#this idea has definitely been done before but... its something ive wanted to draw for many years now. im gonna try and finish it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nevertheless-moving · 3 years

Text

Suicidal Misunderstanding X

Star Wars Time Travel AU #27

Part I - - - - - Part II - - - - - Part III - - - - - Part IV - - - - - Part V - - - - - Part VI - - - - - Part VII - - - - - Part VIII - - - - - Part IX

“I realize this is incredibly difficult,” the Nautolan Soul Healer said calmly. “But in order for us to help Obi-Wan, we need to determine the cause of his current disconnection with reality. Based on the drug panel, and convenient surveillance, we have, to the best of our ability, ruled out temporary psychosis brought on by a drug interaction.”

Cody stiffened further, not sure how to react to anything anymore. When a brother tried to end his own life, it was usually obvious why.

Sife Aerdo continued on. “There have, of course, been cases of Jedi Seers giveing into their fears of the future, or losing their sense of reality, but every case study involving such an extreme reaction was the result a gradual degradation over the course of many years. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Obi-Wan experienced a vision, and it may have impacted his breakdown to some extent. The more we know, the more successful any attempts to convince him of reality will be.”

Bant furrowed her brow in thought, trying to replay three decades of increasingly vague discussions of nightmares.

”Considering the high profile nature of his position, we cannot rule out some kind of psychological attack, perhaps even a darksider incursion.

Anakin leaned forward intently, the inside of his skull buzzing with white noise.

"All that being said, we must be prepared to treat Obi-Wan’s self harm as the culmination of a long and quiet mental health struggle. He would not be the first in the Order to disguise such a thing with durasteel self-discipline.”

At that, Bant and Mace took a moment to release their feelings to the force, while Anakin raised his shields defensively.

Master Aerdo finally hesitated, before continuing in the same smooth tone. “I would ordinarily prefer to structure this kind of conversation quite differently- allow Obi-Wan time to share his feelings first and invite you each separately to support him in the healing process. But he’s gone from fighting sedatives and force compulsions as though the fate of the galaxy depended on it, to a self-induced coma. All while barely lucid, yet still somehow maintaining Master Class mental shielding. We need to get a better understanding of his mental landscape if we’re going to even begin the process of treatment."

It is necessary to note that everyone in that room had led, in one way or another, a somewhat miserable life. This was the main reason none of them could claim that the next five hours were the worst they had ever experienced.

“But he’s always had terrible sleeping habits.” Anakin said hoarsely.

“Yes, but I think they got worse after Qui-Gon passed,” Bant argued, not sure what point she was making.

“When I pointed out he couldn’t be getting more than three hours a night he told me that he could manage on meditation” Cody offered irritably.

“That’s technically true,” Mace confirmed. “If the Master in question is well-balanced otherwise”

“So its like his eating habits, crushing responsibilities, and repeated exposure to violence, then? Completely fine for a Jedi, in less it’s not, in which case it’s a major red flag?”

“I think it would help to establish a timeline.“

Aerdo actually dredged up old mission reports, leading to the group reluctantly contacting Ashoka for her memories of Mortis.

At her Master’s insistence, she told them everything she remembered, hazy as it was, nervously elaborating on her own memories of falling. To her confusion, Master Windu all but brushed past that, assuring her that the important thing with stepping into darkness was the choice to the return to the light. Anakin bizarrely agreed with Windu. Out loud. Unnerved by the cooperation more than anything, she put her holographic foot down and demanded to know what was going on.

Anakin took the comm-link into a separate room to speak privately.

Upon return, he informed the group (with a visibly red and puffy face) that Kit would be escorting her back from Mount Cala cleanup early, daring anyone to disagree. Windu nodded and the conversation continued on.

Together they rewatched holo-footage of Obi-Wan laughing amongst Ghost company the night before last, and debated reports from psychometric investigators who had scoured the cantina as well as Obi-Wan’s personal quarters for traces of illicit substances. Between that and another drug panel, they were finally forced to conclude that despite the timing, the alcohol at most confused Obi-Wan’s perception of a vision, or possibly simply loosened his tongue.

Bant prodded Cody to repeat every word from the holocar ride to the temple, taking furious notes. Cody was unable to stop the heat that crawled up his face.

Just when the looming horror of Obi-Wan actually preparing to intentionally die started to break over Anakin, Windu interjected.

“You don’t see what I do,” the Harun Kal said grimly. “Something galaxy-sized shattered around Obi-Wan and he didn’t break from it. The closest comparison I have is Master Yaddle’s presence when she meditated on her confinement. He’s chosen to keep going, even when, quite frankly, death would be a release. We’re missing something fundamental.”

“He said there were ‘other dark forces at work.’ Even if the fight was objectively hopeless... there’s no way he would choose to die because of it!” Anakin agreed vehemently, shaking off morbid fears.

“But he did choose to die.” Cody said quietly. And the wind went out of Anakin’s sails.

“Lets go back.”

Anakin gritted his teeth as they picked apart everything ‘unusual’ Obi-Wan had said and done leading up to his visit with Bant.

“What exactly did he...”

“So Plo Koon was able to get a read through his shields?”

“Did he have anything to eat?”

“How did that compare to...”

“When he's mentioned things in the future...did it seem good or bad to you?” Bant asked.

“Bad.” Cody and Anakin said in unison. Remembering the trip to the temple Cody spoke again, “Definitely bad.”

“Right. When we were talking he sometimes used the wrong tenses for things, people. I confronted him on not knowing ‘when’ he was after Knight Skywalker left. He told me that he knew what was real, but he was “enjoying not fully living in the moment” he also said that he intended to “wake up”

“Enjoying? That’s the exact word he used?” Cody asked incredulous.

“He did seem...mostly happy yesterday. Giddy, at points.” Anakin said, slumping in on himself.

Bant looked at her notes once more before addressing the group.

“This isn’t vision psychosis in any manner I’ve heard of before...but I think I might have a theory. He used to have intense visions when we were kids; plenty of us did sometimes, but Obi-Wan would be unable to sleep after. What terrified him more than anything was the uncertainty that he might make the wrong choice- even when the vision was about something good, or neutral. His visions gradually stopped coming around puberty. We just had a conversation about this a few months ago- how relieved he was to only have to manage flashes of precognition. If he had a random, horrifying vision of a terrible future...suicide wouldn’t be his reaction. It’s too final.”

“Even if he blamed himself for what he saw coming?” Mace asked.

“Especially if he blamed himself.” Bant said.

“What’s your theory?” Aerdo prodded.

“What if...what if he was telling the truth when he said he could separate out what was real and what was not? What if there was no distortion or blurring between now and then? What if he was just wrong about which was which?”

“That...would be a very extreme and abnormal manifestation of force-induced psychosis. He has training in distinguishing reality from visions. The continued presence of his mental shielding means that the fabric of his mind can’t be so horrifically collapsed in on itself.”

“What if the vision was actually that realistic?” Bant said, pushing back against the soul healer. “So detailed and vivid that it effectively was a reality in itself, and everything else, all of us...”

“Were just memories” Anakin finished. “It would...actually explain pretty much everything. You said he wanted to wake up and when...when I found him.” He stopped, swallowing. “When I found him, he argued with me...what if he wasn’t trying to hurt himself? If you’re right...that would mean I found him trying to get back to reality.”

“It could explain his behavior in the halls...his desperation to wake...” Sife mused “But it runs counter to every other experience I’ve had with those managing prophetic visions. Master Windu, could that explain the shatterpoints you saw?”

“I’m not certain. It would have to have been extraordinarily real to create the echos of Shattering I witnessed. I don’t know if that depth of vision has occurred before, but then again, many things are possible in the force.”

“You really think he might have been...trying to wake up from dream? By killing himself?!” Cody asked incredulous.

“If that ends up being what happened I am going to give him such shit. That is the worst way to end a vision.” Anakin replied.

“Yes. It is.” Bant said pointedly. “That’s why it’s a last resort, after every other attempt to wake fails.”

They all sat in silence, processing various implications. Cody was unnerved by another terrifying insight into force powers, as well as the idea that the General might vividly remember Cody being inexplicably mind-controlled into trying to kill him. Anakin was trying to understand what this would mean for them, and the conversations he had thought they had had. Did...any of it count, if he thought he was offering it to a hallucination?

“Alright, this is a valuable working idea, but let’s make sure to examine everything with an open mind before we draw any more conclusions. Anakin, what happened after you left the healers office?”

Obi-Wan’s critique of the practicalities of visiting a soul healer could be and was interpreted multiple ways. The incongruity of peacekeepers in war sparked a rehash of earlier discussion. More apologies. Self identifying as ‘crazy’ inspired new debate, especially in the context of the new theory.

“When I saw him enter the fountain room I assumed he had had a brutal run-in with dark force user.” Windu explained. “Based on everything we’ve gone over, I don’t understand when...but some of the more insidious sith compulsions work by taking whatever small anger or hurt you feel and magnifying them until they consume you. If Obi-Wan was already experiencing self loathing...”

Cody sucked in a breath. “Then a Sith mind suggestion would bring him to commit suicide. It...sounds like something he might do, if he was partially in control. Take the blow rather than let himself be used as a weapon against anyone else, even his worst enemy.”

“Hells, it could have been an even vaguer compulsion, driving him to attack the person he hates the most,” Bant added darkly.

Anakin buried his head in his hands, trying to hold it together. He couldn’t afford to lose control or get angry. Hells, getting angry at Obi-Wan for ‘failing him’ when in pain could be the reason Obi-Wan was currently in the healing halls. The man said he loved him unconditionally, then practically had a breakdown over how much Anakin pushed that unconditional love to the breaking point, then killed himself. How was he supposed to-

“Anakin? Are you alright to continue?” someone said.

“Yes. No. There’s more I have to tell you...I don’t know if it will help but - it was hurting Obi-Wan...I...”

“Let’s just take it one step at a time. What happened after you left Mace?”

Apparently even Cody somehow knew more about Bruck Chun than Anakin. Master Windu and Eerin told different sides of the same sad story, which spiraled back into a conversation about Obi-Wan’s inadequacy issues, which somehow devolved into a long rant about Qui-Gon Jinn that Master Windu had apparently been holding back for years.

“My apologies.” He said afterwards, clearing his throat as the group stared, taken aback. “Old grievances. Go on Anakin, what did happened after you got to the ‘secret spot.’”

“He...was skirting around whatever was bothering him...I pushed him...told him I wanted to help...he said I couldn’t...because it was me...because of what I...”

Anakin stood up suddenly, feeling the walls of the room closing in.

“I’m sorry- I’m sorry I-”

He ran out.

He turned around almost immediately, pacing in the small corridor, knowing he couldn’t leave, simply needing a minute to catch his breath.

Master Windu followed him out after a moment, not saying anything, just standing there. Watching him.

“What!” Anakin finally snapped. “What do you have to say that I don’t know already!”

“Knight Skywalker-”

“Don’t call me that! I DON’T DESERVE-”

Anakin let out a frustrated snarl, punching a wall. The crumble of stone beneath this fist briefly made him feel better, but then he remembered Obi-Wan’s heartbroken expression in the light of an underworldly glow, and the tiny, choked sound he heard when the healers moved him and Anakin just...collapsed, falling to his knees.

Master Windu sank down gracefully beside him.

“Anakin. This isn’t about attachment issues, is it.”

“Not really, no. I mean, maybe you’ll blame attachment but it’s more about...”

“Anger.”

Anakin looked up at that, trying to regain the meditative calm he had felt for a glimmering moment yesterday, right in-between making peace in the cave and everything burning to ash.

“You know that I have had my own struggles with anger. It is how and why I came to develop Vaapad.”

“Yes, but you’ve Mastered your anger. And you’ve never...never given in to hate.”

A beat passed and Windu watched some of Skywalker’s familiar breaking points flicker into view.

“You’ve done something. Something you know the Jedi won’t forgive.”

“Obi-Wan forgave me.” Anakin said, whispering. “He said that even though I couldn’t fix what I did he loved me anyway and I just needed to...to honestly regret what I did and not do it again. I told him I’d get rid of my lightsaber and I meant it and...I thought he forgave me. I was ready to go to the Council with him, come clean about everything. And then I left him alone to get dinner and when I came back...he was holding my lightsaber. My lightsaber.”

Anakin buried his face in his hands, shuddering with creeping cold.

“I’m not going to critique your and Obi-Wan’s attachment to each other right now. I’m well aware that much of the order has turned to personal ties to maintain their stability given the ongoing horrors of war. I am, for many reasons, wary of the risks this brings us, yet it is also true that risks do not automatically mean failure. I myself have mastered my emotions in a different manner than conventional wisdom councils.”

Windu spoke carefully. For all that he and Anakin had similar relationships with the force, they rarely saw eye to eye on any given subject. At a certain point, Mace had accepted that the volatile young man was determined to find the worst possible interpretation for anything he said. And Mace was not the order’s most patient diplomat.

“As for your crime, whatever it is, l will tell you this: Unless you choose to renounce the code and leave our number, you will be treated as a Jedi Knight, subject to our protections, as well as our judgement. You will receive appropriate mental counseling. If you are judged to be a danger to those around you, your actions will be curtailed and monitored, possibly through temporary confinement. The Jedi do not believe in punitive measures for their own sake, but you may be required to provide restitution to those you harmed, perhaps indefinitely.

Silence hung perilously between them. Windu watched a tremor run through the unfathomable kaleidoscopic of shatterpoints that had orbited Skywalker since he was a boy. A small one broke inward, and an attached tangle of larger, darker ones fell away, crumbling to dust. The rest faded from view, invisible for the moment. A choice had been made, some decision that closed off at least one path to the darkside.

“There’s no one to make restitutions to.”

“...You’re going to have to elaborate on that.”

“Let’s go back inside- I don’t want to do this twice.”

They returned to the increasingly hated meeting room.

Anakin spoke in an outpouring of words about love and hate, about misplaced revenge and now uncertain forgiveness. When he finally finished, the room was deathly silent.

The three Jedi sat quietly while Cody pinched the bridge of his nose. “I guess this is why Jedi have the no attachment rule, huh? I admit I never really got it, but I suppose even if I-”

Bant abruptly lunged up, fumbling to bring her lightsaber to Anakin’s neck. Everyone jumped to their feet, except for Anakin, who stared at Bant with a wretched expression.

“MASTER EERIN! This is not-”

“Did you do it?” she asked, ignoring the Master of the Order.

“Bant!”

“It was my first thought after I saw him. We all rushed in expecting a fight, or a bomb, only to find you, insane, and him with a hole next to his heart. I didn’t want to believe it of course, but you’ve always had a violent streak that Obi-Wan, force help him, couldn’t quite soothe away. A fight gone wrong. Master Windu said it was suicide, and I believed him, and I’ve been trying to make sense of that ever since. But Mace found you after, didn’t he? After you felt guilty? Did you think he was going to turn on you?”

“Bant Eerin, you are dangerously-”

“No.” Anakin whispered.

“Obviously I might be why. But I didn’t- I couldn’t. I know I’m not good but I can’t even imagine- holding a saber against him like that. Kriff, do you not get how much I can’t handle losing people I love? I was insane when you saw me because I saw someone trying to kill Obi-Wan and I couldn’t even fight them.”

Bant held his gaze for several lingering seconds, deactivated her saber and dropping it with a clatter. They stared at each other, breathing heavily and not blinking. She returned to her seat, moving jerkily. “I apologize Knight Skywalker. That was uncalled for.”

“I wish I could say I wouldn’t have done the same thing in your shoes” he responded lowly. Bant made a tiny, unintelligible noise in reply.

Cody collapsed back into his chair, holstering his blaster. “Alright then...so after you finished sitting in the fountain room...what happened next?”

Everyone stared at him.

“What?”

“You’re handling Anakin’s confession somewhat dispassionately. We’re simply surprised.” Mace said slowly, returning to his seat at the same time as Master Aerdo fell into theirs.

Cody shifted uncomfortably. “The vod were trained in a wide range of enemy suppression tactics. While we’re extremely glad the Jedi have never asked us to employ them, I’m not...unfamiliar with this scale of deliberate slaughter. At least in the hypothetical, sir.”

“I see.” Aerdo said. “That is a valuable insight to have, thank you. Knight Skywalker-”

“Just...call me Anakin. Or Skywalker.”

“Anakin. When did this happen?”

“About two years ago, immediately before the First Battle of Geonosis.”

“And have you had any similar experiences with giving into the darkside since?” they asked placidly.

“I don’t think so but...we went to war the next day and....I don’t know if I’ve stopped fighting since it- since I did what I did.”

“Hmm. Anakin, would you mind stepping outside the room and waiting in the corridor for a moment please?”

He bit his tongue, tasting blood, and quietly walked out the door while the Masters decided his fate. He leaned back against a wall, desperately wanting to see Padme.

To his surprise, the door opened barely a few minutes later, and he was politely invited back in.

“Anakin.” Master Windu spoke. “Thank you for telling us this. It’s an important insight into Obi-Wan’s feelings right now, and I recognize that you could have kept it a secret. As Head of the Order, and with the advice of a Senior Soul Healer, I have made a decision. You will be assigned a personal soul healer, who you will start seeing tomorrow. Commander Cody pointed out that over nearly two years of continuous warfare, you have maintained some of the the lowest trooper casualty units of any division, by a significant margin if we evaluate based on mission risk level. Your civilian and enemy casualties will be reviewed, but even considering constant war, since your massacre of the Tuskens, you have clearly managed to at least... direct your violence away from the innocent. We do not consider you a threat to the inhabitants of the world. For the time being, I see no real benefit to limiting or tracking your behavior within the temple or on planet, but you are barred from leaving orbit. I have decided to delay a full reckoning before the council until such time that your former Master is well enough to provide his own opinion. Give me just cause, and I will have you confined to a force-suppressing cell. Do you understand?”

Anakin nodded, bowing in acknowledgment. All things considered, it was...honestly better than he expected.

“Now, as Cody” Windu paused. “My apologies, as the Commander was saying-”

“Cody’s fine, sir” Cody said, wrung out in a way different from anything Kamino had trained him for.

“...I think we can all consider ourselves on a first name basis at this point.” Bant said with a snort. She paused. “That includes you Anakin. I really don’t know how to handle what you did but kark it, I don’t want to hate you. For myself.”

Everyone nodded.

“As Cody was saying, what happened next?”

Peace. Comfort. Hunger. A warning in the force...

“I tried to pull the saber back but his finger was already on the igniter...”

“You probably saved his life. Even a second later-”

“I know, that’s almost the worst part.”

“-his neck”

“Why would he change weapons?”

“What if-”

“He said what to you and Healer Che?”

“That has to support the detailed vision idea, think about-”

“I’m sorry, Emperor?”

“I think we’re done.”

Anakin stared blankly at Sife. “But we didn’t figure anything out.”

“Not conclusively, but we’re unlikely to make any more progress, you’ve given me enough information to preform a meaningful meditative scan, or guide a conversation, should Obi-Wan wake, or navigate through his mind, should we decide to make a more decisive attempt at his shields.”

“Master Aerdo... I leave the final judgement up to you, but I strongly urge you to make a more decisive attempt. I am more convinced now than I was...” Mace glanced at the chronometer “five hours ago that this was motivated by a specific, external stimuli, likely dark. Do you disagree?”

“No.” they said with a sigh. “But I don’t want to underestimate how much underlying factors might have contributed to his response to stimuli, including underlying factors that none of you were aware of.”

The Nautolan Soul Healer stood up, tucking their hands into their sleeves to address the room with classical Jedi serenity. It was a little irritating.

“In any case, we all need to sleep, eat, and meditate. Master Eerin, you have the rest of the day off, I've cleared it with Master Che already. Master Windu, I leave the final judgement up to you, and I am aware that your duties as Master of the Order are unceasing, but I urge you to take some time to center yourself before returning to the council. Commander Cody, I would be more than willing to arrange soul healing for you or any of the Vod, please let me know. Anakin, you will receive a comm later today with further details on your future healing sessions.

They bowed low, then glided out the door.

Bant stood next, bowed individually to each soul, and sped walked out.

Commander Cody cleared his throat awkwardly, “Mace- what should I tell the troops? We’re supposed to have command briefings later tonight.”

“If anyone asks about General Kenobi, tell them its classified.” I’ll schedule a briefing on the subject. Now go find Captain Rex and take care of yourself, that’s an order.”

Cody saluted, first to the high General, then to Anakin.

Finally it was just Mace and Anakin.

“Is there anyone who you trust who I can call to stay with you.” Master Windu asked.

“I can manage on my own” Anakin replied, not willing to give the Master of the Order anything else he could use against him, even after everything.

Master Windu held back a sigh.

He continued once more, making a deliberate attempt to soften his tone. “Anakin- I know we’ve had our differences, but this is not a trick, nor a trap. You’ve suffered a series of great shocks in the last 24 hours and handled them with immense maturity. I myself am struggling to deal with the emotional fallout.”

Anakin looked up at that, surprised. He didn’t seem to be struggling, but maybe that was what made him a good Jedi Master...

“As I told you before, I am not going to begrudge you the comfort of attachment. I’m rather convinced it would do you more harm than good at this point. I don’t want you flying right now, and you don’t have to be alone. I hope we have come to a better understanding today, but I doubt my presence is suddenly a comfort, though please correct me if I’m wrong. Now is there someone I can call?”

Padme ended her call with Master Windu extremely discomfited. She had barely heard from Anakin since he ran out on her the night before last to take care of an apparently extremely drunk Obi-Wan. He had messaged her a few times that night, promising to make it up to her, but had been comm-silent since. She had been starting to get worried, and now the Master of the Order was asking her to pick him up from the temple. Fortunately, she had already cleared most of her meetings for the week well in advance (Courascant leave usually meant THEM time, not that she was jealous of Obi-Wan, of course).

The speeder ride back from the temple was silent. All Anakin would say was that he would explain everything once they were in ‘a secure location.’

The door to the apartment had scarcely closed behind them when Anakin fell into her arms, shaking.

“Anakin, talk to me love, what’s wrong?” She gently guided him to the couch, arranging him so she could hold him protectively.

“Obi-Wan tried to kill himself.”

She let out a harsh gasp, “No! He can’t have, he would never-”

“I got to him in time, but Padme... he was holding a lightsaber to his heart. It was...really close” He burrowed deeper into the folds of her dress, and she gripped him fiercely.

“Oh gods, is he-”

“He’s physically healing, but he’s still...not all there. I spent all of today locked in a room, trying to figure out if it was a Sith Attack, or an insane vision, or..or me”

“Anakin! What do you mean ‘me’ - Obi-Wan loves you, you-”

“I know.” Anakin interrupted her again, knowing he was being unfair; he was just too exhausted to be patient.

“He told me loved me. He...he...found out about what I did to the Tusken village, You should have seen his face, Padme, he was horrified, but he still told me he loved me, and he was willing to forgive me, even though he shouldn’t”

“Of course he forgave you,” Padme whispered. “You’re not a monster, Anakin, I know you would never do something like that again.”

"And then after we talked, I left him alone and he-” Anakin choked out into her dress.

Tears ran down her face, heart breaking. “That’s- that’s horrible. Anakin...it must have have been a attack, Obi-Wan wouldn’t do that.” she said urgently.

He pulled away, horrified. “I made you cry. I made Obi-Wan cry too. I’m sorry- Padme please, promise me you won’t-”

She grabbed the sides of his head.

Her nails bit into the soft skin behind his ears as she pulled him down so they were face-to-face, vowing, “Never. I swear by the force itself, I will never choose death over life.”

He let out a relieved sigh, eyes fluttering closed.

“Now you,” she demanded

“As long as I have anyone to live for, I swear by the force, I will never choose death over life.”

She pulled him the rest of the way in for a bruising kiss. He lifted her, and they desperately clung at one another as he carried her to bed. They continued like that, clinging and grasping, until exhaustion carried him to sleep. She pulled the covers over top them both and curled around him defensively as the day slowly faded away.

Part XI

#star wars #my au #suicidal misunderstanding au #prequel trilogy #potentially triggering #discussions of suicide #references to self-harm #star wars au #bonding? between #Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker #? in my #hurt/comfort fic #? It’s more likely than you’d think #also I struggle with fix it stories that just never address the big tusken elephant in the room? of course i want everyone to #live happily ever but theres a certain scale of atrocity that i feel u gotta address 2 get there #ugh this chapter got reallly long and im just gonna post it ok? ok.#meh #a lot of this fic is just people mentally going What The Fuck at various registers with different inflections #Because that’s not an inappropriate response to time travel in general! and star wars canon in particular.#star wars au no 27

252 notes · View notes

i-am-infinite · 3 years

Text

Guilt (Part 1): The Rescue

(Din Djarin x ForceSensitive!Fem!Reader)

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Slight Chpt 12 and 13 spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Description: Moff Gideon has found someone else to run his experiments on and word gets back to Din. Will he take his son far away and try and find somewhere safe? Or will the guilt of an innocent being put in his son’s place eat away at him? (No Y/N or ___ used)

Word Count: Slightly over 4K

Warnings: Mentions of blood and needles. Broken glass. Fainting. Blood loss. Canon type violence. Possible bad writing (first fic pls go easy on me). If I’m missing anything please let me know, I’ve never done one of these before.

A/N: This is my first fanfic I’ve written so it might be really bad but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head so here it is. I also made up a planet/system and don’t know if star wars has alarm clocks but i wrote it in anyway. I also wrote this in Word first and then realized I couldn’t copy it over so I tried my best to type it over in here.

Normal. That is what was used to describe your life. Nothing out of the ordinary. Life wasn’t boring per se, but it definitely wasn’t compelling enough for your tastes. Studying to be a healer help keep it somewhat interesting but not enough.

Bzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzz. Crust littered eyes creak open as your face unsticks from the textbook scattered across the desk. Bzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzz. Your stiff neck cracks as you finally sit up. Fell asleep studying again. You loved learning about healing, you really did. But the long nights and barely sleeping was enough to make your head explode. Looking over at the clock with bright red numbers blinking at you. 8:15.

8:15! I’m late! You think as you force yourself awake. No not again! Being a student means you need to do hands on hours down at the nearest medcenter. All the late night studying also means that you oversleep most days. Grabbing your work bag filled with a change of clothes, in preparation of these events, you run out the door.

Your feet hit the wet cobble stones as it echos through your little part of the city. Vendors lining up the street ready to start their days. Passing the shop you went to yesterday, your mind too preoccupied to notice that it’s empty today. You know that theres is a faster route to the medcenter, but is it a path you really want to take today? Dark and windy path that you can barely see five feet in front of you on mornings like this. Too foggy and muggy for your liking. You’d rather stick to the main road where there’s people, where if anything were to happen, people would see, they would know. Regardless, it shaves fifteen minutes off your commute. You loathe having to be late for another shift. Making the sharp turn in between tow booths, you pace quickens to get through as quickly as you can. While not having much visibility, you swear you can see a pair of eyes in the dark. Has to just be my imagination, you convince yourself, I just need to keep going. It’ll be fine.

Footsteps echo behind you. Hands grab your shoulders. A scream rises in your throat, but no sound comes out. Everything goes dark when you feel something hit the side of your head.

Sigh. “Grogu get back in your seat.” The little baby waddles down off the controls and into his father’s lap. “Not what I meant,” Din grumbles with a smile hidden under his helmet. He grabs Grogu by his little robe and places him in the seat to his right and tells him to buckle up as a holo comes through from Greef Karga.

“Mando, we’ve just got word that Moff Gideon might have been seen in the Braic system. It looks like they found a substitute for the baby for the time being. I would use this time to go find a hide-out and lay low. He could still come back for the little one. Be well,”

Din goes to start the ship and find coordinates to stay out of trouble for a while when he hears the baby whine. Looking back at his adoptive child, all Din can see is Grogu, then a nameless kid, lying unconscious on a metal table, trapped underneath a contraption. Din starts breathing heavy and feeling sick that he ever gave his son up to those Imps. All he can hear is the beeping of the machine he’s hooked up to. Anger boiling back to the surface as he hears himself yell at the doctor all over again in his memories. No, he tells himself, He’s here with me. He’s fine. He’s safe. He shakes himself out of it and goes to fly the Razor Crest off planet.

Before he even gets off the planet, all Din can think about is that innocent person in his son’s place. They were going to kill Grogu, just for his blood for their experiments. Din can’t bring the kid anywhere near those people, he can’t risk losing his family, not when both of them have formed such attachments to each other. But he can’t stop thinking of this person who is in the that position now. He should’ve made sure Gideon was dead. Because of that now more people are going to get hurt.

Without thinking he turns on his holo already asking, “Where is he taking them?”

Feeling groggy with heavy eyes, you are able to open them just a bit to a blinding light. Reluctantly closing them again, you lift your arm to rub your eyes, but only they don’t move. What? The rest of your senses start coming back and you can feel the cool metal against your back, the same metal wrapped around your wrists and your ankles attached to the table. Finally bracing the light and opening your eyes, lifting your head slightly off the table and oh no the room is spinning now. There is an IV in your arm drawing your blood out into some odd machine, explaining the dizziness. Second time in two days you’ve had to deal with your own blood.

Walking through the shops on your one day off, you pick up a flower hair pin. The glasswork is so intricate and entrancing, you can’t help but turn it over and over in your hands. A pearl bead sitting in the center of iridescent gray and white petals. Placing it back in its place, your had scrapes against another glass design that is not yet finished, slashing open your palm. “Oh, dear let me help you with that,” the lady running the stand says. She looks you with her white hair barely covering her forehead. Tattoos liter her arms. A design peaks your interest as you swear you know but can’t quite place.

“It’s fine, I can take care of it myself,” you state already inspecting your hand. No shards in it so thats good.

“Oh no I insist. It happened at my booth, let me help clean it,” she declares taking your hand in her own. It feels like she squeezes the wound causing you to wince in pain slightly. Knowing she should just be cleaning it and wrapping it, you’re a little confused. Maybe she just doesn’t know how to tend to these sort of things, not wanted to embarrass her at her stand, you keep quiet. She finally gets a clean rag to help blot away at the blood on your hand. You didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it appears she has put it in a bag to the side.

“I don’t have any gauze to help wrap it up,” the stand lady says.

“Oh, don’t worry, I have plenty of my own,” you mention, “It will be fine until I make it back to my place.” Smiling you walk away. Without looking, you can feel her move the piece you cut your hand on into the bag. Must just be because it’s a dangerous piece, you think, not knowing there’s still some of your blood on it too.

Closing your eyes again, you try to wonder why that is so significant to you right now. It was a harmless thing in passing, so why is it at the forefront of your mind? You are strapped to a table and all you can think about is that little cut you got the day prior. If your head didn’t feel like it was a spinner top right now, you would have laughed. Opening your eyes again you see men all in white armor and helmets guarding the door to your room, while a man in a white coat is working on the machine where your IV is attached. I thought the empire was dead. The same symbol that keeps going through your mind is the same one sewn into the man’s white coat. Your breathing gets shallower as you feel the panic rise in your chest. I’m never getting out of here, you realize as your vision becomes black once again.

You’re losing a lot of blood. You know that. You can feel it when noise wakes you up and your eyelids feel like lead. All the noise is muffled, as if you’re underwater. Frankly it feels like you are. It would be so easy to let the waves of darkness just wash over you right now, to let the water take you under. No, you can’t give up the fight and drown into unconsciousness just yet. You force yourself to stay awake.

Barely getting your eyes open, bright red lights flood your vision. You imagine you’re still in bed, or at least asleep at your desk, with the alarm clock blaring, not here with blaster fire. Wait, blaster fire? You attempt to turn your head to the side to look, or to dodge, you aren’t to sure in your current state. The fast action causes you to feel like you’re spinning, or it might be the room, either way your eyes can’t focus on what is going on. Closing your eyes again to make it stop, you hear voices surrounding you. They sound so far away at the moment but finally, after what feels like ages, one voice sounds clearer.

“Please help us. Help us get out of here. Her m-counts aren’t nearly as high as the child’s. They’re demanding more blood. She’s already lost 2 liters, I don’t know how much longer she can last.”

Child? They wanted to do this to a child? You’d choke down a sob if you could just thinking of that poor baby. What did he even say about what-counts? What the hell are those? All these questions are making your head spin more and more. Taking most of your energy to open your eyes, you’re met with a chrome stormtrooper trying to unbind you. Wait no, not a stormtrooper. You’ve heard stories about him and his people. What were they called? For the life of you, you can’t remember right now.

“You’re going to need help getting her out of here,” you realize that the man in the whit coat was the one who spoke before and is now pleading with the metal man, “Please Mandalorian take me with you and I’ll help you get her out of here.”

That’s it. He’s a Mandalorian. He gets your wrists free as the doctor takes the IV out. Pushing off the table to sit up, the world starts spinning again. You don’t even realize you’re about to hit the table again until the Mandalorian grabs your shoulders to keep you semi-upright. You hear some sort of static come from his helmet. “Fine.” he grumbles, “help me get her out of this thing.”

With a flip of a switch, the rest of your body is free from restraints. Eager to get out of there, you swing your legs over the edge of the table, hands finding the arms of the Mandalorian with his hands still on your shoulders. Nauseous and woozy, you try to use the cold metal of his pauldron to ground yourself, to get the room to stop spinning. He can see you start to sway and wraps his arms around your waist as he lowers you from the table. Your feet hit the floor and black dots start to cloud your vision. Blood pounding in your ears trying to tell you to stop and lie back down. Muffled voices come from beside you again as you feel another arm wrap around you from the other side. Your feet dragging against the floor as both men on either side of you go towards the door.

You feel the heavily armored man to your left let go. Eyes that are still fuzzy and unfocused sort of see him peak out the door with his blaster drawn. He leaves the room and all that can be heard is the pew pew pew of blaster fire. Vision start to come back the tiniest bit, you can see him standing in the door way waving his hand as to say Come on.

The three of you hurry as fast as you can down the corridor to get to an exit. Lots of twists and turns, just for you all to come up at a dead end. So much for rescuing, you think to yourself as the doctor still holding you up, leans you up against a pillar as the two of them survey the situation. More of the Mandalorian assessing the situation and the doctor just frantically pacing back and forth.

Sitting down now that the adrenaline of being kidnapped and “rescued” die down, you feel your breathing getting shallower and harder to breath. Eyelids getting heavy again. You just want to lay down and go to sleep, hoping that will fix things. Starting your descent from your upright position to close your eyes, two hands grab your shoulders and jerk you up. It takes a second to realize this modulated voice was talking you you. “Hey, you got to stay with me now,” he pleads, one hand going to the side of your face. Pain spreads across your features due to being struck there earlier, a bruise starting to form in its place. Pulling his hand away like seeing the your face contorted burned him, he continues, “I’m going to get you out of here, you just have to stay awake.” You open your mouth to speak, but your throat feels like it’s filled with sand from Tattooine, so you just weakly nod your head yes. “Okay good,” the shiny man says after letting out a deep breath.

Still holding your shoulders, he helps you stand up and tells the doctor to take you and go further down the hall. Taking something small and circular out of his belt and placing it on the far wall, he speed walks back toward you two. It starts blinking red as his arms come and cage both of you in. Peeking over his shoulder, you see the wall disappear. Well explode, but one second ago it was there and now it’s not. When the explosion first rings in your ears, you reflexively reach out for the Mandalorian’s arm and feel him tense under your touch.

When he deems it safe to move again, letting go of his arm, he hops over the rubble to the outside world, blaster drawn. Looking out you think it looks like a desert, but one you’ve never seen before. You have no idea where you are, even what planet you are on. You eyes go to where the chrome man is stalking towards. It seems he found two speeder bikes that the troopers use, sans the troopers. Your feet hit the gravel and you realize you aren’t wearing shoes anymore. How long was I out? You begin to question when you see a stormtrooper take aim at your rescuer. Right when he pulls the trigger, you reach your hand out and scream, “NO!”

You could’ve sworn it was going to hit him. It should’ve hit him. But at the last second it bent and went in another direction. You knew stormtroopers were bad shots, but nothing like that has ever happened. The Mandalorian whips around at your scream and shoots the trooper down. He goes back to what he originally planned to do, but not without turning to you. You see his chest plate heave up and down a few times before turning back around. After a beat, the only sound you can hear is the Mandalorian starting up the speeders and your heartbeat pounding in your ears. The doctor helps guide you to the bikes and as you’re about to get on behind him, the Mandalorian picks you up bridal style and sits on his own respective bike. You make a noise of discontent at the sudden action and are then seated in front of him, yet again caged in by his arms with your legs draped over one of his. You can hear him breathing through the modulator as he states, “Just in case you pass out again. Can’t have you falling off the back of the bike.” You go to adjust how you are sitting when he takes off.

Gasping in shock, you hug your arms around his neck with you head in his cowl as you take panicked breaths. His hand touches your back as you hear him shout over the noise of the engines, “Put your legs around me, you’re slipping off.” He holds your waist as you sling your right leg around and hook it with your left one behind his back. Not the position you thought you’d end up in as a blush creeps up on your face, but neither the less here you are. His hand lets go of your waist and back to the handlebars as he steers.

Suddenly getting the feeling like you’re being followed, you say into his neck cowl, “Go left!” You don’t know why, but you just get a gut feeling to go that way. He follows your lead, not without a brief hesitation. The doctor follows on his speeder in the same direction. Finally looking up you see two stormtroopers in the distance. I wish their speeders would just stop or something, you plead with yourself and you think back to what happened with the blaster. Testing the waters, you unhook one of your hands from Mando’s neck and hold it out and... nothing. Okay focus, you close your eyes and picture their speeders stopping, or malfunctioning, or anything at this point.

The sound of a crash comes ringing into your ears. Opening your eyes, you can see the troopers flip over their handlebars as if their engines just died. You slightly chuckle to yourself as your eyelids feel heavy again. You try to get them to stay open, but sleep just feels so much better at the moment. And with that, you’re out like a light.

Din feels you go limp against him. His arm once again going to grab you by your waist to keep you in place. He wills his speeder to go faster, to get back to the Razor Crest sooner as he’s panicking thinking he somehow made the situation worse. He exposed you on the bike by having you sit like this. Your arms, legs, and head were all exposed to possible blaster fire. Have you been hit? He heard a crash but couldn’t look back without moving you more, risking leaving you more unprotected. His blame for himself spirals as his grip on you grows tighter. He can’t explain why he’s so distraught over a stranger, but still every time he blinks, he swears he sees back on that table. The next time he swears he sees his son on that very table again. First he gave the kid up to those people, now he didn’t finish Gideon off and let you, an innocent stranger who he is now clutching onto for dear life, get in the crossfire. Too many people have gotten hurt because of this. Because of him. He needs to make it right.

Finally Din and Dr. Pershing arrive at the Razor Crest where Din is already lowering the hatch and carrying you in. Kicking some crates together, he gently lowers you down onto this makeshift bed. He uses his thermal setting to see your body temperature, to see how you are recovering from the blood loss. He isn’t thrilled to see it still low, you were getting your energy back slowly before, along with more body heat, bit not enough to Din’s liking. Turning his helmet to Pershing, the doctor says, “She’s going to need more blood.” Din, already standing ready to run out and get some, not even knowing where or how to do that, is stopped by Pershing telling him that he’ll go get it, that it would look less suspicious. Agreeing, Din sits by your side while using his comm-link to tell Greef that he could bring Grogu back to the ship. How Din always finds someone to babysit still surprises him.

You wake up with a start. Eyes not yet adjusted to the lights overhead. Looking down you can see an IV in your arm again. Now towards the side, you can see the same doctor from before asleep up against a wall. Please tell me it wasn’t a dream, tears well up in your eyes as you think you’ve made the whole thing up to cope. It wasn’t until you felt your hand come to wipe away your watery eyes that you realized it just might not be a dream. The IV isn’t taking blood this time, it’s giving it.

Finally looking around, you realize you’re on a ship that feels like it’s moving. Confused by this, you try and sit up. Not nearly as dizzy as before, you slowly swing your legs off the wooden crates you’re lying on. Noticing your still barefoot as a chill gets sent up to your spine by the cold metal floor, you grab your IV bag off what appears to be just a hook poorly attached to the ceiling. You venture around the small area of the ship, noticing there isn’t a lot besides these boxes and what appears to be two storage type of units. You don’t even tempt to look in, too intrusive. You do however see a ladder going higher up on the ship. Taking the IV out and ripping a piece of your shirt off to wrap around your arm for pressure, so you can use both hands to climb, you start your ascent up.

Once you finally reach the top, you hear cooing? Didn’t that doctor say something about a child earlier? Looking forward into the cockpit, you see your savior flying while looking to his right at one of the co-pilot chairs. Clearing your throat to get his attention, two little eyes peer at you from the seat. A bright smile appears on this little green things face and you can’t help but stifle a laugh because its ears are the size of his body.

Distracted by this cute baby, you don’t notice the way the Mandalorian swivels his chair to face you. Finally looking at the man who saved you today, your breath hitches. You don’t know how to thank him for what he did, so you sort of just stand and stare for a second. He stands up and lightly grabs your arm with your homemade bandage on it. Tilting his helmet to the side you hear static coming from it. Did he just sigh at you? “You were supposed to keep it in your arm,” he finally states, with a tinge of annoyance.

Eyes not wanting to meet the T of his visor, you direct your gaze to the ground. “ I jus- I-,” you stammer, not able to find the right words. “Thank you.” It comes out more hushed than you’d like, but he still hears you. He just gives you a slight nod before releasing his arm and heading back to his seat. All your muscles turn to stone as you stand there not knowing if you should leave or not, until he cocks his head towards the seat to his left. On shaky legs you find your way to the seat. Before even sitting down fully, the little green child is already trying to get into your lap. Giggling to yourself you let him up onto your lap.

Once you do the strangest thing happens. You can feel what he’s thinking, his emotions, his past. How he was trained with the special abilities, much like the ones you just displayed before. How he was scared and in hiding until the man sitting in front of you found him. How he thinks of him as a father, his dad. Your chest tightens at that one. Still confused as to why the same people who wanted this child, Grogu, for his powers, also wanted you, you pull him to your chest to comfort you both. You finally speak up again and ask, “Did they want me because I might have the same abilities as this one?” You meant it to sound strong, but it just came out sounding weak.

Without looking at you, the Mandalorian replies shortly after a pause, “Yes.” You swore you can see his grip tighten on the ships steering as he says that. Turning to the two of you finally, he says in the sincerest voice you’ve heard out of him, “They wont get to either of you again. I can promise you that.” Your chest swells at this statement and Grogu looks up at you with a smile as if he felt the way your heart fluttered. You wish you were the one wearing the helmet right now because you can feel your cheeks heat up. To ease the situation in the best way you can, awkwardly, you clear your throat before asking, “So where are we headed now?”

Swiveling back in his chair to hit a few buttons, you’re confused not knowing what they are supposed to do until he pulls up a map and points a place out. He tells you that he’s going to drop off Dr. Pershing at one of the squiggles you see and then try and figure it out from there. “So, I guess thats where I get off too?” You meant it to come out more as a statement than a question, but after what you just went through, you’d rather not be left to fend for youself.

“If that’s what you want,” he finally utters after a while. “ But they’re not going to stop coming after you. Either of you. It might be safer for you to stay here with me, us.” The last part comes out so quiet, it’s almost as if he didn’t want you to hear, out of fear of your response.

Trying to not answer too quickly, you take a deep breath and finally say, “Yes. I’d like that a lot.” With a curt nod, he turns back around. Warmth fills your chest yet again at this stranger’s kindness. It’s just because I have the same abilities as his child, you try to convince yourself. But deep down you’re hoping it’s more than that. The child in your lap grips your fingers tightly and coos, as if he’s trying to tell you your hopes might not be too far off.

Oh, it’s going to be an interesting adventure with these two, you smile to yourself.

251 notes · View notes

bubsdolan · 3 years

Note

concept: reader and grayson are in a long distance relationship and for his birthday ethan or kris or someone surprises him and flys her out 🥺🥺

{since im one bit fat mess of a human, i failed to get this done for their birthday... so here’s you surprising gray for christmas!! ho ho ho just call me santa x}

“ok, ive landed! are you sure he doesn’t suspect im here?” you nibble at your fingernails, pacing up and the down the airport arrivals lounge as you panic over the phone to kristina. wondering if your surprise had been or was going to be ruined. scared some fans may have spotted you on your journey cross country to reunite with your boyfriend.

being in a long distance relationship was hard. it certainly wasn’t for the faint hearted, the weak minded and untrustworthy. sure you and grayson had your down days, finding the distance and time difference excruciating, but if anything it made your relationship stronger. making your romance blossom in ways being around each other 24 hours 7 days a week could never. it made every conversation shared between you both special. it made being back in each others arms after many painful months apart meaningful and reminded you that no matter where you were in the world, grayson dolan will always be your final destination.

“stop stressing, y/n! he doesn't have any idea that you're here. to be perfectly honest he thinks you’re asleep, s’constantly checking his phone every five minutes for a text or call from you.” kristina calmed your nerves, sat in the passenger seat next to ethan as they drove to collect you from the airport. making up an excuse to grayson that they were going to get some lunch. leaving him alone to await your good morning message he valued the most- his day never fully began until he heard from you.

‘bro, i can't wait to see him cry,” you heard ethan tease, indicating to you that you were on loud speaker and ethan too, had just witnessed your mental breakdown.

when the happy couple finally arrive at lax, lots of happy greetings and cuddles were exchanged as you finally got to catch up with your bestfriends. you couldn’t help but feel the pit of your stomach bubble up with nerves and anxiety as you approach closer and closer to the dolan resistance. you had been resisting to temptation of texting grayson, holding off all contact with him untill you were back safely in his arms.

“relax, y/n. you’re his christmas miracle.” kristina felt how tense you were, providing you with a one armed side hug as ethan lead you up the pathway into the oddly quite house. allowing you time to take in the awe and beauty of the decorations. the absence of nutcrackers lines up on the mantelpiece that made you feel like home, the deliciousness and comforting scent of wakeheart christmas candles being burnt and christmas tree you got to witness brewing up a storm between the brothers as they figure out how to assemble it, live on facetime. you breathe in the change of air, your nostrils filling with nostalgia, safety and comfort.

“yo gray! c’mere!” ethan shouts from beside you, sending you a toothy grin as he and kristina move off to the side of the living room and get their cameras ready to film the reunion of the two lovers- which can only be described as a scene from a movie.

your heart rate picks up as you hear the heavy footsteps of your boyfriend draw closer. his head buried deep into his phone and fingers working rapidly at his keyboard as he was so panaorid and caught up with the lack of communication he was yet to receive from you.

“bro, y/n still hasn't messaged me. you think something-” his voice stopped. his chest tightening as he finally makes eye contact with you after looking up from his phone. standing there in all your glory, eyes shining directly into his as you hold your arms out and make grabby needy hands his way.

“merry christmas, bear,” your voice just above a whisper. quickly being replaced with a squeal of delight and your body distancing itself from the ground. graysons arms engulfed your waist as he’s lifting you up and spinning you around in his arms. twirling your entwined bodies around untill he felt dizzy, sick with love and happiness.

“no way! no, oh my god! you’re here! baby, you’re actually here!” grayson chokes out through his sobs. placing you gently back to the floor and immediately smashing his lips to yours in a long waited, desperate kiss, not even giving you time to reply to his excitement. the two of you only pulling away when grayson’s body can't contain the trembling due to his heavy tears. you reach your hand up to wipe under his eyes, face softening as your hands trace patterns soothingly over his inflamed skin.

“how-how? i thought you weren't able to fly over for chirstmas? he questioned, referring to that one heartbreaking call you had to make when you explained to your boyfriemd how your mum was unwilling to let you travel this christmas. making false statements that you had to spend it in your town country with your family. “what changed?”

you nod your head over in the direction of ethan and kristina, both watching in awe, displaying contagious and heartfelt smiles. grayson follows your eyeline, sending the pair a thankful smile as he drags your body closer to his. kissing you once more to make up for lost time. ethan and kristina high five each other out of success, taking the hint and heading in the direction of their own room to give you and grayson your much needed time alone.

grayson drags you over to the sofa, wasting no time in wanting to wrap you up in his arms for the forceable future. but before he has the change to drag your body down with his own, you’re pulling away. running over to collect your carry on case and rummaging through it to find exactly what you were looking for.

grayson sits patiently with a frown upon his face, already missing the warmth and scent of your body. but he lets you be, seeing the corners of your mouth them upright as you walk back in his direction. standing over him between his legs as you hold a neatly wrapped box under his nose.

“i wanted to give you a little something early. its nothing big but- here just open it.” you hand him the gift he’s been eyes up, detailed with a red and gold bow and finished with a handwritten ‘G♡’

grayson chuckes slight, watching as you become flustered under his assumed gaze. his eyes going soft at the care and delicacy of the present. witnessing your cheeks heat up in an adorable blush as you fidget with the chain around his neck. needing something to occupy your mind away the your anxiety and sentiment your early christmas gift held.

he unwrapped the present, untying the bow carefully as he knew you were bound to keep it in your relationship memory box after he was done with it. unpacking an even smaller, securely wrapped box inside which kept his suspicions growing.

‘’its a bond touch bracelet’” you explain watching as he inspected the thin black watch, almost comparable to a fitbit. he didn't have the heart to tell you he hated it at first glance, it definitely wasnt up to par with his $40,000 rolex. but as you went on to explain the inner workings and meaning behind the jewellery, it quickly became his most prized procession- after you.

“it connects to mine, see here.” you lift your wrist up eye level to his face, flashing the identically watch that was flashing green. a heart beat symbol vibrating across the narrow screen as your own increased in the presence of your soulmate.

“even when we are miles apart, across the other side of the globe, you just simply tap the screen and you’ll feel a gentle vibration. a light will flash up to let you know im thinking of you. no matter where we are in the world, we stay connected.”

if grayson wasn’t crying before hand, he certainly was now. strapping the band securely to his wrist. hearing the soft buzzes from your own as he taps the screen three times. a small heart beating on display as he lets you know how much he loves you.

240 notes · View notes

penfullofwordsaheadfullofstories · 4 years

Text

No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen

A/N: I really have nothing to say for myself at this point.

Sequel chapter to this fic here, if you’d like to catch up.

Thank you to @caffeine-in-an-iv for being my incredible beta and to @maybege for letting me rant to you and giving me so many wonderful ideas when I hit my walls. Also to the Obi-Wan fandom in general: Y’all are some of the kindest, most supportive people I’ve ever encountered on this hell site. Thank you for your support and your content!

Pairing: Obi-Wan Kenobi x Force Sensitive! Fem! Reader (no Y/N)

Word Count: 11.9K (I lost all control)

Warnings: SMUT!!! Soft Dom! Obi rights, Also, Sub! Obi vibes, Foodplay (but not how you’d think), Inappropriate use of the Force, Voice Kink, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Hands Appreciation Society, As Usual: Too Many Feelings For Porn, Emotional Competence Kink, Trust Kink, TW: Pregnancy, TW: A character draws blood on themself unknowingly

Title from one of my favorite quotes:

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

-D.H. Lawrence

What infinite irreverence the galaxy has for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

As if his master and only semblance of a parent wasn’t taken from him when he needed him most.

As if a boy who needed a father wasn’t entrusted to Obi-Wan quickly following, far too young and full of his own loss.

As if he wasn’t thrust onto the pedestal of parenthood when he really only wanted to be a brother.

As if that isn’t what they became anyway, and as if that wasn’t the exact cloud that hung over the atmosphere of your lives ever since you’d arrived on Tatooine.

As if the being whose life signature resided in your abdomen didn’t throw a punch into each of those blooming bruises by its very existence.

Which is why, you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that you couldn’t tell him yet.

Normally, it’d be no small feat to keep something of this scale from him. But these days, he’s so focused on having his shields up around you, keeping you from both being hurt by or helping with his torments.

You have to take great care to control your body language, because even when he’s shut off from you in the Force, his keen perceptiveness will pick up on something being off anyway.

The art of a convincing lie is having layers. If he senses your feelings and decides to dig, then only give up one layer, and he’ll stop looking.

In this case, it’s your worry over him. It is true you’re trying to shield him from feeling that, not wanting him to carry the burden of it on top of having to work through his own pain.

But it’s not everything you’re trying to hide from him. So you let a small projection of your fear over his well-being escape, like you’re losing control of your feelings. It’s enough to convince him, and something critical inside you dies at the victory every time.

He deserves your honesty, and you’ve never given him anything less until now.

You hate how well your strategic deceit takes root. Because only part is due to your talent as a liar. The rest comes from how much he trusts you.

You’re not stupid, though. You know it’s only a matter of time before the biological changes in your body betray you.

Obi-Wan said he needed time, and you’re going to give him as long as you possibly can before dropping this anvil on him, hoping the further he gets from it all, the better off he’ll be.

You could kick yourself for not being more careful. You hadn’t missed any dose of your herbal Ho’Din contraceptive. It was one of the few things you shoved in your bag with the mere minutes you had to leave Coruscant for good. It was from a reliable medicinal shop, and there’s no good reason it should have failed in any way.

But here you were anyway.

Of course, there are options that free you from the obligation of carrying the child to term. All are expensive, and Tatooine is sorely lacking in any trustworthy medical facilities. The alternative methods could put your own life in danger as well.

Even if it wasn’t, you’d feel so strange making that kind of decision without Obi-Wan. Not that he wouldn’t support whatever decision you needed to make for yourself if you did, but going behind his back is something you’re not sure his trust could recover from.

And really, far too much has been decided for him in his life.

The worst reason why you can’t bring yourself to move towards any solution that ends the pregnancy now, the reason you abhor, is because somewhere within you, despite the awfulness of the time and place, you want this baby.

You couldn’t give a definitive explanation for yourself, but you did. Undoubtedly

Obi-Wan doesn’t press when you ask to cease your combat training for a time, asking to start learning the new offerings of the Jedi texts instead.

He’s concerned when you tell him, but if he’s suspicious as for your reasoning, he doesn’t show it outwardly, at least.

The way he doesn’t even ask about why, though: It makes you wonder if he had a reason all of his own why he’d rather not fight, even in imitation.

The Jedi writings given to Obi-Wan by Master Yoda are often more cryptic and mystifying than logically applicable without deciphering, which you are at first annoyed by, but then strangely thankful for, as Obi-Wan verbally processes his understandings of it, knowing what he does of the Jedi way, and you adding your thoughts from the stance of fresh eyes.

The conversations distract wonderfully, and you savor any way you still get to connect with him.

You don’t push for the ways he doesn’t allow you to connect with him anymore. The way he won’t let you in his mind. Because now, you too have a reason to not let him in yours.

*******

When it’s time to go into town for supplies again, you make up some feeble excuse which you know Obi-Wan sees through as a lie, and this time, he does pry, eyes soft and concerned. He knows you love going to the markets. You simply explain that you’re tired, which is true enough to satisfy him, leaving you behind with a kiss on your forehead before you watch him saddle up your eopie and ride off.

You sigh, sagging against the closed door once he’s disappeared into the horizon. You do love the markets. They’re the most colorful thing the planet has to offer, textiles and rugs and shiny, hanging things.

But the spices. Fragrant and potent, usually so appetizing and intoxicating, you know would turn your stomach alone. And that doesn’t even account for the strange meats being cooked at different vendors, and Maker help you if anyone was selling raw meat of any sort today. You’ve done your best to keep your nausea at bay, at times even tapping into the Force for centering when the world felt like it was rocking. But you know the market would be too much, too many variables.

It’s not a fast journey, even on the eopie, and you don’t expect Obi-Wan to be back for hours. Which is why when you hear a knock on your door, the tool in your hand clatters to the floor, as does the remnants of your project.

You quickly grab one of the long staffs you and Obi-Wan had only begun to use in your defense training, trying to recall the lessons as adrenaline begins to rush through your veins. Tatooine isn’t known for its pleasant company, and if anyone was going to try to rob your home, now would be as good a time as any.

The knock sounds again, and you shout from the inside, “What do you want?!”

“A peace treaty in the form of baked goods,” comes the feminine voice, one you recognize.

Opening the door, you lower the weapon in your hand as Beru Lars blinks at you.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were…” You step aside, gesturing for her to come in.

She waves a hand, dismissive. “I understand.”

You lead her over to the small living area as you fix two glasses of water from the kitchen.

When you set them down on the table, Beru speaks. “I apologize for the intrusion, if there was another way of contacting you before coming here…”

“It’s absolutely fine, I’m glad to have you.” You smile in what you hope is an assuring way. “Although, I’m surprised at it just being you. Where’s Owen?”

Her eyes flick to the stone floor. “He um… doesn’t exactly know I’m here. He’s out on a business deal today.”

You feel your eyebrows go up at that, waiting for her to continue. But instead, she changes the subject. “Where’s Ben?”

“In town. We needed some things from the market.”

Awkwardness settles in as a conversation topic evades you.

She breaks the beat of quiet. “Here, I brought these for you.”

You take the basket in her hands from her, peeling back the thick woven cloth to reveal a simple form of bread. It looks so appetizing your stomach clenches, and you instantly realize you haven’t had anything since breakfast.

But then the smell hits you, hard and powerful, and stars, it’s just bread, there’s nothing that should do that about bread, but you’re on your feet in a minute, forsaking the basket on the ground as you bolt to the fresher, barely making it in time to the sonic sink before you start heaving.

In a moment, you feel soft hands at the nape of your neck, gently holding back the fabric of your shirt and blowing cool air as you continue to wretch.

By the time everything has settled again, you’ve dealt with the aftertaste in your mouth, and splashed on your face with a precious cup of cool water, hot shame rises in your cheeks at how this must seem to Beru.

You wipe at your face with a rag, half muffling your words when you address her. “I’m so sorry, I’m sure they’re absolutely delicious, It really has nothing to do…”

“How far along are you?”

Your spine straightens instantly, and you let the cloth drop to the floor.

“I… what?”

Now she’s the one to flush. “My apologies, it’s just that it’s known for being a very gentle bread, it’s one my mother used to feed me when my stomach ached. If that smell turned you... I just assumed, and I shouldn’t have.”

Your lips purse as you consider your options. It’d be easy to say nothing, or just to nod.

“Two months,” you hear your own voice answer despite yourself. You’ve never been one for easy anyway.

A surge of emotion wells up in you at even being able to speak it aloud, aloud to another human, and next thing you know, to your absolute horror, you’re crying into your hands as your shoulders crumple in on themselves.

Why now, of all times? In front of Beru Lars? Whom you know accepted Luke with her husband without question because they couldn’t biologically have any children of their own?

“I’m… so… sorry,” You manage to choke out through the sobs, disgusted at your own lack of control.

At some point Beru must join you on the floor, patting her hand soothingly on your back. “Shhh, it’ll be alright. You’ll see. It’s not so bad having a young one around, you and Ben have so much to look forw…”

“He doesn’t know.”

Her hand pausing briefly on your back is the only indication she gives of shock.

“Would he not be happy?”

You take a steadying breath in, trying to calm yourself. “I don’t know,” you whisper, small and almost frightened to let the room hear you say it.

It falls silent again, but it echoes around in your brain, bouncing against your thoughts until you feel the onset of a headache.

After you’re to a numb enough state to enjoy yourself, you and Beru make tea and bring it back to the living area.

She lifts her glass to yours, clinking them. “To secrets kept from men and the mischievous company they bring.”

Your head now throbs with pain, but you smile anyway. “Thank you,” you say to her, and you mean it so very much.

********

The next time Obi-Wan goes into town, you’re feeling well enough to go with him.

You’re not visiting the food portion of the market, after all, so you’re not as much of a risk to set your stomach off. He’s taken to fixing small machinery for trading with the Jawas recently, the extra income helping with the projects around the house.

There’s a trap door that you found within the first day of being there. The staircase carved out of the bedrock beneath the hut leads to a small room that has now served as additional storage and a place for Obi-Wan to work. It’s also quite cool during the day, so if you can stand the smell of the various meats hung to dry, you’ll sit down there with some sort of project, or even reading material if you come upon it.

So today, he’s looking for a few specific tools that will streamline his working.

It doesn’t take long to find a promising stall among the maze of shopkeepers, selling everything from trinkets to weaponry of questionable legality. Obi-Wan finds what he needs easily enough, and it looks like the trip is going to be as efficient as it is successful as you walk through alleyways with him.

At some point, he takes your hand in his, squeezing it gently, projecting an assuring strand of affection toward you. It’s such a small gesture, but you’ll never tire of the feeling of his hand clasped in yours.

You’re almost back to where the eopie, Rooh, as he named her, is stabled when Obi-Wan abruptly slows his pace, dropping into a stall. An alarm goes off in your head when you watch him pick up a frivolous trinket on a table that you know he has no interest in.

You open your mouth to inquire at his actions, but it answers itself once you see him glance out of his peripheral vision to where the holonews plays in the stall adjacent.

Battle footage on what you recognized to be Kashyyk at the presence of the many Wookies plays with the Emperor addressing the viewers in a very two-dimensional, sugar-coated, thinly-concealed threat to any other world that would try to resist occupation.

There’s wreckage and uncensored violence, and you turn your head away.

“May it be known that Lord Vader is quite capable and willing to help those into compliance that require assistance... “

The item in his hands crushes, ceramic tile cracking into his hands, breaking the skin and drawing out drips of red.

But he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to register the glass he’s pushing into his own hand. His eyes are wide and he makes a wounded noise from the back of his throat, eyes peeled to the holonews now, not even trying to feign disinterest.

His signature sparks, giving a flash and then a severe cry of anguish, and it hits you then. Pieces of information coming together as you feel Obi-Wan tear apart at seams.

Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side, and Obi-Wan thought him dead. There’s a new Sith Lord now; the correlation and timing can’t be coincidence.

The Toydarian male behind the stall shouts something about paying for it in full, and you quickly hand over the credits with a glare.

You start to pull Obi-Wan’s other hand off the table, but you quickly realize your mistake in that.

The moment it isn’t holding his weight anymore, his knees start to give, and you’ve only a second to react, jamming your body under his arm to keep him upright. His momentum nearly pulls you forward, but you plant your feet and remember at the last second to call on the Force to assist you.

He seems to come to himself enough to walk somewhat as you steer him to the nearest alley away from the vendors.

He braces a hand on the stone wall, but even it isn’t enough as he drops to his knees. He doesn’t even seem to have the will to stand.

Crouching beside him, you place one of your hands on his chest.

“I…. I…” The tremor in his usually so crisp wording and steady voice crushes your chest, making it hard to breathe. “I failed him. I failed him.”

“Obi-Wan,” you start, trying to grasp at anything, everything to comfort him, not even thinking of how you can’t call him that here, even if there’s no one in sight.

If he registers your call, he doesn’t let on, continuing in his whispers to the wall. “He was burning. Burning, but I couldn’t do it. It would have been mercy to kill him, it was my mandate to do it, but I could not...” his voice gives out on the last word, and his shoulders fall forward in a shuddering inhale that transforms into a cut-short sob on its exhale.

“And now…” as the words pour from him, his shields fall, and so do the floodgates on his emotions, and it takes all the training you know to not be washed away in the torrential current of his grief. Does he even know he’s doing it, or has the insurmountable weight of his burden finally overridden his innate control over them?

“I’ve sentenced him to a fate worse than death.” He’s only barely choked out the end of his thought before his shoulders start to shake in earnest and he crumples in on himself as he begins to weep for his brother.

Giving no heed to the odd angle, you throw your arms around him. Trying to get your arms around his body is exactly the embodiment of the feeling of the moment, this anguish you don’t even begin to be enough to cover.

What could you say? What could you do? What would even begin to…

When you press your fingers to his temple, it’s light, a show of how unforced this is, how much he can say no if he needs. Because this isn’t for you. No, it’d be so much easier to not know the exact depth of his pain and rip your chest open with that knowledge. But you’re offering it, meaning it absolutely, desperate for him to take the hand offered to him. “Please let me in. Don’t do this alone. Let me…”

Then he’s pulling you in, not just letting you come in yourself, clinging to you like a person drowning. You remember to steady, to try to keep your own head above the water as wave after surging, overpowering wave of soul-crippling agony like you’ve never felt it engulf you in their surge.

You can’t hold out against it no matter how hard you try, so you refocus from centering yourself to pulling his signature into yours as you wrap your arms tighter around his torso.

And you begin to weep with him.

*********

The suns are drifting low by the time both of you have any intelligible thought, far too late to start the journey back to the hut.

At the inn, as Obi-Wan falls into the beginnings of a restless sleep, a thought emerges, clear and crisp in its awful truth.

You cannot tell him for a long while still.

*******

It’s different now. Because when he wakes in the night, he doesn’t give you falsehoods you see right through. He lets you into the terror and distortional dreams that all reside over one theme.

There’s silence in the first days after. Just silent tears and still embraces and the way time seems to freeze when grief is at its worst.

But then he starts talking. It comes in little pieces, then in larger ones.

The loudest thing his signature screams is guilt.

You tell him how it isn’t his fault, how Anakin is responsible for his own choices, but he just gives you a new reason every time as to why it is his fault, how he could have stopped it.

Because even in what he considers his worst failure, his verbiage is indicative of how it’s not his own image and pride hurting that he’s even considered. All of his thoughts, all of them, are on what Anakin needed that he didn’t give.

At first, it’s just impressions from his mind, unsorted, blurry thoughts and feelings, but it eventually begins to become words.

“After his mother died… I know that he blamed me. How couldn’t he? He told me of his dreams, dreams he knew were foresights, but I dismissed them, multiple times, at that. And the council… advised me against comforting him, but he… I… I did anyway.” His shoulders are forward, body sagging with unsureness that doesn’t fit him right in the slightest. “But it was far too late. I know there was something pivotal about the death of his mother, and I am...” he hesitates, seemingly not because he doesn’t know what to speak, but because he does. “Terrified. Terrified it’s all because I didn’t validate him sooner. If I had not...” His voice breaks off, as he shuts his eyes.

Fear is not something admired by the Jedi, you know. When he speaks of his own emotions, he speaks them like he’s confessing them.

And as he confesses and confesses, you comfort where you can, cry with him when you cannot.

*****

The swells of sorrow ebb and flow in their intense bursts and receding stillness, and despite the moments of not being able to breathe under the weight of it, there are miniscule, almost violating, hysterical intervals where smiles and life spring to the surface, gasping for air.

Or in this case, the inexplicable desire to dance.

You don’t even really know when you start, simply going about cleaning clothing in the sonic washer, and the next, some ridiculous, repetitive tune sweeps you to move your hips and feet, uncoordinated and graceless. The tune itself played from a datachip, scrapped with some pieces Obi-Wan was repurposing to make repairs. You’re not even familiar with the type of music, and it’s hardly the type of music you’d normally choose, but you find that today, it’s an improvement on the quiet that falls upon the house as Obi-Wan works outdoors.

The song swings into a bridge, and you slide across the stone floor, imitating something you saw in a music holo years ago, as you do, your foot catches on the rug you recently added, sending you fumbling for your footing. You eventually catch it before you fall, but as you look up, you decide to lower yourself to the ground anyway at the sight of Obi-Wan, leaning up against the door frame, watching you with an amused expression, the fingers of one hand tracing between his lips and chin.

You sit splayed as tactless and gangly as you danced and let out a short, startled laugh.

“Please, don’t stop on my account. I was quite enjoying myself.”

Maker, could you just hide under the rug you tripped over? “Please tell me you haven’t been standing there long.”

He pushes off his lean on the wall, crossing the room to you. “I won’t tell you lies, my love.”

Shame twists in your gut at his words, chasing the laughter in your throat away. But Obi-Wan extends a hand down, and you take it, letting him draw you to your feet.

He kisses the back of your hand before taking it in his, extending the clasp out to the side of your bodies as his other hand rests hot on the small of your waist.

“But I will join you, if you don’t mind a style change.”

“I don’t know how to dance like this,” you say, factually.

“Then allow me to teach you.” When you look in his eyes, they’re lined with the etches of heartache still, but there’s something else too, brimming to the surface.

“What, to this music?” You give your last, unconvincing protest.

He simply drops his forehead to yours, and the small sounds of the room fade to white as a sweet, moving melody replaces it. It’s not perfectly clear, and it takes a moment to realize that it’s because it’s coming from Obi-Wan’s memory.

The music has a distant, foggy quality, and it has potential to be eerie, but instead, it just lifts you into an ethereal feeling.

He steps, and your feet follow, not as graceful, but he makes it easy for you, the steps hinted out in his thoughts before taking them in actuality.

When you start to feel confident enough in the movements, you look up at him. “Does this mean I can teach you my dances next?”

He laughs, laughs, unabashed and with no emotion harbored under it, and some torn piece of your heart mends at the sound.

“Certainly not.”

You laugh too, even at the thought of him trying. The laugher rolls into a smooth quiet, and you let yourself bask in the feel of his body against yours, the press of his hand on your back as you rest your cheek against him.

Obi-Wan cradles you to him, forsaking the pattern of the dance as he encompasses you in his arms, lowering his lips to your cheek, then your mouth in a blazing kiss.

He takes your hand in his, lifting it above your head. Then you’re guided into a spin, and the room spins double with it as you abandon all endeavors of trying to get the dance correct. Your hand drops protectively to your belly before you can even think better of it, and by the time you know you’re not going to throw up, it’s too late. You already feel Obi-Wan’s unmistakable concern right before he asks, “What’s wrong?” extending an arm out toward you.

His complexion is ashen with worry, and when you don’t respond, you feel him start to reach out to your mind; a spike of panic zaps down your spine, and you’re suddenly not sure you’re not going to throw up after all.

Your shields crash down, not enough time for subtlety, and he retracts both his hand and inquiring tendril of energy as hurt and confusion shape his features.

You can’t do this. You can’t keep up this facade or cover this moment with a lie you know he’ll see through. But you can’t tell him either. After all the weight he’s carrying, the weight of the being that grows in you should be yours alone. You can’t thrust that upon him.

But it’s a delusion that you can keep this from him forever. You’re going to hurt him one way or another, and the weight of your silence and lies multiply every day you insulate him from the truth.

You take in a shuddering breath as dread settles into your bones. You know what you have to do.

Even as you slowly lower your shields, opening your signature, your mind screams at you in opposite directions, ripping you in half, and your hand shoots out to the nearest wall to stabilize yourself. How could you be so sadistic to tell him this? How could you not tell him? After all the trust you have in each other?

But he doesn’t take the invitation. “I will not touch your mind if you are still unsure you want me to,” he says softly but resolutely as he approaches you, but stays an unthreatening distance away, as if approaching a frightened animal.

No, no, no. You won’t have him being the one to sturdy you through this. You need to be strong, be ready, don’t force him to coddle you through the blast to his own chest.

So you dial down your own emotions and switch your absorption to amplifying the still tiny, barely recognizable life you’ve been carefully censoring ever since you heard it yourself.

You want to close your eyes, blockade the pain of both how it impacts him and how it will impact you, but that’s not how you two do things.

Summoning every iota of bravery and resolve running in your veins, you force yourself to look up at him as you watch understanding coat him.

His eyes go wide, and his hands clench and flex at his sides in an erratic, nervous pattern.

You can’t keep your signature open to his mind’s reaction, you just can’t. He’s seen enough, and you can put your shields up again. His face is enough to confront all on its own.

Obi-Wan steps toward you, slowly, dazed in a completely uncharacteristic way. With the way he seems to ever be prepared for the blows life throws at him, you hate how you have to be the harbinger for the second one that’s knocked him off his feet.

When he stops in front of you, he places his hands on either of your shoulders and looks into your eyes, searching for confirmation, and you nod, trying to not let fear seep into your expression.

One of his hands covers his mouth as he takes it in.

And then he’s sinking in front of you, off of his feet indeed, and onto his knees. You want to follow, ready to hold him through the heartache sure to follow, at the second child he didn’t ask for while he still grieves the loss of the first.

But his hands instead take purchase on your stomach, tightening the fabric of your tunic around the barely-visible bump before bunching it up and lifting, just enough so he can tilt his forehead against the skin there.

You can feel him reaching out, not taking him long at all to find what he’s searching for, and curiosity beats self-preservation at the last moment, prompting you to open your mind again, just for you to be able to catch elation coursing through Obi-Wan.

You don’t even bother trying to stifle your confusion as he looks up at you with glassy eyes.

Sinking to your knees to meet him, you take his face in your hands, trying to make sense of it all as he takes your hand in his. “I never... “ when his voice comes out unsteady, he clears his throat and tries again. “I never thought I’d have... That we could… didn’t occur to me that now...stars above, how long have you known?”

You don’t recall when you start crying, but tears are falling freely down your cheeks as you shake your head. “I’m so sorry. I… I would never want to keep something like this from you, Obi-Wan, but I couldn’t tell you, not with everything, not with all you already have…and i’m so sorry.”

“Oh, heavens, no. You should not have to do this alone. Please don’t keep things from me, even if you think it to be for my sake. We can…”

You fix him with a pointed, unamused stare. He exhales as he must notice his hypocrisy.

“Your point is well-put and taken, but the sentiment still stands. We’ll not keep secrets from each other anymore. Do we have an accord?”

Despite it all, you smile at his overly-formal phrasing, something you’d normally have a quip about if it weren’t for the concern still nagging at you.

“Are you not angry then? Or disappointed?” you watch him carefully, praying to any deity listening that he doesn’t concoct some half truth to placate you. His first instinct is always to protect, but you’d never want it at expense of his authenticity.

Bafflement marks his brow at first, then he takes your face in his hands. “Darling, no.” He says your name, gathering every bit of your attention. “I dreamt of you. During the war, when I was away. I did not sleep well, even then, but when I did, I’d sometimes dream of you, holding a child that I knew to be ours. When I woke, I would remember it so vividly, so painfully, because I never thought that was an attainable future for us.”

But that doesn’t need to matter if you… do you want this child?” His eyes are so full of hope, and it was the last thing you expected, but here he is laying it down on the altar of your preference, and maker, are you glad those two things aren’t opposing each other.

Because his hope and yours are one in the same, and once he knows it too, at your whispering, choked, “yes,” he’s clutching you in his arms.

And for the second time in a month, you’re both huddled on the ground in tears. The first, bowing under the mass of catastrophe. Now, at the glowing relief of the sprouting of a dream sown in tears, too tender before to even say aloud.

But now? You’re saying it, back and forth, from him to you as your walls fall, permitting him into your mind as he welcomes you into his, and finally you take true comfort once again in the home you’ve built in each other.

*******

The night after, you lie side by side, hand in hand, on a blanket splayed not far from the hut. The suns have sunken, but the pinks and oranges of their palette still paint the sky where it hasn’t yet turned to midnight cobalt. The light of the lantern gives off a similar hue, dousing everything in your reach in soft, warm hues.

It has taken Obi-Wan some convincing, being so out in the open with everything he had to worry about wasn’t his first choice, but you compromised for a small alcove in the rock formations which surrounded you on two sides. More easily defensible. Not that he needed it, but if he was cautious before, it was borderline unbearable now. With the added danger of the Empire knowing without doubt that he lived. With more than ever to lose.

So, he was in charge of safety, you were in charge of snacks. And if they so happened to be almost entirely comprised of those melons you couldn’t quite get enough of lately? That was no one’s business except yours. You brought a few things you knew Obi-Wan liked too, of course.

What little remains of the miscellaneous spread you push to the edge of the blanket so you can both lie down.

“I dare say it’s almost pleasant out tonight.”

You turn your head to him, a snort ready at him discussing the weather of all things, but it instead forms a cloud in your throat at the sight of him.

His eyes are closed, hair rustling in the slight evening breeze, a tranquil ease over his profile.

The small patches of grey in the part of his beard next to his ears catch the first glints of moonlight in a way the rest of his hair doesn’t, giving them away.

The mellisonant lowness of his voice brings you back to yourself, cheeks heating.

“I can feel you staring, little one.” He opens his eyes, leisurely rolling to his side. “Some say it’s quite impolite.” Slanting over you, he lifts a brow, daring your response.

“And is that a problem?” You look up at him through your eyelashes, feigning innocence.

Obi-Wan’s gaze follows back up to the stars, as he plays right along, pretending to have to think on it. “I suppose it depends.”

“On?”

“On whether or not you allow me to return the impropriety,” he responds with a coy smile, moving back to you, so close now you can feel his exhales on your cheek.

Warmth blooms through you as you answer back, “You can always look, Obi-Wan.” You lift yourself to close the short distance between your face and his, pressing your lips together, which he deepens right away. Using the hand not supporting half his body off of you still, he fans out his fingers across your belly, towing the line between caressing gently and clutching protectively.

You pull your lips back from his as an uninvited slither of insecurity slips into your chest.

He senses it, of course, so you speak before he even needs to ask. “Are you really, truly, certain this is what you want? Now? I don’t want you to just say so because…and we could wait, we have...”

“I am,” he says, adamantly, before you even have a chance to finish. His eyes flash to the side. “I…” He rolls back onto his back, looking straight up as he talks seemingly half to you, half to himself. “There is not much I know for certain these days. Some days… I scarcely can remember who I am anymore.”

He turns his eyes back to you, unwavering. “There are seldom few things I haven’t questioned of late, and my love for you isn’t one of them. And from the moment I’ve known, from the very first instant you let me feel the life within you, my love for them hasn’t been one either.”

Your thoughts split into two, one wanting to lean into it, to take him for his word that’s always true, and the other cautioning you, telling you to keep distant and watch for the surface level honesty he gives that hides the brutal one he safeguards you from.

But you’re not hiding anymore, feelings unconcealed in your energy and on your face, so he leans back into you, grasping your arm in his hand, squaring your shoulders to him. You cringe at yourself when you know he’s heard the impression of you questioning. It’s redundant, but self-doubt always is. “Know, please know, my darling.” Taking your hand in his, he brings it up to his temple with an insistence that you have no desire to counter.

And it’s there. Right there and sparking in its clarity, right at the threshold of his mind as you enter it. How much he means his words, no holds barred, no cleverly crafted glazes to an unly underbelly of reality. His reality was this, how severely he craves starting a family with you. How much he already loves the being within you, how he looks forward to the day he gets to hold them in his arms.

The fear is there too, quiet, but not kept from you. The fear of failing as a father, unsure of assuming any role that resembled a mentor again, all-too-familiar with the ghost that will float over him in every lesson he teaches.

What shocks you there is his faith in you. In how much he’s already learned from you about the impact of open affection, in how you don’t let your feelings lead you, but you let them breathe, not suffocate them. It’s part of how he even can acknowledge his fears to himself and to you without berating himself under the too-simple phrase “fear leads to the dark side.” There’s truth in it, but also inaccuracy.

Because he’s afraid, and yet, there is so much light in the acknowledging of it to himself, and in that very act, it loses much of any power it could have had over him. Oh, how deeply he wishes he could have articulated that understanding to Anakin.

The pain is fresh, but so is his anticipation for the future, swirling together in a potent drink, and his throat bobs with the effort to swallow them down simultaneously.

He knows you’ll help ground him through it, he trusts you, even in his uncertainty in himself.

It breaks your heart but also warms it: the knowledge that he lets you into that place where he keeps the questions of himself, the place only you and the man who’s caused most of this doubt have been permitted.

With a thankful short farewell, you part from his mind as you know exactly what you want to do.

The remains of your snacks still rest on the edge of the blanket, including the shells of the deep purple-pigmented melons. The one draw-back to their delightful taste was how badly they stained your fingers. You had to break them into tiny pieces, plopping them into your mouth without allowing them to touch your lips unless you wanted your mouth to stain too.

But right now? The staining quality was just what you needed.

Although first you needed a blank canvas.

“May I take your tunics off?” you ask, sitting up.

Despite a short twitch of confusion and then interest, Obi-Wan follows, raising himself up into a kneel, slightly lifting his arms in compliance.

The paleness of his skin catches all the light of the lantern, highlighting your view as you slowly slide the fabric up and off, gliding your hands up the line of hair dipping below his navel as it becomes more exposed. It grants you a quiet, steep intake of breath from him and you suddenly give halt momentarily, distracted by the alluring appetite you’ve created.

No, you won’t give in. Not yet. He needs to know this.

You take one of the broken pieces of melon rind in your hand, where little tart bits of the fruit still cling, dribbling pigment, but before your finger makes contact with the taut skin of his chest, you pull back at the realization you might have bitten off more than you can chew.

How do you even begin to describe him? Obi-Wan is so many things at once, so many attributes, and every descriptor that comes to mind falls blatantly short of him.

Then you recall Obi-Wan going through the motions of Alchaka, watching his body fight to maintain the poses at times. Being such a personal practice, you felt honored that he let you see him go through the exercises, and even more honored that he opened up to you about the purpose behind it later. It was an exercise of both physicality and Force use, and the goal was absolute exhaustion. That was the destination. Trying, knowing from the start that he’ll fall short in the end, but doing it all the same. Because there’s so, so much to be said for the trying.

So you do. You bring the messy fingertip to his clavicle, smearing the first word you know to absolutely be true of him, as if starting the premise with a whisper of I know you’re even more than the sum all of these singular praises.

The word “complex” appears in your penmanship on his skin as you drag it to life. You look up to his eyes, and his curiosity is clear there, but also so is the tenderness that is elemental to any time he looks at you. And just like that, you have your next word.

Kind.

And at the way he flushes so lovely for you at that?

Beautiful.

You feel his protest before you see it, the objection in his signature, and you know you’re going to have to switch methods.

Just then, a droplet from where you’ve written the last word on his pectoral falls, down, down, threatening toward the hem of his trousers, but you’re fast, dropping your mouth down and catching it all on your tongue before it can stain the bleached beige of his remaining clothing.

When his stubborn revolt at the affirmation quiets in his mind in exchange for a flash of searing lust, you know exactly how you’re going to continue.

Because Obi-Wan Kenobi, general, warrior, negotiator, Jedi Master, legend, has rarely ever been affirmed as such, and he squirms under the thick blanket of his humility and deprivation anytime someone endeavors.

So you need his mind to be preoccupied enough, guards down low enough, so he can even hear the message get through.

When you place your hands over his waistband, locking eyes in inquiry, stopping when he hesitates, scanning the area around you, vigilant as always. Overly so now.

“We’re alone. And wouldn’t you be able to sense it if we weren’t?”

He looks down at you as he answers. “If I stay mindful enough to do so, yes.”

Good, he’ll be even less prone to fight you if he has some of his mind sensing outward.

You look back up at him with the facial equivalent of asking “well?” to which Obi-Wan sighs in response. “Very well then.”

With your familiarity with ridding him of clothing, it only takes moments before you can finally taste him where you want to, where he’s already hard and swollen for you.

You know you won’t be able to take him as much as you want, a recently-developed overactive gag reflex preventing you. But it just so happens to be convenient tonight, as the resulting taunt should have him right where you want him.

A gentle kiss, right to the head of his cock is all the warning you give him before taking the whole tip in your mouth, swirling your tongue around him, pulling a choked hum deep from his throat.

Oh, oh, Maker, have you done a grand miscalculation, because you forgot an entire factor in this equation: the way you have been borderline hysterical in hunger for him.

You’ve kept so much from him, and part of how you’ve even managed is starting to convince yourself of less than fact. Facts like how many times you’ve had to change underthings recently, physical evidence of desire unwilling to comply to your head’s demands. Facts like how you’ve literally had to bite your finger to keep the feelings at bay.

You’d expected changes in your body even before your belly grew, but this was one you hadn’t anticipated. In some ways, it wasn’t that different than usual. You never knew you could want someone with the breadth that you want Obi-Wan.

But this? Of late? It feels like it’s been amplified tenfold.

You’re not keeping any cards close to your chest anymore, but you do have to ignore your own body’s screaming cries as you complete this.

He needs to know.

Nerves still serenading his brain with feedback, you re-wet your finger with the purple juice and write the next words across his abdomen.

Wise.

Perceptive.

He’s caught on to your scheme by now, cued by the all-too appropriate addition of the last word, and he lets you know it, an impression projected, speechless but still unobstructed. He’s still powerless against it. Or rather, letting himself be powerless. Trusting you with the control he has left, trusting you in his vulnerable places. The places where he’s weak.

Strong.

The word spread over his right upper arm, where he’s obviously just that. But may the tint of the word bleed through his skin, may it run through his veins, because that’s how deep and deeper still that his strength runs. It’s in the way he doesn’t flaunt it. It’s in the way he chooses to wield it.

Gentle.

He closes his eyes, flinching at the onslaught of acclamation, and you dip your head down again, wrapping your lips around his cock, letting him slide to where you can take him comfortably, just starting to build a pace as his hips squirm in harmony with his suddenly erratic breaths. Oh, how you’d love to let him deeper, allow his cock past your lips beyond the teasing amount you can take now, but the little writhes his body gives in protest are enough to almost make you okay with how your mouth won’t agree with your ambitions. He says your name, groaned out in bliss as he cups a hand on your cheek.

His barriers are down, so it’s easy to hear when his deprecating thoughts quiet again, and you switch back to coloring him again.

You know the moment you look up at him that it’s a mistake, because he’s flushed, so torn, suspended in the limbo of your give and withdrawal, mouth ever so slightly open, tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip.

You’re only human, so before you draw anything else, you bring your lips to his, which is yet another mistake, because among the many things Obi-Wan is, he is a deep kisser, and as his tongue delves into your mouth, your will power takes a devastating blow.

You pull back, reeling at the reminder of how easily he can take back control, knowing you have to complete this before you let him.

Stars, how you want to let him.

For now, you need that control back, so you take him into your mouth again, filthily wet and not nearly long enough as you quickly pull back, watching in satisfaction as he heaves forward at the loss, correcting himself quickly back into straight posture.

With a smirk, you drag your slippery, pigmented finger across his lower stomach.

Disciplined.

There’s so many more words, so much more he needs to know, and if you covered every inch of his skin in the smallest writing it still wouldn’t be sufficient of all that he is.

Or you could whisper it all through the Force, embed it all in his mind.

But because you’ve been there, know his mind inside and out, you know every time he sees his own skin, all he sees is the red of blood on his hands. The blood of his brother.

And that’s exactly why you’re going to stain it in your own colors. Take back territory and push back the front lines that the army of guilt has taken over on him.

Your Jedi, ever-adorned in unassuming beige, now drips in the color of royalty.

Charming.

Humble.

Confident.

Steadfast.

You’re only left with enough space for one more word, and you want some sort of conclusion to it all, something to summarize the expanse of the man kneeling in front of you.

Nothing can.

But maybe, just maybe, one word encapsulates what he is to you.

Treasure.

This time you do chant it across his thoughts, prompting him to open his eyes and look at you.

Cerulean blue blinks open, slowly, almost painfully and nearly overflowing with emotion.

Thank you, is all he says, unable or unwilling to say it out loud, much too heartfelt and newly-budded for that.

You know his pain has older roots than those tended to in this moment, but you vow to yourself that you’ll never stop trying.

Lowering your mouth around him once again, you don’t tease him anymore, at least not intentionally, even though you still can’t take more than half of him.

“Look at you, you’re…” he hisses in a breath as you swipe your tongue against that vein on the underside of him. “Stunning. You’re doing so well, little one.”

The taste of him compels you as much as his words, seizes you in spice-like addiction, and how interesting it’s going to be explaining that taste craving to him, among your sudden adoration for those damn melons.

“Darling, I’m…”

You feel it in his energy before he says it, already pulling off, replacing your mouth with your hand, dropping your lips down even lower, mouthing at his balls, and the feedback is instant. An outpouring crest of his pleasure blasting outward as he lets out a depraved moan, netting his hands into your hair.

Your hand is wet and so is where he’s spilled on his still flexing and releasing stomach, clear white maring the lettering halfway through “disciplined.” You’d clean it with your tongue if you weren’t sure how your overly sensitive taste buds would react now.

It’s not the first time you’ve had sex since you’ve known you were pregnant, but it’s the first time since he’s known, and it’s the first time you’re not hiding the symptoms. Before, you carefully shied away from anything that might give you away, and between the preoccupation of everything on his own mind he was trying to keep from you and his respect for your boundaries, he never pressed. He had questions in his eyes, but you knew how to carefully reveal partial vulnerabilities to keep him off your trail.

Your chest flares at the memory.

We’re not hiding now.

It’s your chant, your reminder, your comfort. How nothing of this caliber will be kept between you again.

His eyes confirm it, sincere and exact as they fight to break through their dazed slipping.

Never again. His voice in your head is home, so consoling it can and has put you to sleep before.

Right now, it wakes you up in a different light, dowsing you in heat as Obi-Wan takes your hand in his, wiping it on a piece of his discarded clothing before wiping the spend off himself.

Then he’s taking your face in both his hands tilting you up before kissing you soundly.

I love you, he says across the wire that ties your minds, the wire that keeps growing stronger every day. So, so very much.

You say it back, a fact as simple as breathing. You love him.

You want him, borderline need him the way you need your next inhale, you don’t say, but he must hear it anyway, because that cocky little smirk that’s been gone far too long is back.

“Shall we do something about that?”

You’re about to just lift your shift dress up and off in response, but he halts you, grasping your wrists.

“Allow me.”

He pulls you into another sultry kiss, completely neglecting the task of ridding you of clothing.

Or so you think.

There’s buttons all the way down the dress, and you’ve never used them, always wondering at their purpose if it can so easily lift over your head.

At first, you don’t even know he’s doing it until you start to feel the coolness of the night air on your nipples. Opening your eyes, you pull back from him to watch as seemingly in thin air, your buttons undo themselves.

“You needn’t seduce me further. You already know how much I need you,” you gasp, breathless from the kiss.

Obi-Wan just gives a small smile as he drops a hand, dragging it down your side, then down your thigh. “Hm. So impatient. All this from just pleasuring me?”

Maker, he knows! He knows that you are. You always have been, and it’s not as if you weren’t projecting your feelings too.

When he reaches a hand between your thighs, parting them and making a single, tempting stroke through them, his fingers come back glistening.

“I should think you could feel that I am.” You let the tide of your frustration spill over into your connection to his mind.

You know he had to hear you, but he gives no indication that he did.

“Mm. Desire needn’t always be indicatory of impatience,” he punctuates his statement with a hand at the base of your skull, tipping your head back to expose your neck. “I need you to be patient, little one. Let me savor you.” And with that, his mouth makes contact with your neck at the same time his other hand plays with one of your exposed nipples.

You whimper at the attention, quietly pleading with him for more. Among the still slight changes to your body, this has been the most notable one. How sensitive your breasts have become to even the scrape of the fabric of your clothing.

And with the rough pads of his fingers working only one, leaving the other to pang in want...

“Obi-Wan,” it’s a prayer, a request. He doesn’t need his hands to cause sensation, and you’d beg him right now if he asked.

He lets up on your neck, only barely, lips moving against the now throbbing skin. “Answer me first.”

Clearing your throat, you give the most cogent response you can muster. “Depends on if you’re definition of savor is synonymous with torture.”

He locks eyes with you then, gently grasping a breast in each of his hands, dragging his thumbs over the nipples as you moan out your assent.

His chuckle is far too self-satisfied to be becoming of a Jedi, but you’re already too far gone to call him on it.

“Is that what you want, little one? For me to torture you so?”

An affirmative whimper is all the response you can give, and Obi-Wan reacts quickly, taking your chin in his fingers and tilting your eyes up to his again.

“Then you will be patient for me. Because I’m always happy to stop, and we can begin again when you decide to adhere.”

Your brain short circuits on the spot, and all energy is redirected much, much lower. His voice, stars above, his voice when it takes a commanding tone.

It’s intimate, it’s personal, and yet this game is almost inappropriately playful for how sincere the moment is.

But such was being loved by Obi-Wan. Full of dissimilar feelings that shouldn’t fit, but moved together in liquid consistency. Like metaphors that didn’t rhyme but still somehow gave their own life-giving rhythm, not dissimilar to the sound of his heartbeat when you lay your head against his chest at night.

Making quick work of the remaining buttons of your shift and underwear, he beckons you to join him as he lies back down, large, warm hands guiding you to turn around so you’re facing away from him.

You know that the purple stickiness of the fruit will smear from his body to yours like this, but you can’t at all bring yourself to care.

You gasp a sigh of relief as one of his hands finds your breast, brushing a knuckle over the too-sensitive nipple.

“Please.” Your whispered beg sounds pathetic, even to your own ears. But as you arch against him in a frenzied attempt at skin contact, Obi-Wan juts his hips forward, grunting into the exposed column of your neck, and stars, yeah, maybe he didn’t find that so pathetic after all.

“What do you want, darling?” His voice doesn’t divulge any desperation, and for only the hundredth time do you envy his immaculate self-control.

“You know, don’t pretend you don’t.” Leaving any doubt to the wind, you push your chest against his barely-touching hand.

“Specificity can be a virtue; that I also know.”

You change techniques, driving your hips back softly into where he’s hard and insistent against your ass, hoping it compels him.

Then you simply… can’t anymore. You’re frozen, unable to move your lower half at all.

Tangling your desires into a knot and tucking it away, you find the mindfulness to reply. “Yeah, so is mercy.”

“Indeed it is. I shall concede when you do.”

You won’t win a battle of the wills with him. You’re not sure anyone could.

So you bring his hand over to your nipple. “Touch me here.”

You feel his smile without even seeing it as he starts tweaking the bud. “Like this?”

It’s so much sensation, all concentrated on such responsive flesh, that you want to beg for him to switch to touching you between your legs.

You haven’t even finished the thought when you feel his unmistakable metaphysical brush against your thigh.

Extending a tendril of your own energy, you invite him in, and he takes it eagerly, ever as eager if not more to be entwined with your mind as with your body.

He hears it all, the besottment, the arousal, the neediness. The panic that he might drag this out longer, that you’ll have to go a single minute longer without...

“It’s alright. It’s alright.” He sends soothing waves through your connection, and he swaps the positioning of his hand with the curl of power. He turns his hand so that the back of it runs through where you’re aching for him, gathering up your slick on the backs of his knuckles. You have to contort your neck to see what follows when he takes the hand back behind you, and your mouth goes dry when he sucks the knuckles in between his lips.

You want to hear, you want to know what he’s…

He’s welcoming you in, navigating you to the brink of his mental barriers, letting you take that final plunge into the unsuppressed fullness of your bond to each other.

Now it’s your turn to hear it: how his carefully constructed unaffected persona is not at all a match for his naked, wanton need for you.

And under that, the foundation on which that desire is built, not the product of it, is his love, his unyielding, unashamed, iridescent love for you.

It’s all you can do but to pour it back, affirming and soothing and calling his love into action with your own.

You both don’t want anything else except the most complete of entanglement, and that’s exactly what he moves to do, situating your bodies, hiking your top leg in the crook of his arm as you feel the initial breach of his body into yours, and all breath leaves your lungs in an exhilarating evacuation.

His audible gasp is an echo of his emotions, how he thinks he’s prepared for this onslaught of feeling, but how you take him off guard, how his equilibrium threatens to teeter every time.

The web of his consciousness enveloping you, it’s easy to pick out a single thought blaring within him: How much he adores the way you fit together. Your back against his chest, how your breast fits in his hand, how the snug joining of where his cock presses into your body sends you into trembles, how comforting your very presence is to his soul when he lets you in like this.

Tears, without warning, seep out of your eyes as he starts to move against you, slow and deep. You close your eyes, willing the powerful emotion away, but glimmers of light flash out behind our closed lids the moment you do, and how the kriff does he stay composed?

Anchor. Anchor against me.

He stills, letting you have a break from the barrage of pleasure blinding you as you search him out, looking for the cords of his intellect that seemingly both steam downward and beam upward, grounding him.

You find it, and you clasp on tightly.

But the moment he starts moving again, you lose sight of it all over again.

Your heightened hormones make your flesh so susceptible, and the tears start to fall again. Obi-Wan rolls your nipple in between his thumb and index, and he’s so good, and you’re so full, and you can hear his pleasure as your own, adding, doubling everything…

Scorching, electrifying heat speeds through your veins, hitting hard and fast, leaving you astounded and even more sensitive than before.

Obi-Wan’s signature spikes as your climax resounds through him, and you can feel the vibration of the wanton noises he’s making right where his beard scratches against your neck.

But he doesn’t allow it to overtake him, letting it run through him without resistance, making himself pliable but unmovable, keeping himself back from the edge.

You still have much to learn.

Because that control? Gives him the ability to not even stop, not even hesitate once, even at both yours and his own ecstasy flowing through him.

When he starts striking his hips hard into yours, the weight of him inside you dragging exactly in the right place, you start to cry in earnest. Obi-Wan stops for a millisecond, concern radiating off of him, even when he can hear how much you want this so clearly, has access to every little passing thought.

“Don’t stop, I’m fine, I pro…” He does just as asked while moving his hand down to your belly again, a soothing touch to his rough thrusts. Your eyes are blurred with wetness, overwhelmed with him.

He’s listening to it all, applying every micro-feeling of feedback into action against your desperate, post-orgasmic skin, hand switching back and forth from your nipples to loosely clutching your neck, Force energy focused on applying pressure to your clit.

“You’re doing so well, so good for me,” comes the wisp of his sultry tone, lips pressed against your ear.

Since you aren’t even thinking about changing position, you know it’s his own preference that has him withdrawing, guiding you onto your back.

There’s no inhibition this way, not the way there is when you’re on your side, no separation from your bodies being flush when he pushes into you again. You have to anchor in him, both mentally and with your fingernails clawing at his shoulder blades as your body starts into tremors.

He’s keeping the weight of his chest off of you, even though your belly is still barely swollen into distinguishable roundedness, and as much as you miss the contact, you can look into his eyes like this, can see the unfiltered attachment and all the weight of all the emotion he wills his body to not cave under.

But then the tremoring transforms into series of contractions throughout your body, centering through your slick core, and you thrash your head to the side catching a glimpse of Obi-Wan’s fingers clenching into white knuckles, grasping into the exposed sand from the blanket being bunched up.

He projects his thoughts across the tether to you, how thoroughly impacted by the very fact you’re carrying his child, how affected he is by every little thing about you, honored that he’s allowed to touch you like this.

You roll your hips back up into his, and that’s what it takes. His stuttering body is the lightning, and the searing, molten pleasure across your connection is the thunderous repercussion.

It completely overthrows you, and your body bows against him as his high instantly cues yours again.

You can feel him throb inside you at the very moment you do, his turn to experience the secondary sensory white-out of your mate’s climax through the Force, his shuddering shout meeting your breathy whines in the close distance between your mouths.

And he does kiss you then, soundly but with the haze of afterglow slowing it.

“Have you any idea how bewitching you are to me?” He breathes it out, and despite all the ways you’d normally scoff at such words, his eyes tell the story, and you listen to it’s truth.

His eyes hold that constant infiltrating study of you, the one that could be unnerving if his mind, still tethered to yours didn’t hold such amor, heart bleed such fondness that settles in the creases around his eyes.

How interesting it is watching someone as knowledgeable as him having such an inquisitive outlook on life, and being so frequently the object of those investigations.

Did the galaxy know her debt to him? Did she know the sum owed to inflicting the worst of life’s pains on someone who refused to let it build anything except an even gentler man of himself? When does she plan on repaying him? What does she offer in exchange for her cruelty of the hand she’s dealt Obi-Wan Kenobi?

Then the whisper comes, soft but crisp, from somewhere in the threads of existence around you, “Can’t you see? It’s you, child.”

You could argue it. You could scream how it’s not enough, how you’re not enough, how he deserves so much more from some dark insecure place inside you. Or how love shouldn’t be treated as currency in exchange for pain, how the galaxy could still have your fists if that was how it tallied.

But the finality of it settles in your soul, more impressionistic than in solid wording: there is no easy conclusion that ties the suffering of life into purpose, no experience that erases or mends its pain. But love. Love makes the complicated endeavor of trying to find purpose in the madness worthwhile.

Obi-Wan’s hum of agreement resounds in your ears and through to your head. His Force signature feels so familiar, so at home within yours and yours within his, that you’d briefly forgotten he could still hear you.

With all the strength still left in quaking limbs, you wrap your arms around him, and he melts into it.

The compassion of his soul hardly matches his war-ravaged skin, his guilt-ridden memories. Every good thing here came to be with a war waged, refined and not burnt away in fire at his sheer tenacity.

It’s a growing thing, blooming in the desert. The beliefs in both of you. Your love for each other. Your own trust in the Force.

Healing is no short journey, but her two sojourners here are determined.

And if that tender hope can blossom here?

Then maybe, just maybe: Tatooine is exactly the place for a baby after all.

*********

In the valley beyond the hut, a boy jets quickly away in some mechanical contraption he recently motorized, a girl in a similar vehicularized compilation of junk not far behind.

On the cliff’s edge stands Obi-Wan, eyes scanning the landscape intermittently for any sign of threat between longer affectionate looks at the children before him.

He turns, feeling your approach in his keen awareness as you set a hand on his shoulder from behind. His temples are now even thicker with sun-bleached silver, and his eyes wield the lines of laughter around them.

And you? You’re as roped in by his gravitational pull as you’ve always been.

He puts a hand over yours, clasping it to bring you in front of him, where he can still watch the children and encase you in his arms at the same time.

“Slow down, Luke! You’re going too fast!” comes the distressed cry of your daughter, Ahlina, drawing your attention away from admiring Obi-Wan and back to the valley. Her vowels curl in the same way her father’s does, but her more casual phrasing was certainly thanks to you. Luke shouts back at her, “Come on, keep up!” while he races on ahead.

Obi-Wan smiles, seemingly amused at a secret joke.

“They are much too young for this nonsense still,” he speaks, muffled slightly as he hides his lips in your hair.

“Probably,” you reply with an airy laugh.

Not long after, the engine on Luke’s small contraption gives out, jutting him off and tumbling forward into the sand.

“I told you!” Ahlina yells, her own machine coming to a halt not far away from Luke.

When they make it back up the cliff, Obi-Wan couches and opens his arms, and they both come running with smiles. They’re still young enough to be unshy about affection, and Obi-Wan knows to soak it up, closing his eyes in relishment.

Luke is the first to wiggle down, waving before running over to hug your leg, which you happily return, brushing some of the blonde mop of hair from his forehead. You adored the nights that the Lars let him sleep over.

Although the nights that Ahlina slept over at theirs certainly had their allure too.

“Can we have a snack, Daddy?” Ahlina asks, still happy to be hoisted up on one of his arms.

“Hm. Perhaps I can make some of those ahrisa sweet breads again?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Can Mommy make them?”

“Why not mine?”

“Because you always burn them.”

He bops a finger lightly on her nose with a smile. “Cheeky.”

She goes to bop him on his nose in return, but he catches the finger, holding it.

“Give it back!” she screeches through a giggle.

“No, no. I think I’ll keep it now.”

The suns are dipping low as you retreat into the hut, the two children running ahead, racing to gather the ingredients to help you bake the bread. Luke especially was an enthusiastic sous-chef.

You step to follow them, but Obi-Wan grasps your hand. You turn back to him, and he barely gives you a second before he joins his mouth to yours. Sliding a hand into the auburn beard, you open your mouth to him, letting his familiar taste permeate your senses.

He reluctantly breaks after a long moment, and you take his hand in yours. When you turn back to the horizon, the suns are dipping, blanketing the landscape in the most celestial light of the day.

The planet’s eyes aren’t harsh in the way you used to see them. They’re still intense, and frequently unforgiving.

Perhaps they never changed. Maybe only you did.

But as they sink now, you give a silent, partial farewell, knowing they’ll greet you again in the morning.

Because if Dark’s patience is infinite?

So is the promise of the return of the Light.

Tagging upon request: @million-dollar-legs

#obi-wan kenobi #obi-wan kenobi x reader #obi-wan kenobi x you #obi wan kenobi x reader #obi wan kenobi x you #obi-wan x reader #obi-wan x you #obi wan x you #obi wan x reader #obi-wan kenobi smut #obi wan smut #obi-wan smut #obi-wan #obi-wan x oc

560 notes · View notes

disaster-fruit · 3 years

Note

could you tell us more about the brarg family au with the 3 babies and trans luci?

I definitely can! This au has been living rent free in my head since i started that drawing and I was actually sketching more stuff for the AU right before I got this ask so- I definitely can ramble more about it

This was supposed to be just a collection of a few hcs and now it’s a multi-pages word document the size of a fanfic so – Im really sorry.

I didn’t think a lot about their backstories tbh, though I have it in my mind that Luciano transition in his late teens and that he and martin either met after that or knew each other before luciano came out, lost all contact, and then met again after (and you can blame oxiosas fic for that yeah im not even subtle)

But I imagine them having some sort of meet cute and kinda progressing really fast in their relationship without realizing – yk, its just a fling, no big deal, yeah ive met his parents, yes I basically spend every weekend in his apartment, yeah I have a spare key now, ops I guess we’re adopting dogs and plants together- oh I think we’re married. Yeah. We’re married.

Ok but for real Luci does the proper proposal-with-a-ring-and-knelt-down-on-a-special-day thing and Martin is just bright red saying yes over and over again

It is Afonso (port) the first to be all WHERE ARE MY GRANDCHILDREN like… the night of their wedding.

They live in a house in a not too big city with two dogs, one cat, one parrot and all the birds that Luciano feeds and names that aren’t actually theirs. Still, they choose the house with two spare rooms because they always talked about having two kids.

In this AU they can buy a nice house and don’t have to worry about money and can raise kids like the world isn’t ending.

I think right after they got married they got in line for adoption. However, everything indicated that it would take a long long time so they started talking about the possibility of trying to have a biological kid. I think luci was the one to suggest it when he noticed martin had been thinking about it but not saying anything for a while.

Lots of boring doctor visits and confused doctors looking at luciano and trying to process it like the dumb cishets they are. Boring exams and all that, but everything is on track eventually, luci pauses his hrt and keeps his jockstrap on the drawer and they’re googling the best positions for fertility on those weird cishet sites and doing it like bunnies etc etc

Getting pregnant the natural way after years of testosterone is not the easiest thing in the world, so it takes a while. But eventually it works.

Both of them are kinda freaking out with this whole first pregnancy thing. Martin is the ultimate protective husband, and spends way too much time on the internet finding out what luciano can and can’t eat, what exercises he should do, and going to every single doctor visit. He’s very committed to it.

Luciano has to drink non-alcoholic beer and hates life. There’s a single teardrop shed every time he buys it. And drinks a lot of lemonade like it’s the same as caipirinha. Poor guy. Martin doesn’t help on that, life isn’t fair, he buys his own beer.

But he also has to drive absurd lengths to find the weirdest fruit or make the most hideous, blasphemous pizza toppings because Luciano is constantly craving absurd shit. But poor baby actually really NEEDS that chicken M&M pizza at 8am.

They’re super proud daddies though, and both their instagrams at this point are just baby belly pictures. Luci had top surgery on this au on my hc so also. Lots of shirtless pics. He looks like an old uncle with a beer belly and he’s PROUD. Just. Baby bellies all over.

Martin picks the entire baby layette. Because of course he does.

Their baby shower is a huge deal though. Their dads are there, Antonio brings an entire trunk filled with diapers and tells everyone how many tincho used to need when he was a baby, Afonso is cooking for everyone and talking about how he’s gonna be a grandfather (!!!). Iracema (pindorama) is scolding Luci about his bad habits while also quietly being a super proud grandma. Zola (angola) bought toys because she knows that’s what kids actually like, Samero (Mozão) keeps asking if they installed all the necessary security stuff in their house – we will, chill, we still have some months to go – Vera (Tomé) is teasing Simão (Timor) about him no longer being the family baby, Fatima (g.bissau) is another one who bought a huge amount of diapers, Rosinha (cabo verde) is taking pictures of everyone and everything, Sebas and Dani are discussing if the kid should speak Portuguese or Spanish, Maria brought a huge pink plushy as a gift, it’s quite a party.

Once they’re late in the pregnancy, Luciano mostly spends his time on Martin’s oversized t-shirts asking for foot rubs and not getting much sleep because the baby keeps moving. Martin on the other hand is a little nervous about being a dad, but absolutely loves feeling the little kicks and talking to the baby all the time, except when its 3am and he wants to sleep but Luci cant because of it so he just does his best to keep him company. He mostly ends up falling asleep on his chest though and doesn’t help much

I wrote all of this but I still don’t have a name for the girl lol Anyway, she’s finally born, and if martin was overprotective when Luciano was pregnant, he’s ten times more with his baby girl. Tbh theyre both kinda going crazy with this whole parenting thing, both are overprotective, tired, and have no idea what theyre doing.

Zola and Sebastian are the girl’s godparents. Sebastian isn’t very good with kids so when he takes care of his niece he either puts on a tv show and lets her eat whatever crap she wants, or relies on Daniel to do the actual taking care, since he is good with kids.

Luciano and Martin are very much neurotic first-timers and have all this schedule of what their girl can eat and when and when she has to sleep etc etc.

When Zola takes care of her, she just ignores it and does it her way. She helped raised Luci since he was a baby anyway, he survived just fine and even married and reproduced, she knows what to do better than both the dumbasses, and they never even find out.

Afonso on the other had follows everything when he’s with his granddaughter, determined to be a better grandfather than he was a father, and the baby loves him so he’s doing a good job.

They’re a very cute family yes yes

She grows up well and happy, a bit shy maybe but very smart and sweet, loves the dogs and her aunts and uncles and granddads (afonso more than antonio though)

By the way, Iracema is soft like butter with her granddaughter.

When she’s about four or five years old they start talking about having a second one, considering the age difference and all. So back to doctors, Luci stops the hrt again and they go back to trying, but again it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do it naturally after years of hrt.

But god listens to the prayers of such good catholic family, and right after they start thinking about a second child, they receive the news they will finally get to adopt a baby.

Luciano is the one to receive the news, he’s working at home when the social worker comes to tell him they can finally adopt. He’s extremely happy, he hugs the poor lady and is barely able to concentrate as she explains the paperwork that is left and the details of it because he can’t stop smiling.

He immediately texts martin saying something like “CALL ME RIGHT NOW WE NEED TO TALK” and it’s in happy caps but martin understands it wrong and thinks someone is dying or dead but then his phone is what dies so he gets home as fast as he can thinking all the worst scenarios just to find luciano jumping on him with a smile for ear to ear. It’s such a shock he takes a while to react but when he does you have two idiots so happy they can’t function.

It’s another girl, she has big brown eyes like her sister and it’s a few months old.

They quickly reassemble the crib and paint the second room to get everything ready in time to take her home, and the next week or so it’s nothing but all the family visiting to meet their new baby.

Since they managed to adopt, they decided to stop trying to have another kid. Luciano goes back to the doctor do some routine exams so that he can go back to testosterone and the doctor just awkwardly explains that, well, that won’t be exactly possible. Not for the next eight months, at least.

He’s quite shocked at that, and takes him a while to tell martin. They just got a new baby and do they even have space to raise three kids? Eventually it just escapes from him and martin is shocked as well, but ultimately both of them are just worried about their place being too small, and once they relax about that they can’t shut up about having another baby on the way to anyone.

Still, it’s not easy to manage, martin is just as worried as he was with their eldest, except that this time he’s simultaneously worried about their new baby and about Luci’s pregnancy. Poor dude needs a break asap. So he’s trying to do most of the work of caring for a little baby to spare luciano from the stress, while also taking care of him as well as he did the other time.

Luci is more chill about being pregnant, he’s done this before, he’s fine. He’s even a little too chill about it, as shown in the art, he still wants to carry their kid on his shoulder and having a few sips of martin’s beer is no big deal and honestly he’s fine, he can help with the baby, and Tincho just needs to relax and it will all be fine.

Again, poor tincho needs a break.

Some things don’t change though. Them being super proud daddies who do nothing but take pictures of their kids and Luci’s belly every chance they get. And they’re really happy and excited to have their house full and this big family.

Just a good cute family AU where nothing bad ever happens thank you very much. Yet it took me almost 2k words to say it. I have no self control and I’m very sorry. However, if anyone has their own hcs to add about this whole au, I will be more than happy to hear and talk about this AU even more than I’ve already done.

20 notes · View notes

robinisaghost · 3 years

Note

animatic ideas :0 (ramble away, i would love to hear them!!)

mk thank you for enabling me, i will now be yelling

anyway

this is gonna be so obnoxiously long i am so sorry

can you add read more's on asks? eeeekkkk because this got so damn long lmao

mild dsmp spoilers obviously

this is the playlist, by the way

-im sorry boris (wilbur soot)

i think it would work really well with mmm slightly post lmanburg niki. andby slightly i mean. well when she leaves (that is the whole thing of the song gdfjkhgsdf) also side note at like 1 minute 11 on that song theres a discord notification really subtly in the background and it makes me paranoid every time i hear it. anyway god its such a nice song. even for just like. the end of lmanburg. not necesarily paired with a character, just the sense of leaving a place that was so highly populated before it got blown up twice and was like. the main part of the smp. yeah. anyway also the lines "they'll knock down the pubs before helping you...they'll let you jump under trains before helping you" yeah those four lines have big niki vibes but also i think the song could work well with exile tommy or actually even with the finale when tubbo is about to sacrifice himself? mmmmm yeah

-this is home (cavetown)

mmmm got exile tommy vibes innit. a lot of these have exile tommy vibes tbf i just like sad songs and also exile tommy. plus the song has a lot of like. the message is sort of like. changing yourself to appeal to others? like with "ill cut my hair to make you stare" but also the repeated thing of "ill figure out a way to get us out of here" which is clearly the main character of the song trying to help everyone when they are clearly not in a good way themself. yeah thats got big tommy vibes in general tbh but more like. pre finale tommy. i think he got a bit more independant after that.

-soldier poet king (the oh hellos)

ok this is self explanatory and has been done to death already but d a m n its kinda funky. anyway i had thoughts and actually started this but then lost motivation and deleted it all lmaooo. the only proof of its existance is a shitty storyboard in my draw which will hopefully never see the light of day again (unless anyone wants to see it :eyes:) anyway i had the thought of like. sbi? so soldier techno poet wilbur and king tommy. but tbf tommy and techno are kinda interchangeable with that, cos while techno is obviously the better fighter, tommy is used a lot, especially in lmanberg era and also i think he probably will be now that wilburs back

-pyjama pants (cavetown)

ok so i honestly dont remember why this is on the playlist but tbf this could go well with a bunch of characters. thinking like. phil and wilbur? or wil and tommy, or tubbo and ranboo are two that like. i know for a fact that i did not put the song on the playlist specifically for them but god thinking about it now it works so well with them

-boys will be bugs (cavetown)

OH BOY THERES A LOT OF CAVETOWN ON HERE HUH (i feel like that probably says something about me but shhhhhh we dont need to talk about that) ANYWAY

I think this could probably work really well with tommy? because of the whole like. trying really hard to come across as not caring about others, but really being like. very vunerable. but at the same time it could go really well with wilbur for the same reasons. also the song fucks ok cant deny it. to be fair i think it works better with tommy, because he's younger and also he really likes bugs (unless i am mistaken) which is just a cool coincidence but still)

-brother (kodaline)

FUCKKKKKKKKKKK THIS WORKS SO WELL WITH SO MANY CHARACTERS AND IS ALSO ***SO ANGSTY*** WHAT

anyway

i added it because of tommy and tubbo because holy shit, but also it could work very very well with wilbur and tommy, techno and wilbur, probably techno and tommy, and oh my god i just thought of this but this would work so well with phil and techno!!!! but yeah i originally thought tommy and tubbo because i thought it was a funny coincidence with exile tommy waking up underwater, and theres a line that says "if you were drowned at sea, id give you my lungs so you could breathe" and like. just thinking about the compasses especially. me gusta.

-feel better (penelope scott)

fundy. that is all.

no ok this works well with fundy but also probably karl sapnap and quackity, and also very much wilbur, like it works well with both. just mainly fundy idk why its got big fundy vibes tho. very poggers.

-as the world caves in (matt maltese)

ok but like this goes very very well with the explosions of lamberg. either of them. i think probably the first one is better, but i think it goes well with both. probably the first one, because it was way more emotional i think? cos it was the first time that their homes had been destroyed and everything, but also because it was so personal, because wilbur was the one who did it. i think that also it would work well if it was set during the explosion but also focussed on different facets? so like. one bit about wilburs perspective, one bit about tommys, one about phils, one about fundys maybe? idk just a bunch of lmaburg citizens' povs for this. its good. as the world caves in is a song that can be so gender tbh.

-do you hear the people sing? (les mis)

obvious obvious obvious...... but like..... also tbh it goes well with a bunch of things. like, mmmmm wilbur in pogtopia. the butcher army. lmaburg independance war (obviously ghdskj) but yeah. also this song just goes so hard like b r u h

-wolf in sheeps clothing (set it off, william beckett)

SO MANY OF THESE ARE LIKE. PRETTY OBVIOUS IF YOUVE HEARD THE SONG

but yeah. it would go so well with like. well any betrayal basically. so eret, from tommys pov maybe, or about wilbur from nikis pov, or wilbur from anyone pov tbf, or quackity from charlie/purpled/foolish/sams pov, or sam from tommys pov, really it works well with so many people which says a lot about the characters tbh but shhhhhhhhhhhh

-need you here (idkhow)

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

mk mk mk mk FUNDY AND WILBUR THO

like b r u h that works so well with them

also i started this one as well but didnt like it, theres a story board in my draw as well for it because like. oh my god its such a good idea i just am shit at animating and don't have a decent enough program :')

also also

the line "daddy has to go, and that makes me sad, but daddy will always come back, he promised" fuckkkkkk that works so well with like. say for example, idk, when they're celebrating schlatts death and wilbur leaves to press the button? the sheer fucking angst of that is enough to kill any one person istg that is in fact the entire reason why i started the animatic in the first place. just that line. also all the lines sung by the child voice. fuckin angsty as hell. also ust generally a banging song, as is every idkhow song

-green (cavetown)

another cavetown song huh. ok sure.

mk so wilbur and sally and fundy. like. for a start, the imagry of a fish at the start? boom sally.

anyway the lines "you looked so good in green, i hope you're well, and you look so good with him, (schlatt ig?) and I'm proud of you still (wilburrrr and fundyyyy) i miss your perfect teeth, i was too blunt, i hope you feel happy, that's all I want"

FUCKKKK

the whole song is about missing someone you used to love and only hoping the best for them!!!! and wishing that they are happy and safe!!!!!!!!!!! and hoping they still think about you!!!!! but even if they dont its fine because all you want is for them to be happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

-achilles come down (gang of youths)

OK I THOUGHT IT COULDNT GET ANGSTIER

so like. tw suicide but thats what the entire song is about and bing bang boom i just think it works so so so so so so so well with not only exile tommy (who obviously did try to kill himself) but also wilbur in a slightly more metaphorical way? so like. his self destructive habits leading him to a point where he had no choice other than to kill himself and to take his country down with him. and its all about other characters trying to help them and persuade them not to but also near the end there is a second voice trying to persuade them to go along with it, which im thinking like. if its wilbur, either dream or maybe just himself. his own brain persuading him to continue down the path that would inevitably lead to his and his countries destruction. also it works well with schlatt for the same reasons, except he doesnt want to die. maybe (since the song is so goddamn long) like. one verse for tommy one for wilbur and one for schlatt? dead gang poggg but also like. the verses cover fairly different things which work with one character but not so much the others, for example the first verse would be tommy because its mainly about persuading the person to not kill themself (which tommy did himself but shhh) the second for schlatt because its literally about drinking and smoking away your problems, and the third for wilbur since its more of a fight between the "good" and the "bad" sides, which is obviously what wilbur was experiencing. also obviously i have a soft spot for this song because its string instruments and french, basically my favourite combination ever (also i like his voice idfk lmao)

ANYWAY THATS ALL THE SONGS ON THERE SO FAR

i literally thought of another song while i was in the shower today but i dont remember which it was but a n y w a y the playlist will most definitely be getting longer, especially since there are so many more songs that are good for this but i just havent added them yet lmao. anyway ive been writing this for like an hour gsdfjhgdhfsg but still oh my god this was fun to write

#long post #tw suicide #only a mention at the end but still gotta be safe :)#dsmp #dreamsmp #dsmp animatics #robin talks #ask #thank you so much for the ask tho cos like. i dont wanna be annoying or anything? but also like. i really wanted to talk about this gsdfkjg #god i hope the read more worked or this is gonna be annoying to everyone ever #its fine probably maybe not really

3 notes · View notes

terminally-karkalicious · 3 years

Note

allow me to rant about the only thing that has been in my brain for the past two months and that is doll customizing babeyyyyy

i know there’s a 90% chance that you wont give a Shit about any of this but here we go anyways

SO first you gotta choose a doll. preferably one with a high range of motion to avoid creating new joints or having annoying limitations like not having elbow joints for some fucking reason. what the fuck mattel. give monster high dolls back their ball jointed shoulders and elbow joints. smh

the most common dolls ive seen used as bases are monster high and ever after high. most customs ive seen are highly stylized so the stylized face molds work well for those types of dolls but dolls like barbies are good for when you want a more realistic face-ups.

once you’ve got your base picked out you gotta wipe that bitch’s face off with like. acetone or nail polish remover or something strong like that. you can also use acetone to shrink doll heads which is cool as hell imo. n e way once the face is wiped you gotta chop off the hair and remove the hair plugs from the inside. ive seen this done several ways but the easiest and most common way ive seen is to dunk the head into boiling water for ~30 seconds until it gets squishy and malleable. once you’ve got the head back, you can use pliers (i think tweezers would work in a pinch) to pull out the hair plugs which are kinda icky because theyre covered in glue and other gross shit. ew

now you must decapitate the doll. dunk em back in the boiling water to soften them back up then just tug the head off. the neck pegs look funky and are usually a different color than the body so thats cool ig

once the head’s off, you can start the face-up which is basically just giving the doll a new face using stuff like watercolor pencils, acrylic paint, gouache, and a whole lot of other stuff. hell ive seen people use person makeup on these dolls.

next,,,,, hair. there’s about twenty million ways to do hair from gluing yarn wefts to sewing to rerooting with purchased nylon doll hair or yarn wefts but i’m gonna talk about the most common one ive seen which is rerooting and gluing.

before you can reroot, you need doll hair. which, as i mentioned, can be bought at stores like the doll planet or made at home with yarn in literally any color. have fun with it! make rainbow hair or something idk

to make homemade wefts, you take some acrylic yarn, cut it twice as long as you want the hair to be (keep in mind you can cut and style the hair once it’s been rerooted), fold them in half, and tie it to something sturdy like a wire coat hanger for the next step.

once you’ve got your yarn tied to your hanger, use a pet brush and brush the yarn until it’s wispy and looks like hair. then take a straightening iron and iron the weft flat. then remove from the hanger and boom. hair wefts. ta-da

to reroot the wefts onto the head, use a rerooting tool (which can be as simple as a needle with the eye cut at angle) (just google it please i’m shit at descriptions)) to poke small sections of the hair into the head. you can use the pre-existing rooting holes for your own reroot as they’re usually pretty reliable. to reroot, take a small length of you doll hair (about 10-15 strands), loop it in half, and put the middle of the loop into the reroot tool. poke the end of the tool with the hair on it into the pre-existing hole and remove the tool. the hair *should* stay in and fill up that plug!! also remember to plug thickly at the hairline and part of the hair where it's most noticeable. it doesnt matter as much in the center of the head as that’s not usually visible on the doll. once you’ve rerooted, squeeze in strong glue through the neck hole and squish around the head to make sure it covers all the plugs and secures them in place. then pour hot water onto the head to make the hair lay flat for styling later.

also, you can reroot yarn directly into the head to make thicker, more textured hairstyles. and since the yarn is thicker, you dont need to glue the inside of the head for the hair to stay in place!!

if youre not doing body modifications (which are also cool as hell) then it’s time for clothes but clothes are boring and i like body mods more so i’m gonna rant about them instead

the material ive seen most doll artists use is apoxie sculpt, which is like play doh on steroids. it comes in two parts which you gotta mix together for some reason. why dont they sell it pre-mixed. what was the reason. also once it’s dry it’s super super strong and you can sand it, drill into it, paint it, and all kinds of stuff. very nice and i want some for myself.

you can use hand saws and drills and shit to whack off doll limbs to make stuff like digitigrade legs or new joints. also dont be afraid to use other mismatching doll parts when customizing like heads and bodies and forearms and hands and shit. it literally does not matter if youre gonna recolor the doll anyways so have fun with it. make frankenstein’s doll if youre feeling spicy

accessories my beloved. stuff like tiny beads and clay baubles and shit will literally transform the entire doll plus they’re adorable and multi-purpose

i suppose i must talk about clothes now. ah well. you can find great clothing patterns if youre new to customizing on other customizer’s etsy shops and probably google although those will probably be lower quality than paid pattern pieces. and keep in mind that if it exists as clothing irl, you can likely make it doll-sized. there are literally no limits to your clothing options as long as you can execute your idea.

the once all your components have been made, you can assemble the doll again!! and finally see what all the parts look like together!! very cool 10/10 stars.

ight that wraps up my doll rant. i could really go into more detail on certain parts but thats a whole other rant for a whole other day smh. sorry for fucking flooding your inbox ender ahaha……………. you asked for this

little did you know that dolls have been one of my favorite things since like ever. if i can read a 25 chapter long fanfic i can read this B)

mattel definitely fucked up by completely ruining MH doll designs and just stopping EAH, alot of their profits most likely came from people who collect and customize dolls and by changing MH doll designs/Stopping EAH dolls they 1. most likely lost a small (or big if we're not jus talking people who customize dolls) part of their profit and 2. made it harder for doll customizers to make dolls/get commissions out rather quickly because they probably have to waste more time making joints or learning how to make joints.

EAH/MH dolls (specifically MH dolls) had AMAZING MODELS because there was so much variety with height, face shapes, etc (my favorite molds had to be the short/tall dolls and the cat molds because of the tails) and doll customizers really went all out with enhancing a molds unique features. The only "downside" abt MH dolls is that they (or atleast most)(from what i remember)) had slimmer faces but wider eyes while EAH dolls have wider faces with slimmer smaller which left a canvas for the face and not the eyes (and vice versa for MH dolls)

I've never seen any videos where a barbie is customized (maybe because i absolutely despised barbies at the time) so I'll definitely have to check those out but they seem to be good for realistic makeovers. I've seen like like semi realistic makeovers for EAH/MH dolls that were pretty good too tho (pretty sure mostly EAH dolls since yk MH dolls were used for creature makeovers while most EAH dolls weren't)

yeah i was always amazed by the head shrinking with acetone. honestly i still am?? idunno i have no idea how that chemical bullshit works. Ive seen a few of uh makeovers that just pain over the face (in multiple layers ofcourse) but that's usually when they're painting the entire body a different colour (again usually when they're turning a doll into a funky little baby man). I've also seen a few that just chop the hair off and take out the hair plugs yk without uuh like softening the head or just go straight for the hair plugs after taking off the head (i used to do that it was funny to me??). i always really liked when they used watercolour pencils or just colour pencils in general to draw/sketch on the face cause like wow ur drawing on ur doll without ruining it?? kinda epic maybe even poggers and pogchamp?? oh god my brain is failing wjshsmsj.

Watching them putting the hair back on the doll was, other than the face stuff, was the BEST part for me. Favorite type of hair was iuuuuuh was either thick yarn or brushed out yarn. Literally worship the people that would reroot the hair, theyre the most patience people on this earth!! it's literally insane but i guess that's what happens when you've been doing that for years? you guess kinda get used to it. when they put glue into the head does it just become stiff?? like it's just a clump of dried glue or does it like..hollow out again??

dude you literally cannot convince me most of the supplies used for doll makeovers. APOXIE CLAY LOOKS SO FECKING GOOD. its edible and i will die on that hill. The body mods are literally so amazing!!!!! it's so impressive how theyre able to imagine certain features THEN LIKE ACTUALLY MAKE IT LOOK ACCURATE TO WHAT THEY WANTED TO LOOK LIKE AFTER LIKE ON TRY (or many yk trial and error is very necessary for..everything). Absolutely loved when doll customizers would saw off a dolls legs and use different ones or just completely get rid of the torso to use a different one. it's like uuh that one big guy that's mismatched and sewn together. very cool. The accessories are so fun!! just small little details you seen really need but can add because it's your feckin doll!! I used to be absolutely obsessed over the doll clothes i would find on etsy, so much so that i started sewing shitty shirts and dresses for my uh "customized" dolls (they were absolute HORRORS idk WHY my mom let me feck up my dolls like that).

Thank you for this!! i haven't been able to talk about any of my interests for a while and this just really made me happy!!

Question fer u my fellow MH/EAH enthusiast: what was your favorite MH/EAH movie/episode and doll series. Mine was The fusion dolls (MH obvi) and that MH movie "Haunted" cause we got to know more about Spectra :D

#YOOOO LONG POST?!#long post #:) hehehe #this was very fun to read cant wait for ur next fanfic length ask #asks :D #theoreticallyjasper

2 notes · View notes

floridensis · 3 years

Photo

AH!

(im just rambling under the cut and it got loooong)

ive been looking for the phone i had at this time and i cant find it

okay do you remember back when instagram was for hipsters? like it was literally basically exclusively about putting vintage filters on your pictures to make them look old timey. good times. why cant we go back.

anyway back around (?????) i had an instagram and i literally have no idea if there was a social feature, if there was i never used it. i just used it to make some pretty pictures sometimes.

well back in (??????) we travelled to pennsylvania to visit family, and i loved the vibes there, so much older and less.... whatever its like in my part of florida. i must have decided to take some pictures that matched my vibe. i knew i took some really old cemetery photos and some street photos to instagram, but i had no idea i took this one.

i KNEW i captured this butterfly eating a crabapple, and i had some normal, non-filtered photos, one of which i had as my lock screen. its these photos ive been after for a long time now, because i want to find as many old photos as i can to upload to inaturalist. my main blog has been fantastic for excavating high school finds, but this butterfly has remained elusive. i think i had a tumblr at the time, but some time in the middle of high school something snapped and i manually deleted every single post on my blog with a small handful of hand picked exceptions, so just about everything from before then is no longer there. i never ever ever get rid of my old phones (or most things.... because i have issues) so i know i must have it but i just cant seem to find it anywhere. i was giving the butterfly up for lost. but i was looking at my massive folder full of my photography and related stuff that has only been around for a couple years, and i saw that i must have saved a small handful of my old instagram photos. i opened it expecting to just be nostalgic for pennsylvania but what do you know, i also struck gold!!!!

unfortunately, that instagram account is gone, and this photo is dated at 2017, which must have been when i originally re-discovered it and saved it. the picture is absolutely way older than that, but i have no idea when it was actually taken. my phone would have that information saved, but alas i cant find it. id date this as probably 2009-2011 but i am bad with time in a very big way. i think this might have been a summer visit. so im happy i have this and might upload it to inat in this condition, but i hope im not done. im going to show my mom some of the other instagram pics i had to see if she has an idea about when this was. she most definitely does have that answer though of course she could not pin down the exact date of my butterfly. i will also need her help because i know the exact location of where i took this but i dont actually know where it is. if she gives me the address thatd be perfect.

i also like.... hate the idea of uploading something with a filter but thats all i have until i can find that phoneeeee

(i bet when i find that phone ill also have bunny pictures that will make me literally weep.... i really hope i find it)

isnt it beautiful?

i love floridas nature but i detest the human parts. so modern and ugly. modern doesnt have to be ugly but it sure does like to be. i probably have some not-filtered cemetery shots because these stones were REALLY OLD, but again.... missing the phone. its like impossible to tell from these pics to see what the stones say but they dated back hundreds of years if memory serves.

call it my heavy cancerian influences, i have an immense draw to places and things with strong, long pasts. one day im going to accidentally bring a haunted object home. its hard to articulate my draw but its a feeling i cant deny

4 notes · View notes

pantsusnifferr · 3 years

Text

I’m gonna be hella honest here, 2020 wasn’t the drastic life changing year i had hoped it’ll be.

Now its a tradition, well maybe, not really. Who knows...

Let’s start with the goals which ive accomplished in 2020 yeah?

Have less regrets Live more, experience more, get out of the comfort zone Be hardworking, be brave Work hard for the company Rekindle ties to the ones important to me Start working on my YouTube channel for company Study hard Be more confident, be more social Be a nicer and kinder person

Yes i definitely have had lesser regrets overall, i learnt that listening to that gnawing feeling in my gut is one of the few things that will lead me to get less regrets. Perhaps that’s an indication of something that you really want on the inside. Many times this year i just took a leap of faith and made decisions on the fly, going out of my way many times just to do the things i wanted to do. The me a year ago would never have done any of these things, let alone spend any money or time into such ‘frivolous’ activities.

Lets go through some of the highlights for my accomplished goals.

1. Bought Airshow tickets on impulse and rented camera lenses just because i had a shot i wanna get.

Ended up getting that money shot and feeling pretty accomplished. It was nice to meet up and connect with fellow aviation enthusiasts and friends from my Air Force days, but i still felt like i didn’t fit in. Oh well, i didn’t regret anything. I set my mind to a thing i thought would be fun and challenging and i did it!

2. Trespassing into the green corridor for an assignment during the circuit breaker

haha...Definitely isn’t worth the trouble in the end due to shitty unusable footage and total lack of input when it comes to the editing process. BUT STILL, the feeling of walking through thick jungle and jumping over construction barricades and barriers in the middle fo some goddamn forest just to get some footage is an experience nonetheless! Shitty teammates, good thing we managed to pull through and made some friends along the way. Wasn’t worth it, but i didn’t regret the experience one bit.

3. Got into more active activities with an open mind.

Went to the gym with friends a lot more and tried to lead a healthier lifestyle, cycling, hema classes (more about that in a bit) The me from a couple of years ago would definately never give this idea a shot. Running at least once a week, keeping track of my health, all these made me feel a lot better. I should really get into it more though.

4. Hema classes .

Never thought swinging swords around can be that much fun! And i almost didn’t want to show up because i had a sudden surge of social anxiety in the morning before. Glad i powered through that to get to that class that october aternoon. I was mostly on autopilot, depressed and wanting more...but for the last few months of the year, hema classes gave me something to look forward to, and this really changed up my entire outlook then. I suppose having a newfound hobby you never knew you liked changes people for the better.

5. Going out of my way many many times just to help out a friend. Or just to hang out.

I remember being too lazy to go out and have fun. Too lazy to wanna get up to get something done even with friends. Installing internet access points, cleaning up rooms, setting up laptops etc. Perhaps its the large amount of FOMO i’ve started to develop, or maybe its just me sick of being a sad loney wreck. Who knows, all i know is its a blessing to have friends and i am so glad that they’re willing to give me their time of the day as well.

6. Making videos for work.

I didn’t HAVE to do this. Autopilot at work is a scary thing, its my own company and i could’ve done so much more... but i didn’t... or rather i couldn’t. I don’t remember what came over me and how i manage to find the willpower to shoot the videos then edit them over a few days. And i have no idea how i managed to actually follow through with it and get the damn thing edited. Not my proudest work, but damn am i proud of myself for actually doing the thing!

7. Keeping at it for school and not giving up.

Statistics, the killer module. Logistics, another killer one. I studied so so hard for it, i thought i was going to fuck it up like how i fucked up my assignments. But I am so so so glad that it paid off. Taking days of work to study is the correct move and i am so glad i had the discilpine to stick with it. Haha discilpline i said, more like letting the panic set in untill i find myself studying as if my life depended on it. But still, an A and a B+ feels really great though. My first A, that’s still something to celebrate for! Thanks for helping, you know who you are!

8. Giving more of a shit for my company

Im a little undecided about whether i should put this under the part about having no regrets. I am happy with the money and growth we’ve got in our company, alongside the many happy customers ive got, I still somehow felt that i have struggled so much and had a lot more anxiety and stress as compared to the previous years. Perhaps i just need to chill. Although i don’t doubt the fact that taking more responsibility does indeed make things less mundane. Appreciate the increase in pay and bonuses though.

9. Spent quality time with family

I used to have this feeling whenever i am around my cousins, these are the people whom i’ve grown up wit,h and who i used to consider really close friends. I just felt that over the years we have just became different people altogether. They’re normies with normal hobbies, living their lives normally and successfully while im just a weird outsider.

Im somewhat glad that we managed to find some common ground in gaming and our talking sessions. Attending their wedding is a weird feeling but im still somewhat glad that a part of them is still the same on the inside. We might not be as close anymore but im still happy that they treasured the times and memories we had just the same as i did. Lets hope i’ll not fuck it up and i’ll need another chance to rekindle this relationship. Still, them being more successful in life and work still gives me this crazy inferioty complex around them.

Talking with my mom has given me a lot of peace of mind. I am so glad that I have a responsible parent and business partner who shares the same values as i do. Makes things a lot less stressful to know that she’s got my back.

10. Became more social

Yep, went out of my comfort zone many times to talk to people and help out when i could! Its always good to do the kind thing and reach out, when i’d just brush it off as someone else’s problem previously. I am really proud of myself for this.

Now for the goals ive failed. Start work on my personal YouTube channel Join the weeb club to find more gamer weeb friends Learn weeb speak Be healthy Learn 2 songs on bass guitar or ukulele Draw at least once a month (I did but they’re not completed art)

Oof, i don’t know perhaps its the lack of time or the lack of effort. Maybe i’ve been putting in so much effort into the other things i don’t have the mental energy to process these. Perhaps i don’t want it bad enough...

Art and drawing in particular has been really bad. I want to be good at drawing so badly but i really just can’t be arsed to practice. Music too.

I think i am definately healtheir than before but i am nowhere near where i should be. Gotta step up!

Now here’s what i wanna do for the next year

Keep healthy, Lose weight! Be even more social! Start work on personal youtube channel Learn ONE SONG on any instrument Draw at least twice in the next year! Live even more, experience more, get out of the comfort zone more! Be hardworking, be brave

#2020 year in review

3 notes · View notes

blookmallow · 4 years

Text

i finally rewatched Us watching for details... I also took a bunch of screenshots, I’ve mentioned before I live in santa cruz and grew up going to this boardwalk so im obsessed with this movie, I’m going to go try to take some better comparison shots sometime (here’s a few I took before) (and here’s a Tethered mannequin that was outside of the frightwalk for a while. i havent been inside for ages so I don’t know if they moved him inside or if he’s just gone now) (i HOPE they did something with the theme considering the frightwalk is literally a horror attraction beneath the boardwalk. i dont really want to go in there by myself though lmao. not a fan of animatronics jumping out and screaming at me)

this is a lot, i have many things to say

-----------------

- the opening news segment is 11 at 11

- you can faintly see adelaide/red’s reflection in the tv screen, with a toy rabbit (her shirt also has twin lines on it in multiple places but that could be looking too far lmao)

- in the “Hands Across America” segment (aside from the obvious red figures linked together in the logo) : “from the golden gate bridge to the twin towers” another possible 11/twinning, and it starts in california, which is where the tethered revolution begins

- on “from sea to shining sea” the exact same coastline image is just flipped

(there’s also another 11 on the side of the TV here)

- “This summer, 6 million people will tether themselves together”

- brief mirroring in the boardwalk ad, not just two girls running on the beach but also two girls with upside down reflections in the ground,

- fairly obvious one, but “find yourself” (as a sidenote there’s nothing in that spot irl, the roller coaster and the swings are real but there was never a ‘vision quest’ or a ‘merlin forest’ as far as I know and there’s no door or anything there either, the interior shots must’ve been done separately somewhere else) (nothing’s left here from the movie now either, I have no idea when they filmed it because I never saw anything or heard anything about it)

- adelaide/red whistles “the itsy bitsy spider” when the lights go out in the vision quest - “down came the rain and washed the spider out,” it’s raining outside when her tethered comes up (and she is dragged down). she also drops her red apple on the ground before she enters

- zora’s rabbit shirt

- everyone else is eating fast food of some kind, except adelaide, who is eating red strawberries

as well as being a visual cue, its possible she has an aversion to meat if she was forced to eat raw rabbit as a child

- young adelaide arranging animals in the sand (it seems like some of the tethered tend to mirror their counterpart’s movements, so it’s possible she’s mirroring red, though it’s probably not that likely she’d be planning this early/the dance hasnt happened yet so its probably just foreshadowing)

- young adelaide very pointedly watches “her” mother crying, saying “I just want my little girl back” - she will never have her little girl back again, though she doesn’t know it (I’m not sure if adelaide still remembers what she’s done at this point either)

its also mentioned that ‘grandma’ has passed away as of the present time, likely adelaide’s mother (i dont remember if its stated outright but since the house belonged to the grandma, and it’s in santa cruz, that would line up) so. the tethered mother, if she’s still alive, would not kill red’s real mother in the uprising. dont know about the father, or if red knows/cares about this, but. thats there. that also means the original mother will never know what happened with her daughter (likely the father won’t either, it’s not clear if he’s still alive but there’s no mention of him being around/he’s not at the house so it seems likely he passed already too)

- adelaide, her reflection, and a (not so) itsy bitsy spider

theres even two spiders, one a toy, one real

- jason crawls out of a cabinet at zora’s feet and scares her while she’s looking in a mirror (which is also a very pluto-like movement)

- adelaide finds the toy rabbit in a box; assuming the intro was chronological, we saw “her” with it in the tv screen reflection before she went to the boardwalk, so this was red’s rabbit first (she probably does not remember this, though) (red also later finds this and cuts off the head, not sure why though)

- adelaide “sees” her child self in the room with her (in her memory) learning her dance alongside her reflection

but the reflection is the one she “sees” looking directly at her

(she’s also interrupted by hearing her son, above her, screaming because he’s trapped, but that might not be intentional) (though when red comes down here later, she is also interrupted by her son getting stuck in the closet too)

- she’s also wearing a choker necklace with a matching gold bracelet, maybe an allusion to. the choking and the handcuffs, again i might be looking into it too much, but. the white clothes which steadily become red with blood seems very intentional so i wouldnt be surprised if the jewelry was planned specifically too

- its really hard to see and its a split second throwaway comment but kitty goes “oh isnt that beautiful” showing her the magazine and i thhiiiink thats a white girl in a native american headdress :’ ) probably doesnt have. much deeper meaning other than ‘clueless white friends’ but

- guy buried in sand comes bursting to the surface again and scares his friends (also eyyooooo you can see the wharf in the background im down there all the time) (sorry this is still wild to me. i grew up here ive been to that beach like 9 million times)

- i didnt catch it and was waiting for it to be shown again and it wasnt and i dont want to go back for it but anyway jason has a drawing of a bunch of people holding hands in a line like the hands across america thing in his room, theres a lot of drawings around and we see his drawing of the first untethered, so he probably drew that as well

- jason has a hard time communicating, but he seems to use drawing as a way to express himself. he doesn’t tell his mother about the encounter with the old man (and only shrugs when he’s asked about it) but he does draw it. adelaide found self expression through dance when she was a child before she was able to talk, so he probably got those traits from her. her voice also goes low and hollow on the line “I just didn’t know if you were lost, or... taken”

- her voice also gets very strange when she’s talking about her memory of the encounter in the vision quest. low, shaky, harsh. its fascinating hearing how much alike the voices are (obviously they’re both the same actress/if the tethered are clones it makes sense that they’d have identical vocal chords but like. red’s got a fucked up voice. hearing echos of that in adelaide is wild and i didnt notice it at all before)

- its not clear whether adelaide actually remembers what she did, or even realizes she was the copy - is she trying to protect her family from what she believes was the girl who almost took her, or trying to stop her from getting her revenge? she describes the event to gabe as if she was the one who was attacked but escaped, and im not sure if she’s lying or has convinced herself that’s the truth

something’s going on with jason and pluto too but I don’t quite know what it is. when we first see jason he’s wearing a Jaws shirt, kind of a similar vibe to the thriller shirt, and when the tethered arrive he’s wearing a white tuxedo t shirt, white matching his mother’s white outfit. the others all go off to kill their doubles but pluto holds jason’s hand, sits with him quietly, watches his magic trick, he’s told to go “play” which. obviously has a violent undertone to it but he doesn’t actually try to kill him. i dont even remember seeing him with the scissors. why are jason and pluto different. why does pluto get stuck mirroring jason’s movements even to the point of his death but the others dont. why didn’t adelaide mirror red

i guess its possible its because pluto is the youngest in the family so maybe he hasn’t broken out of his connection yet? they didnt really ever explain how they learned to do that

and as for the connection with adelaide it. could just be that jason takes after his mom more and zora takes after her dad more but that seems too simple. i mean theres the theory going around that jason was actually switched with his clone too at some point and its got some good points (jason forgetting the magic trick, getting stuck in the closet again, etc) but theres a whole line of logic to debunk that too so its just. What’s Going On Here

cal 11

i took the first pic to get a comparison shot at the same place later irl but then noticed the ambulance they come across is the same one (#2) they saw earlier

pretty obvious but the real rabbit comes out through the picture of an identical rabbit (there’s also probably a “rabbit hole” allusion here)

i noticed this before too but now i have a screenshot of it, im the rabbit in the background just chilling on the floor during the climax here

- im sure i must have seen this before but i forgot about it. the 11:11 guy’s tethered didn’t have a sign so he just.......carved it into his head

- it never healed, either, he did it badly enough to scar

- red says “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, how you could have taken me with you” - she doesn’t mean adelaide ran off and left her there. adelaide made the choice to trap her in the underground. its possible red might have even been thinking how she would have let adelaide come with her if given the chance, which. i mean, i dont know how her parents would have reacted to suddenly having identical twins out of nowhere, but like. knowing there’s a chance red might have accepted her. and all this could have been different

this is definitely a movie that’s not really intended to be fully explained, there’s a lot of questions that aren’t really supposed to be answered, but nonetheless one of my biggest concerns is where do the clothes come from underground. red tells us they were all abandoned down there generations ago so nobody’s supervising or providing anything. how do they end up with copies of the clothing their counterparts are wearing. and here adelaide has a messed up faded old shirt that either looks similar to red’s shirt or is the same shirt just badly damaged, she switches it with red’s before she goes out for good so that explains how she gets the new shirt, but where did this one come from. why is it different if the other clothes aren’t

and of course there’s the whole question of “where did they all get these red jumpsuits from” but again. questions that aren’t really the point, i guess

#liveblog general #Us #us movie #jordan peele #us 2019 #pinned #media analysis

71 notes · View notes

storiesofwildfire · 4 years

Photo

Loki is one of the most powerful magic users of their generation. While magic is rather commonplace on Asgard ( though magic is not actually a natural occurrence in pure Aesir blood, magic is deeply ingrained into their culture. Not to mention, the Aesir did, at one point, commonly breed with non-Aesir, so magic lingers in many bloodlines for that reason ), Loki’s abilities and what they can accomplish with their unique brand of Seidr not only stretches across a wide and vast range of techniques, but also holds a powerful potency that most sorcerers cannot hope for.

The only other magic user that stands as Loki’s true equal is the Vanir God, Heimdall. Aside from the Watcher, there are no known individuals on Asgard who can match Loki’s strength and abilities. The same is believed to be true throughout most of the known worlds. While there will always be someone more powerful than Loki out there, very few rivals actually exist in this particular field.

Often seen as the God(dess) of Magic, Loki is often worshipped for their abilities, and some ( like Loki’s first love, Vera ) actually call upon Loki to channel their own sorcery.

There are many brands of magic throughout the universe. To list them all would be extremely complex and time-consuming, but magic tends to boil down to those who possess the power themselves and those who draw their power from something ( or someone ) else.

In Loki’s case, Loki’s sorcery comes from within them. It was something that they were born with. They create their magic on their own and it is as much alive as Loki is. Thus far, Loki has not reached a cap on their abilities, meaning their magic continues to grow each and every day. Their power is constantly flowing through and around them and those who can sense or even see magic may very well be able to watch the emerald hue of Loki’s Seidr move around them in a continuous flow. Loki doesn’t rely too heavily on their abilities, but not using them would be absolutely catastrophic. When magic sits idly, ignored, it tends to lash out and occupy itself. The energy wants to be used and if it isn’t, it makes life very unpleasant for the one restraining it. For this reason, even when Loki does not need magical assistance, they may still very well use it, even for mundane things like keeping their hair in order or tidying up a cluttered desk.

While Loki’s magic doesn’t entirely have a mind of its own, it certainly does react that way to many sources of stimuli. The reason Loki’s power can heal them even if they are not conscious to will it is because much of Loki’s power can act on its own, most of the time to protect its user or ensure the comfort of its user. The presence of other magic users will also perk up Loki’s energy and draw it out. For those it feels somewhat compatible with, it may even attempt to spark the other’s power to come out and play. The only time Loki’s magic is not active and present is if Loki has expended themselves too far, in which case, they will need to rest and allow their power to recuperate over time.

Yes, Loki is an extremely powerful sorcerer, but they do have limitations. As stated above, Loki can stretch their power supply too far, making it nearly impossible to cast even the simplest of spells until the energy has time to rebuild. Loki would be exhausted and extremely vulnerable in these times. There are also certain sects of magic that Loki has not mastered or struggles to even perform. They are not automatically an expert in everything, and some abilities come far more naturally than others. Some magics they are not horribly familiar with or gifted in would include things like shadowmancy and necromancy ( though Loki does have certain abilities that do linger in death—they are the mother of Hel, after all, Loki doesn’t roam too far into these abilities. Mostly out of respect for their daughter and understanding that death is Hel’s domain, they should not interfere much ).

Because of how potent Loki’s magic actually is, for those who can easily sense magic, Loki is like a shining beacon. In order to hide their presence from those gifted with such abilities, they have to go to rather great lengths to disguise their Seidr or camouflage it in some way. Those who feed off of magical energy are especially attracted to Loki’s presence for that reason. Those who wish to steal power from those more powerful ( very much like Odin, who has stolen all of his magical abilities from other people and sources ) would view Loki as some sort of glittering treasure waiting to be uncovered and taken.

Loki’s magic also relies heavily on Loki’s emotional state and how well they are able to keep their power under control. As a child and well into their adolescent years, extreme emotional distress or even vigorous moments of happiness would trigger something that Loki did not mean to trigger. For that reason, Loki has learned to be very in control of their emotions so as not to lash out magically by mistake. As they’ve grown more powerful and learned more restrain, their magic escapes from them less and less, but it is still prone to happen. Especially in moments where Loki completely loses control of themselves for any variety of reasons...

Below is a list of different abilities that Loki has picked up and/or mastered over the years. Please keep in mind that this list will grow over time as Loki becomes more and more familiar with new forms of magic and even if something is not listed here, that does not necessarily mean that Loki cannot do said magic or is completely unfamiliar with it.

In no particular order and not limited to, here are Loki’s abilities:

i. Elemental Manipulation

Simply put, Loki can manipulate the elements that exist around them. Fire, earth, water, and air can be controlled to do Loki’s bidding so long as Loki is close enough to whatever source they wish to draw from. Think of this as bending from Avatar. It’s extremely similar to the concept of using the elements that exist around you.

ii. Elemental Creation

Unlike the previous listing, this is the literal creation of elements. Loki does not need to draw on an existing source. They can create the source themselves, though it does take a significant amount more to do so.

iii. Fire Manipulation & Creation

While this does technically fall under the previously mentioned entries, fire deserves its own entry because Loki is literally credited as being the Norse God of Fire. Fire manipulation and creation tends to be a bit easier for Loki than the other elements.

iv. Ice Manipulation & Creation

Again, this does fall under the same category as those already mentioned, but it’s worth noting that Loki’s water—and more specifically, ice ( yes, I know it sounds very Elsa-like, but honestly, I’m okay with that )—abilities are also rather advanced in comparison to things like earth and air. While it does act as a contradiction to the God of Fire title, Loki’s Jotun heritage makes these abilities feel almost like second nature.

v. Illusion Casting

We’ve seen it, we know it, we love it. Loki has an uncanny ability to project images so real, you’re convinced that what you’re looking at absolutely is. The illusions can range from simple images to complete glamours that cover extensive areas and even create sounds and smells to make them even more realistic and vivid. The size of the illusion and the more detailed it is, the more energy it takes to create and keep up. It does make it difficult to tell what’s real and what’s not when Loki is around, though.

vi. Mind Magic

This can get a little dicey. We’ve seen evidence of Loki being able to bring memories and ideas to the forefront of people’s minds ( like what they did to Valkyrie in Ragnarök, for example ), but just how far do these abilities stretch?

For me, Loki’s mind magic is severely underdeveloped because it’s a relatively new concept for them and it’s something they don’t entirely feel all right using. While Loki did have the ability before their experiences with the Mind Gem, the Gem being inside Loki’s mind definitely brought the ability to the forefront and forced them to acknowledge and utilize it more.

Loki’s shown abilities in forcing thoughts and ideas to the forefront of someone’s mind, while also pulling thoughts and memories from them. In some ways, this means that Loki can both force their will onto others as well as force their way into the minds of those around them.

Because this very thing has been done to Loki so thoroughly that it traumatized them, however, Loki doesn’t much like tapping into the abilities. They are severely underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of their magical scope and every time they utilize the power, they get a sick feeling in the pit of their stomach. It’s not a pleasant thing, it’s not something they actually enjoy doing, and if it were up to them, they’d never use it.

Unfortunately, the Mind Gem amplified those abilities. It is the one piece of the Mind Gem Loki feels they can never truly scrub from their mind.

vii. Teleportation

As simple as it sounds, Loki can fast-travel pretty much anywhere they want to go within reason. It usually has to be a place on the same world or realm they’re already on, but it’s become such a quick and easy way for them to travel, it’s so simple to them now. If Loki is holding onto something or someone else, that something will be brought with them.

viii. Portal Conjuring

For off realm travel that Loki doesn’t want to use or doesn’t have access to the Bifrost for, Loki does have the ability to create small portals that connect one place to another temporarily. While this is a relatively easy thing for Loki to accomplish after years of practice, this does actually take up a lot of energy. It’s way more difficult than teleporting and it extends over much longer distances. Loki usually needs a rest after this, and they don’t tend to leave the portal open longer than it takes for them and whoever may be accompanying them to step through. It’s far too draining to keep a tear in space open for any sort of extended period of time. Even a moment or two is sometimes too overbearing, especially if the distance between those two spots is also extreme.

ix. Item Conjuring & Transfiguration

As we have seen countless times with Loki’s daggers randomly appearing in their hands, Loki can call items that are not currently on their person to them at any given point in time. Most of the time, Loki is calling on an item that already exists elsewhere, however, they can create an object from nothing ( or from something else! Like turning an apple into an orange ) if they wish to. Creating something with magic does take a lot more energy than calling something that already exists, however.

x. Creationism

In this sense, I’m not referring to the belief that the universe was created by some sort of divine intervention. I’m referring to the idea that, on some scale, Loki and their magic can be that divine intervention. Loki’s magic has created life numerous times over the course of their lifetime. All four of Loki’s biological children were the product of magic.

Although Loki is unaware of this, Loki’s magic is also the reason that Jotunheim and their biological mother now thrive ( you can read more about this in Laufey’s biography on my “other muses” tab ).

In short, Loki literally has the ability to create life and while such magic is draining and often takes a long period of time, it is one of the most powerful forms of magic Loki possesses.

xi. Shapeshifting

We all know that Loki is a shapeshifter. They can take the form of anything and everything they want within reason. The larger the form, the harder it is for them to maintain over the course of a long period of time, however. Loki can stay in any form they choose for any given period of time, though some forms are simply more difficult to actually maintain for significant stretches than others.

When it comes to shapeshifting into animals, it’s a bit more complicated though. While Loki doesn’t lose sense of themselves or the understanding of who they are, the longer they’re in an animal form, the more that specific animal’s instincts fight for dominance over rational thought. While in an animal form, Loki often has to surrender a certain amount of sentience to the animal’s natural habits, otherwise, they wouldn’t be a very convincing version of said animal. The longer they’re in said form, the more like that animal they become.

This is one of the easiest things for Loki to do, though, as all Jotun are, to some degree, able to shapeshift. Not all of them can do an entire body transformation like Loki can, but they are all able to change certain aspects of their body. It’s as much heritage as it is magic for Loki.

xii. Language

While most, if not all, Aesir use the All-tongue to speak ( a language that allows them to understand and be understood by anyone within Yggdrasil ), Loki has a natural born gift to understand and decipher languages and stories over time. Words are often credited as being one of Loki’s most powerful weapons and it’s partly because of this ability. We see a lot of it in God of War 2018, where Loki ( called Atreus by their birth father ) can easily pick up on runes and various symbols from many different realms and figure out what they mean without the use of the All-tongue.

Loki is the God of Stories and is often credited with the reason the ability to tell stories and even keep historical records exists. It makes sense that Loki would possess such an ability.

xiii. Energy Channeling

This is kind of a broad category in that it covers things like redirecting attacks from opponents and using raw energy as defense or offense. What I mean by this is that Loki can use their own magic as a raw energy projectile, or they can use it to create a barrier/shield around themselves or something else. They can also use the power of others to accomplish the same thing, though that takes way more caution and concentration. To stop someone’s oncoming attack and either redirect it or use it for something else is a useful skill, but a dangerous one because there is so much room for error.

xiv. Absorption of Foreign Magic

Loki can literally absorb magic from other sources or people. This is technically the method that resulted in Loki's pregnancy with Fenrir, Jörmungandr, and Hel. Loki absorbed Angrboda’s magic, but her magic was so potent that instead of simply fusing with Loki’s once Loki took it, it literally created new life with the help of Loki’s magic ( rooting back to the creationism thing I mentioned earlier ).

Loki can technically use this technique to make their own magic stronger, though that can be a dangerous game to play. If another source of magic doesn’t agree with their own, it’ll be like a patient rejecting a blood transfusion because the blood type is wrong.

Loki can also use this as a way to alleviate someone else’s burden if their magic is running rampant and they can’t get control of it. It can be temporary, and Loki can return the magic to them. In a few threads, Loki’s actually done this for Heimdall, when his power became too much and he couldn’t stop it.

xv. Prone to Visions ( aka Foresight )

Some Jotun ( not all ) are rather gifted in the ways of seeing into the future. Laufey, Loki’s mother, was one such Jotun.

Loki’s abilities in this haven’t cropped up much as of yet. In fact, Loki would even go as far as to say they don’t have any abilities with foresight. This, however, is not entirely true. As they grow older and more powerful with their magic, visions will begin making themselves know, rarely at first, and often in the form of a dream.

Loki doesn’t have much experience with this yet and what they have experienced was easily chalked up to random chance or coincidence, but it will not always remain as such.

xvi. Cloning

Loki can literally create doubles of themselves. The clones are lifelike and realistic, often able to fool anyone into believing they are the real thing. Loki’s clones can act independently and make their own choices without Loki pulling the strings, giving them the illusion of free will, but they are connected to Loki. Loki can feel anything that one of their clones experiences and Loki can sort of look through their eyes, so to speak, so whatever their clone sees and hears, Loki can choose to as well.

xvii. Healing

Healing is a relatively easy thing for Loki depending on the severity of the injury. The worse an injury is ( aka, the closer to death someone is ), the more difficult it may be for Loki to mend the wound or do so in a way that would actually prove to be effective in helping save the person’s life. Small and even medium-sized wounds are no problem, though, making Loki someone you definitely want to have in your corner during adventures or wars.

While Loki can also help ease or soothe some of the side effects of certain ailments, curing said ailment is much more difficult than healing a wound. Loki isn’t exactly proficient at curing sickness, but can often help when it comes to fevers, aches and pains, or general pain and/or discomfort caused by ailments.

Loki can also heal themselves. Much of the time, their magic does this without them consciously needing to activate it. This is why Loki can heal even when unconscious. Loki’s magic kicks in the second injury happens and goes to work repairing their body. This also attributes to why it’s much harder for Loki’s skin to scar than the average person. They simply heal too quickly more often than not.

xviii. Empathy

While this isn’t something Loki consciously activates and often doesn’t even realize they possess, Loki is able to read and even feel the emotions of people around them. For most of their life, they’ve passed this off as being particularly acute to reading expressions, body language, and tone of those around them. That does not explain why Loki can often identify so intensely with someone else’s emotions that they can understand and even feel them, though. Loki usually chalks this up to the idea that they feel too much and allow others to project on them.

#( storiesofwildfire headcanon ) chaos is about that which is possible #index; loki #filed under; headcanons #filed under; magical abilities #{ this has... literally been sitting in my drafts half written for months #I didn't expect this to be one of the only things I got done today #but this is... long #like 3100 words kinda long #and I'm so glad to actually have it out of my drafts and published #icb it took me this long to write up a proper breakdown of Loki's magic and abilities #the list will definitely change as Loki learns and grows more powerful tho #I simply touched on some of the most commonplace things Loki does/can do }#loki's magic #magic write up #about loki's magic #magic

16 notes · View notes

basketofverbiage · 4 years

Text

Angels Calling

Hi everyone! I just wanted to give a bit of a preface to this story. I know I was supposed to post a much happier story but I just couldn’t. A little bit about me that you may not know is that I worked for a local Hospice for 6 years. I helped people shower, maintain their homes, and just be there for them as they died and provided love and care to their loved ones as they were passing. My dad’s parents have been my next door neighbors since I was 4 years old, and I started noticing my sweet Gram declining a lot last year. When it got to the point that she needed help with showering, she wouldn’t let anyone else but me help her. So, when she was actively dying and in Hospice at the hospital, I stayed with her a lot and when she was still aware, she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. She lingered for 9 days. The night she died, I did her final post-mortum (after death) bath and got her ready for the funeral home to come myself. Because of my time with Hospice, I have a very unnatural way to deal with grief and everything is a little more complicated. When I started having nightmares about being at the hospital just waiting for her to pass, I knew I needed to do something to get it out of my system, and this story was born out of my need to deal with both my time working for hospice and the hundreds of patients I cared for and losing my Gram over the summer. So, with that, I’m sorry, but this story is really sad, but lightens up a bit at the end. But also know that I wrote this more for myself than for anything else.

Warnings: character death, grief, Hospice, terminal illness

Words: 18301

“Appa, I don’t feel so good.”

Hoseok never dreamed that those simple words spoken to him at 2:30 am would be the start of his worst nightmare come to life, but it was. Hoseok was a single dad, and as difficult as it could be, he wouldn’t trade his precocious 3-year-old daughter for anything in the world. Almost every father would say that if asked, but for Hoseok it was the truth. As far as he was concerned, the sun, moon, and all the stars rose and set in Dasom. Dasom’s mother had been young and a bit flighty, so when she found out she was pregnant she begged Hoseok to let her have an abortion, but he refused. He finally begged enough and promised that if she carried the baby to term, she’d never have to see either of them again, and she’d agreed. After 15 hours of labor, Dasom was born and her mother signed documentation resigning all parental rights to the child leaving her solely with Hoseok. As much as it broke his heart that she wanted nothing to do with this vibrant child, he was just selfish enough to be relieved that she couldn’t stroll in whenever it benefited her and shatter pieces of Dasom’s heart.

Hoseok could only think of a handful of times in her short life that Dasom had been ill, but she had recently begun attending pre-school and came into contact with more children her own age. He figured that it was only a matter of time before she would catch a cold, so when she came into his room and shook him awake and said she didn’t feel good, Hoseok figured she might have the cold that was going around.

“What doesn’t feel good, my Love?” he asked gently as he turned on the lamp on his bedside table.

“Appa, everything hurts. My skin even feels sore.”

Hoseok reached his hand out and felt her forehead and she was burning up. He picked her up and she immediately snuggled her face into the crook of his neck. He carried her into the bathroom and sat her gently on the countertop to take her temperature. She was old enough to take her temperature orally now and tolerated him holding the digital thermometer under her tongue until it beeped. When he glanced at the number on the screen, he did a double take. How was it possible that his baby had a temperature of 106 degrees? He was no doctor but he knew enough to know that her fever was dangerously high and probably the reason her little body was aching.

“Dasom, darling, we have to go to the doctor, but first I want you to take some medicine, okay?”

“Okay, Appa. As long as it helps. It hurts so much,” she whimpered as tears started streaking down her cheeks.

Hoseok hated seeing her in pain, so he gave her a dose of children’s fever reducer then got dressed to take her to the emergency room. After dressing himself quickly, he helped Dasom slip out of her pajamas to put on something that would be comfortable but warmer to go out into the chilly late-autumn night. When he took off her pajama pants, he gasped. There were big dark bruises down her legs that had not been there several hours ago when he’d helped her bathe before bed. As much as he was panicking on the inside, he was trying to stay calm for Dasom.

“Darling, did you fall out of bed or bump your legs coming to wake me up?” he asked, quietly.

“No, Appa, but it hurts.”

She was beginning to cry in earnest as he helped her into her booster seat in the back seat of his car and helped her buckle her seatbelt. The drive to the hospital went quickly, but Hoseok was so worried that it felt like it took hours to get there. Luckily, when they arrived there were no other people in the waiting room.

“Hi, Sir. How can we help you?” the receptionist asked.

“It’s my daughter. She woke me up saying she felt really bad, her fever was 106 degrees when I took it under her tongue, and she has bruises on her legs now that weren’t there when I helped her with her bath at 8:00.”

After entering the information into the computer system in front of her, the receptionist stepped from behind the desk with a clipboard.

“I’m going to go ahead and take you back to have her checked out by a doctor, but in the meantime, I do need for you to complete some additional information please.”

She led them back into a small room that was sectioned off with a curtain but had a bed in the middle. Hoseok laid Dasom gently on the bed and pulled a chair over beside her. She had brought a small yellow stuffed dog with her, and while she still cried a bit, she was toying with its ears while Hoseok completed the paperwork. He wrote down their insurance information and paused slightly when he got to the section about emergency contacts. His parents and sister lived several provinces over, and while he had some friends in the city, he and Dasom were pretty much solitary. After pondering for a moment, Hoseok wrote in the name of his best friend and business partner, Kim Namjoon. As far as Dasom was concerned, Unca Joonie and his partner, Unca Tookie, were her best friends. Namjoon and Hoseok ran a small bookstore/coffee shop combination in Seoul, while Namjoon’s partner Jungkook ran a game and comic book shop down the street. Namjoon and Jungkook had met a couple of years ago when Jungkook started coming into the café every morning for an Americano with double espresso shots every morning before opening his shop. Hoseok had just finished completing the requested documents when a doctor in a long white coat slipped into the room.

“Hi! My name is Dr. Kim Seokjin, but you can just call me Dr. Jin. What’s causing you so much trouble in the middle of the night, Princess Dasom?”

The dark-haired doctor was gentle and playful enough with her that he eased Dasom’s worries about being in the hospital, while still performing a thorough examination. After looking her over and taking her vitals, he turned to Hoseok.

“Mr. Jung, how long ago would you say Dasom had the fever reducer?” he asked.

“It was around 2:45 am,” he said, looking at his watch. “So maybe an hour and 15 minutes ago?”

“Hmm…” Dr. Kim thoughtfully jotted a few notes down. “It should definitely be taking effect by now, but her fever is now 106.3. I am going to have my lovely assistant come in and draw some of Dasom’s blood to do some tests. I’m also going to have him start an IV so we can give her a different medication to try to bring that fever down.” He turned to Dasom then and gave her a blinding smile, “I’ll be right back, Princess Dasom. I just want to step down the hall and get you some juice. Don’t give my lovely assistant too hard of a time, okay?”

Once she had giggled a bit and agreed, he exited the make-shift room. Since the room was essentially a big curtain in a circle around the bed, Hoseok could hear Dr. Kim speaking softly to someone outside the room but couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was watching Dasom snuggle under the light blanket with her puppy when someone new popped into the room.

“Oh my goodness! You must be the beautiful princess Dr. Jin was telling me about! My name is Taehyung,” the tall man said cheerfully before bowing to Dasom.

Dasom started giggling as soon as he called her a beautiful princess, and Taehyung shot her a big boxy smile before he came and sat down on the side of the bed.

“Princess, Dr. Jin said you are feeling pretty bad, and he wants us to do some tests to find out why. In order to do that, I need to take some samples of your blood which might not be fun for you, but I’ll be as gentle as I can, okay?”

Hoseok was still on edge, but the kindness of the nurse to even make his baby girl smile in this scenario was so appreciated. Dasom reached over and squeezed Hoseok’s hand while Taehyung drew three different tubes of blood and inserted an IV. Once the IV was in, he hung a bag of clear liquid and connected it.

“Alright, Princess Dasom! We are all done with the worst part now. I’m going to take your blood off to my friend to run some tests. In the meantime, why don’t you try to take a nap?”

After Taehyung left, Dasom lifted her little arms up to Hoseok and asked, “Appa, can I sleep in your lap?”

“Of course you can, my darling,” he smiled to her. He picked up her small body being careful not to tug the IV lines and climbed into her bed. She snuggled into his arms and within a few minutes she had fallen asleep.

After she had fallen asleep, Hoseok checked the time. It was nearing 5:30 am, and they still had no idea what was wrong. Hoseok was exhausted with worry, so he tilted his head back on the pillow in Dasom’s hospital bed and drifted off to the rhythm of her sleepy breaths on his neck.

The phone at the nurse’s station rang and Taehyung picked it up, chatting with the person on the other end for a moment before covering the mouthpiece with his hand and flagging Jin down.

“Dr. Kim, this is Dr. Min in the lab about our pediatric patient in Bay 1.”

Jin looked up from his charting and walked over to take the call.

“Hi Yoongi-chi. Have some good news for me?” he said cheerfully into the receiver.

Taehyung knew that Dr. Kim and Dr. Min had gone to medical school together and were close friends. They usually bantered back and forth for a bit, but from the look on Jin’s face, something wasn’t right.

“You’re sure, Yoongi-chi? Damn. Okay, send me up the report.”

After hanging up the phone, Jin pulled up the digital report before swearing softly under his breath.

“Tae, I hate cases like this. She’s really sick,” he said. “Do me a favor and go make Mr. Jung a strong cup of coffee and get some chocolate milk for our princess.”

“Mr. Jung?”

Hoseok startled awake at the deep voice calling his name. He still held Dasom to his chest, and he could feel where she had drooled some in her sleep onto his shoulder. Taehyung smiled softly at him then helped him sit the head of the bed up a bit. He sat a sippy cup full of chocolate milk on the over bed table, before holding out a cup of coffee.

“Here, you are going to need this. Dr. Kim is going to come in after you’ve had a few minutes to wake up to talk with you about Dasom. It’s not the best coffee you’ve ever had, but it’s not jet fuel either.”

Hoseok thanked him and sipped on the hot coffee while waiting for the doctor. Something about how Taehyung had given it to him made his stomach twist with nervousness. After a few sips, the coffee and the churning of his nerves made Hoseok a bit queasy, so he abandoned the cup onto the over bed table beside the cup with Dasom’s chocolate milk. Before he had the time to overthink, Dr. Kim came in and sat in the chair beside the bed.

“I see our princess is still sleeping. I’m a little glad that she’s going to sleep through this conversation,” Dr. Kim sighed then and ran his hands through his hair. “We got the blood tests back that I ordered on Dasom. Her white blood cell count is literally off the charts. It’s so high that our machine that reads the count gave an error. Our lab director is a friend of mine and he personally ran the test for me. I really suspect that Dasom has a form of leukemia, but I can’t treat her here in the emergency room. I’m going to have her admitted to our children’s ward upstairs and personally refer her to a colleague who specializes in things like this. Dr. Park is a couple years younger than me, but he’s brilliant and knows all the latest treatments. He should be able to pick up where I leave off. Is there anyone you can call to be with you? I didn’t see mentions of Dasom’s mother on the paperwork…”

“She signed away parental rights the same hour Dasom was born. I haven’t seen her in literal years. My best friend lives in the city, so I’ll call him,” Hoseok murmured.

He was in shock. His baby was so sick. He could feel the panic bubbling up a bit, but he swallowed it harshly down.

“Taehyung is going to come in a few minutes and take you upstairs. Dasom will have to go up a separate elevator due to hospital rules, but we will make sure you have her room number before you go. That will also give you a chance to call your friend.”

Dasom was still asleep when Taehyung came to push bed and all up to the 7th floor of the hospital. He gave Hoseok the cup of chocolate milk and a slip of paper with her room number written on it. Hoseok stepped out of the emergency room bay and walked out into the lobby inside the main portion of the hospital to make a phone call.

It was still dark outside when Namjoon’s phone rang. He knocked a closed bottle of water off his bedside table trying to get to it and then croaked out a greeting. He was trying to stay quiet enough not to wake Jungkook sleeping with his head on Namjoon’s bare chest, but when he heard Hoseok sobbing on the other end about Dasom and the hospital and something about leukemia, he sat up fast enough to dump the younger man off his chest harshly.

“Hobi, we will be right over. We will stop by and put a note on the door of the shop that it will be closed for the day.”

Jungkook had pouted at first at his rough awakening until he heard how upset Namjoon was. Namjoon was rushing around getting dressed faster than Jungkook had ever seen, and it made Jungkook respond with his own shaken brand of frantic dressing.

“Baby, what’s wrong? Who was on the phone?” Jungkook asked as he pulled a black shirt over his head.

“Hoseok. He’s at the hospital with Dasom. They’ve been there all night and the doctors think she has leukemia.”

That was the beginning of the flaming hellscape that Hoseok’s life became. After four months of intermittent hospitalizations for weeks at a time, chemotherapy treatments that made Dasom vomit everything out for days afterwards and made her beautiful hair fall out, other treatments in the form of shots, IVs, and elixirs, and a bone marrow transplant, Hoseok wasn’t sure how much more either of them could take. It seemed like their options were slowly running out, and that was terrifying to him. It was still amazing to him how Dasom was still as bright and playful as she had ever been despite how sick she truly was. Namjoon and Jungkook had been by their sides the entire time, and Jungkook had spent a small fortune in cute hats and headbands for her when all of her hair had come out.

“I can’t help it, Hobi. I just want her to still feel as beautiful as she is, with or without hair,” he’d said when Hoseok had commented on it.

The three of them took turns staying with her during the day. Luckily, Jungkook’s friend Yugyeom was able to help out at the game shop on the days when Jungkook was babysitting, much like today. Hoseok and Namjoon were both in the shop that day preparing for a book signing coming later in the week, and Jungkook was sending them both photos of their adventures as the day went on. Hoseok was re-arranging the window display for the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday when his phone rang. He hadn’t been expecting a call, so it startled him a bit when he saw the phone number for Dr. Park’s office on his caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Jung? This is Eunwoo at Dr. Park’s office. He’d like to schedule a time for you to bring in Dasom to go over her recent labs. Is there any way you can come this afternoon?”

Something in Hoseok was shattered by the urgency of the request, but he set the appointment for 3 pm. That gave him a little more than 2 hours to pick up Dasom from Jungkook and arrive at the office. He placed the red tinted fairy lights he’d been attempting to detangle back in the box and headed to the back of the shop to find Namjoon. He found him in their office on the phone confirming the time with the local author for the book signing that Friday. Hoseok sat on the edge of the chair in front of the desk and waited for the call to end.

“Alright, Hobi. That was just confirming the details for our signing Friday afternoon. He will be here at 4 and we can get him settled at his table with some tea before we let in the masses.”

“Joon, Dr. Park’s office called and scheduled an appointment for Dasom in 2 hours. I’m going to have to go pick her up and go,” Hoseok told him anxiously.

“That doesn’t sound good. Why don’t I ride with you and we have Kookie meet us at the office with Dasom? If it’s not good news, I don’t want you to be alone,” Namjoon asked. Hoseok knew that he was worried by the way his forehead was crinkled just between his eyebrows, but he was trying to hide it.

“Okay. If it’s not too much trouble for you and Kookie.”

Hoseok was so nervous about the appointment that they ended up leaving nearly an hour before they had to be there. Hoseok felt the anxiety buzzing around his abdomen like he’d drunk live bees instead of tea with breakfast that morning. Namjoon’s presence at his side was soothing and familiar as they sat on a park bench in front of the office waiting on Jungkook to get there.

“Hey, Seok? No matter what happens when we walk out of this appointment, we will handle it together. We are brothers. Jungkook and I love Dasom just like she is our own child. We will help you with whatever comes next,” Namjoon said softly, squeezing Hoseok’s hand gently as they watched Jungkook park his car and help Dasom out of the backseat.

Hoseok felt his throat close up with nerves, so he just nodded and plastered on a bright smile for his daughter. While the smile was initially fake, it slowly became a true grin as he heard Dasom and Jungkook singing “Baby Shark” as loudly as they could while crossing the parking lot. Jungkook was holding her against his chest and she was wearing a sparkly lavender princess dress and was clipping her matching tiara into Jungkook’s curly locks as they walked.

“Wow, Kookie! Who knew you made such a beautiful princess!” Hoseok teased.

“I’d be offended, but Dasom already told me that I’m the prettiest princess, and her word is law since she’s the queen,” he sassed back, making Dasom giggle.

“Hi Appa!” she squealed when Hoseok reached out for her.

“Hi my Love! Have you had a fun day with Princess Kookie?”

“Yes! We read more of The Princess Bride after lunch, then Unca Tookie let me play dress up for a bit.”

Hoseok listened to his daughter chatter about her day with Jungkook as they checked in with the receptionist. The group had only just sat down when a familiar face popped out and called them back.

“TaeTae! I didn’t know you worked here!” Dasom squealed out while she hugged his legs.

“Hi Princess! I just couldn’t wait another day to see you! And Dr. Park’s assistant had a baby last week, so Dr. Jin let me come over to help out. Plus, you know how much trouble Dr. Park gets into. Someone had to come keep him straight,” Taehyung explained as he hugged her.

They had gotten to know Taehyung pretty well as he had transferred up to the children’s unit shortly after their night in the emergency room. He still worked in the ER when they were short staffed, but he mostly worked in the inpatient unit for sick children. Since Dr. Park Jimin was the head of the children’s ward, Taehyung also floated over to the doctor’s office when needed. Somehow, just seeing his boxy grin and easy demeanor always put Hoseok and Dasom at ease; Dasom loved Taehyung and said he was her favorite nurse because he gives the best hugs. Taehyung took them back towards a room but stopped to weigh Dasom and measure her height.

“Princess, you have grown another inch since I saw you last! I’m going to give you a rock for a hat so you don’t get any bigger!” he teased before taking the rest of her vital signs.

Hoseok was a little surprised that Taehyung picked up Dasom and carried her while leading them to Dr. Park’s actual office instead of an exam room.

“Dr. Park wanted me to bring you in here instead of an exam room. He said he’d be in to speak with you in a few minutes. Make yourselves comfy. Do any of you want coffee or tea?” Taehyung asked. When they all refused, he patted Hoseok on the back and left the room, leaving the door slightly open.

They had only been sitting for a few minutes when Dr. Park came in. Hoseok always thought that if he’d met the man in a different setting, he’d have never known he was a doctor. Park Jimin was a bit shorter than Hoseok and had this habit of pushing his blonde hair back out of his eyes. He never wore a lab coat like most doctors Hoseok had ever met unless he was at the hospital, and then he just wore the lab coat over jeans and simple shirts. He had no qualms about kneeling in the floor to speak eye-to-eye with his young patients and his entire manner was soft and friendly. Children liked him and he was great with them. Not only was he great with his patients, but the man was truly brilliant. He had presented treatment options that Hoseok had never even heard of and had been willing to try anything. When Dr. Park came into the room, Dasom climbed out of Namjoon’s lap where she’d been doodling on the notepad that he always kept in his pocket to hug her doctor.

“Hello, Princess! I see that you brought in your royal guard and a new princess I don’t think I’ve met yet with you!”

“Oh Dr. Chim, that’s not a princess! That’s Unca Tookie, and you’ve met him before,” Dasom giggled.

“Well, don’t tell him I said so,” Dr. Park whispered conspiratorially to her, “but he makes a very pretty princess.”

Hoseok glanced over at Jungkook, who was blushing a bit and sneakily trying to remove the tiara from his hair and chuckled to himself.

“Princess, why don’t I take you to play with TaeTae for a little while? I need to talk to your Appa,” Dr. Park said before taking her hand and leading her out the door.

He was only gone for a few minutes, then came back and closed his office door. He shook each of their hands in greeting before sitting down behind his desk and opening up a folder that Hoseok hadn’t noticed before.

“Thank you for coming in at such short notice, Hoseok. I just didn’t want to dally in discussing this with you. As you know, we were hoping that the bone marrow transplant would help Dasom. I got her labs back this morning, and they were discouraging. While her white blood cell count is a little bit lower that it was before the transplant, it’s higher than it was during her last bloodwork. This tells me that it isn’t working,” Dr. Park paused at this point to look Hoseok in the eye. “You know that the transplant was the last-ditch effort we had to get ahead of this. I don’t have anymore tools on my belt that I can use to magically heal Dasom, and God knows I wish I did.”

Hoseok struggled to speak for a few minutes before finally choking out, “So what does this mean?”

Dr. Park ran his fingers through his hair, then stood and walked around his desk to take Hoseok’s hand before speaking again. “Hoseok-ssi, it means that with all of the efforts we’ve made to heal Dasom, none of it has worked. She is still very, very sick and there are no more options for treatment. We’ve tried them all.”

“Is she…please…is she dying? Is my baby going to die?” Hoseok stumbled over the words in his horror.

“I’m so sorry, but yes. I think she’s dying, Hoseok. I wanted to bring you in and talk to you about requesting some help for you. What do you think of Hospice?” Dr. Park said gently.

Hoseok couldn’t speak. His mouth fell open, but Jungkook spoke for him. “Isn’t Hospice for people who are going to die right away?”

“That is a misconception that a lot of people have. Hospice is designed for patients who are terminally ill and have a prognosis of living 6 months or less. While they won’t get better or heal really, the entire goal is for the patients to have the best possible quality of life and be comfortable in the end. Not only that, but you’d be able to keep Dasom at home throughout the process. She won’t have to be hospitalized again. I would still be her doctor and manage her care, but there would be other people involved. A nurse would come at least once a week and would be on-call 24 hours a day, a social worker would be available to you, and you would have access to 13 months of completely free bereavement care after Dasom dies. And that offer is for more than just you, Hoseok. It would be available to both Namjoon and Jungkook. They can also help arrange bereavement with your parents and sister through a Hospice nearby their homes.”

Hoseok crumpled under the weight of the shock. He couldn’t help but to fold in on himself. Dr. Park was still knelt down in front of him and holding both of his hands, but Hoseok’s head was nearly resting on his knees. He started to sob unintentionally; he had wanted so much to be strong for his baby girl, but he was so scared and devastated at this news. Before he realized what had happened, Dr. Park had released his hands and pulled him into a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry, Hoseok. I wish I could do more to help her,” he whispered into Hoseok’s ear.

When he finally calmed down enough to pull back from the doctor, he could see the tears streaking down Dr. Park’s own face. He was an amazing doctor, so compassionate and brilliant, but there were still limits to what he could do. He couldn’t work a miracle. And while Hoseok understood that in his mind, his heart was shattered.

“I’m sorry for breaking down. But she’s my whole world. I literally exist to be her father, so the thought that she’s going to die before me is incomprehensible to me,” Hoseok said while trying to wipe his tears away. “Since we can’t do anything else, I guess Hospice is the next best thing. I don’t want her to be in pain, and if she can be at home to pass, I think she’d be more comfortable.”

Dr. Park sucked in a stuttered breath then said, “Okay. I will make the referral today, so please expect a call in the next couple of days. A nurse and a social worker will come out to your home for that and begin to get to know you. And I will of course make visits occasionally to check in on Dasom.”

Hoseok listened to the rest of the things that Dr. Park said about Hospice services as if he were standing in a tunnel. The sound echoed around his head, but most of the words were lost. After a few minutes, Namjoon and Jungkook helped him to stand and walk out of the room. They found Dasom sitting in Taehyung’s lap reading a storybook just down the hall. A toy stethoscope was clipped around her neck over the top of her princess dress and she had a disposable cap on her head like the ones used for surgery. Taehyung was doing silly voices for all of the characters in the story and Dasom was laughing along with him. Hoseok just stopped to stare at her, gripping onto Namjoon’s arm while he saw how lively she seemed in this moment. It took everything within him not to hit his knees right then.

“Hey, Seok? Why don’t Jungkook and I come over and help you make dinner for Dasom? I just want to help support you both,” Namjoon asked softly. Hoseok just nodded before approaching Taehyung and Dasom. As he got closer to her, she looked up at him with a huge smile on her face.

“Appa, are you all done with Dr. Chim?” she asked.

“Yeah, Darling. Let’s go home now. Uncle Joonie and Uncle Kookie are going to come over for dinner. Should we order something?” he replied as he picked her up.

He couldn’t resist hugging her to his chest, and when she wrapped her tiny arms around his neck, more tears slipped out of his eyes. Would this be one of the last times he was able to hold her? To see her smile? Hear her precious giggles?

After Dasom and her family had left, Taehyung stepped in to check on Dr. Park. They were good friends outside of work, and Taehyung had suspected that whatever news had been delivered to Mr. Jung was not good; Taehyung knew that Jimin would not be handling it well. In fact, he had rescheduled all of his appointments for the rest of the day when the reports had come in.

When Taehyung got to the office door, he could hear the sobs. Jimin was such a tender-hearted soul that his patients affected him deeply. He slipped in the door to find Jimin with his head down on the desk, crying into his folded arms. Taehyung closed the door behind him, then went to kneel beside Jimin.

“What happened, Chim?” he asked gently.

“She’s dying, Tae. The bone marrow transplant didn’t work. Her labs are still terrible and there’s nothing else I can do. I had to bring her father in and suggest Hospice to him for his 3-year-old daughter. I’m a horrible doctor. I can’t help her!”

Taehyung pulled Jimin into a hug and squeezed him tightly. “You are the best doctor at this hospital, Chim. Seriously. You have helped so many sick children recover. And I know, Dasom is a special little girl and it sucks so much that she’s so sick, but you can only do so much. You have tried every single treatment available for her, including some non-conventional methods and nothing has worked. Maybe her candle was only meant to be lit for a short while. All we can do now is make sure she’s comfortable and as happy as she can be through the end. Are you going to do home visits for her?”

Jimin nodded against Taehyung’s shoulder. “Want me to go with you those days?” Taehyung asked. Jimin nodded again. “Okay. We will go together. And we will make sure that she is the happiest that she can be.”

Y/n hated pediatric cases. They were always the worst. She had begun working as a Hospice nurse to help dying people pass in comfort and peace and to make them smile as often as possible, but most of her patients were elderly. They had all lived long, mostly joyful, lives and were tired of being sick. As she stared at the admission information for her new patient, her heart sank.

Jung Dasom, born 26 May 2015, is a 3-year-old female patient with Juvenile Myelomoncytic Leukemia. The patient has endured a variety of treatments, including various chemotherapies and a bone marrow transplant. The transplant slowed down the growth of the leukemia for a short time. The patient’s mother has revoked claim to all parental rights and should not be given any information whatsoever regarding the patient’s condition should she reach out or inquire. The primary caregiver for the patient is her father, Jung Hoseok, who runs a bookstore/coffee shop. Additional caregivers are the father’s business partner, Kim Namjoon, and his boyfriend, Jeon Jungkook; information regarding the patient’s condition can be shared freely with both. The patient’s grandparents and aunt live out of town but do visit regularly. Mr. Jung has given permission to also speak with both regarding the patient’s condition. Mr. Jung has expressed interest that the patient remain at home for the duration of her illness and not be hospitalized again. Primary physician is Dr. Park Jimin, who will continue to manage the patient’s care and should be contacted for any and all changes in the patient’s condition. Dr. Park plans to make regular home visits to the patient to monitor the progression of the disease.

Y/n had not been the nurse to admit the patient as she had been attending a visit for another patient’s death, so her colleague, Sara had gone.

“Hey Sara, I see you did the admission yesterday for my pediatric patient. How are things there?” Y/n asked.

“She’s an absolute doll. You will fall in love with her. She is still very happy and playful and doesn’t report pain often. She lost all of her hair from the chemo, and complains of nausea when she eats, so Dr. Park has her on some meds that she takes before meals. Her dad is a total sweetheart and is super hands on with her care. He’s absolutely devastated at the news but is trying to hold it together for Dasom. The entire scenario is horrific, and I’m so glad she’s your patient and not mine.”

The night that they’d gone home from Dr. Park’s office, Namjoon had driven Hoseok’s car back to their apartment and Jungkook had followed behind with Dasom so that Namjoon and Hoseok could talk.

“I swear I never dreamed that she would die before me, Joon. The thought rips the breath out of my lungs. I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell her, but I think I have to,” Hoseok cried to his friend.

Namjoon had tears rolling down his cheeks by the time that he parked the car, but they had developed a bit of a plan. Namjoon and Jungkook would order in dinner and set the dining room table while Hoseok tried to explain things to Dasom. Before stepping out of the car, Namjoon reached over and squeezed Hoseok’s hand a couple of times to give him strength then wiped the tears from his face. They looked at each other and both took some deep breaths before stepping out of the car.

Jungkook and Dasom were singing “Baby Shark” again. Jungkook was doing a great job of keeping his energy up for Dasom for the moment, but Namjoon could see the sadness in his eyes.

“What sounds good for dinner, Somie?” Namjoon asked as they took the elevator up to their floor. “Jungkookie and I are going to order something yummy for us.”

She tapped her little index finger against her chin for a moment while she thought about it. “Can we have noodles?”

“Of course! We will order loads of noodles,” Jungkook replied with a soft smile.

“Can we have chicken too?” she asked.

“Yeah, we can order chicken too,” Namjoon said, also with a smile.

“When we get home, can you meet me in my bedroom with your puppy, Love? I want to talk to you for a few minutes before we have fun with Joonie and Kookie,” Hoseok asked her as he knelt before her as the elevator was nearing the 8th floor where their apartment was.

Dasom nodded then put her little hands on each of Hoseok’s cheeks and blew a raspberry on the tip of his nose. “Yes, Appa. We can talk,” she said as she giggled at the silly look on Hoseok’s face.

Hoseok stood then and held her hand as they exited the elevator. When they got to their apartment, Dasom kicked her shoes off beside the door and put them in their designated spot on the shoe rack before running down the hall to her room. Namjoon, Jungkook, and Hoseok all stepped into the kitchen after removing their own shoes. Namjoon and Jungkook stepped forward to hug Hoseok, but he held his hands up to stop them.

“If you hug me right now, I’ll lose it. And I have to keep it together to talk to her,” he explained before grabbing Dasom a juice box out of the refrigerator then heading towards his room.

When Hoseok opened his bedroom door, Dasom was already there. She was sitting in the middle of his bed with her puppy plushie in her lap, fidgeting about with his ears. When he heard the door open, she smiled at him. He put the straw in the juice box and handed it to her before sitting down in front of her.

“Dasom, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our visit with Dr. Chim today. You know that you’ve been sick for a while and had surgery, right?” Hoseok paused for her to respond, and she simply nodded as she took a sip of juice. “Well, Dr. Chim talked to me today because the surgery didn’t do what it was supposed to, and you are still sick. Dr. Chim told me today that there is nothing else he can do to help you get better.”

“Appa, am I going to go to heaven?” Dasom asked softly.

“Yes, Baby. At some point soon, you will go to heaven. Dr. Chim is going to help us make sure that even though you are still sick, it won’t hurt, and it won’t be scary. I’ll be with you the whole time. So will Uncle Joonie and Uncle Kookie. Dr. Chim is also going to send us some new friends that will help us take care of you at home, so you won’t have to go to the hospital anymore.”

“Okay, Appa. Will I get to see TaeTae again?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll call Dr. Chim’s office tomorrow and see if TaeTae can come visit you sometimes.”

Hoseok had to stop talking because his voice got caught in his throat. He reached out and picked Dasom up and pulled her into his lap. She instantly snuggled into him and wrapped her little arms around him to hug him.

After a minute, she looked up at him and said, “Appa, I’m not scared to go to heaven. I just will miss you so much when I’m there. You are the best Appa in the world. I love you so, so much.”

Her words broke him more than he already was. Hoseok cried as he whispered back that he loved her several times.

“Appa, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay,” she said as she kissed his cheek. “Unca Joonie and Unca Tookie will take care of you when I get to heaven.”

The minute Hoseok had walked out of the kitchen to speak with Dasom, Jungkook had lost it. He had been strong the whole time he drove so that Dasom wouldn’t realize how upset he was, but when Hoseok left the kitchen, Jungkook wrapped himself up in Namjoon’s arms and let his own tears fall. Namjoon held him as he shook in his arms until they heard the click of Hoseok’s bedroom door open. Jungkook pulled back from the hug and walked to the kitchen sink to splash some water on his face to clear out all of the tears from his cheeks.

Jungkook had just dried his face on Hoseok’s hand towel when Hoseok himself came around the corner. He took a deep breath before turning around and seeing Hoseok taking slow deep breaths.

“How’d it go?” Jungkook asked gently.

“Better than I thought. She said that she loved me and that she’s not scared to go to heaven and that you and Joonie would take care of me when she’s gone.” Hoseok whimpered, fighting hard against the pain in his chest. “I don’t want my baby to die.”

Jungkook started crying again with him as he pulled him into a hug. Namjoon draped his arms around both men, and they all stood there and cried together for a few minutes, before a small voice spoke up.

“Don’t be sad please. I don’t want you to be sad,” Dasom cried as she wiggled into the middle of the three men. “I don’t want you to cry because I’m sick.”

Their tears had made their favorite princess cry because she didn’t want them to be sad because of her. Jungkook picked her up and snuggled her into all three of them.

“I’m sorry, Princess. I’m just sad that I won’t get to see you anymore when you leave us. But I promise I won’t cry anymore.”

Y/n called and scheduled an appointment to meet her new patient 2 days after she had been admitted to Hospice. She was a little nervous about meeting Dasom and her father, but her nerves were immediately put at ease by the man with the 1000-watt smile who greeted her at the door.

“Hi, my name is Y/n. Mr. Jung, I presume?”

“Oh please. Mr. Jung is my dad. Please call me Hoseok,” he said warmly as he shook her hand. “Dasom is playing in her room. Should I go get her?”

“There’s no need. We can chat with her in her room if that’s better,” Y/n said. She couldn’t help but smile back at Hoseok as he led her into the apartment and down the hallway on the right side of the living room.

“Can I carry something for you? You look like you have your hands full,” he asked.

“I’m okay. Thank you though. I lug my bag and computer around from place to place all day long, so I barely even notice it these days.”

Hoseok nodded, then led her into the little girl’s room at the end of the hall. Dasom was sitting in the floor in front of a dollhouse at the end of her bed playing with some tiny dolls, one of which she was currently putting into the tiny bathtub in the upstairs of the dollhouse. She was wearing a light blue cotton dress with a picture of a unicorn on the front and some pink house slippers. She had very little hair, just a bit of peach fuzz that had begun to grow in after her chemotherapy treatments had ended, but she had on a blue headband with a bright yellow flower attached to it. She looked up at them when they entered the room and her dark brown eyes twinkled brightly when she saw her father.

“Somie, this is Y/n. She is one of the new friends Dr. Chim sent to help us out here at home. She needs to check you over so she can report back to Dr. Chim,” he explained as he introduced Y/n to the little girl.

“Hi Y/n! I’m Dasom. Are you friends with TaeTae?” she asked.

“TaeTae is Dr. Park’s assistant. His name is actually Taehyung, but Dasom gave him his own nickname because she loves him so much. He’s her favorite nurse,” Hoseok explained with a smile at the confused expression on Y/n’s face.

“Oh okay. No, I don’t know TaeTae yet, but I’m sure I will meet him soon since I’ll be calling Dr. Chim on a regular basis. Can you sit on your bed for me? I just need to take your temperature and your blood pressure.”

Dasom was completely unbothered by the discomfort of the blood pressure cuff as Y/n took her blood pressure. She was quiet until Y/n finished taking her blood pressure then she chattered about random things as Y/n continued her assessment.

“Dasom, do you hurt anywhere? Do you feel okay today?”

“No, nothing hurts today. I had a headache yesterday, but Appa gave me medicine and it helped. I haven’t thrown up in 3 whole days!” she replied excitedly.

After doing a physical examination, Y/n and Hoseok left Dasom to play with her dollhouse as they chatted a bit more in the living room. Y/n sat down on the sofa in front of a coffee table to chart on the visit on her computer and speak a bit more with Hoseok. Hoseok brought her over a cup of hot tea to sip as they talked more.

“Thank you so much for this,” Y/n said as she took a sip. “I just wanted to sit down with you and answer any questions you might have about Hospice, Dasom’s illness, or any concerns you have. I’m planning on visiting twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. Since Dasom is so young, I just want to be present a bit more to get ahead of any symptoms that come up. I also want to be here to support you as much as I can.”

“I appreciate that very much. My best friends, Namjoon and Jungkook, will probably be here at times when you come so that I can work. My priority is Dasom, but on the days that she feels okay, I try to go to the bookshop to help Namjoon. I can do quite a bit of work from home since I do most of the bookkeeping and ordering of supplies, but it helps to get out some.”

“That’s understandable. I can call you and give you an update or leave you a note if you prefer on days you can’t be here. I have some families that keep a journal of sorts to write down their questions for me and for me to leave notes for them. We also have a nurse on call every night. If you have any issues, please call and someone can either give you instructions by phone or will come out as needed. I’m regularly on call as well, so sometimes if you call, you might speak with me.”

They chatted a bit more and Y/n could tell that Hoseok was a bit nervous, but she tried her best to assuage his fears. “I know this seems super overwhelming at the moment, but I will be by your side throughout this process. Death and dying seems like such a foreign process to most people, but I will be here every step of the way to help manage her symptoms and help you know what to expect as we go along. Don’t worry about that part though. For now, I just want you to take things day by day and enjoy spending time with your daughter.”

Months passed before anything really changed. Dasom had good days when Hoseok could barely tell she was sick, and she played and laughed and grew. Other days were worse. She complained of headaches more often, and her nausea was harder to control. There were days she couldn’t even keep water down she was so nauseated, and she would cry and beg him to make it better. Those days were hell for Hoseok because he couldn’t make it better for his baby as much as he wished he could. Y/n was an angel throughout everything, and Dasom had taken to her as quickly as she had taken to Taehyung. It was so reassuring to Hoseok that she came on a regular schedule, every Tuesday and Friday. It was also so good to know that if something went badly during the middle of the night, he had someone he could call right away for help.

When they had first been admitted to Hospice, they had been given a special packet of medications that were tailored to Dasom that Y/n called an emergency kit. It was a set of medications that were often needed during end of life care for patients and kept in the home so that they were on hand if needed. The dosages and medications had been modified from what was typically given in a standard emergency kit because Dasom was too young to be given doses of that size of some medications or needed alternate medications altogether. This kit was kept in a high cabinet in the kitchen where Dasom couldn’t access it but was handy if something was needed. While Hoseok hoped they’d never have to use it, there was something so comforting about knowing it was there.

Hoseok never anticipated that things were going downhill until the floor collapsed from beneath him. He was out at the shop doing some work there since Dasom had been doing wonderfully for 2 weeks. She’d felt good and had been able to eat normally and play. Her hair had finally begun to grow back in earnest and she currently had the equivalent of a cute pixie cut. She still wore her hats and headbands that Jungkook had gotten her, and he’d bought several more since then. Since she had been so well, Hoseok felt safe with leaving her with Jungkook for a few hours while he worked in the shop knowing that Jungkook would call the second anything happened. It was nearly 4 in the afternoon on a Thursday, and Hoseok was shelving the newest batch of best-sellers he had ordered when his phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey Seok, its Jungkook. I think you need to come home and have Namjoon follow you. Dasom was fine up until after lunch. She said she was tired and fell asleep on my chest watching Frozen. That was at 12, and I’m having trouble waking her up. When I try, she opens her eyes a little, says, ‘So tired, Unca Took,’ then conks back out. I’m worried.”

That was all it took to bring the walls of a normal day shattering around Hoseok. Namjoon immediately closed the shop and they left to head home. While he was driving, Hoseok called Y/n to update her on Dasom.

Y/n was leaving another patient’s home when she got the call from Hoseok, and she could tell he was panicking. She promised him that she’d meet him at their apartment. She got there just before he did since she had only been a few blocks away. Jungkook answered the door holding Dasom to his chest, and Y/n could see the fear in his large, bright eyes.

“Y/n! I’m so glad you’re here. Dasom isn’t really waking up and she’s breathing kind of funny,” he said. “She fell asleep on my chest and I’ve just been holding her so she wouldn’t be scared.”

Y/n instantly noticed that Dasom was a bit paler than usual. She naturally had her father’s golden skin, and it was a bit disquieting to see her so pale. Y/n convinced Jungkook to carry her down the hall to her bedroom and lay her on her bed. Several weeks ago, they had switched Dasom’s toddler bed out for a hospital bed so that they would be able to elevate the head of the bed as needed. Jungkook and Y/n got her settled in the bed and laid her favorite blanket over her lap. The whole time, Y/n noticed that her breathing was starting to be a bit more rapid than was normal but had begun to have periods where she stopped breathing altogether for a few seconds. Y/n was able to rouse her a tiny bit, but she instantly went back to sleep after finishing her sentence. Y/n was taking her temperature when Hoseok ran down the hall with Namjoon hot on his heels.

“What’s happening?” Hoseok asked, panicking a bit at the way his daughter looked. In his eyes, she already looked dead because of the pallor of her skin, but he could see her staggered breathing.

“Please, sit down, all of you. This might be a lengthy conversation,” Y/n said as soothingly as she could. Jungkook stepped and grabbed two chairs from the dining room table for himself and for Namjoon to sit in, while Hoseok opted to sit on the edge of Dasom’s bed.

“Thank you. I don’t want you to think I’m being unsympathetic of the situation or being harsh. I just need to speak honestly with you, so you all understand what’s happening. Dasom has been such a strong girl, but her body may be starting to give out. She may start to sleep a lot more than is usual for her and she may not breathe normally. Her heart rate might speed up and she could have periods where she doesn’t breathe at all; you may hear me call that periods of apnea. She may also start to have constant fevers. This will just get worse and worse until eventually she stops breathing altogether. Now, I would love to be able to tell you how long something like this will take, but I simply don’t know. She could also have several days in between where she will have more energy and be more awake; these periods are called rallies. She is rallying her energy up to take care of any business she may have and to say anything she needs to say to you. I will start to come more often for a while because I want to be here for you. I’ll also call Dr. Park to update him. He will probably call you to make a visit.”

Y/n’s heart was breaking with these three men. While Namjoon and Jungkook were not related to Dasom at all, this child might as well have had 3 fathers with as much time as they spent with her. Over the nearly 5 months she had been taking care of Dasom, she had rarely had a visit where only Hoseok was present. She had even come when Taehyung and Dr. Park had been there a few times. Everyone that she came into contact fell in love with this little girl, Y/n included. If her father’s smile was bright as the sun and his heart just as warm, his daughter’s smile was brighter and her heart warmer. As sick as she was, she always wanted to know that the people around her were happy, and she spoke wise words for such a small child.

While Y/n would never breathe a word of this to anyone, she had suspected that this was coming soon. Dasom’s birthday had been a week ago, and Y/n had visited the day before her birthday party. Her birthday had fallen on a Thursday, but she had wanted everyone she loved to visit for her birthday on Saturday, Y/n included. Hoseok stepped away to take a call as Y/n was finishing up listening to Dasom’s lungs.

“Y/n-ie, will you promise me something?” Dasom asked solemnly while her father was distracted.

“Of course, Love. What can I promise you?”

“Promise me to take care of my Appa. I love him very much, but I’m scared for him when I go to heaven. I’ve been hearing angels say my name when I’m sleeping, and I know I’m going to heaven soon. You’ve taken such good care of me. Will you take care of him too?” she asked.

Y/n blinked away tears before speaking again. “Yes, Somie, I promise. I will help take care of your Appa. I will help Namjoonie and Jungkookie. We will make sure he is okay when it’s time for you to go.” After securing that promise, she returned to her usual happy, giggling self as Hoseok came back into the room apologizing for his rudeness at having to take the call.

All 3 men in her presence were crying after Y/n explained what was happening in Dasom’s body. Namjoon was crying hard into Jungkook’s shoulder. Hoseok had climbed into the bed with his baby and wrapped his body around hers protectively. He had pulled her into his arms and was crying into the top of her head as quietly as he could. Y/n herself was struggling not to sob with these men who were watching this whole thing.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to step into the living room and call Dr. Park,” Y/n said before walking quickly from the room.

Y/n took her phone into the kitchen and dialed the number to the doctor’s office.

“Thank you so much for calling Seoul Pediatrics and Youth Care. My name is Taehyung. How can I help?”

“Hey Tae. It’s Y/n. I’m here with Dasom. Is Dr. Park around?”

“Hey Y/n! He just stepped out of an exam room. I’ll call him over,” Taehyung said happily.

“You might want to send him to his office, Tae. I don’t have good news.” Y/n’s voice broke at the end of the sentence and tears started flowing in earnest.

“Oh no! Let me put you on hold a minute, and we’ll both pick up in there,” Taehyung said before the overly cheery hold music started.

Taehyung and Jimin had closed the door to Jimin’s office and picked up the call on speakerphone. Taehyung had warned him as well as he could that the news was grim, so Jimin had tried to steel himself for the call.

“Y/n, this is Dr. Park. What’s happening with Dasom?”

Jimin’s hands were shaking as Y/n relayed that Dasom was experiencing states of heavy sleep and semi-consciousness, periods of apnea, and she already had a fever.

“I think you’re right, Y/n. It does sound like she’s approaching end of life. I have 2 more appointments, but could you please let Hoseok know that Tae and I would like to stop by?”

At the end of the call, Jimin looked up at Taehyung’s glassy eyes and swallowed hard. He couldn’t even speak for a few minutes, so he squeezed Taehyung’s hand and they just sat there in silence composing themselves to endure the rest of the afternoon.

Before she left that afternoon, Y/n kissed Dasom on the forehead softly and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sweet Girl.”

Hoseok, Jungkook, and Namjoon all walked with her to the door. They were all still crying a little bit, but she hugged them all tightly before picking up her laptop case and bag.

“Dr. Park and Taehyung will be here in a bit, and I’m on call tonight. If anything happens, please call me, okay? I don’t care if it’s 3 am.”

As much as he wanted to hurry to see Dasom, Jimin knew that he had to keep his head in the right place. Lucky for him, his final patients of the day were just general check-ups on a pair of siblings who were getting over the flu. He put on a smile and made sure that the pair were recovering appropriately. Their lungs were clear, so it had not turned into pneumonia. He sent them on their way with instructions to rest and keep up the increased liquids for a few days before going back to school.

Once his final patients left, Jimin charted the visits using his laptop then nearly bowled his receptionist over as she came around the corner. “Eunwoo, Taehyung and I are going to see Dasom. Her Hospice nurse called earlier, and it sounds like she’s dying. I may need you to reschedule some appointments for the day of the funeral.”

Taehyung insisted on driving to the Jungs’ apartment. He and Jimin had been taking turns, but he knew that Jimin would be upset when they left this visit, and he didn’t want him taking a chance. They put on some soft classical music for the drive just for background noise.

“You ready for this, Chim?” Taehyung asked gently as he backed his car into a parking place at Hoseok’s apartment building.

“No. Not at all, but it’s part of my job, Tae.”

Neither of them spoke again until they were standing outside the door of the apartment. Taehyung squeezed Jimin’s hand and whispered, “Let’s go say goodbye to the Princess.”

After Y/n had left, they all just stared at each other for a second. Hoseok was completely in shock. His baby had been fine yesterday, and today she was dying. He lifted his left hand and pinched himself hard to see if he was dreaming, but he didn’t wake up; this nightmare was very real.

“Can I have just a few minutes alone with her?” Jungkook asked softly through his tears.

“Of course, Kook,” Hoseok replied, waving him towards her room.

Jungkook sat down on the side of the bed as close as he could get to her, and just looked at her. The first time he had met this beautiful girl, she’d been barely 10 months old toddling about the café at the bookshop on wobbly legs while holding onto Namjoon’s fingers. It was the first time he’d been in the shop, and she had taken one look at him and abandoned Namjoon. She’d reached up to him with a sweet smile and upheld hands, saying, “Up peez.” He hadn’t been able to resist her then and he couldn’t now. He loved her so much and she lit his life up so much. Dasom had lived the meaning of her name in every sense of the word. Hoseok had named her well: Love is what she truly was.

“Somie, its Uncle Kookie. I just want you to know how much I love you. I know you don’t remember the first time I saw you, and how you wanted me to pick you up even then, but you won me over that day,” Jungkook spoke softly to her through his sobs. “I love you very, very much, Princess. I want you to know that I will watch out for Joonie and your Appa, so please don’t worry about leaving him behind. We will make sure he will be okay. When it’s time for you to be our guardian angel, let go and fly.”

Jungkook kissed her gently on the cheek and stumbled out of the room. He couldn’t see through his tears, but he didn’t have far to go before Hoseok was hugging him tight. They were still standing at the head of the hallway sobbing into each other’s arms when Namjoon answered the door to let Dr. Park and Taehyung in.

Jimin and Taehyung went together back to Dasom’s room. She was peacefully lying in the bed, but her breathing was very shallow when they entered the room. Jimin could feel his heart break and the pieces leapt up into his throat as he sat down on her bed beside her. He took his stethoscope from around his neck and listened to her heartbeat. It was definitely beating at a higher rate than normal as her little body desperately struggled to ward off the leukemia in her veins.

Hoseok had excused himself to the bathroom for a few minutes to try to calm down before coming into the room, so they were alone with her.

“Hi Princess! It’s TaeTae. I needed to come see your beautiful face one more time. I know that you are about to become a star in the sky, so I wanted to ask you a favor. When you get there, please go find my grandma and give her a hug for me. Then, both of my favorite ladies will be together. I know you’ll be looking down on us. Your family is going to be fine; I promise. Your Appa is a good, strong man, and he will be okay. I’ll miss seeing your smiling face,” Taehyung murmured to her softly before kissing her forehead gently. After speaking his gentle goodbye to her, he squeezed Jimin’s shoulder as he left the room to check on Hoseok.

Jimin had a much more difficult time finding words to say, so for a moment he just sat quietly and held her small hand in his own and thought back over the time since Jin had referred her to him as a patient.

“Dasom, it’s Dr. Chim. I just came by to check on you. Y/n called me and told me that you weren’t doing so well. You don’t seem to be in any pain, which is good,” he paused a moment when the tears started streaming down his face. “I’m sorry, Dasom. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t able to help you get better,” he whispered to her before rushing out of the room.

Hoseok felt like he had no more tears left to cry. He had wept out every molecule of fluid in his body in the hours since Jungkook had called him. Namjoon and Jungkook had opted to spend the night, and Hoseok had told them to sleep in his room and he’d wake them if anything happened. He had planned to curl up in bed around Dasom so if she needed him, he’d be right there. He laid down beside her in her hospital bed and brushed his fingertips gently over her forehead. It was almost as if she sensed him since she curled up to him at that gentle touch and snuggled closer to his chest. He drifted off to a fitful sleep as soon as she settled down into his arms.

Sometime later, he woke up to her tiny hands touching his face. He opened his eyes to see her looking up at him and stroking his cheeks and the shape of his nose.

“Hi Appa,” she said softly.

“Hi, Baby.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up but I needed to see you one more time. I love you, Appa. Please don’t be sad, but it’s almost time for me to go,” she said with a soft smile.

“I’m so glad you woke me up, Somie,” he cried, trying to smile at her through the tears dripping down his cheeks.

“Can you see them, Appa? Can you see the angels? They’re so pretty.”

“I can’t see them, Darling. But they aren’t here for me,” he whispered to her. “You can go with them if they ask you to, okay? Please don’t stay for me. I’ll be alright.”

She just nodded and wiped his tears away with her little hands. After a few more minutes, she laid her head on his chest and put her arm around his waist. She drifted off to a deep sleep soon after, but Hoseok couldn’t bring himself to sleep anymore. He watched and counted every breath she took that night, and just held her small body to his chest for the last time. Just as the dawn was breaking and light was peeking through her window across their faces, Dasom took her last breath.

Namjoon woke up to Hoseok’s nearly screaming sobs confused as to where he was, but when he opened his eyes, everything came smashing back in on him.

“Jungkook, get up! Something’s wrong,” he said as he flung the blankets back and grabbed his cell phone from the bedside table.

Namjoon practically ran down the hall to find Hoseok holding Dasom to his chest, sobbing and begging her to wake up. She looked like the fairest china doll he’d ever seen and she wasn’t moving, even with her father being as loud as he was.

“Oh my god. Seok, please, you have to calm down. We have to call Y/n,” Namjoon said soothingly as he reached out for his friend.

At that moment, Jungkook slipped past him into the room and wrapped his arms around Hoseok. “I got this, Joon. Go call her.”

Namjoon stepped into the living room and dialed Y/n’s familiar number. She answered on the second ring even though it was still super early.

“Hey, Y/n. It’s Namjoon. We need you to come. Please…I think…” he stopped to breathe in for a moment before he could continue. “I think Dasom is gone. Hobi is holding her and is nearly hysterical begging her to wake up.”

“Oh no. I’ll be right over, Namjoon. Just give me 20 minutes to drive there.”

After disconnecting the call, Namjoon stood in the living room trying to steel himself a bit. Hoseok wasn’t screaming anymore, but Namjoon could still hear his sobs echoing down the hallway. He was afraid they were going to have to sedate Hoseok to get him to let go of Dasom’s body at this point. Luckily, they’d already planned a basic service back when Hospice was called so that Hoseok could just mourn when Dasom passed instead of having to make major decisions. Namjoon took a few more deep breaths then walked back down the hall.

Jungkook had managed to get Hoseok to lay Dasom back down on her bed. After he put her down, it was almost as if all the bones in his body disintegrated and left the man in a crumple on the floor. Jungkook was wrapped around him trying to offer some measure of comfort while he was crying himself. Namjoon knelt down beside both of them and whispered that Y/n was on her way and she’d be here soon. When he heard Namjoon’s voice, Hoseok unfurled from Jungkook’s embrace and moved to Namjoon’s instead.

“Joonie, I thought we had more time. Can I go with her? Please? Please let me be with my baby,” Hoseok begged as he buried his face in Namjoon’s chest and fisted the sides of his shirt.

“Seok, I’m so sorry. It’s not the same, but we loved her too, and we will be with you every step of the way. I promise you that Kook and I will take care of you until you can stand again, okay?”

Before they could talk anymore, the doorbell rang. Jungkook got up and went to let Y/n in. Hoseok took a few deep breaths as he listed to Namjoon’s deep voice assuring that he wasn’t alone in the hellscape that his life had become and was no longer sobbing. Tears were still raining out of his eyes, but his chest had apparently finished caving in because there were no wracking screams or sobs leaving his mouth.

Y/n had expected this to be a horrible death visit. She had known that when she had to officially pronounce Dasom, Hoseok was not going to do well. And what father out there would do well with having to bury their 4-year-old?

The scene she walked into was worse than she’d dreamed. Hoseok was curled in a ball on the floor, shirtless and bare feet, but flannel clad knees pulled to his chest and his bare back pressed against the rails of Dasom’s hospital bed. He was crying into his best friend’s chest and Namjoon was crying too. Jungkook’s face had been red from crying too when he answered the door for her, and she had been able to hear Hoseok’s screams during Namjoon’s phone call. She dropped her bag inside the door and knelt in front of the two men in her black scrubs, gently rubbing Namjoon’s back.

“Hoseok? Can you look at me?” she asked softly.

He leaned back from Namjoon and launched himself into her arms when she offered a hug. “I’m so sorry, Hoseok. Was she comfortable?”

He nodded for a second before speaking. “She woke me up a few hours ago rubbing my face. She told me she loved me then asked if I could see the angels. After we talked, she fell back asleep and I just held her over my heart and watched her leave me. Oh my god, Y/n, bring my baby back. Please! I need you to bring her back!”

Y/n just sat down in the floor then, scooting the fully broken father in between her legs and brought his head to her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and held him and let him cry for a bit, knowing that he just needed to get a bit of the grief out of his system. After a bit, she could feel his hysteria starting to slow down a bit, and she moved her hands to his shoulders to pull him back to look at him. He had stopped crying, but big tears where still standing on the apples of his cheeks and his eyes looked so incredibly lost.

“Hoseok, I’m going to stand up now and do the part I have to do for Hospice, okay? I have to officially pronounce that she’s gone. Do you want to stay while I do?” she murmured to him.

When he shook his head slightly, Y/n stood then let Namjoon lead Hoseok into the living room to sit him down. Jungkook remained behind, still crying, but softly mentioning that he knew which outfit that she should be buried in. He had gone to the closet and chosen Dasom’s favorite glittery purple princess dress and matching tiara. He laid it beside her on the bed and held her tiny, now cold hand as Y/n listened with her stethoscope for just a few minutes. Dasom was definitely gone, and Y/n officially pronounced her at 6:47 am. Y/n hugged Jungkook and left the room to give him a moment alone with Dasom before going into the living room and checking on the others.

Hoseok was beginning to succumb to the emotional exhaustion already, but his breathing had begun to return to a stuttered normal where he had wept so hard. Y/n hugged Namjoon and whispered that Jungkook wanted a moment to say goodbye alone, before turning to Hoseok. She crouched down before him where he was crumpled onto the sofa and took his hands before speaking.

“I’m all finished with her. Jungkook picked out her final outfit. I just wanted to see if you are ready for me to call the funeral director. It’s okay if you aren’t,” she said in a soothingly gentle voice.

Hoseok took a deep breath and nodded. “I think so. I can’t bear the thought of her getting cold though. Can we wrap her in a blanket?”

“Is there a certain one you want to wrap her in?”

“There is a purple one at the end of her bed. Its super soft. That’s the one she always wanted when she felt bad,” he whispered.

“Do you want me to do it? Or do you want to help?”

“I can’t. I don’t want to remember the way she looks cold and lifeless. I want to remember my happy, giggly baby.” Hoseok whimpered.

Jungkook had come back into the room when Y/n stood to go back and wrap a blanket around Dasom. Namjoon’s face was pressed into his chest and they were softly crying together. Y/n smiled sadly at them before heading down the hallway. She found the blanket easily enough that Hoseok had wanted her wrapped in. Y/n gently picked the tiny body up and held her to her chest as she spread the blanket out with one hand. She swaddled Dasom’s lifeless body in the blanket as if she were a large infant, then kissed her on the forehead.

“Bye, Baby Girl. I’ll keep my promise to you. I’ll take good care of your Appa,” she whispered before calling the funeral director.

For Hoseok, time seemed to stop. He had no idea what day it was or how long it had been since Dasom had died. He knew that it couldn’t have been any more than a week, but he felt like his life had stopped the same moment hers had. Namjoon and Jungkook refused to leave him alone for any length of time and they’d practically moved in at this point. Hoseok only slept when the crippling sadness and exhaustion made him stagger down the hallway to Dasom’s room where he’d collapse into the “big girl bed” that she’d used for maybe two weeks before it had been replaced by a hospital bed. The only time he could sleep was when he was wrapped up in the sheets that still vaguely smelled of her baby powder scent with her stuffed puppy squeezed to his chest. In those moments, he could pretend that she was just across town with her Unca Joon and Unca Tookie and he could pick her up.

Hoseok is unsure how he survived the funeral. He remembers standing by the too small casket in a borrowed suit, locking his knees to remain on his feet, and shaking the hands of everyone he knew. He remembers his mother and sister crying softly beside him in the visitation line, and his father struggling to not let the tears fall. He remembers the pastor saying a few words and the prayers before they closed the casket. He remembers Namjoon holding him back from tackling the funeral director who closed the lid and to keep him from collapsing as he begged them not close his baby in a box. He remembers Y/n being there too and standing beside him at his insistence at the graveside service, the death grip he had on her hand, and he remembers the sweet amber scent of her perfume keeping him from going insane when they lowered the tiny casket into the hole in the ground. And he remembers Jungkook wrapping his arms around him and hiding his face in Jungkook’s chest when they started shoveling the dirt back over his daughter’s grave.

After the funeral, Namjoon and Jungkook drove him back home while his parents followed behind. His mother and sister came in and began trying to cook away the pain in their chests. They cooked enough food to feed nearly the entire Korean army it seemed. They made Hoseok sit down at the table in front of all the food, but he just stared at the chopsticks and the dishes like he’d never seen them before. After a few minutes, Namjoon helped him walk into his bedroom, and for the first time since they’d graduated college, Namjoon helped Hoseok change clothes and helped him into his bed. Hoseok just stared at him with empty eyes for a few minutes.

“Hey, Seok, I’m going to step into the kitchen and grab you a bottle of water. Then I’ll come lay down with you for a while, okay?” Namjoon told him.

When Namjoon came back, Jungkook came with him and they each curled their bodies around Hoseok’s and wrapped their arms around him. They both knew that he wasn’t doing well and wanted to provide as much support as possible. When they enveloped him in their arms, Hoseok shattered again. He cried these terrible sobs that sounded like they were scraping the inside of his chest out and left his voice raspy and broken. Namjoon and Jungkook looked into each other’s tear-filled eyes and knew that they were in for a long road.

Over the next several weeks, Hoseok walked around an empty shell of the father he had been. He found himself searching the apartment for Dasom sometimes, then breaking down when he remembered he’d never find her again. After a while, he threw himself into work so that he wouldn’t have to come home until late. Namjoon and Jungkook practically moved in with him for the first 3 weeks after the funeral until Hoseok had insisted that he was okay and that he needed to bite the bullet and get used to his childless house alone. The first night they had relented and gone home, Namjoon called him every hour to make sure he was still okay. At midnight, Jungkook had turned Namjoon’s ph0ne completely off so he’d give Hoseok some space.

Hoseok needed time alone to remember his daughter and try to come to terms with her death. While he did take advantage of some of the bereavement services that were offered, he never felt totally comfortable speaking with a gentleman who had never even met Dasom about her life and the giant black hole her death had created in his chest. So, he worked. He worked nearly 90 hours a week for practically a month after Namjoon and Jungkook had returned home. He needed something to fill all the time he had designated for caring for Dasom. It helped him to be so exhausted at the end of the day that he could fall into bed and sleep immediately without feeling any of the sorrow that had consumed him.

Just 2 short months after Dasom’s funeral, Jungkook had needed to attend an out of town conference primarily for gamers. He had reserved a booth there nearly a year in advance, before Dasom had ever gotten sick. Hoseok insisted that he’d be fine and that Namjoon should go with Jungkook, so they’d reluctantly agreed. They left on a Friday morning and were slated to return on the following Tuesday. Hoseok worked in the shop diligently, but the problem came on Sunday. The shop was always closed on Sundays, and he was so far ahead on work that he had nothing he could do on that day, so he was stuck at home. He did well until dinnertime that night. He had thrown himself into doing some research into some less well-known authors in the area that he wanted to feature in the shop and planning a display.

When he realized that he should eat dinner, he warmed up leftovers from the night before and decided to have a glass of wine. A single glass of wine with dinner became a bottle and a half as he tried to drown the ache in his chest. Before he knew it, he was completely inebriated after having finished the second bottle. In his drunken grief-stricken hysteria, Hoseok lost it completely.

It was 2 am on Monday morning when Y/n’s phone rang. She had kept her promise to Dasom and kept in regular contact with Hoseok. He had been doing okay, or so he portrayed to everyone else, but Y/n had a little more experience with the cycles of grief. She knew that he was putting on a good mask, but it would crumble sooner or later.

“Hello?”

“Hi Y/n, is ‘oseok. Can you come over? I can’t find Dasom.”

“Hobi, honey, how much have you had to drink?” she asked softly. He was mumbling a lot and slurring his words.

“Um…I don’t know? A bottle or two of that red wine Joon likes?”

“Oh wow. Um…yeah. I’ll be over in a little bit, okay? Can you make sure the door is unlocked?”

Hoseok hung up after promising he’d unlock the door. While she was not sure what had led up to this, she got up and dressed in leggings and a comfortable sweater to head over. She didn’t know what she’d find, but she knew she had a long night ahead of her. Luckily, she had the next 3 days off from work after her weekend on call.

When Y/n got to the apartment, she knocked lightly at the door before entering. Luckily, Hoseok had kept his word and the door was unlocked. She paused at the door to remove her shoes and smiled softly when she saw Dasom’s tiny pink house slippers still sitting on the mat beside the door.

“Hoseok?” she called as she walked through the living room. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room.

“In here,” he replied, followed by the distinctive sound of vomiting.

She found him, in nothing but his boxer briefs, knelt in front of the toilet in his master bathroom. The skin of his shoulders and up his neck was flushed from the alcohol and from getting sick from drinking too much. Y/n knelt down beside him and rubbed his back softly for a moment before speaking.

“Oh Hobi,” she murmured. She stood and wet a washcloth in cool water and placed it over the back of his neck, before heading toward the kitchen to grab a bottle of water and some painkillers.

“Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me,” he begged when he had a moment of a break between heaving.

“I’m just going to the kitchen, Hobi. I’ll be right back, okay?”

When he nodded, she quickly gathered the water and medication and placed them on his bedside table. Then, she turned back his bedsheets and fluffed the pillow on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom door before joining him in the bathroom. She found him sitting with his back against the cool porcelain of the bathtub with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. She wet another washcloth and gently used it to wash some of the sweat off of his face. He tilted his face into her touch, and tears slipped out of his closed eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I just wanted to not feel so much hurt.”

“Hoseok, I wish I could help more with that. I hate seeing you hurt so much, but the only thing that will help is time. In time, you will be able to look back on the memories of your baby girl and smile at the light she was instead of sobbing. But for now, sob when you need to.” When she spoke, he opened his eyes and looked at her for a moment. His eyes were glossy with tears and the alcohol coursing through his system. “You feel okay to walk to bed?”

He nodded, so Y/n helped him stand and stood with him while he brushed his teeth. She took the washcloth from the back of his neck and hung it over the side of the tub. When he was ready, she wrapped her arm around his waist to make sure he’d stay steady until he got to the bed. He seemed to have begun to sober up a bit after being sick, so she helped him lay down and tucked him under the blankets. She turned to walk out of the bedroom, but he grabbed her arm.

“Please…don’t leave me. Stay?”

She just nodded, and he shuffled over in the bed to make room for her. She laid down beside him and turned off the lamp.

“Y/n? Could you hold me?” he asked softly.

“Of course, Hobi. Come here,” she whispered back. When she opened her arms to him, he curled into her and put his head on her chest. She could feel him crying and shaking a bit, so she hummed a song and rubbed his back soothingly until he fell asleep.

It was several hours later when Hoseok woke up. The first thing he noticed was that his head was throbbing. After a few moments, the memories of the wine, vomiting, and Y/n came back to him. His eyes flew open, and he was a little surprised to find himself alone in his bed. He remembered her holding him until he fell asleep and the little song she was humming to him. Hoseok gingerly sat on the edge of the bed and saw the water and medication on the bedside table. He took it and walked into his bathroom to brush his teeth again. He pulled on some lounge pants and a white tee shirt before walking into the living room.

“Y/n?” he called.

“I’m in the kitchen!”

He walked toward his kitchen and saw her propped against the sink with her phone pressed to her ear, and ingredients for a possible breakfast spread across the counter.

“He’s okay, I promise, Joon. You had to know that this was bound to happen eventually, right?” she said with a smile into the phone. Hoseok could hear Namjoon’s voice murmuring on the line, probably fretting over him. “Namjoonie, I’m a nurse. He called the best possible person. Besides, he was puking his guts out when I got here, so I’m pretty sure he learned his lesson. And with the way he’s squinting at me right now, I’d say he has a hangover from hell…Yeah, you do that. See you soon.”

She hung up the phone before turning to Hoseok. “Think you can handle some breakfast?” she asked.

“Nothing much. I don’t think I could handle the smell of eggs or anything like that cooking.”

Y/n just nodded and popped some bread in the toaster before turning to pour him a cup of coffee. He handed him the coffee mug before pouring her own. When he added milk to his, she giggled, sipping her own coffee black.

“Wanna talk about it?” she asked when the toast popped up. She spread just a bit of peanut butter on the slice before cutting it in half and handing it to him before treating the second slice the same way for herself. “The peanut butter is high in protein and will help take the edge off the hangover.”

He thanked her before sitting down on the stool behind the kitchen counter. He took a small bite of the toast and chewed thoughtfully before speaking. “Thank you for coming last night. I know you didn’t have to, so it means a lot that you cared enough to come check up on me then stay over.”

“Hobi, I care about you. Of course I would have come when you called.”

That night was the only night he tried to drink his pain away. He had learned that it just made him feel worse in the long run. He began to simply take it a day at a time and tried not to work so much. Around nine months after Dasom’s death, Hoseok finally decided that he needed to clean out her room. Leaving everything like she was just going to come back was making it so much harder to heal. Plus he wanted to donate some of her things to the children’s ward. He had called and spoken with Taehyung to see what they needed, and he had a list of the things he could take them. Once he had decided, he called Y/n to see if she could help. They had begun talking more often since the night that he’d called her in a drunken stupor, and he considered her a good friend. He knew that Namjoon and Jungkook wouldn’t be able to hold it together in cleaning out her things, but Y/n would be. Something about her was soothing to Hoseok, and he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

Y/n came over early on a Saturday morning to help Hoseok empty out Dasom’s room. They had several boxes to fill. Hoseok had already removed the bed and had labeled each of the boxes. One box was to be taken to a local shelter that helped women and children who were escaping domestic violence situations, one box was to be taken to Dr. Park’s office for the children’s ward, a small box for things that Hoseok wanted to keep, and another small box of things to give to Namjoon and Jungkook. Hoseok had already taken all of the tiny hats and headbands that Dasom had collected to Dr. Park’s office except for one. The tiara she had worn the day that they had gotten the news that she was dying was in the box for Jungkook. He had asked for that one, since he knew it was her favorite and it was the one Dasom would always clip in his hair. Hoseok had moved her yellow puppy plushie into his room. It sat on his bed all day amongst his blankets and pillows so he could squeeze it tightly the days he missed her so much he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Hoseok and Y/n worked diligently that day. Neither said much, but together they were able to clear out the room. Dasom hadn’t accumulated that many possessions in her short life, and they were able to empty out the room in a little over 6 hours. She helped him load the boxes into his car. He wanted to deliver them himself to the different places. He knew that Dasom would have been so happy to know that other little girls were going to have her princess dresses and dollhouse; she had always been so giving.

“Y/n, could I ask you something before you go?”

“Sure, Hobi. What’s up?”

“After I drop off all of these things, would you go to dinner with me? I don’t think I should be alone tonight,” he replied.

“That sounds good. I’ll go home to shower and grab some pajamas and my toothbrush. How about I meet you back here at 6 oclock?”

Hoseok delivered everything to their respective donation points except for the box for Namjoon and Jungkook. He’d take theirs with him to the shop on Monday. After dropping everything off, he returned to his emptier apartment. Even though he knew that he had needed to do this, it still was difficult. The familiar ache in his chest had lessened some and he was able to remember happy times with his baby as he sorted through her things. He showered and thought about the day and how much help Y/n had been, and not just physically. Her presence was soft and soothing, and it was no wonder that she made a fantastic Hospice nurse. If the way she had handled Dasom’s Hospice period was any indication of the way she did her day to day work, she helped a lot of families. In the past year or so since meeting her, Y/n had become a welcome addition to his life and the lives of Namjoon and Jungkook. They often all spent time together playing games or watching movies. She’d even tried her best to teach Namjoon to cook Jungkook’s favorite meal at one point.

In thinking it over, Hoseok realized that he hadn’t actually been on a real date since he was with Dasom’s mother. While dinner with Y/n wasn’t an official date, he found himself wondering if she would be willing to go on an actual date with him. Even the thought of asking her made him a little nervous, so he decided that he’d ponder that a bit more when he wasn’t about to spend extended amounts of time with her.

Y/n rushed through her shower to spend a little extra time getting ready. In the amount of time she had spent with Hoseok since caring for Dasom, they had gotten very close. Lately, she had realized that she’s developed a huge crush on the man with the heart shaped smile. While having dinner together as friends wasn’t a huge deal, and she knew that the invitation to stay overnight with him was just as a comfort measure to him, she couldn’t help but be a little nervous because of her stupid crush. Besides, she told herself, he was still in mourning for his child; he didn’t want a relationship with her.

They hadn’t discussed where they were going to have dinner, so she opted to dress in an outfit that would be appropriate for a variety of places. She opted for a light-yellow sundress with a jean jacket over it and ballet flats. She packed shorts and an oversized sweater for sleeping in and an outfit to wear home the following afternoon. After packing her things for the overnight stay, Y/n finished curling her hair in loose soft curls and pinned it out of her eyes, then did just a touch of natural makeup.

She pulled into the parking lot of Hoseok’s apartment complex at 5:56 pm, and decided she’d just take her overnight bag up to his apartment and they could leave from there together. She glanced down at her phone after ringing the doorbell, and when Hoseok opened the door, she looked up to find him in just a pair of jeans and still towel drying his hair.

“Hi,” she said softly, “I’m a few minutes early, but I thought I’d bring everything up.”

Hoseok smiled and apologized for not being ready yet. “I just lost track of time in the shower. Go ahead and take your bag into my bedroom. I’ll just finish drying my hair and grab a shirt then I’ll be ready to go.”

Hoseok walked back into his bathroom as Y/n placed her overnight bag just outside his closet door. When he’d opened the door to see her standing there in her cute dress and her hair curled that way, it had nearly taken his breath. She was gorgeous in such a soft, gentle way that he was a little bit addicted to. Something about her just felt like home.

They had opted to go have sushi at a place near Hoseok’s apartment, so they had just walked over. During dinner, they had laughed and joked as much as possible to lighten up the solemnity of the day. Hoseok had to admit that he felt better after laughing and just being around Y/n. As they were walking back to the apartment, the sun was just starting to set. Without thinking about it, Hoseok reached over and took her hand, linking their fingers together. He felt her stiffen up for just a second before relaxing and squeezing his hand. He looked down at their linked hands and smiled at her.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve wanted to hold your hand all evening. I hope you don’t mind,” he said to her shyly.

“I don’t mind at all, Hobi. I kinda like it.”

When they got back to the apartment, they decided to watch random reality tv shows and just lounge around. Y/n slipped into his master bathroom to change into the shorts and sweater she’d brought to sleep in. When she got the sweater on, she realized that it covered her shorts completely but there was nothing she could do about it. She stepped out into the living room to find that he’d changed into a tee and some lounge pants and was pouring them each a glass of wine.

He turned around with the glasses in his hand and found her standing in the living room in just a sweater that was so big that it kept slipping off of one of her shoulders.

“I swear I have shorts on. It just looks like I don’t because my sweater is so big. I just didn’t realize it when I packed it,” she said, nervously fiddling with the seams on her sleeves.

“Oh…okay,” he stammered. “You look so cute standing there. Seriously, my heart is pounding.” His face turned bright red as he realized that he’d actually said that out loud, but her giggle in response was enough to make him feel less embarrassed.

They curled up on the couch, sipping the wine and making fun of the rash decisions that the contestants on the reality show were making. To Hoseok, this felt like something they did every day, and he realized that he kind of wished it was something they did every day. After finishing the show they were watching, Hoseok glanced over to see Y/n dozing against the arm of the sofa. He smiled softly before deciding he’d just carry her to his bed. They hadn’t discussed sleeping arrangements, but there was no way he was going to make her sleep on his couch after everything she’d done for him that day. He scooped her into his arms bridal style and started towards his room. She woke up just as he was laying her down on his bed. He’d laid her on his side of the bed without thinking about it and was tugging the blanket up over her when her eyes fluttered open.

“What’re you doing, Hobi? I can’t steal your bed.”

“I’m a gentleman, Y/n. I refuse to let you sleep on my couch. I’ll sleep on the couch; it’s no big deal,” he smiled at her.

“It is to me. Can’t you just sleep in here with me? I promise I’ll be good,” she pouted at him.

He chuckled softly at the way she’d phrased it, then finally agreed. “Okay, Darling. If you insist. I’m just going to go turn off the living room light and the tv. I’ll be right back.”

She was already back asleep when he returned to the bedroom with her back facing the door. Hoseok went to the other side of the bed and climbed under the blankets. The light from the full moon was streaming in between the sheer curtains hanging over the window, and it caressed her cheek softly, making her glow. Y/n looked beautiful in sleep, and something about the way that she was snuggled into his pillow like she belonged there made his heart ache in such a good way. He kissed her forehead gently before whispering, “Goodnight, Darling.”

Hoseok woke up the next morning to the smell of fresh coffee and something savory that definitely had bacon in it, and his bed empty. He used the restroom and brushed his teeth before following his nose out to find Y/n singing softly in his kitchen as she pulled a beautiful quiche out of the oven. She had to have been awake for a while to have put this together.

“That smells amazing,” he murmured as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” she giggled. “I hope you don’t mind that I raided your fridge and made breakfast.”

“Not at all. I rarely make time to eat more than a slice of toast as I’m running out the door to the shop, so this is a serious treat for me.”

Y/n sliced up the pie and plated it before grabbing a fruit salad out of the fridge she’d also made. Hoseok moaned at the first bite he took of the quiche. It was so good. The crust was flaky, the eggs were cheesy and there were just enough chunks of vegetables and bacon to make every bite a little different. Paired with the tangy pineapple and sweet strawberries in the fruit salad made it twice as good. Y/n blushed a little bit at his visceral reaction to the food she’d made before they began chatting about the day. By the time that Namjoon had called to see if they wanted to catch a matinee of some horror movie that Jungkook wanted to see, Hoseok had eaten two big slices of the quiche.

“I need to shower, but I’m so full,” Hoseok whined.

“I didn’t tell you to try to eat half the quiche at once,” Y/n laughed. “Go shower. I’ll put everything away and clean up our breakfast dishes.”

Y/n had fallen asleep quickly after Hoseok had carried her to his bed. She’d woken up just after 7:30 with her head pressed to Hoseok’s bare chest, her ear pressed just above his heartbeat. He’d had both arms wrapped loosely around her. It felt so good that it scared her a bit; she’d wriggled her way out of his arms and tucked a pillow in her place. When she was stressed or needed to think, she cooked, so she made breakfast. She’d actually been on her second cup of coffee when Hoseok had stumbled into the kitchen in all of his golden glory, and when he’d moaned at the taste of the food she’d made, her heart stuttered in her chest. It had made her wondered how else she could make him make that sound, and that was something she was not prepared to deal with, so she decided to shove those thoughts deep down and not consider them again.

She covered the quiche with plastic wrap and slid it and the fruit salad into his refrigerator. There was enough left for him to have that for several more breakfasts. She began to sing softly to herself as she emptied the coffee pot and washed up the plates, mugs, and silverware from their breakfast. She was rinsing the last of them when Hoseok slid his arms around her waste and snuggled her into a hug.

“Thank you,” he whispered to her.

“You have nothing to thank me for.”

“Yes, I do. You took beautiful care of my daughter, and you are still taking care of me in subtle ways. So thank you. I wish she’d had someone like you to be her mom.”

Y/n sat the mug down, then turned around in Hoseok’s arms to face him. He had tears on his cheeks as she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.

“I’m sorry for getting emotional. I was just thinking about Dasom in the shower. If she had never died, I’d never have met you. And while I wish sometimes she was still here, I would never want her to suffer the way she did for any longer,” he whispered through his tears. “If she’d never died, we’d have never met and you wouldn’t be making my heart skip beats by singing while you clean my kitchen. I don’t know how to feel about that thought, but I don’t want to lose this chance at happiness. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m still a lot broken and a bit damaged from losing my daughter, but I like you a lot.”

“Oh Hobi,” Y/n smiled. “I like you too. I never told you, but Dasom made me promise to take care of you after she was gone. Keeping my promise to her has been a joy in itself, and when I woke up with my head on your chest this morning, I kept thinking how much she’d have laughed and teased me for falling for her Appa.”

Hoseok pressed his forehead to Y/n’s and closed his eyes. “She so would have. And she’d have asked me why I hadn’t given you kisses yet.”

He opened his eyes and looked into hers for just a moment. When all he saw was a soft happiness in her eyes, he pressed his lips to hers. She sank into the kiss slowly, slipping her fingers into his shower dampened hair. When he pulled away, they just stood staring at each other. He knew that they needed to take it slow, but he could feel the gap that was still in his chest from Dasom’s death closing up just a little bit. Y/n herself had been so healing to him just being there for him. They stood there for a few minutes, just holding on to each other before Hoseok spoke again.

“Why don’t you ride with me to the movie later? We can tell Joonie and Kookie about us. But there is a stop I want to make first.”

Hoseok parked in the parking lot of the cemetery where Dasom was buried a couple of hours later. Y/n was sitting in the passenger seat holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers for him to leave on her grave.

“This is the first time I’ve been back here since the day we buried her, Y/n,” he sighed. “But I felt like I needed to do this. Just stay here. I won’t be long, I promise.”

She nodded before handing him the flowers. He got out and stood beside the car for just a moment before walking down the pathway that lead to the section designated for children. He knelt down in front of the tombstone and laid the flowers just at the base of the stone.

“Hi, my Love. I’m sorry I haven’t been to visit you here, but I’ve had a hard time adjusting to you being in heaven without me. Joonie and Kookie have taken good care of me. Y/n too,” he stopped speaking when the sobs collected in his throat before spilling out. “Speaking of Y/n, I kissed her in our kitchen this morning, Somie. I’m sure you’re looking down asking me what took so long, but your Appa can be so silly sometimes. Ah, Somie. I wish you were still here with us. I wish Y/n could have been your Eomma, but I wouldn’t have been able to meet her if you hadn’t gone to heaven.”

Hoseok stopped speaking for a moment to trace Dasom’s name on the tombstone. After he brought his hand back, a purple butterfly landed on his knee. It felt to him like that tiny butterfly was his baby girl acknowledging his words and telling him that she was okay. The butterfly fluttered it’s wings a few times before fluttering away, but it was enough to add a balm to his heart.

“Thank you for the butterfly, Baby Girl. I bet you are the most beautiful angel in heaven. Keep watching over me, yeah? I love you,” he whispered before wiping his tears and standing up.

As he walked slowly back to the car to rejoin Y/n, he knew that he still had a long way to go with healing, but he felt like he was finally making a solid step in the right direction. While he still missed his daughter, he knew that she’d want him to carry on without her, and for now, that was enough.

#bts #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts imagine #bts imagines #bts imagination #bts hoseok angst #bts hobi #bts jhope #bts jhope angst #hospice au #bts jung hoseok #bts hobi angst #angels calling

29 notes · View notes