he could muster under the circumstances.

“Yan-dangjia, I see you’ve already made yourself comfortable,” he folded himself onto the bar stool next to Yan Wushi and was careful to keep a safe distance between them.

“I’ve got to say,” Yan Wushi swirled his drink in a tulip glass, the liquid inside a glistening rich amber, “I would never have expecte this place to serve such excellent cognac.”

“You have Hengbo to thank then,” Shen Qiao said, nodding towards the bartender who was looking at them curiously out of the corner of her eyes, “she’s the one who makes all the purchases here, and she does have an eye for good liquor.”

Yan Wushi raised his glass towards Gu Hengbo with an appreciative hum. She returned the gesture with a curt nod, eyes cold and guarded.

“And what will you have?” Yan Wushi wanted to know after taking another sip of his cognac.

“Hengbo, can I have my usual please?”

“Of course,” Gu Hengbo happily made his order with elegant ease, measuring out and pouring different liquids into the silver drink mixer. The resulting solution was a pale foggy citrine fluid poured over ice chips into a copper mug and topped with a sprig of mint leaves and a thinly-sliced wedge of lime.

She slid the beverage across the lacquered bar top, but a hand intercepted the mug before it could reach Shen Qiao.

“Yan-dangjia…”

“Moscow Mule?” Yan Wushi leaned in a little closer to take a whiff, a brow raising up before passing the drink off to Shen Qiao at last. “Virgin?”

“Do you have a problem with my order?”

“Not at all,” Yan Wushi smiled easily behind his glass, “I’m merely interested in what Ah-Qiao’s favourite drink is, that’s all.”

Instead of reacting to Yan Wushi’s comment, Shen Qiao took a much-needed gulp of his drink. The refreshing lime flavor and the spicy-sweetness of the ginger beer instantly cleared up his mind and made him feel better, slightly less annoyed by Yan Wushi’s presence and the brazen way the man kept staring at him while he drank.

Yan Wushi finally spoke after he watched Shen Qiao finished half of his drink.

“Well, how did it go?”

“I imagine you’ve already talked with YuWen Yong, so why are you asking me?” Shen Qiao cradled the mug with both of his hands. He was staring quite hard into the cup as if the answer lay somewhere deep in the bottom of his drink.

“I’d like to hear your side of things, too, Ah-Qiao,” Yan Wushi sounded almost genuine that it made Shen Qiao pause.

“How much did he tell you?” Shen Qiao turned to face the other man, gaze remaining hesitant.

“He sounded impressed, which is a rare occurrence for that man, so that’s saying something. He was also quite upset that you rejected his offer. I heard he’d even proposed to help you re-instate your position at your old academy, or give you a recommendation to an even more distinguished institution.”

“There’s no point in getting a position if it weren’t earned by my own merits,” there was something unshakable in the steady tone of Shen Qiao’s voice that fascinated Yan Wushi.

“There’s no shame in relying on someone else’s help now and then,” Yan Wushi reminded him matter-of-factly.

“That’s where you and I differ, Yan-dangjia,” Shen Qiao said in an equally pragmatic tone.

“I wonder…” the corner of Yan Wushi’s lips curved up in a subtle degree as he leaned closer towards Shen Qiao, the amber liquid in his glass churning with a mesmerizing pattern, “or perhaps you just haven’t hit your lowest point yet.”

As if sensing Yan Wushi’s sudden unwelcome proximity, Shen Qiao quietly shifted his body back with just enough precision and poise that it looked like he was merely changing his position of sitting by crossing his legs the other way naturally.

“I don’t mind YuWen Yong,” Shen Qiao continued as if that little display of push-and-pull – a silent, deadly waltz – didn’t happen, “as a politician, he has done beneficial deeds for the public and he has good intentions, even if the means to his goals were a little… unscrupulous.”

“So, the problem lies not with him but with his son?”

Shen Qiao nodded grimly.

“I did say that brat’s a handful,” Yan Wushi laughed. “I take it that means you met YuWen Yun as well?”

“YuWen Yong insisted that I at least talked with his son first before making my final decision, so I did.”

“And?” Yan Wushi’s eyes brightened with interest.

He couldn’t avoid interacting with the boy since he was always having meetings with YuWen Yong at the politician’s mansion, but the few times they were forced to talk had been… well, let’s just say that if he didn’t have favorable business ties with YuWen Yong, Yan Wushi wouldn’t have tried as hard to prevent himself from throttling the bratty teenager with his own two hands. He wanted to know what Shen Qiao – a teacher who was experienced in communicating with children of different personalities and attitudes – might think of someone like YuWen Yun, who many would label a problematic child upon their first meeting with him.

“I’ll admit, academically speaking, he’s smart for his age. And maybe far too clever for his own good in other ways.”

“Oh?”

After another sip of his drink, Shen Qiao continued, “he played the role of a perfect high school student and the son of a respectable government official in front of me: bright, polite, just the right level of charm and playfulness, but there was something not quite right – I could see it in his eyes.”

“I didn’t know Shen-laoshi is an expert in physiognomy, too,” Yan Wushi commented with amusement.

“It has nothing to do with physical facial traits,” Shen Qiao said, “call it an instinct—”

“Ah-Qiao!”

The familiar voice made Shen Qiao freeze and his fingers tightened around the copper mug with such force that his knuckles were turning white. He bit his lower lip to stop the words that were about to rush out of his mouth; there were things he’d like to say, but he also knew that once some words were laid out bare, he could never take them back.

But Shen Qiao couldn’t – shouldn’t – run away anymore. Sooner or later, he’d have to face Yu Ai and their crumbling friendship, and what it meant to Xuan Du Group as a whole.

“Ah-Qiao, what are you doing with that bastard?” Yu Ai was now standing directly behind Shen Qiao, his eyes glaring daggers at the unwelcome guest. He’d heard from his own informants that Shen Qiao had started to mingle with some high-level member of Huan Yue Group, but never would he imagine the protagonist of the rumor was none other than the syndicate leader himself.

Yan Wushi snickered, absolutely unperturbed by the pointed name-calling.

“You have the face to call me a bastard? I’m not the one who betrayed his own brother behind his boss’s back, am I?”

“You—!” Yu Ai was this close to pulling out his revolver despite being in public with witnesses and civilians all around.

At the exact moment that Tan Yuanchun grasped at Yu Ai’s bicep to stop him, Shen Qiao got off the stool and turned around sharply to face his sworn brothers.

“Yu Ai, that’s enough. There are people watching.”

He’d called him by his full name, Yu Ai noticed with a grimace. He didn’t think it would sting this much.

“Ah-Qiao…” Yu Ai seemed relieved that Shen Qiao was at least talking to him, and after sending another dark glare at Yan Wushi for good measure, he suggested in a softer tone as if any sudden or loud noise would scare Shen Qiao away again, “let’s find somewhere quieter. I’ve been meaning to talk to you since…since you quit your job.”

Shen Qiao raised his brows at the painfully awkward pause but said nothing.

“Ah-Qiao, for Tan-dage’s sake, will you hear Ah-Ai out just this once?” Tan Yuanchun opened his mouth for the first time that night, and Shen Qiao couldn’t say no to the benign face of his elder sworn brother.

“Please excuse us for a moment, Yan-dangjia.”

“Of course,” Yan Wushi didn’t even turn to see them go.

“Hengbo, are there any available spare rooms in the VIP area tonight?” Yu Ai called over to Gu Hengbo, who’d been furtively listening in on their conversation as she pretended to mix drinks for patrons.

“Sure,” Gu Hengbo only tripped over her own feet a little when Yu Ai unexpectedly summoned her. “Follow me.”

The music was entirely shut out by the soundproof walls of the private room, in which Shen Qiao had sat down on one end of the lush cushioned bench and Yu Ai and Tan Yuanchun had perched on the one that was set perpendicular.

Shen Qiao looked over at Yu Ai expectantly.

From this single expression, Yu Ai knew he’d been found out and that there was no use in covering up anymore, but it was still incredibly difficult for him to start, so he began with small talks, which he knew Shen Qiao hated.

“H-how have you been holding up? If you’re having financial troubles, I can—”

Shen Qiao’s usually warm brown eyes hardened into cold sepia behind the icy glare of his lenses.

“If you’re that concerned about my wellbeing, then why did you do what you did in the first place?” Shen Qiao demanded. He never demanded anything of anyone – he asked, prodded, requested – but he didn’t like forcing answers out of others unless he was desperate, and right now, he was desperate – frantic and forlorn for the answer that he somehow knew he wouldn’t get from Yu Ai.

He didn’t wait for Yu Ai to confirm his suspicion, and with a sad smile brimming with thick, heavy disappointment that was almost tangible in the air, Shen Qiao said, “it was you, wasn’t it?”

Yu Ai inhaled sharply but didn’t have the heart to deny it.

“You doped my drink that night under the pretense of wanting to have a confidential chat with me about your crush on some woman working under you, when all you wanted was for me to fall unconscious so you can hand me over to Sang Jingxing like a wrapped gift. And for what? Money? A higher position within He Huan Group? What is it? What did Sang Jingxing and Yuan Xiuxiu offer you that made you decide to betray father’s trust… my trust?”

At the end of his rant, Shen Qiao was exhausted, the ice in his eyes melted into nothing but a muddy puddle of confusion, the strength leaving him as suddenly as the heat of frustration had struck just a moment earlier.

“I didn’t mean for the whole thing to go so far,” Yu Ai said weakly, his gaze downcast as he continued in a listless whisper, “Sang Jingxing… that sonovabitch went too far; he wasn’t supposed to hurt you. The initial plan was to just keep you imprisoned, give you a scare, make you reconsider your position…”

“My position…?” Shen Qiao’s brows gathered into a bewildered frown.

“Xuan Du Group needs a leader; we need you. Yet you keep dodging your responsibilities by detaching yourself from Xuan Du, pretending to live amongst civilians like you’re better than the rest of us.”

“I don’t —” Shen Qiao was startled by the raw animosity in Yu Ai’s voice, the bitter scorn etched so agonizingly obvious and real on his face. Had Yu Ai always thought of him this way? Shen Qiao was torn in pondering between this hidden side of Yu Ai and the equally true state of Yu Ai breaking his trust, even if his intention had not been as malevolent as Shen Qiao had initially thought. He just didn’t understand why Yu Ai had to go through such farce to get them here.

“It doesn’t matter now, Ah-Qiao,” Yu Ai said with a resigned exhale, and he glanced up to see the younger man staring at him with wide, lost eyes. He thought maybe he’d finally found the metaphoric chink in Shen Qiao’s always immaculate and perfect armor, and Yu Ai was not one to waste opportunities. “What matters is that you come back to Xuan Du with us. Qi-dangjia, the elders, and all the younger members will be so happy to welcome you back with open arms as their young master.”

Shen Qiao shook his head slowly but firmly; though disbelief was evident on his pale face, it didn’t erase the lucidity that still dominated his mind.

“Xuan Du has father, and father has you and Tan-dage. Hengbo, too. She’s becoming very good at managing Indigo Palace, so father should feel confident to gradually let her handle Xuan Du’s other affairs.”

“But none of us is the true heir of Xuan Du,” Yu Ai said, a sliver of impatience was slipping into his voice. “Qi-dangjia had always wanted you to be his successor eventually, despite the free reigns he gives you, but you wouldn’t quit your civilian job and we’re running out of time, so I figure…”

Yu Ai swallowed hard, and he wished he had something to drink to rid of the lump in his throat, but he pushed on, “I figure we’ve got to do something to force you to quit and rejoin Xuan Du before Qi-dangjia’s condition gets any worse…”

“Father’s condition…? What do you mean?” Shen Qiao cut in with widened eyes. “The last time I went back home…”

The last time Shen Qiao had went back for a visit, Qi Fengge had been taking more medications than Shen Qiao had last remembered, and he’d asked his adoptive father about it, to which the leader of Xuan Du only replied with a tired but genuine smile, “ah, it’s nothing a few more pills and a strict diet won’t fix. You know how it is – it’s the fun part of getting old.”

“I didn’t realize…” Shen Qiao murmured, eyes darkening and fingers gathered into fists partly from remorse of not noticing the gravity of Qi Fengge’s worsening condition sooner and partly from fury that nobody had thought to let him know.

“Qi-dangjia instructed us to not tell you,” Tan Yuanchun said, “he didn’t want to worry you.”

“Do you even know what’s happening within the inner circle of Xuan Du Group right now?” Yu Ai asked with a tense mutter, but the volume of his voice only increased with intensity from there. “The elders are shitting themselves because the group’s losing money, and they’re saying Qi-dangjia is the one to blame for running the organization like it was still the good, old golden days. Now that some of them are aware of his deteriorating condition, they’re going to find any damn excuse to kick Qi-dangjia out of the leader’s seat. Are you going to let those old dogs do that to your father? After all Qi-dangjia has done for you, do you have the heart to leave Xuan Du the way it is now?”

With his chest still heaving from the outburst, Yu Ai could hear the crevices in Shen Qiao’s armor crackling and multiplying, the gashes widening and seeping blood.

“I—” Shen Qiao rose halfway from his seat.

And then the door to the private room swung open.

“Do you enjoy teasing me by keeping me waiting, Ah-Qiao?”

#qian qiu #thousand autumns #shan he jian xin #yanshen #bowie's crappy writing

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theheartsmistakes · 3 years

Text

The Last Night Part XXIII

Parts I-XXII:

Here is Part I

Here is Part II

Here is Part III

Here is Part IV

Here is Part V

Here is Part VI

Here is Part VII

Here is Part VIII

Here is Part IX

Here is Part X

Here is Part XI

Here is Part XII

Part XIII

Part XIV

Part XV

Part XVI

Part XVII

Part XVIII

Part XIX

Part XX

Part XXI

Part XXII

XXIII.

Alastair watched his sister play with her dolls on the rug in the sitting room from the second to last step on the landing. A safe distance away from the fire, her small voice filled the room with color that it sorely lacked. Since their father’s return from wherever it was he had been for the past year, their furniture (what furniture they had) started to disappear.

Cordelia, being only eight hardly noticed. Not when her father’s attention became more of a pressing matter, but Alastair being ten years old and having been the one to mind the estate after their staff stopped showing up and Sona fell into another one her deep depressions, he began to notice.

And he could only suspect one person responsible.

After being satisfied that Cordelia was out of ear range, Alastair turned and jogged up the stairs two at a time. He noted the sconces on the walls were missing along with the bulbs except for one left unprotected and obnoxiously bright without a cover. The rug that ran along the hallway was gone as well leaving the floor bare so that every footstep and noise could be heard. Alastair took a deep breath through his nose and steadied himself.

He’d secretly hoped that his mother would be the one to address the issue, but she hardly seemed to notice the missing things, or if she did, she didn’t feel the need to mention it. The house grew colder and colder by the minute despite his father's enormous presence to fill it.

A part of him chastised himself for not being more elated about his father’s return. The rest of his family members seemed to be, but because of his illusive absence for the past year with no explanation about where he’d gone and the stink of alcohol lingering on his vest, something deep in Alastair’s chest froze towards his father.

Others may be warmed by his false promises and elaborate stories, but he knew the truth. Call it a gift of his, he could see past the pretense his father shoveled in front of everyone to hide his sins.

When he reached the oak door at the end of the hall, with a shaking fist, he knocked.

At first no sound came, so he knocked again; louder this time.

A shuffle could be heard inside. Glass shattering against the floor followed by a string of cursing.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, father,” said Alastair. “I need to speak with you.”

“What’s this about?”

Alastair placed a hand on the handle. “May I come in?”

“Is this important?”

“It is,” said Alastair lifting his jaw.

“Very well,” said his father.

Alastair turned the knob and pushed his way inside. The bitter, sweet smell of freshly spilt whiskey hit him and burned his eyes. He resisted the urge to cover his nose with a handkerchief.

His father wobbled on his hands and knees attempting to clean up a spill with his pocket cloth, but moving as if he were on a very unsteady ship. Red rimmed eyes looked up at Alastair and a grin curved around his father’s face.

“What is it?” He slurred as he fell backwards against the wingback chair that happened to be the only piece of furniture in the room beside the beverage cart sitting beside the window. “Am I late for supper?”

“It’s nearly noon, father,” said Alastair. “I’m here because it appears that our household items have gone missing.”

“Missing?” Elias squinted up at his son.

“Yes.” Alastair rolled his eyes. “As in gone.”

“Like what?”

“My writing desk, Cordelia’s doll house,” said Alastair. “Mum’s good China, the Tehran crafted weapons, the silver, and where’s the furniture that used to be in this room?”

“Alastair—“

“If you’re pawning our household items to support your drinking then—“ It wasn’t a question of if, nor was it an accusation. Alastair knew the truth, he knew even if he didn’t want to believe it.

“Then what?” asked Elias. “Go on, boy, finish your sentence.”

“You’ll not take one more thing from this house,” said Alastair.

Elias scoffed and attempted to push himself up from the floor when his hand landed on a piece of glass. Elias hissed and fell backwards again onto the floor. “Bloody hell!” He held his hand up, dripping now with fresh blood. “Don’t just stand there. Get me something to stench this with.”

Alastair sighed and walked across the room to the beverage cart. A towel hung from the silver handle, stained with spilt alcohol, Alastair grabbed it and brought it over to his father.

“Where is your steele?” asked Elias as he ripped the towel from Alastair’s hand.

“I don’t have one with me,” said the boy.

“What kind of Shadowhunter doesn’t carry around his steele?”

“I’m nearly ten, father,” reminded Alastair. “I’m hardly a Shadowhunter yet. I can go find yours if you’d like.”

Elias took the towel away from his hand and examined the wound in his palm. “No, don’t trouble yourself. You’ve clearly more pressing matters to attend to. Have you spoken to your mother about these missing items?”

“I haven’t wanted to trouble her—“

“Only me?” asked Elias. “I suppose I deserve that.” He got slowly and unsteadily to his feet. When he stepped backwards a few steps, Alastair had to stop himself from reaching out towards him. He looked like a toddler learning to walk for the first time.

The question dangled on Alastair’s tongue as he watched his father pitch forward and back like an aged ship on angry seas: why did he insist on drinking? When did he become a drunk? Alastair, honestly, couldn’t remember. There’d been a time when sobriety found him for a few months and then he’d be back on the streets again. Alastair was seven years old the first time he picked him up from the porch steps when he passed out before he’d made it inside. The first time, he’d thought it kind of comical, by the third time that week, he found it frightening. And now, he wanted to ask his father why. Why weren’t they enough for him? What was his father chasing that could be found or forgotten at the bottom of a bottle?

Alastair feared he might never know.

_ _ _

The pocket watch ticked inside Alastair’s palm where he sat on the sofa in the drawing room waiting for Cordelia and Lucie to enter through the door. It was five past three; the time they were supposed to return. Questionably, James hadn’t returned either. Alastair knew he should have trusted his instincts over his sister’s word, but he’d allowed himself to feel marginally guilty about upsetting Cordelia.

How could she not understand he was simply trying to do what was best for her? She clearly wasn’t thinking straight— and to be honest she never had when it came to the Herondale boy. It would be over his dead body that he’d ever see James hand-in-hand with his sister.

No, not even then.

Alastair shoved his watch back into his pocket, stood from the chair retrieving his jacket from the arm, and marched towards the door.

“Oh,” said a voice behind him. “Are you leaving too?”

Alastair turned to find Thomas descending the stairs in his full fighting gear. His soft brown hair was combed back away from his face and curling slightly behind his ears. His scarred hands were adjusting the straps across his broad chest that just barely fit across him. Alastair swallowed and quickly averted his eyes to his shoes and then the front door.

With a strange pitch in his voice, Alastair said, “I hadn’t realized you were here.”

“I came with my parents to meet the Herondales,” said Thomas tucking in the extra bit of leather left at the end of his strap. “I thought Christopher, Matthew, and James would be here, but it appears I am at a loss. Miss communication.”

“James is with Matthew on patrol,” said Alastair. “At least that’s what I was told.”

Thomas looked off to the side. “Then I’m sure that’s the truth of it. Where are you headed?”

“I’m supposed to meet my sister at the other Lightwood’s estate,” said Alastair. “She’s running a bit behind so I figured I’d spare her the trouble and catch her there.”

“I’m on my way there as well,” said Thomas. “Would you mind if I joined you?”

Surprised, all words evaporated from Alastair’s mind. When he managed to find them again, a bright color had emerged in his cheeks. “Are you quite sure. I don’t mind finding my own way there.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Thomas reaching for the door knob. “We’re going in the same direction, not on an outing together, there’s no reason for us to take two separate carriages to the same destination.” Thomas opened the door and without waiting for Alastair to respond, he walked out onto the front steps.

Still slightly shocked, Alastair combed a hand through his hair, picked up his cane, and followed.

“What plans do you and Cordelia have today?” Thomas asked from atop the bench seat of his parent’s carriage.

Alastair, who’d chosen to remain quiet despite the kindness being extended to him, focused on the main road as he answered. “I’m not sure. She mentioned something about going to a park.” He was quite certain that was all that was going on between them. Perhaps his parents conjured him into being kind to the injured, isolated, and troubled Carstairs boy. Perhaps this was some sort of revenge and Thomas had alternative plans of dropping him into the Thames.

“It’s a lovely day for the park—“

“What are you doing?”

Thomas’s eyebrow jumped. “Excuse me?”

“This?” Alastair motioned between them. “This show of uncharacteristic kindness. I can tell it’s not genuine. Who put you up to this?”

Thomas sighed and straightened his shoulders. “I felt badly for the way I spoke to you the other day.”

Alastair had to fight to keep the shock from his face. “You felt bad? Thomas, you have nothing to feel badly about.”

“Perhaps,” said Thomas, “but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how unfair I was being towards you. Do not misunderstand me, this is not me granting you pardon for what you did, but rather an understanding.”

“Why?”

“Because when you created those lies about my father,” said Thomas, “I created lies for him, or what I thought were lies to help repair some of his reputation. My father, who is an upstanding citizen by most regards, and truly a wonderful father, and I was making up all kinds of lies to protect him even though I knew the rumors about him were lies— even though I believed him. I can’t imagine if the rumors were actually true.”

He didn’t have to say it. Alastair had long since learned to read between the lines of what someone was saying to him.

“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” said Alastair shortly.

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” said Thomas, never removing his eyes from the road, “and I don’t pity you. I’m merely saying that I understand. In a way, I understand.”

With the wind brushing against his face, Alastair felt a weight of sorts brush off of him.

“I am sorry for what I’ve done to your family and Matthew’s,” said Alastair. “I’ve been minding my father’s reputation since I was a boy.”

“Why did you do it?” asked Thomas. “I know why I fought for my father’s reputation, but yours was an actual alcoholic.”

Alastair bristled. “Alcoholic or not, he is still my father.”

“I’m sorry if I offended—“

“You didn’t offend,” said Alastair. “I suppose I fought so hard to protect him for so long that I simply forgot how to not to. I’d been able to keep up a pretense about my father that at the first sign of trouble, my instinct was to defend him, and the only way I knew how to do that was to put the spotlight onto someone else. If I’m being honest, it wasn’t him I was trying to protect.”

“Yourself?” asked Thomas, as he steered the horse down an empty brick paved street.

“Cordelia,” said Alastair. “I was trying to protect Cordelia. She grew up believing that our father was someone to be admired. She held him on the same pedestal that the Herondale children held their father. I made sure that she never knew about his… illness.”

“Does she know now?”

“She does,” said Alastair. “I couldn’t protect her forever.”

“No,” said Thomas, drawing the horse to a stop at the brick pathway leading to a white gated entrance to a garden. “I suppose you can’t.”

Alastair looked up at the beautiful ivy crested veranda and tried to remember what had caused him to go fetch Cordelia in such a hast. Surely, she was all right with Lucie and if she was in fact with James, perhaps it was high time that she started worrying about her own mistakes. And if she needed him, he would surely be there for her.

“Perhaps I’ll wait here,” said Alastair. “While you go fetch Christopher.”

From the ground now, Thomas looked up at Alastair as he tied the horse to a post. “Would you like me to get Cordelia for you?”

“No,” said Alastair, adjusting his coat. “I shouldn’t trouble her. She’ll return when—“

Before he could finish his sentence, a high pitched scream came from inside the house. Thomas and Alastair both looked in the direction of which it had come and then back at each other.

“Cordelia,” said Alastair as he swung himself down from the driver’s bench as Thomas drew a steele from the strap on his shoulder and whispered its name to it. It burst to light in his hand, accenting his face in a halo of light.

The two men stalked up to the open front door: Alastair at the front, with Thomas trailing closely behind him, both of them scanning their surroundings.

Upon entering the house, it didn’t appear that anything was out of place through the kitchen. There was no sign of a scuffle or demon activity. Even though he didn’t know him all that well, Alastair wouldn’t put it past the odd glasses wearing one to release a demon during one of his poorly executed experiments.

They inched through the kitchen into the short hallway that went through to the sitting room. Attached to the room was a staircase and from the second floor, they could hear an exchanging of voices.

Alastair broke for the stairs at a run with Thomas close behind him. He followed the direction the voices were coming from and turned to the left, stopping at a door that was partially opened. He was seconds from storming it, when Thomas grabbed him by the coat tail and wretched him back.

“Wait,” said Thomas and stepped in front of him, “listen.”

“I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” said a second voice laced with ill intention and centuries of old lies. “Not unless you want me to start breaking bones in their bodies starting with the smallest.”

Thomas grabbed Alastair’s arm and mouthed a name. “Belial.”

Suddenly, the door slammed in front of Alastair and he heard the faint sound of the lock.

“We don’t have much time. I have a very short window back into my realm and we’ll need to be going now. That is if you want your friends to live.”

“Lucie,” said a male voice that Alastair could not recognize. “Don’t go with him. I’m not meant to be here. I’m not meant to be alive.”

“How rude,” said Belial. “Do you have any idea how hard your mother and sister worked to bring you back to life. The least you could do is be more grateful.”

“If I go with you.” The voice was clearly Lucie’s and if Lucie was in there then so would Cordelia. “If I agree to do what you ask, you’ll promise to leave them alone?”

“You have my word,” said a second voice laced with ill intention and century old lies.

Thomas glanced at Alastair and pointed at the medieval spear hanging on the wall in the hallway. Alastair reached up and pulled it carefully from it’s hooks as Thomas took several steps back, picked his foot up, and kicked their way through the lock with his heel in a single, impressive stomp. As Thomas reached for Lucie, pulling her away from the mysterious figure in the center of the room, Alastair threw the spear with every ounce of his might.

He watched it spiral through the air, quick as an arrow, and then stop mere inches from Belial’s chest. A wicked grin curled around the handsome face, as the spear evaporated and then reappeared faster then Alastair could blink.

It was warm, that was the first thing he thought about. Warmth spreading across his back and his chest. His eyes searched the room for Cordelia, but he couldn’t find her face amongst the ones he could not recognize. Everyone stared at him, the pale haired girl Grace and a dark haired boy sitting beside her looked on at him terrified. His eyes drifted to his left where Thomas held Lucie tightly in his arms both gaped at him horrified. He tried to say something, but his lungs had stopped expanding. When he looked down at his chest, he could see where the warmth had come from. The end of the spear protruded from his chest.

“Alastair!” Thomas yelled.

“Go,” he said, as rust flavored saliva dripped from between his lips. “Go now.”

“Release the girl,” said Belial, with his arms crossed and a rather bored expression on his face, “and the boy lives.”

Thomas’s grip on Lucie faltered just slightly.

“Don’t,” said Alastair. “He’s lying.”

“Let me go, Thomas,” said Lucie. “Let me go. He won’t let him die, he won’t if it means he can have me.”

“Listen to the girl, Thomas,” said Belial. “Save your friend and sacrifice the other or lose both.”

Alastair could see the turmoil in Thomas’s gritted teeth and reddened face, still his hands were white knuckled around Lucie. He wouldn’t let her go. Not unless—

Lucie brought her head forward and swung it back against Thomas’s sternum. With a quick maneuver of her feet, she twisted under his grip and shoved him off balance into the wall.

“Let them go,” said Lucie, her hair loose from it’s braid now and falling around her face giving her the appearance of a mad woman. “Let him live and I’ll go with you.”

Belial grinned and with a slight nod of his head, he and Lucie blinked from the room like a flash of lightning. Alastair was released from the spear in the wall and fell crumpled to the ground on his knees. His hands went to his chest to feel for the wound, but while the blood and hole in his shirt were still there, the wound and weapon were not.

A/N: Hope I redeemed myself just a little bit. Next update comes out 12/20

#jordelia fanfiction #The Last Night #the last hours #chain of gold #james x cordelia #thomas x alastair #thomastair #j

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hannagoldworthy · 3 years

Text

AWOL 16

(I’m working off of the KOTOR map here for where all of the planets are...funny enough, Dathomir really is in Mandalorian space, which explains why all the Jedi had to go to that Force-forsaken planet by themselves without bringing GAR backup. Of course, when you are the Chosen One, your Master is ‘close personal friends’ with the ruler of Mandalore, and the both of you have perfect wibbly-puppy-dog eye technique and make solemn promises not to disturb any actual Mandalorians, there’s a lot you can get away with.)

It was the general agreement that the best course of action to pursue after successfully perpetrating an armed robbery against a Separatist facility was to find a place to lie low for a while.

Where said place should be was not as easily settled.

“Has Yavin IV been much affected by the war?”

“The Republic has not been able to breach the lines that far as of yet, but I doubt Dooku has neglected it; it’s a perfect staging area for someone who doesn’t want to attract attention.”

“Felucia?”

“It’s an active war zone against the Commerce Guild, and a favorite target of the Ohnaka gang. They’ll both be looking for us.”

Maul held his chin in one hand, squinting at the map. Then, he looked up at Barriss and Savage in turn. “Dathomir is only two sectors away.”

Savage’s reply was instant. “No.”

Barriss was more measured. “She can only get to us if we get off the ship, right? So, we don’t have to land. We can just hide in orbit for a while until the Separatists find something else to be angry about.”

“And it’s in Mandalore space, which is neutral territory, correct?” Barriss nodded. “So we should not have to worry about running into Republic ships.”

“That’s assuming nothing goes wrong. And frankly, I’m beginning to think that that’s too much to expect.”

Maul sighed. “Even if we do somehow end up on the surface, she can’t hurt us anymore.” There was a muted note of warmth in the half-second he used to glance at Barriss in a gesture, but it was gone in the next instant. “So we don’t have to worry there.”

Savage growled in frustration, outvoted. “You’re underestimating her, both of you. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The younger Zabrak shook his head, already diverting their coordinates. “You worry too much, brother. It should only be another couple of days, and we’ll be away, you’ll see.”

***

From Korriban to Dathomir was a hyperspace journey of about a day, more than enough time to try and get some rest. And, they’d managed to weld the new bedframe to the cargo bay door, and make it up with the pillows and blankets that had been stolen.

Savage eyed it dubiously. “You’re saying that’s supposed to be comfortable?”

Barriss smiled, spreading the tooka blanket which Savage seemed to favor in order to make the bed more welcoming. “A little warm for my tastes, but you should be able to sleep like a baby.”

“Babies don’t sleep.”

“They do when they feel safe.”

“And I’m not gonna feel safe that high off the ground, without even any hides.”

Barriss considered that. “What about the skalder hide you got on Florrum? Would it be dry by now?” Something that big should have taken at least a month to properly tan, but Savage had apparently worked some ‘male magic’ on the thing; Barriss had long given up on understanding Dathomirian arts.

“Yes, but…” He trailed off as he began to think about that. “I suppose I could get it,” he grumbled, trundling over to the skin in question. “It doesn’t even smell like sulfur.”

Tentatively, he slipped under the blankets, dragging the hide to cover him as he did so, and laying carefully back against the pillows so that he wouldn’t tear them with his horns. “This is…very soft,” he said after a moment.

“Too soft?”

He didn’t answer; after a moment, a deep, rumbling snore sounded from the direction where his head was.

“Out like a light,” Barriss said, chuckling softly. She turned and started toward her own bunk, in the process approaching Maul, who had been watching silently from the hallway entrance. “There should be enough room if you want to sleep here as well. Iridonian Zabrak like to sleep in piles; I can’t imagine there being much difference between their people and yours.”

His expression was indecipherable. “I’ve always slept alone.”

She shrugged. “And Savage has always slept on the ground, but…well, just listen to him.” The snore had grown into a content, continuous purr, which almost seemed a cousin to the ship’s engine. “Maybe you would be more comfortable with it if you gave it a chance.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps…but, Mirialans sleep communally as well, to stave off the cold.”

There was something in the way he said that which made her gall bladder do a backflip. “Yes,” she said, maintaining her composure. “In some tribes, amongst ourselves, that is true. However, I’ve woken a few bedmates from sleep with my cold hands and feet, and the same would be true in this case.”

Maul blinked, and then raised both eyebrows at her incredulously. “…How many bedmates?”

She rolled her eyes. “Just my former crèchemates when we made blanket forts to tell scary stories. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“The gutter is a step up from where I’ve been, as you well know.”

His tone was bantering, but Barriss had seen enough patients cover emotional pain with dark humor to avoid being fooled. “I do know. But, perhaps,” she nodded significantly over to Savage, “you can take another step up?”

It was a good note to end on, and so she continued on to her bunk. As she pulled the drawer out and turned down the covers, however, Maul’s voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Good night, Barriss.”

He’d never wasted air on pleasantries such as that, not once in her time knowing him. It wasn’t his style, and she’d come to accept that. And yet, here he was now, waiting expectantly as she stared stupidly at him. “Good night,” she said at last, curling under her covers. “Sleep well.”

His glimmering eyes followed her as she pushed the drawer back into the wall with the Force; she stared at the alcove above her, stunned, because for a moment she swore she could see their reflection in the roof.

“Too close again, Barriss,” she murmured quietly to herself, trying to force her stomach to stand still. “Much too close.”

***

Maul didn’t feel particularly tired, so he brought one of their hand-held analysis devices over to the bed with him in the hopes of doing…some sort of work, hopefully. Unlike his brother, he’d slept in a soft bed before; aside from his own drawer-bunk in the hallway of this ship, the Queen’s quarters on Naboo had been too luxurious to resist. However, the entire time he’d been there, there’d been a nagging feeling of loneliness that had not existed in his Spartan quarters on Mustaphar or Coruscant; when he did drift off, he’d dreamed simply of behind held, and awoken clutching a pillow to his chest, purring like his life depended on it. At the time, he’d been disgusted with himself. If he was honest, it still disgusted him, how he longed for something like this. He was supposed to have been above creature comforts, the perfect, solitary assassin who only clung to the shadows.

But, if he was to retain Barriss Offee as a member of his organization, following her advice would be a decent show of good faith.

So, he drew back the covers, and settled into a seated position beside Savage. In response, his brother curled protectively around him, still asleep, but purring even more loudly; Maul froze, instinct telling him that unnecessary touching was to be avoided.

After a few tense heartsbeats, however, he began to relax; whether it because of the vibrations emanating from his brother’s throat, or the softness of the bed, or the meaty smell of the hide, Maul couldn’t tell. But, he let out the breath he had been holding, and leaned over his device while he grew accustomed to the feeling.

A line of aurebesh which he had not typed was waiting when he laid eyes on the screen. You’ve got it bad, kid.

He frowned. I can try to improve, if you tell me what I’ve got wrong.

Good grief, you’re un-socialized to the point of misunderstanding basic slang. It’d be cute if I didn’t want to rip out your Master’s beating heart and feed it to him.

Is that not my job?

Ooh, yeah. And I can watch. This is the best decision I’ve ever made.

Maul rolled his eyes. You said I could ask you for advice regarding Doctor Offee. You are Mirialan, and you were a Jedi once. How could I exploit the situation to keep her with me?

By which you mean, how can you earn her affection? And, well, you’re almost halfway there without my help; you already have her trust, and no little admiration.

How? She doesn’t even look at me.

And yet, she turns her back to you without fear – that’s not something she can easily unlearn, with a war against the Sith raging. That’s trust.

Maul snorted. That’s just lack of fear. She knows I’m still in recovery.

Okay, but she also is trying to hide the fact that she likes you more than she thinks she should.

He frowned. That’s ridiculous. I haven’t even offered her anything. Not that he had anything to really offer her; he was quite in her debt, and no doubt she knew it as much as he did.

I can still read minds, you know. Stop talking yourself down like that, it’s tragic. It’s really not a question of what you give her, anyway…but that’s a good place to start, come to think of it. How steady a hand are you in the kitchen?

***

The problem with soft beds and warm blankets was that when it was time to get up, they became even softer and warmer. Savage found this out to his own mild chagrin upon waking, still wrapped around a space that had been empty when he drifted off, but was warm from someone else’s body heat.

That realization was enough to sit him up. The sensation of cuddling up to a brother had been familiar enough that his brain hadn’t questioned it in sleep, but the thought of Maul willingly sharing such an intimate experience was unimaginable. But it could not have been Barriss; he could see her climbing out of her bunk right now.

“What’s that you’re cooking, Savage?” she asked blearily, heading toward the refectory door. Savage blinked; he was pretty obviously not cooking, but maybe she just assumed that it was him since most of the time he took that job.

He slipped out of the bed and tip-toed over to the kitchen, peering quietly inside. Maul was at their tiny stove, stirring some of the remaining skalder meat in a dark sort of sauce, with rice in another pan next to it. Barriss stood beside him, seeming just as befuddled as Savage felt to see Maul, who tended to wolf down whatever was put in front of him without much regard for taste, meticulously preparing a meal. With one fork, she speared a piece of the meat, and carefully ate it.

“I had to guess at the spices,” Maul said, focusing on the rice for a bit. “There were a lot of them in the supplies we got, but I don’t know what would go well with skalder.”

“It’s good,” Barriss pronounced after a moment. “But where in the world did you learn a recipe like this?”

“…The ether,” he said after a moment, dryly.

She laughed. “Very well, keep your secrets. Thank you; this was very thoughtful.” Barriss dished out a portion of meat and rice onto a plate, and as she turned to sit down, she noticed Savage. “Skalder tangine!” she said brightly, holding her plate up as some form of proof. “As good as my Master might have made it. You hungry?”

Savage was always hungry, so he gratefully accepted a plate…but he still stared at his brother all the while. Something was up. He just couldn’t quite put a name to it yet.

***

The morning (so to speak) went by fairly cheerfully; Barriss grilled Maul good-naturedly for the tangine recipe, and asked Savage how he slept. For once, she actually felt welcomed here, that she didn’t necessarily need to impress the both of them in order to stay on (or, well, alive). Savage was quieter than usual, but he was probably still just waking up, no problems there; Maul was discussing lesson plans for the day, since Savage was moving on to the next ataru kata, which was fairly intricate. The time went on so quickly, they did not notice the proximity alarm until they’d already pulled out of hyperspace in Dathomir’s gravity well.

When that happened, however, Barriss dropped her fork.

Maul took one look at her face and practically jumped out of the refectory, scrambling toward the bridge. “What the hell is a Republic destroyer doing here?” he yelled.

Savage’s eyes widened, and he thundered out of the room; Barriss followed, dampening her Force presence as much as she could, knowing exactly what she was going to see out of the pilot’s window.

Maul fiddled frenetically with the dials, growling in frustration. “I thought Mandalore had some sort of treaty forbidding the Republic to trespass,” he said.

“It was a treaty drafted by Duchess Kryze of Kalevala, who has friendly relations with the Jedi. And that is Anakin Skywalker’s flagship. No doubt the Council worked out some sort of exception.”

“But how would they know we would come here?”

“They were looking for us, and this is your homeworld?”

The communicator fired up, and a trooper’s voice filtered through the static. “Unidentified shuttle, provide your transponder codes.”

Maul didn’t even think of responding; he already had the coordinates coded in for another hyperspace jump, but Barriss stopped him from hitting the last button. “If we just appear out of nowhere and then disappear, they’ll clone our heading because we look suspicious.” She cleared her throat and accepted the communication. “Like hell I will,” she said roughly in what she hoped was a passable Mandalorian accent. “You are in our space, Republican shabuir. Why don’t you give us your transponder codes?”

The line went dead, but the star destroyer drifted without appearing to do anything. “Can you sense anything about what they’re doing?” she asked. “I don’t want to reach out; General Skywalker knows me personally.”

Maul and Savage both studied the ship. “I don’t think I sense Skywalker,” Savage said after a moment.

“No…but they are scrambling the fighter squads.” Maul deleted his previous coordinates. “We’re going to have to enter the atmosphere; it’ll be harder for them to track us there for the Jedi to sense us.”

Savage sat down, shaking his head. “I told you this was a bad idea.”

“Relax, brother; we’re not even going to touch the ground.”

“Just like we were going to hide in orbit until everything settled down.”

“Will you stop? It was a mistake, I get it. We’re fixing it.”

Barriss strapped herself into a seat anyway, bracing for a rough landing. Anakin Skywalker was fairly proud of his fighter squadrons; this was going to be a bumpy ride.

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