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#too tired to look up names of the members whom i can’t quite recall the names of sorry
doiefy · 3 years
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blue // na jaemin
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“The winter has passed and the spring has come We have withered and our hearts are bruised from longing”
- blue, bigbang
In which one ceases to age until they find their soulmate, with whom they then grow old. In which everyone has moved on without you.
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genre: soulmate!au, fluff, angst, slow burn
pairings: jaemin x female reader (written with a female character in mind, but it can easily be gender neutral!), features relationships with other dream members, briefly mentions haechan x jeno
word count: 11.6 k
warnings: language, mentions of alcohol and smoking, mentions of war, mentions of death, discussions of Korea under Japanese occupation, some of the historical references may be inaccurate.
taglist (DM, comment or Ask to be added): @simplicitysbabe Big thank you to @neojaems​ for beta reading this for me !! <333
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Your test comes back blue.
When you rip open the envelope containing your results, you find the little coloured square hidden between pages and pages of lab protocols, testing procedures and other nonsense you know no one actually has the time to read. Then there are the stupid pamphlets, the ones with overtly bright and bubbly messages reassuring people that they’ll find their “special someone” soon, slogans most likely written by people who found their soulmates before they even turned twenty. You scoff, shoving the useless papers back into the envelope and recalling the first time you tested back in 1945, right after the war. The receptionist wrote your results down on a piece of paper and nonchalantly told you to have your emotional breakdown outside.
Now you stare at the blue marking on your paper blankly. It simply means you haven’t aged biologically in ten years, but when you haven’t aged in decades, it means nothing. While the world progresses, you remain frozen in the same body, playing a cruel game with fate. And as with any game that one cannot win, you’ve slowly become bored with it, allowing it to take its course while you sit idle nearby. You feel only disappointed, and not even perplexed or surprised in the slightest. Something about meeting Jaemin just seemed too good to be true; after a lifetime of misfortune and failure, something about the bad news feels… expected. Inevitable. As if unconsciously, you knew he wasn’t the one.
Na Jaemin is not your soulmate. And you spend the walk home contemplating how you’ll tell him this.
When you unlock the door to your shared apartment, you know he’s already home, and earlier than usual: his shoes are placed meticulously on the rack by the door and his jacket is hung up next to the messenger bag he takes to work. The living room smells faintly of the pine and vanilla candle you bought last month, and you smell traces of shampoo and bodywash from the bathroom.
“I’m home!” you call out as you kick your shoes off and put them neatly next to Jaemin’s. There’s a muffled response of your name before the door to your room opens. Then his arms are around you, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he mumbles a tired greeting.
“Bad day?” You ask softly, pushing all your other thoughts to the back of your head. He looks exhausted. His hair is tucked messily under the hood of his navy sweater, still damp from the shower he took earlier. His eyes lack the usual brightness you often find yourself so immersed in, replaced with the fatigue and weariness he almost never brings home.
“I hate this company,” he sighs as you run your fingers through his hair. You feel him relax in your arms a bit. “My boss is a dick, everyone in my department hates each other and the coffee tastes like actual ass. Maybe I should just quit while I still can.”
You frown. “Jaem, you’ve been with them for literally a month. You can’t possibly be thinking about quitting already.”
“A month! A month in and I’m already having mental breakdowns under my desk at lunch. Imagine what will become of me if I spend a year there,” he scowls, but his expression softens when you kiss him reassuringly on the cheek. “Alright, alright, fine, maybe not quit, maybe I’ll just take a long, long, vacation and then retire… Move to the countryside with you…” He trails off dreamily and for a moment, you lose yourself in the fantasy he’s painted for you. The mental image of a quaint house by the ocean is quickly shattered when you remember the test results hidden in your bag. The sunflowers you envisioned surrounding the cottage are blown away in the wind, their bright yellow petals swallowed by the blueness of the sky.
“Oh, you wish,” you laugh, quickly pressing your lips to his in hopes that he won’t see your expression, that he won’t see the sadness and regret you’re fighting to suppress. “Maybe, baby, maybe one day we can do that.”
“Maybe,” he laughs, his face lighting up with the energy and liveliness that has been missing. “But enough about me. How was your day, love?”
“Mm. The same old,” you say, pulling out of his arms so you can finally take your jacket off. You crash into the couch where you fold up your scarf and toss it aside. “Stressful.”
He stares at you for a hard moment, visibly concerned as if he can tell there’s something troubling on your mind. “Is something the matter?” He asks carefully, sitting down next to you. He holds you at arm’s length so he can look at you properly. “Is this about the test?”
“What? Oh, no, not the test. I doubt the results will come in until sometime next week.” The lie slips out easier than it should, and you feel guilt slowly start to twist your insides. Just a white lie, you tell yourself. It can’t hurt anyone but yourself. He’s been through enough today. He’s tired. Not tonight. It can wait. “I’m just tired,” you shrug. “I need some dinner and a nap, then I’ll be all good again. Do we still have anything in the fridge or should we order takeout?”
“I already ordered chicken from Yong’s. I had a feeling that today would be a bad day for the both of us,” Jaemin grins. His smile is smug at first, then endearing when he sees your shock.
You practically pounce on him in excitement, and the two of you go crashing into the couch cushions until you have him pinned beneath you. “Oh my god, I fucking love you, you know that?”
Jaemin groans, curling into himself as he gives you a wounded look. “And that’s how you show your love? By trying to break my bones?”
“Besides the point,” you huff. “You aren’t going to say it back?”
“Yes, of course. I love you too.”
Unsatisfied with his answer, you lower your face so your lips are hovering just inches above his. He looks up at you starry-eyed, his fingers ghosting over your cheeks; you can’t help but notice the way his gaze travels briefly to your lips.
Then you realize how dangerous this is. You know that he’s not the one. You know that you’ll eventually part ways with him when he finds out, no matter how reluctant you’ll feel. Every moment you spend with him like this will come back to haunt you when he’s gone. It will become another reminder of what you’re about to lose, yet here you are, falling deeper into his embrace, intoxicated by his scent and lost in the depth of his eyes. You are only tying more strings between the two of you, strings that will need to be stretched and snapped. You are only making it more painful for the both of you.
But for tonight, you don’t care.
“Say it like you mean it,” you whisper.
He holds your face gently, and those sparks you felt upon your first meeting with him are still there, igniting each time he looks at you, blazing into an open flame when he tells you, “I love you.”
You kiss him with more urgency this time, your lips meeting his in a clash of teeth and tongue. He puts his hands around your waist and pulls you impossibly closer to him. For just a moment, you’re focused on only him and his presence. For just a moment, you forget about everything; the sheet of test results is just another piece of paper in your bag, the blue mark just another colour. Because tonight, he is all that matters to you.
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You met Na Jaemin almost three years ago.
Though the details have faded with time, you remember your first conversation well. It began at a friend’s art show beneath the golden glow of the studio lights, the two of you surrounded by brilliant splashes of colour and bold strokes of texture. Renjun had insisted on introducing you to Jaemin before you even arrived at the gallery, and you couldn’t have possibly refused. Your friendship with Renjun goes way back to the 40s, and you often think he knows you better than you know yourself. “I think he could be good for you,” he told you quietly just before leaving to speak with his other guests.
At first, Jaemin seemed timeless. It was as if he didn’t belong to any particular time period, as if he had lived to see several generations rise and fall, but had never risen or fallen with any of them. Dressed elegantly in a fitted turtleneck and a wool coat, he appeared youthful and contemporary; yet the way he spoke hinted at a certain maturity, at wisdom and sagacity. There was something charming about him too, something about the way he recounted events of the past and drew you in with only his words.
Next to a breathtaking oil painting of the sea, you discovered your commonalities. He was almost two decades younger, but like you, had spent his entire life searching for a partner without much success. You were delighted to learn that he had also worked in teaching—though he mentioned changing careers frequently whenever things became too mundane. He was effortlessly intriguing, and every word he spoke was lively and animated. He infused your conversations with colours, painted everything in bright yellows and aquamarines that matched the swirling paint strokes of the artworks around you, left you wanting to know more without even trying.
You left the gallery that night with his number in your coat pocket. Needless to say, Renjun was thrilled.
Weeks passed before you saw him again. Your busy schedules always managed to get in the way of your plans, but the two of you still kept in touch, chatting late into the night and well into the early hours. As the months went by, you dared to hope that maybe he was the one.
You immediately scolded yourself for being naive. With all your past partners, you had been hopeful in the same way, only to be let down in the end. Your test when you were with Donghyuck came back blue, as did the one with Mark. Both have since moved on, found their soulmates and written their happy endings. Even if you still stay in touch and meet up for an occasional coffee, you know that you are only a distant memory to them in some way or another.
The prospect of the same thing happening with Jaemin had never occurred to you—you’d been so caught up in getting to know him, so blinded that you’d completely forgotten. And then you saw him differently. As if he were a flame that could be snuffed out in an instant, a feather that could be sent flying with the slightest breeze, the slightest breath. You mulled over it for weeks and always did so silently, until it finally came up in conversation.
Almost a year had passed since you’d met him. With the summer coming to an end, the two of you had driven down to the Han River where you sat in the open trunk of his car, sharing a can of cheap beer from the convenience store. There were no words, only the faint melody of an old pop song buzzing from your phone and his hand around yours.
“Move in with me,” he said at last, glancing at you expectantly, trying to gauge your reaction. It wasn’t completely out of the blue—you’d been searching for a new apartment for weeks—but it still took you by surprise. “Too fast?” He asked when he registered your shock.
“No, not at all,” you shook your head and squeezed his hand. “Don’t get me wrong Jaem, I’d love to. It’s just, I don’t know about any of this. About us. If we’re actually…”
He hummed a quiet response, his brows furrowing slightly in contemplation. “Soulmates,” he said with a melancholic sigh. “You don’t want to go any further before we know for certain. I understand.”  
You nodded. “It always hurts, you know? You think you’ve finally found them only to realize you’ve been completely wrong the whole time.”
“I know,” he said, and his empathy flooded you with warmth and reassurance. “You always think you’ll be prepared for the next time. You always think it will hurt less as time goes by. But it doesn’t.”
“Exactly.”
You tipped the last of the beer into your mouth; it tasted faintly sweet on your tongue before dissolving into a pleasant bitterness that hit the back of your throat. When you were finished, Jaemin took the empty can and fiddled with the tab, bending it back and forth until it snapped off.
“I want it to be you,” he told you after a few minutes of silence. “I want it to be us.”
“And if we aren’t?”
He kissed you, hard enough for you to see stars. It wasn’t desperate or longing, but it seemed to convey a hundred different thoughts all at once, a hundred different emotions for you to decipher. When he finally pulled away, his voice was thoughtful and he was seemingly lost in a pleasant daydream. “Oh, love, the universe has already cursed us to search eternally. We may as well spend eternity together.”
“Seriously, Jaemin, what if we aren’t?”
The tremor of your voice snapped him out of it. The glimmer of hope disappeared from his pupils and the dream slipped from his hands.
“We’ve been alive for so long,” you continued, trying to keep your voice steady. “I don’t think I can go on like this. What if we aren’t meant to be? What will we do?”
You didn’t regret your time with Donghyuck or Mark or Jungwoo or any of the people you were lucky enough to have met, but you’d watched all of them from afar, watched them grow while you stayed frozen in time. Each new generation that came along was only a reminder of your loneliness. You felt a certain emptiness each time you invited new people into your life, one that deepened when they eventually left you behind. Or worse, when they gave you their pity. You couldn’t stand it when people told you that it was unfair or that you deserved better, all while they lived comfortably with their soulmates. You weren’t jealous, nor could you ever be angry at them for something beyond their control. Your anger was directed at the invisible forces that toyed with the world, the mischievous hands spinning the universe in some strange direction that left only you disoriented.
His expression took on a faint sadness and when he spoke again, his voice was calm, barely a whisper. “Then so be it. If you need to move on, it would be selfish of me to stop you from doing so.” He stared out at the waters wistfully, at the yachts sailing downstream. “And besides, you’re right. Maybe it’s time we settle down… even if it’s not with each other.”
Your birthday came a few months after that night, but you held off on testing. The bus you took home from work passed by one of the labs, but you never got off at the stop, always watched the doors open and close from your seat. The test isn’t that accurate anyways, you told yourself; it could produce only an approximate biological age, so maybe the longer you waited, the better.
But in the end, it was simply an excuse to escape reality, to avoid your confrontation with fate itself.
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You moved in with him just before the end of the year.
New Year’s Eve wasn’t a big deal for you (you’d lived through too many for it to be exciting), but you spent the last minutes of the year with him, surrounded by cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked. Jaemin had still made some sort of effort at festivities despite your indifference: pale pink and gold candles lit around the living room, golden champagne in delicate glasses set on the table.
You were almost asleep when the clock struck twelve, wrapped up in one of his oversized sweaters and a white throw blanket. The celebratory music blaring from the TV was muffled in your ears, a pleasant symphony that lulled you deeper into sleep until Jaemin awoke you with a kiss.
“Happy New Year, Y/N.”
“Happy New Year, Jaem,” you mumbled, a smile ghosting your lips as you focused on the comfort you felt in his arms; on the new year, on your new home, new hope.
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You know something’s wrong.
Jaemin doesn’t come out to greet you, even after you announce your arrival. He’s home—his shoes and coat are put away neatly like any other day—yet it’s deathly silent, terribly still. No music playing in the living room, no voice down the hallway. Only the occasional chirp from your broken smoke detector, which you’ve been meaning to fix for weeks. As you bend down to unlace your boots, you can’t help but worry.
You find him in your shared bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the comforter. The sun has almost set and the shadows stretch across the room, blanketing him in darkness and masking his expression with ambiguity. He doesn’t move when you turn on the lamp on the bedside table. He doesn’t move when you sit next to him.
There’s a familiar sheet of paper in his hands.
“Jaem, I…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
It isn’t accusatory or hostile; his voice is laced with nothing but sadness, yet you feel so much guilt, guilt that closes around your throat and squeezes the air out of your lungs, leaving you breathless. You kept it from him for days, and now this is the way he must find out about it. From a piece of paper you were careless enough to leave where he might find it. From a piece of paper detailing the DNA extracted from a sample of your blood. You should have told him.
“I didn’t know how to,” you let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Are you serious?” There it is, the cold edge that begins creeping into his voice as he stares down at you. He flicks a finger in the direction of the date printed at the top of the paper. “It’s been a week, Y/N. You kept this from me for a week. Why?”
“I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you, okay?” It comes out sharper than you intended; you immediately begin to drown in guilt as soon as you see Jaemin’s expression fall. You didn’t mean to lash out, and now you make up for it by taking his hands in yours. They're ice cold. “Look, the day I found out, you were already tired from work. I didn’t want to bring it up and make everything worse—”
“So you lied. Said the results hadn’t come in yet,” he says flatly and you rush to defend yourself, only to realize that he’s right.
“I’m sorry.”
The rest of your words don’t come. With a tired exhale, you bury your head in your hands, too overwhelmed to say anything else. You can only hope that he’ll understand, that he’ll empathize and that he’ll forgive you, even if you don’t exactly believe you deserve any of it right now. You hold back the tears. Only when he pulls you into his arms do they fall. He takes your hands, gently pulling them away from your face so he can wipe your tears despite your protests. There’s no coldness in his expression now, only concern.
“I needed time to process everything,” you continue, but you choke on the words. “I couldn’t even accept it myself, I couldn’t—”
“I know, love,” he says quietly as his thumb brushes against your cheek. “I know. It’s alright.”
Your silent sniffles turn into unrestrained sobs as he pulls you into his embrace, your pent-up emotions finally released in the form of silvery streams on your cheeks. You aren’t sure how much time passes. The sun meets the horizon in a hazy line of faint pink and orange. The sky darkens. Outside, the city lights up in a multitude of hues, the amber light from the street below seeping into your room. The minutes go by, but Jaemin never lets go of you until your tears have run dry.
“Better?” He asks, albeit his voice is shaky, his gaze trembling when he looks up at you. You nod.
“We’ll figure this out,” his eyes seem to say. You can tell he’s just as terrified as you are, just as unsure and as lost. Though for now, you simply hold each other. You say nothing about the paper that lays discarded on the floor or what it entails, even if you both feel the need to address it, to face its implications. In this moment of brokenness, neither of you have the strength to do so.
You eventually collect yourselves. You make dinner and force yourselves to eat before passing a meaningless hour in front of the TV. You clean up, wash up. Sleep early in preparation for tomorrow. Jaemin never leaves your side.
“Where do we go from here?” You whisper into the darkness of your bedroom.
“Tomorrow, love,” you hear him say just before slipping into unconsciousness, into restless sleep.
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According to Lee Donghyuck, the chances of meeting your soulmate are 1 in 10 000. Or at least, scientifically. Theoretically. Donghyuck was a man of logic and reason, and had your lives not revolved around soulmates like the earth revolved around the sun, perhaps he wouldn’t have believed in fate at all.
“Remove fate from the equation,” Donghyuck mumbled to himself thoughtfully, jotting a few numbers down on a paper napkin. “And let’s assume your soulmate is around your age.”
“Can’t you rule that one out too?” You pointed out,  but he was too busy, already lost in his thoughts.
“If your soulmate is determined at birth and instantly recognizable at first sight… And they’re actually alive somewhere in the world…”
You watched the quick movements of his blue pen with intrigue. He spun the pen restlessly, allowing its barrel to cross over and under and between his fingers, at times so quickly that it became nothing but a blur of colour. Finally, he scribbled a final verdict and inked two definitive circles around it. “If fate hadn’t been so kind, the chances would have been one in ten thousand. One lifetime out of ten thousand.”
“That slim? Ten thousand lifetimes, that’s nearly impossible,” you said, skeptical but amused at his train of thought nonetheless. You took the napkin from him and looked over his calculations, though some of the numbers were too big for you to check without a calculator. You trusted that Donghyuck had done them correctly though. “You know, if you told that to someone who’d spent a century searching for their soulmate, they’d probably beat you up. You’re lucky I like you.”
He giggled. “We’re lucky it’s only hypothetical.” He took the napkin from you and crumpled it, smudging the neon blue ink on the tips on his fingers.
With Donghyuck, things were simpler. He was young, young enough to not be in a hurry, young enough to speak his thoughts so freely. He never pitied you or worried about offending you, and he never treated you as if you were out of place among the new generations. He offered you perspective. You knew that you weren’t meant for each other, but you were still content to spend your time with each other. To wait together.
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“So… I might have found a new place.”
You don’t miss the surprise on Jaemin’s face when you tell him over dinner. His eyes widen a bit in curiosity, his brows arching upwards and his mouth falling slightly agape. He sets his fork down against his plate, folding his hands together the way he does when he’s deep in thought.
“Already?” He inquires. Maybe you imagine a hint of disappointment in his voice, a slight dip in his tone. He looks at you with a sort of sadness, as if trying to imagine what it would be like with you gone, to come home to an empty apartment every night. “Seriously, Y/N, you’re welcome to stay if you need to. We said we would take the changes slowly.” His words aren’t just out of consideration for you.
More than a month has gone by silently, and within that time, the frigid cold of winter has finally given way to spring. Nothing has really changed when you think about it, as if your test results are meaningless. And you suppose that they have become just that, a meaningless scrap of paper at the bottom of the recycling bin in the kitchen. Jaemin still holds you the same way, though his touches are just a little bit more fleeting. Your conversations still extend late into the night, though they feel just slightly melancholic. You hang onto his every word even while telling yourself not to, that maybe there is no point in doing so when everything is already coming to an end.
“I don’t know if I’ll take it… at least not for sure. And even if I do, I won’t be moving in until April. I just thought I’d tell you ahead of time,” you tell him, reaching across the table to take his hand. “I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I think I need some time alone. So I can adjust to all of this.”
“No, I understand. It’s just a little jarring, you know? Don’t know what it’ll be like without you here.”
“It’s literally only a block away,” you giggle, and he smiles. “I’ll still be here.”
After the coolness of February comes grey skies and a drizzly March, heavy rainfall washing the white snow to grey slush. Eventually, the clouds part across the sky for the sun, allowing the brilliant blue of the sky to peek through. April comes sooner than expected, producing blooms of yellow and white in the flowery courtyards of your new apartment complex, bursts of bright colours along the cobblestone paths.
You stand surrounded by boxes in the middle of your new studio apartment, watching the people pass by on the streets below. The windows are cracked open for air and you can hear the bustle outside, the yells of the street vendors, an occasional shriek of a child’s laughter. The new bedframe and mattress you ordered stand leaning against the wall in the corner, waiting to be assembled. Jaemin stumbles through the door with another box and sets it down before dusting his hands off on his jeans.
“That’s the last one,” he says. He collapses on the couch that the previous owner left behind, out of breath. You sit down next to him, allowing him to rest his head on your lap. He finally looks around, then at you. “Everything you hoped for?”
You nod happily. “I’ll miss having you around though,” you chuckle, playing with the soft strands of his hair, freshly dyed—after losing a drunken bet to Renjun a week ago, he reluctantly let the latter bleach and tone his hair bright silver. But you think it suits him; it accentuates the darkness of his eyes and paleness of his skin, gives him a cold and chic edge offset by the gentleness of his smile.
“I’ll still be here,” he repeats your words from two months ago. “And you’ll be much closer to work, right? No more crazy subway routes and early mornings. At the cost of me being your personal alarm clock, of course.” He grins, and you smack him with a red throw pillow.
“I won’t miss that,” you roll your eyes teasingly.
“Whatever you say, love.” He lifts his head off your lap to press a kiss against your cheek.
You spend the rest of the afternoon with him, unpacking boxes, hanging up clothes, building the bedframe and fitting the mattress with clean sheets so that at least you’ll have somewhere to sleep tonight. When the sun sets, everything is lit in an ethereal glow, and you stare out the floor-length windows, admiring the sky. Jaemin joins you after a moment, wrapping his arms around you as the two of you rock back and forth to the steady rhythm of the music playing from his phone.
When he leaves in the evening, he gives you a final hug, jokingly telling you not to miss him too much. When he’s gone, you find yourself staring out the window once more, at the blocky silhouette of Jaemin’s building a few blocks away. He pointed it out earlier, thrilled that you could see so far from this high up.
You quickly learn that on cloudy days, it is nothing but a smudge of grey in the distance.
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While Donghyuck always tried to ease your worries with reason and strokes of pen ink on his skin, Mark took you on long drives around the city, hoping that the wind blowing through your hair would clear your mind.
On late nights when you couldn’t sleep, you often found yourself in the passenger seat of his 1975 Hyundai Pony, listening to static-laced 80s rock music while he drove you around the streets of Seoul. He would always roll the windows down in the summer and watch the contentment on your face, one hand around yours while the other guided the wheel.
Mark Lee was even older than you—and with all the wars and tragedies he’d lived through, he understood what it felt like to be kept awake by the nightmares. To be kept awake by thoughts of loved ones being blown to bits, to be haunted with memories of the past. With how long he’d been searching for the right person, he knew the urgency you felt and the longing to finally settle down with a soulmate. He understood.
The stories he told you were woven between puffs of cigarette smoke and gentle kisses on your forehead. He told you about Canada and the mountains that surrounded Vancouver, where he’d spent some time in the 40s. He told you about his family, about his brother’s grandchildren who looked older than he did. It was strange, he’d admitted with a small laugh and sadness in his smile.
The two of you often pointed out buildings along the side of the road, reminiscing what stood in their place before the bulldozers and big trucks rolled in. Just down the street from his apartment, the old drive-in cinema was being replaced by an upscale theatre. Next to it, a park was being cleared for a new shopping centre. Even the studio he’d rented out last summer had been demolished so a new entertainment agency could build its empire. Once in a while, he would drive by and stare ruefully at the construction site—the classical compositions he’d once recorded there were being replaced by a new type of music, with catchy beats and pretty pop stars dressed in shiny outfits.
His music had been drowned out by a new industry, and likewise, many of the things you remembered from your childhood have been lost to time. Talking about the past with him helped you remember. It was a sort of reassurance even as you moved on.
Mark eased a bit of your pain, staying out with you until the early hours of morning to make sure that you were alright. The next morning, he would almost always call to ask if you’d slept okay, unless there was an issue with the old landline phone in his office. All concept of time disappeared when you were with him, along with your memories and the demons haunting your dreams. But eventually, he would drop you off at home and bid you goodnight, leaving you to watch him drive away. Eventually, the night came to an end.
He couldn’t stay with you the whole night, nor could he stay with you forever.
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Your evenings are often interrupted by Jaemin’s messages asking you to come over. Sometimes he says that he misses you, or he wants to see you for dinner. Other times, he kisses you breathless against the closed door as soon as you’ve stepped inside, always with an unmatched fervour and urgency as if you might slip right through his grasp and disappear.
Tonight, however, it’s neither.
It’s half past midnight when your phone is set off in a series of quick vibrations. Wrapped in nothing but a towel with your hair still dripping, you type in a reply, hesitate, press send. You get changed, slipping into a pair of jeans and an oversized T-shirt before grabbing your keys.
Jaemin is uncharacteristically quiet when he opens the door for you, his gaze downcast so you can’t see his expression. He’s deteriorating; you can see it in the way he turns his back to you after locking the door, the way he walks inside with a halfhearted invitation for you to follow.
“What’s wrong?” You ask when you’ve sat down across from him.
“I think I found them,” he mumbles and you notice how he averts your gaze. “My soulmate, I mean. I think I found her.”
“Wait, then why with the long face? Jaem, that’s great—”
He cuts you off with a sharp bark of emotionless laughter. His expression turns bitter when he pulls his sleeve up to reveal a mark along his wrist: two linear streaks of dark purple that twist together like the centre petals of a rose. He stares at it, almost with contempt. Apart from the standardized DNA tests, markings are the only other way to identify soulmates, though they almost never show. No one has any proper explanation for them and you have no explanation for why Jaemin has one now.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s great. She’s smart. She’s funny. We have the same mark so I know it’s her,” he says shakily. “But god, I must have really fucked up in a past life to deserve this.”
You feel dread. It hits you all at once, because the way Jaemin speaks is so distant and unnerving, as if he’s lost himself in a trance and forgotten all about you. You’ve seen this dazed look before, only twice, when he was truly distressed and truly lost. This isn’t like him.
He found her. He should be happy. You should be happy for him. He should be happy.
“What is it?”
“I think I’m broken. Something’s wrong with me.”
“What do you mean?” You ask, and you try to keep the urgency out of your voice for his sake. He doesn’t say anything. “Jaemin?”
“I don’t feel anything when I’m with her. Nothing.”
You don’t register his words. They don’t make any sense to you. They are barely coherent. No, you think. That can’t be possible.
“Maybe we rejected each other in a past life and then both offed ourselves. Or maybe this is just the universe’s way of saying ‘fuck you.’ Maybe—”
“Stop that,” you tell him firmly. “Whatever this is, there has to be an explanation for it. Marks don’t just appear out of nowhere, right?” You pause to take a shaky breath, suddenly realizing that your words aren’t meant to comfort only him. “We can look into it. We can figure out what’s going on. This is the 21st Century, remember?”
“But what am I even supposed to tell her?” He demands, his tone exasperated and his brows furrowed together. “‘I know you’ve been looking for me for your whole life, but I can’t see you as anything more than a friend, sucks for you’? What do I do, spend the rest of my life drowning in guilt and self-pity because I couldn’t love her the way she wanted me to? Because I could only pretend?”
You have no answers for him. Perhaps he hasn’t felt anything for her because he hasn’t let go of you. Perhaps it really was a mistake, a freak accident in the cosmos that put the wrong marks on the wrong people, designating a pair that was never meant to be. Your thoughts run wild, but you can’t put anything into words for him. Even if you could, you don’t think you would have the strength to say anything aloud.
Instead, you hold him in your arms, wiping away the tears of frustration that have formed at the corners of his eyes, running your fingers through his hair. You can only hope that his soulmate will do the same for him some day, perhaps in some future where the cruel forces watching over you cease their endless games. Genuinely, you hope.  
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The tone goes off a third time. You glance at the clock across the room: 11 AM. He has to be up by now, you think to yourself as your fingers continue drumming a repetitive rhythm onto the kitchen counter.
“Hello?”
Just before the automated voice can tell you to leave a voicemail, he picks up. Donghyuck’s voice is groggy, as if he’s just woken up—or maybe he’s just about to go to bed. With his disaster of a sleep schedule, you can never be sure.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Oh hey, you, I know you.” You hear him chuckle on the other end of the line. “How are you, Y/N? I haven’t heard from you in ages.”
“I’m alright, the usual, I guess. How about you? How’s Jeno?”
“Jeno adopted another cat because he’s fucking insane, so now we have three little furballs running around the house. But yeah, it’s going great! So great,” he drawls with a familiar bite of sarcasm. You smile to yourself. “If he brings home another one because ‘Oh Hyuck, look it’s so cute, can we keep it?’ I will literally choke him in his sleep. Anyways, what’s going on? You never call me.”
“You never pick up,” you huff, earning a small laugh from him. “Okay, I wanted to ask you something. What do you know about soulmate marks?”
Thoughtful silence. “Not much. I mean, I’ve got my theories, but nothing has really been proven. Why, did you get one?”
“No, not me. Jaemin.”
“Oh, Y/N… then that means…”
“It’s alright, don’t concern yourself with me, Donghyuck. I’m more worried about him, honestly.”
“Hm?”
“He found his soulmate recently, but it’s not exactly… it’s not going as expected, let's just say that. He said he feels almost nothing when he’s with her, and to make things worse, apparently now it’s mutual. God, Donghyuck, they’re so awkward with each other, it physically hurts me.”
Donghyuck is silent again, and you hear the faint clicking of his keyboard. You can almost see his contemplative gaze and the soft blue glow of his computer screen lighting his face. “Did they know each other at all before the marks appeared?”
“Yeah, they were coworkers.”
He hums. “Okay… that could be why. Marks have a tendency to appear if soulmates have been around each other for extended periods of time without realizing it. It’s like nature’s way of telling them that the person they’re looking for is right in front of them. As for why they haven’t felt anything for each other? I dunno… reincarnation can really fuck with people. Any previous sentiments for your soulmate stick with you as you pass on, even if you’re both reborn completely different people.”
I must have really fucked up in a past life to deserve this. Jaemin’s words echo in your head.
“Obviously, there’s still opportunity to fix things,” Donghyuck adds quickly before you can get too lost in your thoughts. “It just takes time. Honestly, I wouldn’t be too concerned”
“I know, I know,” you groan. “I’m just upset that after everything he’s gone through, this is the shit he has to deal with.”
“Yeah. I can’t even imagine.” He pauses. “You know, a lot of people would just run off if they were in the same situation. He’s lucky to have you.”
You give a breathless laugh and shrug. “I feel like it’s the least I can do.”
“You never give yourself enough credit,” Donghyuck says, a hint of melancholy to his voice. There’s a sudden noise in the distance that cuts him off, and he curses beneath his breath. “Shit, the new cat’s not trained yet and I think she’s doing something stupid in the kitchen. Jeno will kill me if anything happens to her.”
You suppress a giggle. “Go ahead. We can catch up some other time.”
“Of course. See you, Y/N.”
The line clicks.
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If Donghyuck taught you to be hopeful and Mark taught you to be strong, Jungwoo taught you to be brave.
Kim Jungwoo was your first love, and in many ways, you consider him to be irreplaceable. Perhaps it had simply been the result of young naivety back then, but you thought he was unlike any other person you’d ever met. In hindsight, he was different. A bright light dancing his way into your life when you were only a child in the 30s, a free-spirited boy who went where he pleased despite living under such an oppressive regime.
The Kims lived only a few doors down. You frequently saw the boys in their front yard kicking a beat-up soccer ball back and forth between them. Jungwoo was the middle child, and he sat right in front of you in class, his back always perfectly straight against his wooden chair so as to avoid the teachers’ chastisement. He was a quiet boy, and he never said a word unless it was to answer a question. But even then, his voice was small—not exactly shy or scared, just quiet. He quickly learned to raise his voice when the teacher hit him on the back of the hand with a ruler and demanded he speak up, when the wood scraped apart the skin of his knuckles.
At the time, when Japanese was all too foreign on your tongue and you struggled to understand anything taught in class, you thought he was a genius. He always had the right answers when he was called upon and there wasn’t a trace of an accent in either of his languages. Not that you heard him speak Korean much; you didn’t dare speak it unless you were hidden in your own homes, where your parents could discuss the uprisings without having to worry about the police roaming freely outside. Though, they still spoke in hushed voices as if anyone could hear them, as if terrified for what could happen if someone did hear.
The first time you spoke to Jungwoo properly was in middle school. After a humiliating incident at school that left you in tears, he ran to catch up with you on the way home and spoke to you in timid Korean, offering to help. You were still teary-eyed and beyond upset, but you let him guide you through your homework. He rambled to you about the Japanese grammar you couldn’t understand and explained the mistakes you’d made for your teacher to lash out at you the way she had. It didn’t stop you from making the same mistakes the next day, but at least he was patient, unlike the adults at school.
“You’re not stupid,” he told you one afternoon on the way home. Again, you were in tears.
“But the teachers think I am,” you grunted. “And I feel stupid. I can’t understand a word they say. I never have the right answers. Everything I say is wrong. If that’s not stupidity, I don’t know what it is.”
“Y/N, all we do at school is memorize meaningless facts that don’t really matter,” he replied with a shrug. “Just because you can’t shove all that information into your head doesn’t mean that you’re stupid. Look at Doyoung. He was failing school but he’s still one of the smartest people I know. He just… learns differently.”
“So? That doesn’t make me smart either. They still think—”
Jungwoo scoffed. “Who cares what they think? I think you’re wonderful, and they’re the real freaks. Miss Ito, especially.” He wrinkled his nose. “She smells funny.”
“Hey, be nice, Jungwoo,” you chided, but you were laughing. He was effortlessly funny and it was such a pleasant contrast to the way he acted at school. He was always so disciplined and perfect when the adults were watching, but he seemed to let loose around you. It made you feel… special, in a way. Validated, accepted. Something you never felt at school.
You walked home with him almost everyday from then on. You became inseparable, even when your school shut down and sent all the students to gender-segregated schools, even when your parents worried that you were spending too much of your time with him instead of studying. Even when war arrived.
The Second World War plunged your lives into darkness; Jungwoo quickly became the only light to guide you. He was there for you while your parents were away, while they laboured in the factories making helmets and guns and bullets so that they could at least put food on the table. He was there when the light at the end of the tunnel went dim, though he was miles away from home.
Jungwoo had never struck you as a fighter or rebel, even if he had the physique of a soldier. He had the drive and the courage and the steel to fight, but you only saw gentleness in his monthly letters to you. The last letter you received from him still sits in a drawer somewhere, the last words he wrote sealed in a plastic envelope so that they won’t fade away.
You took the test a few months after the war ended, only because he had pleaded with you to do so. Even if I don’t make it home, he wrote to you in the same curving script he’d used to teach you years ago. Promise me.
When the receptionist gave you a piece of paper with an X marked next to your name—there were no colour indicators back then, only X’s and hollow circles—a part of you felt relief that you couldn’t quite explain. Another part of you was disgusted, convinced that you were being selfish and apathetic. You thought that maybe you had no regard for him; that you only cared for yourself and a stranger you were still searching for. He’d risked his life to join the rebel army, fought on the frontlines with the Allies, and you repaid him with nothing.
It would take you years to come to the conclusion that your reaction was only natural. It would take you years to heal and start seeing other people. In due time, you would stop frequenting the church in your hometown and your fingers would cease to brush against the memorial stone in the yard, upon which his name was carved. Just one name among many.
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Jaemin’s hands are all over you: in your hair, around your throat, pushing you against the wall as he kisses you. His fingers tangle into your hair and he pulls on the strands, forcing your head back a bit so he can continue trailing his lips over your neck and collarbones.
“We can’t be doing this,” you tell him when you manage to pull away. His arms come around your waist anyways and he buries his head in the crook of your neck. You can smell the alcohol on his breath, and you glance behind him to see empty soju bottles on the kitchen counter.
“I’m not with Jieun,” he snarls. “Besides, like I said. I think we’re fucked. We aren’t meant to be.”
“Don’t say that,” you hiss, taken aback by his sudden coldness. “This isn’t fair to her.”
“It’s mutual, remember? I bet she’s out there doing the exact same thing with some other guy. She doesn’t need me.”
“Jaem—”
“We’re fucked. She told me she doesn’t need me, and I told her the same.”
You’re horrified. “You did what?”
“Hilarious, isn’t it? We had our first fight, and we aren’t even together yet.” He scoffs, pushing a hand through his hair in irritation. “Some type of soulmate.”
You’ve never heard him talk like this. He’s out of his mind. He’s lost it. “Fuck, Jaem, how much did you drink?”
“Not enough to feel better, clearly,” he snaps.
“Alcohol and whatever this is between the two of us isn’t going to make you feel any better. This isn’t going to fix your problems.”
“Then what do you want me to do?!” His words are sharp, his expression hard when he glares at you. “You tell me to move on and to give her a chance and to stop doing whatever—” he motions frantically. You’ve never seen him so wild, so out of control, and you’ve almost never seen him lash out at anyone like this. “—whatever the fuck this is, but do you even know how it feels? Do you even care?”
A sharp intake of breath, and then the world is crashing down around you.
The feelings you fought to suppress re-emerge, rising up to crush you and force you into relapse. Doubt. Regret. Guilt. The little voice in the back of your head is a raging monster now, and it shouts at you, screaming at you in a blind rage. Telling you that you’re heartless and self-absorbed and indifferent, everything you believed you were when Jungwoo died. Reinstating what you know isn’t true. You know he doesn’t mean it. You know that it’s just alcohol fueling the words spewing from his lips and nothing more, but they still bring back unpleasant memories, a sense of dread you can’t shake.
He realizes, albeit a bit too late. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
If you knew how much it hurts me to watch you do this to yourself. If you knew how much it hurts me knowing that there’s only so much I can do for you. “Don’t. I get it.”
For a few seconds, the room is silent, save the ticking of the clock behind you. It reminds you briefly of a memory that you can’t quite grasp, like a flash of deja vu before you spiral back down to the present reality where you stand in cold, frigid silence. The broken smoke detector chirps.
“I should go,” you say at last. You go to grab your keys from where you left them on the counter but he quickly stops you, his hand coming around yours. You look up at him in irritation, pulling away sharply.
“It’s late,” he says shakily, almost pleading. “You shouldn’t walk home at this hour. Not alone.”
“I’ll call a cab,” you shrug before slipping into your sweater and pulling on your shoes. You bid him goodnight and leave him dumbfounded in the living room.
You return home to a sleepless light and endless thoughts in a cold bedroom. A broken record replays his words in your head again and again, until you see Jungwoo’s face floating above you in the darkness. His features are faint, like wisps of smoke that loosely form sad eyes and lips pulled downwards in a frown. And then he’s the one asking, “Do you even care?”
You have no answer for the annoying voice in your head. You stare at the lines of light drifting across the expanse of the ceiling, wide awake as the sky brightens outside.
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“How long will you be gone?”
It was the 3rd of August 1995. You knew because the next day would mark 50 years since Jungwoo’s death. The next day, you would be going back to your hometown and laying flowers on the altar in the Kim family home, revisiting the memorial you’d left behind when you moved to Seoul.
You shrugged as Mark passed you his lighter. The old zippo produced a small spark between your fingers, and then the sting of smoke was filling your mouth and nose. You didn’t smoke regularly—you’d stopped years ago—but you sure as hell felt like you needed one tonight.
“I dunno,” you said, taking a long drag from the cigarette. “A couple more days after the ceremony? If I stay any longer, Doyoung might get upset.“
“Upset?”
“He doesn’t like seeing me. Said I bring back bad memories. I think I remind him of Jungwoo too much.”
Mark grimaced. “Well it’s scary, seeing a childhood friend who hasn’t aged in fifty something years… Must he like seeing a ghost.” He paused, tucking a stray piece of your hair behind your ear so that he could see your face. “My nephews feel the same way about me.”
“You remind them of something?” You asked.
“Their father, I guess,” he explained. “My brother… wasn’t the most understanding of them when they were younger. Whenever they see me, all they can think of is their childhood and his abusiveness.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
He took a moment of contemplative silence “No, not really. I mean, maybe it did at first. But it’s not like I go out of my way to avoid them just because of the memories they associate with me. That would be unfair for me.”
“It would be,” you agreed.
“So then why avoid Doyoung? What he thinks of you is beyond your control. If you remind him of painful memories, that isn’t exactly your fault.”
You sighed. “I don’t know. I just feel like staying out of his way might help him heal. Maybe it’ll help him move on from everything he’s trying to forget.”
“Oh, Y/N.” Mark took your hand with a breathless laugh. His smile was both sad and endearing, as if he were in awe of you—what for, you weren’t too sure until he murmured, “You’re too kind sometimes.” He paused to exhale, smoke escaping his lips and bleeding into the atmosphere, dispersing into the starry sky. He stared into the sky for a few moments, silent.
“But it’s not always up to you to heal their wounds. At some point, they have to learn to heal themselves.”
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“What the hell happened to him?”
Jaemin looks like a mess. His hair is disheveled and swept messily all over the place. His skin is unhealthily pale, unusually warm to the touch beneath your fingertips. You can tell he’s had a little too much to drink; he sits on the couch in a daze, his eyes fixated on an invisible point in front of him as if searching for something that is no longer there. He yelps in pain when you wipe at the cut on his lip.
“We bumped into a couple guys at the bar. One of them took a swing at him,” Renjun explains as he passes you the bottle of disinfectant. You carefully apply a drop to a cotton swab. “And it didn’t help that he was also drunk. Thank god Lucas was there to break up the fight.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” Jaemin groans in protest. “Just tipsy.”
“Tipsy? You couldn’t even tell me Y/N’s number.”
“I don’t remember anyone’s number.”
“Well, you couldn’t tell me your own name either. Got any excuse for that one, smartass?”
You ignore their bickering and continue cleaning the cut on Jaemin’s cheek, holding him firmly by the shoulder so he doesn’t move. The cotton quickly turns light pink between your fingers. You briefly examine the red marks along his jaw where he’d been hit, frowning. Jaemin has never been one to get into fights and especially not while under the influence, but the bruises on his cheek and his knuckles suggest otherwise. Hell, he rarely even gets drunk, but it’s becoming more and more frequent, to the point where Renjun makes sure to watch over him whenever they go out together. He’s derailing, you think to yourself as you brush his hair into some sort of order.
“Okay, let’s get you to bed.” You put his arm around your shoulder and help him up to his feet, nearly staggering beneath his weight. Renjun rushes over to help you move him into the bedroom.
“You should probably go home. It’s getting late,” you tell him when Jaemin has been settled in bed. You glance at the clock hanging in the kitchen as you clean up the first aid kit on the table: almost 2 AM. “I’ll stay with him… make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“I really tried to keep him away from the alcohol tonight. I swear I turned away for only a second to deal with Yangyang and he— Ugh, I’m so sorry,” Renjun apologizes again, shaking his head. “This whole soulmate ordeal is really getting to him. I’m worried, Y/N.”
“You know how he is. He always figures it out one way or another” you reassure him. “I’ll talk to him again though. Maybe he’ll actually… listen this time.”
“Well, call me if anything happens. I probably won’t be asleep anyways.”
“I will. Thanks, Jun,” you nod appreciatively.
By the time Renjun has gone home and you’ve finished cleaning up, Jaemin is already asleep. He stirs when you switch off the lamp and reaches out for you in the darkness, fingers intertwining with yours. “Stay,” he mumbles, pulling you a bit closer.
“I’m not going anywhere.” You say as you admire the way the moonlight filters in through the windows and draws pale lines across his cheeks. Despite the cuts marking his skin, he looks so much softer now, innocent, in a way. Again, you’re reminded of the Jaemin you met at the art gallery. He was none of this. None of this pent-up frustration released in empty beer bottles, none of these crimson bruises marking his otherwise smooth skin.
“You have to stop doing this to yourself,” you murmur. There’s no reply at first, and you wonder if he heard you at all.
“I’m sorry,” you finally hear his voice: small, feeble in the darkness. His words become more urgent as he keeps speaking, spilling from his lips uncontrollably. “I shouldn’t have said those things about you. I wasn’t thinking. You know I could never mean it.”
You hush him, wrapping him in the security of your arms. A single tear brushes against the back of your hand, then another. “It’s alright,” you assure him as you rub soothing circles against his back. “You were going through a lot. I understand, okay? It’s okay.”
He shakes his head frantically, his tears falling in steady streams now. You let out a low hiss when you see them stain pink with the blood from the wound on his cheek. “Still, that shouldn’t be an excuse. I’ve managed to fuck up everything since all of this started. I hurt Jieun, I hurt Renjun, I hurt you. I can’t even go to work and look at Jieun without feeling like such an idiot and getting mad at myself for being such a child. Without feeling like maybe I deserve this.”
Your heart drops, then shatters into a million pieces at the bottom of a dark abyss.
“Look at me,” you plead as you take his face in your hands. “Look at me, Jaem, please.” He finally lifts his head, his eyes meeting yours in the stillness. All you can see is brokenness, defeat and regret, a look you knew well. It’s an expression that once followed you around for years, appearing in every mirror and reflection you passed by. An innate, intimate part of you that you despised so much until you came to accept it. “Listen to me, Na Jaemin. You are one of the strongest, bravest and kindest people I’ve ever met, and nothing will ever change the way I see you. You don’t deserve any of this bullshit. You don’t deserve this.”
“If you knew what I told her, Y/N,” he lets out a shaky breath. “If you knew what we told each other when we found out neither of us had any feelings for each other… maybe you would think differently of me.”
“If that’s truly what you believe, fix what you broke,” you say firmly. “Apologize to her. Make things right between the two of you, unless you want to go through this all over again in another life. Things will only get worse if you don’t address them now.”
“And if I can’t?”
“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Jaem.” Trembling, you press your lips to his temple. “Whether or not you end up with her, whether or not you think you deserve this, I love you. And that will never fucking change.”
He leans forwards, his forehead touching yours, his nose brushing against yours and his lips just inches from meeting yours. But he never comes any closer, and you feel no urge to close the distance either. Perhaps it’s a sign that both of you are already starting to let go, to drift apart; this moment is nothing romantic or lustful, nothing more than comforting each other in your brokenness. Nothing more than trying to help each other numb the pain.
“I love you.” His voice trembles, but his words are steady, deep-rooted in sureness.
“Then promise me you’ll try, Jaem. You’ll try to set things right, for both our sake.”
“For you, love,” he murmurs, so quietly that you can barely hear him. His voice is lost to the faint rumbling of the air conditioning unit somewhere outside and the distant noises of traffic. “For you, I would do anything.”
You wonder if he’ll remember any of this in the morning. You wonder if he’ll take your words to heart, or if they’ll simply be enveloped in dreams fueled by drunkenness, reduced by sleep to nothing but a blur.
...it’s not always up to you to heal their wounds. At some point, they have to learn to heal themselves
You’ve done everything you can for him, you decide. Even if you continue to walk by his side, the rest is up to him.
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One Saturday morning, Jaemin shows up at your door dressed in black jeans and a button-down shirt, his hair swept up neatly. There’s a kind of brightness to him; it’s not necessarily hope or excitement, but certainly a change from what you’ve seen the last couple of weeks. He’s meeting Jieun for lunch, he tells you nervously. He wants to see you before he goes. You tell him you’re proud of him. That genuinely, you admire him.
The next time you see him, it’s at a floral shop. He’s in the middle of picking out flowers, and he flushes when he sees you. A single rose seemed too cliche, he tells you sheepishly, and asks your opinion. He thinks she’ll prefer something a bit more unique but equally tasteful, equally elegant. You recommend orchids or gerberas. They last longer than roses, but they convey the same message. When he’s gone, you buy a small vase of irises for your apartment; your living room needs a bit of colour.
Weeks later, you find a small package in the mail: a parting gift, you realize when you tear open the padded envelope. It’s nothing too special, nothing fancy or expensive—just a piece of blue glass wrapped in silver accents, attached to a delicate chain that you loop around your neck. When you hold the pendant up to the sun, its blue tint shatters into infinite colours, tossing specks of luminous yellow and orange all over your bedroom. More than just a singular colour, it reflects the other hues around you. And for just a brief moment, you think you see your own reflection.
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You watched Jaemin move on just as you’d watched Mark and Donghyuck: from afar, with reserve but at the same time, excitement. Close enough for him to know that you were still there for him, but allowing some sort of distance that grew as the days melded into weeks and then months.
For the most part, he seemed to be alright. His texts were always cheerful, covered in happy emoticons—he used them when he was too giddy with excitement to type actual words. “We figured things out,” was all he said one night, and it was all you needed to hear to know that they’d be okay.
You started to notice the fondness he’d developed for her; it was subtle at first, just a hint of affection in his voice when he told you about her over the phone. Though slowly, it developed into something more. It was just as Donghyuck said: time had forged a relationship out of nothing, out of empty words and empty emotions, growing a garden from a barren piece of wasteland.
The first time you spoke to Kim Jieun, it was over the phone during one of your calls with Jaemin. She’d chimed in on your conversation at some point to say hi, and the way she spoke almost reminded you of Donghyuck: bright, cheery, a little sarcastic in a playful manner. You quickly learned that she was easy-going though brutally honest at times, well-mannered yet well-humoured. Most importantly, she wasn’t judgemental, and she didn’t treat you any differently from Jaemin’s other friends just because you’d been with him previously.
Of course, there was still a sense of yearning, a bittersweetness whenever you saw the two of them together. Your fingers always danced fleetingly along the screen of your phone before pressing like on the photos he posted to his social media. You saw him less and less, only occasionally running into him at the bakery you used to frequent together or at a friend gathering. For the most part, you let the past stay in the past. He seemed happy. And honestly, you were happy for him.
“I told you he’d be fine,” Donghyuck murmured to you at one of Jeno’s rampant parties, once most of the guests had trickled out for the night. The two of you sat on the balcony, watching everyone stumble around in their drunken stupor: Jeno was passed out on the couch with two cats sitting perched on his chest. Renjun was trying to braid flowers into Jaemin’s hair, which he’d recently bleached yet another shade lighter to match Jieun’s platinum locks. Out of the corner of your eye, you watched Chenle and Jisung exchange a few bills and bicker over a bet—Chenle was still in denial that Jisung had won, apparently.
“I didn’t doubt you for a second, Hyuck.”
“But you were worried,” he grinned smugly.
“Why wouldn’t I be worried?” You sighed and knocked back the rest of your wine before motioning for him to pass you the bottle. You swiftly poured yourself another glass. “If I couldn’t have my happy ending, at least I wanted him to have his. As… cliche as that sounds.”
Donghyuck raised a brow at you. “What’s to say that you won’t get yours too? They can’t keep you waiting forever. The longest it ever took for someone to find their soulmate was 241 years.”
“Goddamn, are you trying to make me feel better or worse?”
“Better, of course! Okay, what I’m trying to say is that it’s rare for anyone to wait longer than two centuries. If everyone lived for up to three hundred years, we’d have a lot of dictators and other crazies running the world. The universe would spontaneously combust.”
“I know I’m barely even halfway there, but come back to me when I set a new world record,” you rolled your eyes, to which he responded with a small chuckle.
“So what now?” He glanced at Jaemin, who sat across the room with his eyes half-closed, an empty red solo cup in his hands. Jieun had her head on his shoulder, rambling drunkenly about something to Renjun. If you hadn’t known any better, you would have thought she’d been a part of the group all along; she fit in so seamlessly, and it warmed your heart to see her getting along with everyone.
“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “Nothing for now, I guess. Just waiting.”
“Whoever it is, I’m sure they’ll be worth it,” he hummed in reply.
“You think so?”
“People say that the longer you wait, the better. It’s all in your head, of course, but they have a point.”
You sighed, lifting your head to gaze at the stars hanging overhead. “I suppose they do. Maybe someday I get to find out.”
He patted you on the shoulder reassuringly. “You’ll figure it out. You always have.”
Donghyuck left a little later to get a drunk Jeno to bed, and then you had only the quietness of night to keep you company. Your mind drifted and you contemplated his words, repeating them silently to the wind. The night sky replied with nothing but a gentle breeze against your skin.
You could be patient, you thought as you watched the others inside. You fished the pendant out from beneath your shirt and stared at the reflection in the glass. It was as if you were grasping a piece of the night sky between your fingers: the stars and a crescent moon captured in a single, translucent oval. In the dark, the pendant appeared deep indigo, not too different in hue from the four coloured markings you’d acquired over the years.
But the sun would rise in due time, you thought to yourself mirthfully. Beneath the brightness of morning, you’d hold a different colour in your hands. You tucked the necklace back into the fabric of your shirt. You could wait.
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read the epilogue, yellow
360 notes · View notes
scriptaed · 3 years
Text
bygones of the sun. 08 (m)
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genre: angst/fluff/(future)smut || dance captain!hoseok, bad boy!au, uni!au
pairing: reader x hoseok;
length: 4.6k;
synopsis: Jung Hoseok was once the sweetheart of the school, the dance captain whom every girl, including you, can’t help but fall head over heels for. But like the force of the ever-glowing sun, everything that rises must also set. A year of inactivity later and he’s now the school’s resident bad boy. You’re a firm believer of allowing the past be the past, and yet you can’t help but wonder where the risen sun has gone into hiding—because perhaps its shadows have out-shined its own radiance.
Regardless of the endless praying in the waking hours of midnight and desperate texts to Hani and Junghwa for help, the sun rises nevertheless; rather than replacing, the radiant glow of the sun blinds the darkness of the cold night into nearly nonexistence and the morning comes along with it in an inevitable solar system bound to revolve around its center.
After hours of rolling around in bed—too hot, kick one leg out over your blankets, too cold, bury yourself under the heat you had insulated from tossing and turning—you manage to barely get in a few hours of sleep before waking up only to look into the mirror in dismay over the dark circles drooping under your eyes.
Well, at least that might turn Hoseok off from doing whatever the needy, mischievous, and maybe even horny bad boy deprived of action side of him did to you last night.
A few splashes of fresh, cold water in the sink of your motel room and a messy albeit best bun you could every tie up are all that you figure you would need before marching off into the dining hall just three flights of stairs down; after all, who are you trying to impress? Certainly not Hoseok…
...or at least that’s what you tell yourself; because nevertheless, even after chanting to yourself under your breath that you would do everything and anything to avoid garnering his attention today, and perhaps the rest of eternity, you still take a quick glance in the mirror to assure yourself that your casual black tank top and gray sweatpants are of at least a presentable state. Maybe it’s the lack of sleeping getting to you or maybe it’s the adrenaline mixed with shock from last night’s incident with the boy you’ve been dreaming of since last year that endorses your self confidence that you smile at yourself after a quick scan in the floor length mirror and proceed to skip your way down into the first floor of the niche motel where Jimin had informed you last night that he and the rest of the boys would be getting breakfast.
As you jog down the stairs like a child on the eve of Christmas, you find yourself subconsciously humming to an oh-so-familiar tune; although you can’t quite put a finger on the exact title of the track, the image, the senses, the serenity that comes along with the nostalgic tune floods you into a timeless reverie. An earphone plugged in your right ear while the laughs of others and the tires rolling against the gravel rushes into your left, you can practically feel the cotton of a sweater wrapping you in warmth along with a crisp, spicy masculine scent as you lay your head against the comfortable crook of someone’s shoulder. The squeaking of broken in sneakers against the hardwood floor and the beats of the track echoing in a vast, empty room. You can imagine it all, evidently too real to be conjured up in your head.
“Y/N! Over here!” Taehyung’s voice snaps you out of your daze. Stepping a foot into the relatively small, cozy dining room, the enticing aroma of warm soup mixed with traditional spices and herbs fill your nose and state of mind as it pulls your growling stomach closer than ever. You find Taehyung, Jungkook, and Jimin already decked out in workout attire as they seated themselves with three other less familiar faces before you quickly skid your way to their table. Taehyung flashes you his signature warm, boxy smile, “morning!”
“Good morning,” you press a smile at the five other greetings which follow shortly after.
“Oh?” Jungkook quirks a brow and you reciprocate his gestures. “You’re pretty dressed up today, Y/N.”
“Dressed up?” you nearly choke, eyes popping at your supposedly exact opposite intentions. “Uh no, no, I just threw on whatever I found first in my luggage. Dressing up is the last thing I wanted.”
“Uhuh,” Taehyung drawls, winking at his partner in crime Jungkook. “So, who’s the lucky boy? Is it someone you met at camp yesterday?”
You sigh, “I don’t have my eye on anyone—”
“—oh my God,” both Taehyung and Jungkook gasps, gaping and turning their head in sync, “is it Hoseok?”
“What?” you nearly yell and it feels like your heart is about to fail you. “No!”
“I know we were the ones who asked you to talk to him and convince him to return to the club, but that’s only because we heard you two were a thing… or that you two went out on some dates. But you said you guys didn’t, so…” Jungkook’s voice trails off as he ponders over the rather imaginative albeit somewhat accurate thoughts of his, whereas Taehyung picks up where he left off, “did you catch feelings? Or did you already have feelings for him? You know, how did you convince him to attend camp anyways?”
You gulp. There’s no way you’re telling them the absurd offer Hoseok had proposed, a kiss in exchange for his presence, not to mention the fact that you actually gave him what he wanted and more. The recalling of the tender scene in the kitchen flushes your cheeks to rosy hues as you mumble, “I just begged him until he was too annoyed to decline.”
The boys glance at each other in wariness before Jimin chuckles to break the silence, “where is Hoseok anyways? I told him to meet us here last night, but he left me on read. Do you know what happened to him, Y/N?”
“Huh? Me? Hoseok?” you say louder than intended.
The grim look on his face after he had unexpectedly pulled you in for a session you could only imagine in your dreams just a year ago, when he answered your last question, when you turned your back and left him in the jacuzzi out of shock flashes before your eyes; regardless of having witnessed the sudden change in Hoseok’s demeanor, even you can’t quite explain the reasoning behind it. You thought you were done worrying for him throughout the entirety of last night, however, now that everything around you seems to always come back to Hoseok, you can’t help but wonder what you can do to help him… despite how much he has changed.
“Oh, there he is,” Jimin calls out and your entire body freezes in place, too scared to turn around and face him after last night. “Hoseok—”
“—Y/N,” you can hear the familiar voice of his as his low uttering resonates in your ear and rumbles throughout your chest.
You take a deep breath and gulp, pretending as if you had heard a apparition and turning to grab a plate and utensil to fetch some steamed vegetables in the hotpot placed in the middle of the wooden table.
“Y/N,” Hoseok mutters sternly. You can see his maroon tee and grey sweatpants in the corner of your eyes while Jimin glances between you and Hoseok as the latter takes a step closer to you. “Y/N, we need to talk. I’m sorry about last night. Please, at least listen to what I have to say—”
“—I see we have hot pot for breakfast today,” you interject, turning to Jimin and stuffing your mouth with boiled food which burns your mouth, but not before blurting, “kind of unusual, but I’m not complaining. Thanks for the meal.”
Hoseok sighs, looking the other way in lack of amusement for a split second before placing his hand on your shoulder, “Y/N—”
“—actually, Y/N, guys,” Jimin cuts in and gently extracts Hoseok’s hand from your shoulder. “Hoseok and I have to discuss our plans for today and the rest of the camp. You guys eat first and we’ll join you afterwards in the practice room.”
With that, Jimin ushers Hoseok out of the dining hall, dragging him forward as your eyes briefly lock with Hoseok’s as he reluctantly looks over his shoulder to glimpse at you for a few times. A part of you pangs with guilt for blatantly ignoring him like that, especially since you could sense the sincerity in his apology, but it was just too soon, too awkward for you; and while you know Hoseok as a person completely unaffected by the public’s eye, you’re less than willing to review last night’s moment of intimacy in front of the other boys.
One of the boys clears his throat to break the silence, and everyone turns to stare at him wide-eyed. Chestnut hair and tan skin, you manage to recall him as one of the main albeit in need of Hoseok’s guidance members, Namjoon. He reaches his hand out to firmly shake yours before gesturing for you to take a seat next to him on the wooden bench, “I don't think I've ever introduced myself yet. I'm Namjoon. I've heard a lot about you… Y/N?”
“Yeah, Y/N. That's the name,” you grin and seat yourself next to Namjoon. “It's nice I'm finally meeting the oh-so-popular dance group of our school.”
The boys chuckle at your remark when the rather fair skinned, blond and petite albeit carrying a mien years more mature than boys his age leans forward next to Namjoon to give you a pressed smile and a small wave, “the name's Yoongi.”
“And I'm Jin,” the boy across from you and next to Taehyung and Jungkook waves both jointy hands at you before digging his chopsticks into the shared pot and chiming, “now let's eat already. I'm starving here!”
-
The rest of breakfast passes by smoothly as you and the boys laugh over small talk and gather your things to head over to the first practice session of the day. While Taehyung and Jungkook went to find Jimin, you stayed behind with Namjoon, Jin, and Yoongi. Although they’re not as energetic and bubbly as the other three, you soon find your new friends to be just as dorky as they goof off and even tease Hoseok as he leads the practice through stretches and choreograph; but even through all the teasing and giggling, Hoseok never seems to lose his cool over something which happened all too much back in his days as the captain, for he simply rolls his eyes and directs his attention elsewhere.
Everything passes by smoothly, or at least you think, because shortly after laughing at Jin’s less than sufficient, duck-with-a-broken-leg looking spin, you become determined to show him how it’s properly done before placing one leg over the other and somehow managing to trip over your own feet in midspin. It all happens too fast for you to register, but what you do recall is your right foot twisting at the weirdest of angles, sending a crack echoing in your vicinity and a spike of pain traveling from your feet up as your body tumbles to the floor. You’re grasping at your ankle and hissing at the wincing pain still numbed by adrenalin when you look up from the ground to suddenly find Hoseok right next to you after having dropped all things and rushed to your side, scanning you up and down in worry while the rest of the boys peer over at you from behind Hoseok in sympathy.
And the next thing you know, you find yourself hoisted into the air as Hoseok carries you in his firm arms out of the dance room. The spur of the moment prohibits you from protesting, for all you can do is lie there and peer up at Hoseok in complete awe. You don’t know if it’s the return of the glimmer in his eyes when times of crisis lures out the former captain in him, but the stern, serious and worried expression of his furrowed brows and pressed lips enables you to put your full trust in him. The Hoseok you’re looking at now is more capable than you’ve ever seen him before; war scars, adversities, sympathy and empathy, he’s gone through it all.
The fact that he doesn’t even notice you ogling your eyes at him, or at least the fact that he chooses not to comment on it, only further supports your observation as he carefully lays you on the floor of the empty hall right outside the practice room where a vending machine remains buzzing throughout the silence.
“So,” Hoseok finally says, your eyes widening and darting up to stare at him as his own line of sight remains on the first aid kit and your swelling ankle. “Mind explaining to me how this happened?”
“I… um…” you mumble; something about his new mien akin to a stern captain tells you to be cautious of how you answer. “I accidentally tripped—”
“—tell me the truth,” Hoseok deadpans, glimpsing up from your injury to lock eyes with you and you swear your heart had never panicked more.
Clearing your throat, you bashfully look down at the ground in shame, “okay, fine. I was playing around with Jin and lost my focus, which caused me to trip midspin.”
A few seconds of silence pass, and it feels like an hour of intense pondering over endless penalties or scolding are running through his unamused eyes before he finally sighs and his body language along with his aura softens, “really? You tripped because of that? How clumsy can you be? I used to encourage everyone to dance if they wanted to, but maybe it’s safer if I don’t do the same with you. You really aren’t cut out to be a dancer.”
“...well, sorry I’m not as good as you,” you mumble and pout when you recall the contradiction between what he’s saying to you now and what he had to said to you a year ago.
Another moment of silence passes, and whether it’s from exhaustion having practiced for an hour and a half or from this entire stressful situation playing out right before you, you can feel beads of sweat trickling down your temple.
“No,” Hoseok finally utters as he wraps a roll of cloth tape bandage over your throbbing ankle. He follows his statement without looking up at you, “I should be the one apologizing. I’m sorry about last night. Whether you liked it or not, I shouldn’t have forced myself on you. I don’t really have the explanation you deserve, so an apology is all I can give right now.”
His words freeze you in place. You don’t think you’ve ever heard him as genuine and serious as he is now, at least not since the tense moment you two had shared in his car after your first date with him. You don’t what to say, because it’s not like you’re mad at him. You’re completely worried over his mental well-being, and the grim look on his face only worries you more.
“It’s okay. I understand and I forgive you,” you meekly say, and you can hear a soft sigh of relief escape his slightly curved lips.
He continues wrapping your leg until your ankle is fixed into the right position and the bandage prohibits you from moving it for as long as it’s on while you intently gaze at him out of your subconscious. Sweat thinning his bangs and dripping from its ends, his chest rises steadily with each intake of breath as his eyes and focus completely fixates on your injury. It takes you a while to notice and admit, but your foot isn’t the only thing swelling, for your heart swelters and grows tender at the sight of him.
Unlike the bad boy demeanor of Hoseok you had come to know, there’s something so attractive about a boy who’s ambitious enough to reach for the skies, tough on the outside but soft to the weak, and stubborn but willing to own up to his mistakes. This isn’t the dance captain you had fallen for in the dance studio last year. This is a mix of all the unknowns and wonders of the universe, the sun and the moon collided into one.
Why does he have such an effect on you?
Why are you so weak to someone as confusing as him?
Why can’t you convince yourself that the only persona of his you’ll ever like is the one you had fallen for back then? 
It’s as if the mystical moment when the sun reached its zenith high in the sky and its rays showered upon you and him in the midst of the night fallen dance room refuses to leave the back of your mind?
“You know,” Hoseok lowly states, finally trailing his eyes up to find your own wide ones before cracking a smug grin, “I can take you out to dinner as an apology, if you’d like.”
You scoff, jaw slacking wide open, “uh, no thanks. I wouldn’t have been so careless and gotten myself injured if I knew this was the comforting I was going to receive.”
“The ‘if you’d like’ part isn’t a question. It’s mandatory,” Hoseok chuckles before the stern look on his face returns along with the lopsided, pressed smile. “But as much as it pains me to hear that, I’m glad to hear you won’t be so reckless anymore.”
The deafening silence filled with the buzz of the vending machine behind him pushes you to finally address the thought that had kept you up late into the night. “Hoseok,” you utter, and maybe it’s the tone of pity or concern he spots in your voice, but his head and his eyes remain lowered to the ground. “Is something bothering you? Are you okay? Yesterday… you didn’t seem… right.”
Hoseok then settles into stillness, even his fingers stop in the midst of tying a knot in the bandages; but after a couple of more dreadful seconds, he resumes the work at hand without looking up at you. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he mutters before tying the knot and lightly patting your foot to signal the completion of your treatment. He glances up at you and gives you a small smile, “Be more careful next time, okay? For the sake of my poor heart, please stop being so clumsy.”
You snort and lean back with hands planted flat on the ground behind you, “I only sprained my ankle. You’re acting like I broke my leg or something.”
“You might’ve just sprained your ankle this time, but that’s because you lucked out,” he shakes his head. Then, his eyes flicker to gaze straight into yours, as if speaking from the heart, “injuries can be detrimental to dancers, and I know I said you’re not cut out to be a dancer, but if you really want to dance or even remain in this world with me, then please be more careful. Alright?”
“...okay, but be in the same ‘world with you?’ Please, don’t flatter yourself,” you refute, and he chuckles. “Plus, I’m not a dancer.”
Hoseko sits back with his hands spread out on either side of him, planted on the hardwood floor. He cocks his head to the side along with a brow, “who says?”
“You.”
“I was just messing around with you as always. You know that I don’t mean it.”
“But I bet you really meant it. Most of the newcomers aren’t even half as good as you,” you remark. Seeing how swell the mood had become, you decide to test the waters. “In fact, you’re probably thinking I’m just another one of those silly girls who always watched you in dance practice and is hoping for you to make a return.”
Hoseok raises a brow and chuckles with minimum effort, “I never said that.”
“But dancers are…” you struggle to find the right phrase, “dancers are like… you.”
Silence ensues as he watches you with a void hole in his eyes and an amused smile dancing in the corner of his lips.
“Hm…” he hums and lolls his head back and around the other side of his neck. “How so?”
His question catches you off guard, because while the Hoseok you had gotten to know would have gotten irritated and brushed off your question, this Hoseok seems intrigued by your constant pestering.
What should you do? Should you really tell him how you felt? About how you were one of those silly girls who watched him during dance practice? About how you had fallen head over heels in love with the old him?
This is all or nothing; and while something in your gut tells you not to, the irrational part of you follows the spur of the moment and decides to embark on a final mission to retrieve the sun that had long fallen and given rise to the dark night.
“I don’t know… I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s… it’s something about the way you dance. When you dance,” your brows knit as you struggle with your words, but Hoseok remains still as he patiently waits for you to finish your thought, “it’s like the entire room lights up in your presence. Even at night with the shades closed, you manage to somehow brighten the room, as if… as if you’re the embodiment of the sun itself.”
Hoseok maintains his silence, so you continue to fill up the awkward aftermath of your confession.
“You probably don’t get what I’m saying, but it just amazes me what you can do with your dance,” the more you speak, the more you can envision the enlightening moment you had first taken a peek through the cracks of the dance room’s door, “when people watch you dance it’s like the sun revolves around you and time slows, manipulated even, because you’ve suddenly become the center of the universe.”
Getting ahead of yourself, you decide to shut your mouth where you had stopped and fold your hands uncomfortably in your lap as you sheepishly stare the ground; you can feel the piercing gaze of his boring a hole into the top of your head.
“You’re right, you’re not a dancer; you’re a God damn poet,” Hoseok snorts, averting his eyes as he chortles at your splurge of awe-inspiring words before returning to lock his eyes with yours, a mix of amusement and lack of amusement, maybe even irritation, filling the dark orbs of his irises. “You know, you sound awfully like one of those girls who’d always watch me at practice back in the days… sometimes makes me wonder who you really are what your purpose is. Tell me, why are you trying to get me to dance again?”
With the tick of the clock’s hand, the entire world turns upside down. The soft, empathetic Hoseok had dissipated and the curious yet mysterious bad boy had returned. Even with warm, yellow lights illuminating the hallways, all you can see is pitch black and all you can feel is the wrath of the cold at being caught red handed.
Does he know? Or is he merely speculating? You had completely forgotten his previous more than suspicious speculations regarding your identity, but now all of it has resurfaced once again.
“...what?” you barely manage to utter.
And out of the blue, your world reverts to its normal state like the flick of a lightbulb. The warmth of his pressed smile and the shake of his head brings you back into relief, but your panicking heart never fails to initiate the flight-or-fight response in your veins.
“Nothing,” Hoseok laughs and pats your ankle once again before standing up. “There, all wrapped up and good to go. I’ve got errands to run. I’ll see you later, then.”
The extended conversation proves to be rather taxing when you stumble over your own foot the second you get up. Figuring your wrapped ankle and lightheaded state would only hinder you further, you decide to skip the rest of practice and retreat back to your room.
-
Complete darkness envelops you into a dazed state of mind as you awaken from what you discover to be a lengthy nap. Your entire room is pitch black, your head throbs along with your ankle, and you can barely weave your way through your room without stubbing a toe on a furniture hidden in the dark. Your eyes peep open, dry and heavy as if weights were suspended on the edges of your lids, and you clear your throat in a futile attempt to rid the sore scratches of its walls. Unfortunately for you, water isn’t one of the many things you had packed on this trip, so you grab your wallet and keys and stumble your way down to the vending machine.
With each step deeper into the dark halls illuminated by the moonlight pouring into the windows which lines the wooden walls, your consciousness becomes clearer and clearer and your senses begin to pick up things that had only been registered as blurs; the patters of your footsteps, the chirps of the crickets high in the mountains, the buzz of the vending machine, and the distant groans echoing from down the hall…
...the groans and hisses of pain which shouldn’t have even resonated in the halls hours past midnight.
Whether it be a member of the club breaking the rules, an employee of the motel, or maybe even an outsider intruding upon private property, your pulse races at the thought of someone within the vicinity of you. Crouching low, you cautiously and ever-so-slowly tiptoe as much as your injured foot could muster towards the dance room where the noises are coming from.
A few squeaks of sneakers inciting friction between itself and the polished, wooden floor are followed by ample panting and heaving before one last loud squeak and a pitiful yelp which tugs at your heartstrings—collapse.
The sympathetic side of you kicks you into action, and just as you’re about to go running into the room at full speed to aid the person in need, the sight which lies ahead keeps you locked behind the doorway—eerily similar to the past you, peering into the dance room and fearing confrontation…
...except this time, there’s nothing so enchanting about what lies before you.
Something in your stomach falls, pain gnawing away at your gut as if to tell you you should have known. Fallen, head low, chest heaving and lips grunting. Pitiful, vulnerable, helpless, turned against the wrath of the entire world. No one can understand him. No one can feel the mental and physical pain he’s experiencing right now.
The moonlight floods through the windows and showers the sun rays which contaminate him of the looming past until all that remains are the shadows of the facade of the old him he had tried to put up for the sake of you throughout camp. Alas, the full moon reaches its zenith tonight and there’s something about its blinding presence which tells you it’ll be a while before you see the sun.
Teeth gritted and jaws clenched, he crawls his body back against the mirror walls and curls into a state of vulnerability you had never seen before in the tough Hoseok you knew and had reluctantly fallen for; but the thing is, this isn’t that Hoseok. The boy brings one of his legs into his chest and his hands grab helplessly at his lower swelling leg, groaning in pain.
The only reason he isn’t dancing anymore is simpler than you would’ve ever thought. It can’t be the complete story, for the only thing you could see outside of his flooded, frantic mind is the sudden revelation that the only reason he isn’t dancing anymore is because he can’t; however, what lies underneath is of utmost complexity akin to the origin of the sun, the moon, and the universe itself.
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The Aftermath - Ch. 11
Informative Phone Calls
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SUMMARY: Olivia and Hana return to Lythikos, and Liam has a discussion with Riley’s mother.
Word Count: ~3.2k
Warning: Mention of character death
*All characters belong to Pixelberry, except those that are unique to my story (I’ve also used some characters and fictional instances from Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”)*
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✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧
- Olivia - 
The rolling landscape of frozen mountains sent a welcoming sense of familiarity through Olivia’s skin, which cooled her down from the fiery anger she had unleashed yesterday.
During the Tea Ceremony, the entire court was in attendance for no other reason than to gain the king’s favor via their wives and daughters, all of whom dressed in elaborate embroidery that depicted some sort of Cordonian symbolism. But once they realized that King Liam would not be making an appearance — and that the rumors of him being in New York were proved true through photographs that had surfaced the day before — instead of focusing their attention towards the tea or each other, they began to badmouth their monarch.
Throughout the past decade, many of the Great Houses’ loyalty had been tested after attempted assassinations and coups: House Nevrakis, due to Olivia’s aunt’s assisting the Sons of Earth, and House Beaumont and House Amaranth’s loyalties were both analyzed due to the treasonous actions of Barthelemy and Godfrey. The remaining members of those houses were put under severe scrutiny, but their undying fidelity to King Liam was unmatched by any of the other Houses.
Later on, as Cordonian citizens began to criticize Liam’s actions and decisions as king, Olivia took it upon herself to show her faith in Liam by condemning any person who dared speak ill of him.
During the Tea Ceremony, that job occupied her actively. She had simply carried around her cup while she spoke, and didn’t even get to take a sip of tea.
Such disgusting things were said about Liam and his behavior that Olivia wanted to throw her full cup of boiling tea at anybody who spoke his name. She decided not to though, because she knew that if she did, she would look like his hound, and that would be enough for them to create even more rumors about Liam’s relationship with her.
The Beaumonts being gone did not make it easier, and in fact increased the amount of rumors about how Liam was favoring childhood friends instead of those who could help better the country. The court believed that they had taken their leave of Cordonia to discuss some ducal advancement for Ramsford on an international level. Even though Olivia and Hana knew that wasn’t true, they said nothing. The Beaumonts and King Liam’s absence threw a wrench into Olivia and Hana’s plans, which was to join them all in New York today. Olivia had not yet told Hana that she had canceled the flight this morning.
Hana sat opposite Olivia in the limo, staring out the window. Olivia regarded her, and noticed a certain numbness in her features: her face seemed empty as she stared out into the beautiful terrain. She sat as straight and proper as ever, though. Olivia expected Hana to pull her into unnecessary friendly banter that she used to share with Maxwell and Riley, but she had been completely silent since the beginning of their trip.
Olivia looks out the window, and once they come across a familiar expanse of talon trees, she turns to Hana.
“I canceled our flight,” she tells her, trying to sound dismissive, as if it didn’t break her heart that she couldn’t be with Liam during his time of need. “I decided that it would be better for us not to go.”
Hana gives a small nod, her expression still emotionless. “Based off everyone’s reactions yesterday, I think that would be best. We should focus our attention on convincing His Majesty to return, and not give him any reason to prolong his visit.”
Olivia sighs and stares out the window. “I believed that we could help retrieve parts of Riley’s memory if we were there, seeing that we both played somewhat large roles during her time in Cordonia.”
“It would have helped Liam,” Hana states. “But we don’t know how long it will take for her to recall everything.”
Olivia sighs. “We need to find a way to speed up the process. But right now, Liam needs to come back to Cordonia. He can’t risk staying away for so long. People are unsettled by it. They’re losing trust in him.”
“But what about Riley?” Hana shakes her head. “If she gets her memory back…say a month after he returns… will she still want to stay in New York, even if she knows he came to bring her home?”
“We can get them to bring her here. And if they can’t, perhaps Maxwell can stay with her. Or Drake.” Olivia reaches into her purse for her phone, but once she takes it out, finds it dead. “We can call them after we get in,” she decides.
Hana turns to regard Olivia for a moment. When they make eye contact, Hana gives a tight smile, and by the twitching of her lips, Olivia can tell that it took Hana an unusual amount of effort.
“I don’t know if I got the chance to tell you,” Olivia starts again, “but Drake told me that Riley has two children.”
“Yes, I know. Maxwell told me,” Hana tells her. “I called him after our lunch with the Queen Mother and told them most of what she said.”  
Olivia raises an eyebrow. “Did you know that the older one is Liam’s son?”
Hana’s eyes bulge. “No… Maxwell left that part out.”
Olivia scoffs. “Leave it to Maxwell to keep you well informed.”
“I heard Bertrand say something about Cordonia’s heir? He was yelling at someone.”
“I wonder who….”
“But if what Bertrand said was true, that Riley’s child is Cordonia’s heir… the only reasonable choice is to bring them both back.”
“That is what I hope to convince Liam to do.” Olivia takes her phone back out. “Hana, do you happen to have a phone charger?”
Hana pulls a wire out of her bag. Olivia reaches for it, and plugs it into the car outlet.
“But…,” Hana continues. “Maxwell said that she has two children… so what about the second one?”
“The second one’s name is Eleanor. Her father passed away in the accident.”
“What I meant was that the Queen Mother said she deterred Riley eight years ago, yes? Riley disappeared ten years ago. Almost eleven.”
Olivia’s eyebrows furrow, a dull sense of understanding falling over her. “Yes, so… she was pregnant with Liam’s son when she left court.”
Hana leans forward in her seat, worry shaded over her features. “And that the child was already born when Riley tried to come to Bertrand’s wedding.”
“She was married when she arrived for the Beaumont wedding….”
“Do you know how old her daughter is?”
“No…,” Olivia tries to recall her conversation with Drake. “But I don’t suppose the two are very far in age.”
“So it’s possible that Riley was pregnant with Eleanor when she tried to reach out to Liam?”
Olivia leans back, slightly confused. “What makes you think that?”
Hana shrugs. “I mean… whoever Riley’s husband was… he can’t have married her for nothing, especially if he had to raise a child that was not his own.”
“Are you suggesting that man wanted something in return for agreeing to marry Riley? That he wanted her to give him a child?”
Hana’s eyes give a grievous flash, as if Olivia’s words were too familiar to her. “I don’t know what to think anymore…. I wonder what type of man Riley’s husband was.”
Olivia’s phone turns back on and dings. She goes to dial Liam’s number.
- Bertrand -
The day of the Cordonian Tea Ceremony, Bertrand was in a nervous fit. Every chance he got, he told his king that they should return for the ceremony, and that even if he made a late appearance, at least people would not be upset. But King Liam told Duke Bertrand not to speak of it around Riley or her children, and that he would not consider returning to Cordonia until her health improved.
And so they spend the day with Riley. King Liam and Drake helped her use her crutches, and even though she was incredibly lightheaded, she still managed to walk around the house with them. Charlotte Brooks mostly avoided the group, and always gave them a displeased look every time they would speak to her.
Bertrand wanted to tell King Liam to plead his case again, but was afraid that Liam would reprimand him. Before they had all arrived at Riley’s home, he had told the group not to do or say anything that may stress out her or her children.
And so yesterday and the day before, they had to leave Riley’s home a little past midnight in disguises so that they would not be spotted. King Liam was visibly bothered at having been spotted, and Bertrand heard him tell Drake that because people knew that he was in New York and were trying to find him, he could no longer take Riley’s children out to spend time with them.
Today, Liam ordered a large pile of pancakes, fruits, juices, bread, eggs, and oatmeal to be brought to Riley’s home. While they all were enjoying breakfast together, King Liam’s phone rings.
“Who is it?” Drake asks.
“Olivia,” Liam says. He puts the phone on the table, answers the call, and puts it on speaker for everyone to hear. “Duchess Olivia? Is everything alright?”
“Hello, Liam.” Olivia’s voice sounds tired to Bertrand. “I wanted to call and talk about the Tea Ceremony yesterday.”
Liam resumes his meal. “Ah, yes. How was it?”
“Oh, the ceremony went by without incident or delay, but there were many people… concerned about your whereabouts.”
He stops chewing. “How so?”
“Quite unsavory things were said…,” she continues, and there’s a sense of irritation in her voice. “And after hearing many people’s opinions, I believe it would be best if you returned to Cordonia immediately.”
Liam raises his eyes to look at Charlotte Brooks, then looks back down at his phone. Riley’s children and Bartie continue eating, but everyone else stares at Liam.
“Olivia,” he says. “Considering the current situation, I do not think it best for me to return before she gets better. There are a lot of things that need to be settled and planned out.”
“With the children?” Olivia asks, but she doesn’t give Liam a chance to answer before she continues, “You can just bring them and Riley with you. Ask her doctor when it will be safe enough for her to travel.”
Liam glances at Charlotte Brooks, then at Riley’s children. Riley herself continues speaking to Rowan. “I will look into it Olivia. In the meantime… I want you to figure out how and when Regina forced Riley away.”
“Of course,” she promises. “Hana and I are on our way to Lythikos. I’ll call you once—”
The phone starts to vibrate, and Olivia’s voice cuts out.
“What happened?” Maxwell leans over the table to look at Liam’s phone.
“Leo is calling me…,” Liam announces. Bertrand expects him to excuse himself and answer the phone elsewhere, but Liam answers the call and says, “Leo?”
“Liam! Good to hear from you! I, uh… I didn’t see you at the tea ceremony yesterday. Wanted to check in and see how you’re holding up.”
“You were at the ceremony yesterday?” Maxwell speaks up. “By the way, hey, Leo! But seriously… you went to a royal event voluntarily?”
“Yeah, I… I wanted to check in on Liam.”
“Well,” Liam says. “Thank you for your concern. We’re all in New York at the moment, which is why I was unable to attend. How are Katie and the children?”
“Uh… yeah, they’re fine. Look, Liam… I heard that there are rumors being spread on an international level about… y’know…. And… Regina wanted me to see if you were doing good. She thought that you would open up to me rather than to her.”
Liam scoffs.
“Listen, brother, whatever’s going on in New York… you’ve got to go home to Cordonia. Do you know how that looks, when a leader leaves his country for weeks at a time without explanation? Not only does it look like you’re doing something suspicious, but you just left your country vulnerable. You think Auvernal’s gonna pass by the chance to take up another military occupation in Cordonia?”
“Your Majesty…,” Bertrand speaks up. “You have to admit, there is truth behind his words.”
Liam balls his fist, but says nothing.
“Listen, Liam,” Leo speaks. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll call you again later. I know you, little brother. I know you’ll do the right thing for Cordonia. And I get that you’ve been having a hard time lately, but don’t abandon your people now.” Leo ends the call.
The group continues eating in silence, though Bertrand is itching to discuss the situation with Liam. The children mention that they will be going back to school next week. Bartie asks them what their school is like, and they start answering his questions excitedly.
Once the meal is over and everyone returns to the living room, Liam turns to Mrs. Brooks.
“Is it possible that I may speak to you a moment?” he requests.
She crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Go ahead.”
Liam glances over at the group. Riley is in the process of walking around the living room on her crutches after Drake had told her to practice. Liam motions Mrs. Brooks back into the dining room, and Bertrand follows.
Liam begins: “I believe it’s time we had a conversation about… well, everything.”
She nods.
He straightens up. His posture is commanding, but not regal. He tilts his head down slightly and continues, “I came to New York to bring Riley back to Cordonia, but not to take her away from you or the rest of her family. And now, as you heard from my brother and the Duchess’ conversations, I need to return as soon as possible.”
“Because that’s all you ever cared about, isn’t it?” she questions. “Your country was always your top priority. Riley never was, was she?”
Liam seems surprised. “Of… of course she was. Is. Riley… finding her this past decade has was the only thing I thought about. During the social season and Engagement Tour, her safety was always on my mind. Please understand that what happened during my coronation was something that I regret to this day. I could not do what I wanted because of—”
“Because of what your country expected of you, I know. Riley has tried to make excuses in your favor.”
He pauses for a moment, taking in her words. “Ma’am, I know that you hold a grudge against me, but know that I hold one against myself, as well. I have never stopped blaming myself for the actions that caused Lady Riley to want to leave. I…,” his voice cracks a little, and he clears his throat. “I have regretted ever making her think that she anything less than my top priority. I’ve wanted to make it up to her for the past decade. And… I cannot imagine the pain I put her through, having to raise Gabriel….”
Bertrand’s heart squeezes. He knows exactly what that felt like, and he pitied his king who was suffering a greater deal of such pain.
“I came here to make it up to her,” Liam says. “I wanted, more than anything, to make her my queen. I understand your hesitation… but I need to bring Gabriel back with me. And as his mother, Riley will have to return as well.”
“Mrs. Brooks,” Bertrand butts in. “If you will not understand his feelings towards Lady Riley, consider his position as a king. He has a child, whose mother is still alive. They both must be presented to Cordonia. As heir, Gabriel will be safe in the sense that—”
“Why do they have to be presented?” she asks. “To give your people another opportunity to shame her? Don’t you think that having a child out of wedlock will send a negative image on her?”
“I know that western culture regards these things differently,” Liam states, “But the rules for monarchs and for people in Europe overall is different.”
She stares at him, saying nothing.
“I am a man of my word, Mrs. Brooks,” Liam goes on. “I will not allow anything like that to happen to Riley or Gabriel or Eleanor. I’ve only known the children these past few days, but I’ve begun to regard them as my children. I care for them as I care for Riley, and I will do so until my dying breath.”
She takes another moment to regard him. Bertrand notices anger in her eyes, but her tense face begins to loosen up. She looks… tired. There’s a glimmer of hope in his heart, but when he turns to look at Liam, his expression remains stoic.
“…Fine,” she says. Bertrand lets out a sigh of relief. “I’ll talk to her doctor when I go to work today and ask if it’s safe for her to travel. But you have to convince Riley. Without stressing her.”
Liam smiles warmly, “Thank you for your understanding. Do you plan on… returning with us?”
Charlotte and Bertrand both make a face at Liam. Bertrand is shocked that Liam would allow the woman who wanted him to stay away from Riley to come with them.
Thankfully, Charlotte says, “No, I’ll be staying here. Theodore’s company is having a little trouble, so I have to help fix that. I also have a job, in case you forgot. But I will visit often.” She steps closer to Liam. “And if there is even the slightest whisper that you hurt my daughter or my grandchildren, your citizens’ disapproval will be the last thing you’ll have to worry about.”
Liam bows his head. “Understood, ma’am.”
She squints at him, and hesitates to continue. “You can all bring your things over, too. That should prevent people speculating. And it’ll save you some of your citizen’s tax dollars.”
Liam opens his mouth to say something, but she walks away. Liam turns to look at Riley, still walking around the living room with Rowan and Drake by her side.
“Well,” Bertrand comments. “That was quite a hassle.”
Liam chuckles a little. “I never expected her to agree.”
“For a moment I believed she was going to have you kicked out!”
“Yes. I heard Rowan speaking to her the other day. I hope their conversation made her understand that this is more about my relationship with Riley.”
“Sire?”
Liam turns to look at him. “It’s about Gabriel, and what the boy deserves. Though his life in New York is pleasant, there are many things he must be given by birthright that he has not received.”
“Understood, Your Majesty.” They both turn to look at everyone in the living room. “Though it still seems as though you’re on thin ice with Mrs. Brooks. I hope she will not change her mind.”
After a few moments, Eleanor walks up to Liam with a small booklet in her hands. When she reaches him, she holds out her finger.
“What is this?” he asks.
“A sticker!” she tells him. “For you!”
“Ah, thank you! What for?” He puts the sticker on his chest. It’s a smiley face.
“It’s the first time Grandma didn’t yell at you. Good job!” She gives him a thumbs up, and goes to follow her mother.
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phandom-phriend · 4 years
Text
Phic Phight 2020 - Unrequited Love
“Reveal fic--Danny, Valerie, Vlad, or Dani gets outed in the most inconvenient way.” | Prompt by @pesky-poltergeist
Word count: 2,181
A lot has happened since Fenton became Phantom.
It’s only been a year and so far the teen has fought countless ghosts, was cloned, has constant targets on his back from both ghosts and humans, lost his sleep schedule entirely, saved the world (a few times), found out that the only other half ghost that could possible help him adjust is kind of crazy and infatuated with his mom, became a town icon, ect..
Oh! And he died. So there’s that.
But recently, maybe the most horrific event to date had occurred. After a long battle with a ghost who-shall-not-be-named, he came home tired. Clumsy. A little out of his element. And may have...sort of...transformed back in front of his parents whom he didn’t even notice were in the kitchen with him.
Typical Danny luck if you ask him.
And since then things have been weird between them. Weirder than normal, at least. Neither one of them brought up the incident. Danny chalked it up to them not believing what they saw, or maybe thinking the illusion was a byproduct of handling so many chemicals in the lab for long periods of time. But they were quieter now. As if listening for his footsteps and breathing. And watching him more closely, closer than they ever paid attention to him before. They smiled, but their eyes. Their eyes held fear and apprehension. A dangerous combo for anyone with as great of an artillery as they had.
So Danny wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of bringing up the topic himself.
But when Jaz left for a study date with her friends on some random Friday evening, Danny had the unfortunate luck to be caught by his parents in the kitchen. Not literally! But they were set up with serious faces at the table just… waiting for him. Like they used to do when he got in trouble at school but now the air felt darker. It wasn’t sufficateing, no. They were still his parents after all. Even with all their blasters and ghost-hating ideals Danny wasn’t scared of them. Something just felt off. A little uneasy.
He sat at the table across from them anyway.
“What’s up? You guys are usually in the lab around now. Got a new breakthrough?”
“Not quite, Danny.” Maddie began, voice even. “Your father and I have something to talk about with you.”
“Alright, shoot.” The teen noticed the way his mother's hand flinched from its spot on the table. He ignored it.
“In the kitchen, a few nights ago. Phantom came in.”
“Oh, uh, really? What did he say?”
Jack sighed. “Danny, he transformed. Into you.”
“Oh, well-”
“Are you an imposter? Answer honestly, and don’t think for a second I won’t know if you are lying.”
“Mom?!”
“She’s just a little spooked, son. We just want to know what’s going on.”
Danny froze. Did they know so little about him that they thought he was some...fake? Not knowing him apart from Phantom was one thing. But not telling him from himself…? He shook his head to clear those thoughts. He’s seen stranger things. And he has been impersonated before. There’s good reason to be wary, it’s fine. “No, mom. I’m not some fake. I’m Danny.” he spoke calmly.
She stood from the table, eyes blocked by the red of her goggles, expression flat. It’s always bothered Danny that no matter how she moves, her suit is always silent. How can such a material rubbing against each other as she walks, as she moves, stay so silent? Well, his parents were always on the odd side. Maybe it was nothing. It is probably nothing.
“How can we be so sure?” her voice is as flat as her lips. He can’t tell what she’s thinking. No, he doesn't want to know.
“Well, what are some questions only I would know the answers to?”
Jack took this opportunity to jump in. “What’s your least favorite holiday?”
“Christmas.”
“Who are your best friends?”
“Sam and Tucker.”
Maddie clicked her tongue. “These questions are too obvious Jack. What if the ghost was able to take his memories?”
“Then how am I supposed to prove anything to you?”
“What is something you know that we don’t?”
Well, that was a tough one. Danny knew a lot that they didn’t know. But most of it was centered around his ghost half or the ghost zone, and that felt like dangerous territory to tred in without his parents leading the conversation there. That leaves his school life, which is a mess. And his time that he spends with his friends. But that, unfortunately, is typically one of three things recently. Ghost fighting, the Nasty Burger, and other illegal activities as a result of ghost fighting. Not exactly the best idea, but he’s certainly had worse.
“Uh, well. I snuck into the lab yesterday and took one of your in-progress projectors and may have sort of broken it. But it’s okay! Tucker is helping me fix it!”
“What?! How didn’t I notice!” Jack yelled from where he still sat, shock clear in both his face and tone. Danny didn’t bother to tell him that a lot of things happened without his notice, although his mom seemed to have the same thought with the side-eye she gave her husband.
“Mabe because he was a ghost when he snuck in.” she supplied with snide.
Well, she wasn’t wrong.
“Then how am I supposed to have you believe me? No matter what I say, you’ll just throw that “he’s been replaced” or “he’s being possessed” nonsense back in my face. I just want to go to my room and take a nap. What do I have to do to make that happen sooner?”
“We could take blood samples.” Maddie nodded to herself as if that had all the answers. 
For the first time that night, Danny felt his blood run cold. That was a bad, bad idea. Not only would it look more suspicious for how his DNA has so drastically changed and morphed, but being down in the lab… it does things to him. Makes him paranoid, mostly. But sometimes, when certain gadgets are left about on their work benches, it hurts. Leaves him dazed. Has the air left his lungs so forcefully it feels as if it were stolen.
Confession time, it is. A horrible, very bad time. But he’s so tired. He just wants this to be over, for things to be okay again. He was going to tell them eventually anyway, he just wishes he never had to. But he still can’t bring himself to just blurt it out, so he’ll have to twist his parents into that direction.
Danny can’t help but wish for Jazz to be here with him.
“Well, there could be other possibilities for what you saw.” Danny shrugs, hiding the panic he feels about the tests she wishes to conduct. Divert, divert, divert.
“Annd what would that be?”
“Wellllll…. Dad! You have a theory, right? The one you told me about last week?”
Almost as if there was a buffer symbol where his brain should be, Jack froze, leaving the room in a stiff, still silence as the older man tried to recall whatever it was from a week ago. Right before Maddie could break it herself, Jack shot up with a grin. “That’s right! Ghost molding!”
“Ghost...molding? Jack, honey, what are you talking about?”
“There are ghosts that look a lot like things, right? That one that looks like a tornado, or that other one that looks like some cartoon mad scientist.”
“Yes, dear. What are you getting at?”
“What if some ghosts mold how they look based on things they have a strong connection to. Like a family member, what killed them, or something like that. That’s why some ghosts look similar to one thing or another but have their own traits.”
Maddie seemed to think for a moment before turning back to her son with an eyebrow raised. “I suppose it would explain why Danny and Phantom look so similar. But what connection does our son have to a ghost?”
Man, where does he even start? What connections doesn't he have?
“He could be related to us?” Jack asked, thoughtful.
“No, no one who knew us has died that young. Even if they took their looks after our Danny, they would still have an age to them.”
“Well, there’s no way Danny killed them!” Jack said thoughtfully.
Well, that was only half true. They were getting closer.
“Do you think he was… there? When he died? Or when he came back?”
Danny snapped his fingers with a smirk. Both proud that they got as close to the truth as they did. “Bingo!”
Instead of a smile, Maddie just glared at him, causing him to shrink in his seat. “Explain.”
“I was there when he… died. And when he came back.”
“That’s not possible. Ghosts take time to manifest. Even then it’s in the ghost zone before they make their way back.”
“True, true. Unless…”
“I’m not playing these games with...you.”
“Alright! Unless… they died in the Ghost Zone, right? Or, more likely, at the portal.”
“How is that even possible. We would have discovered a body in our lab.” Maddie sneered with distrust at her son's words. Before he could say anything, his father jumped in.
“What if there was no body?!” Jack jumped up, hands accidentally hitting the table and making the whole thing shake. “Danny!” But then his tone changed. Quieter, reserved. A tone that didn’t belong on the vibrant man. “What… happened to you?”
“Don’t be crazy, Jack! What are you even thinking?! Nothing happened to our son. If this isn’t him, then he’s somewhere else.”
“He’s right.” Danny cut in shyly, hating the new dynamic. This had to change, and he had to change it. “Something did… happen.”
“No…”
“It was the day the portal turned on, two years ago.”
“Danny…” there was a warning edge in her voice, but he pressed on. He was too far now. They needed to know.
“I went inside to check it out. I tripped on some wire…”
“Danny, stop.”
“And pressed the ON switch by accident. A strange place to put it, really.” Danny chuckled awkwardly, trying to lift the mood. It didn’t work. “The portal turned on when I was inside.”
“Danny!”
“It hurt, a lot. But only for a moment. When I woke up again, I was Phantom. Well, a ghost at the time. I didn’t really choose a name until later.”
Maddie pulled out her blaster and pointed it at him, armed and ready. Thankfully, Jack leapt from his seat as Danny did the same, although Jack took a hold of his wife's wrist and forced her to aim upwards. She didn’t pull the trigger, but Jack didn’t let go.
“Mom!”
“Don’t call me that!” she spat out through clenched teeth as my heart seemed to fall through the floor. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
“I’m not a ghost!” he pleaded, although he began to back away from his parents in case things went more south. “I didn’t die, not fully!”
“Don’t lie! Don’t use my son's form to lie to me!”
“I have a pulse!” the teen cried out desperately, tears threatening to spill. “I need to eat, drink, sleep! I’m still human. I’m just different now, don’t you see that?”
“Maddie.” Jack sighed out.
“Don’t be fooled! Either our son is dead or this thing is an imposter, honey! You can’t seriously believe it!”
“I mean, -I” Danny felt his throat close up. Was being half-ghost so bad? Sure, he didn’t think this talk would go well. But a blaster?! Was it really so hard to believe he wasn’t the monster they were making him out to be?
Was she right?
Danny shook his head and stood straighter. “I’m only half dead if you want to get technical. Even then, I consider it more as having powers than being dead.” He could see she wanted to say something but cut her off anyway. “Is it so bad? I help people! I-I fought a king, saved the world! What will it take for me to please you?! For things to, to be okay again?”
To his surprise, she dropped the blaster from her grasp, Jack slowly letting her arm go and taking the blaster for himself. But he did not point it at Danny, instead he set it on a far counter. Now looking at him, Danny could see how… sad his usually vibrant eyes looked. What was he supposed to do now? What had he already done?
His mother slowly walked to him, lips pressed in a frown. Danny stood his ground even as she leaned over him and whispered, no amount of affection in her tone. Only a stone coldness he’s never had directed to him before. “You may not be fully dead, but you are not my son.”
Mind clouded and fuzzy, Danny ran from the mother he loved, but no longer loved him.
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fortheheavenssake · 5 years
Text
PG MM Anon Interpretation Collection- 9
59: Sept. 14
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON 🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜 sorry it’s so late l really am l just am struggling with a flu bug on top of everything else lots of 💜💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜t
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON 🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
MM Anon
MM ANON … From rush- her with love … five ways from SUNday… Britain will Trump Canada … Es-Pee-anarge … under-COVER… 2 many Players… that’s a very deep rabid hole…Em eye six…… “ follow the money “ …… The Queens signature was unconstitutional …… The PM is f#@%d. …… any of them…… ⚖️🇬🇧🇨🇦♟😱😱😱……… game ,set and hatch.
From rush- her with love
From Russia With Love, old Bond film, l prefer the old ones. Remember Kazan anyone?? The lookalike of mm has her photo taken by a chap just out taking photos? He remarked she looked exactly like mm with the exception of a mole being on the opposite side of her face. TP1 mentioned Kazan. Was that our girl in there with a billionaire oligarch yachting? I have seen the photo, she does resemble mm greatly. Or just exactly who is mm? Does Russia possess secret knowledge/videos of our girl that they have been holding over her? Have they been releasing information into the media? Sure fact none of this has anything to do with love.
five ways from SUNday
She is “screwed” in very which way possible, literally and metaphorically. The capitalization of SUN leads one to believe The Sun newspaper has a big story going to break. I think many others are in the same boat in our Ortis, the Intelligence Head who arrested.
Britain will Trump Canada
All the spies who loved me.“ Britain with Russian murdering people on their soil and attempting to, the who Trump issue that’s been going on for years, just who was spying on whom? Now Canada has this tremendous international five eyes security nightmare , where the Head of the Intelligence unit at the RCMP office in Ottawa charged by his own force with violating national security by allegedly leaking government secrets. What was a citizen, non-military of law enforcement doing in that position? What has he all stolen and given to heaven knows who. It was a tip from Trump’s government to Canada that led to this arrest. Thank you Mr. Trump!
So if l read this clue correctly, the word trump means to one up, so it is sounding like Britain is having its own internal governmental issues that will surpass what is happening in our country, Canada.🇨🇦
Es-Pee-anarge
Espionage, it’s suddenly here, there and everywhere. If you recall several years ago, there was a request made, of a former agent who now works privately, to do a dossier on Mr.Trump. This has since infamously been called the Steele Dossier, the gentleman’s name is Christopher Steele. Amongst a myriad of information in that file, you can read it online, l,believe it’s still publicly available, just google it. In part of that dossier it alleges that when Mr. Trump was in Moscow for the beauty contest he owned, Putin offered him the best prostitutes in the world, he, confirmed by his own prime security man whose name escapes me just now, both denied he used any such services. However in the dossier, there are references, especially seedy one to the U.S. public was the fact he enjoyed prostitutes, sorry for this, it them peeing on each other etc etc. So that is part of the clue, l felt the need to share that. I truly apologize if anyone was offended.
under-COVER
Undercover means subterfuge, pretending to be part of something to gather information or evidence. This is most used with police or investigation contexts although since we are talking spied, that as well
Here we have under -COVER. Cover all caps, what’s the meaning? Cover of the newspaper or magazine, a cover story? All are possibles.
2 many Players
2, does that mean only two players are most important? Or does this simply mean too many are involved . I highly doubt with MM ANON that the use of 2 doesn’t have a deeper meaning and that Players is capitalized. Players is a cigarette in Canada. This is definitely such a complex international web l cannot keep my head straight, kudos to those doing the leg work and the mental work to put this all together and bring those to justice who need being arrested.
… that’s a very deep rabid hole
This hole keeps getting mentioned, now it’s not rabbit but rabid, can be the obvious an animal or person for that matter, afflicted with hydrophobia in humans or rabies as it’s more commonly known in animals. It can also mean having or proceeding from an extreme or fanatical thoughts, supports, belief in something. Sugars anyone?? The level on international investigations seem to coincide with madam, but l have a strong hunch things were ongoing prior but she brought with her a lot of similar circles that she yachted in. The hole is indeed deep, one wonders how on earth this all will end.
Em eye six
MI6. Hello chums! The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, is the foreign intelligence service of the government of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence (HUMINT) in support of the UK’s national security. SIS is a member of the country’s intelligence community and its Chief is accountable to the country’s Foreign Secretary. The mere mention of this, is overtly telling us that MI6 is and has been involved and we should rest assured that they are doing the hard, dangerous work needing doing. Thank you for all the work that you do to keep the rest of us safe!
“ follow the money “
As l, and many many others have said, and indeed the mantra of law enforcement, money laundering etc etc follow the money trail. There is always a record kept and, in the U.S. for example if you withdraw or move around over a certain amount without proper explanation, the financial institution fills out a form, l just can’t recall the name, l am sorry, but it triggers a reaction in the system to check into it. In our case, follow the money, who are the backers, where did her money come from. I am quite certain they have that well in hand.
The Queens signature was unconstitutional
As a law-abiding citizen Boris Johnson must sign and send the letter requesting a further extension to the Brexit deadline. However, he is perfectly entitled to send a covering letter that makes it clear that it was written, not by him, but by a member or members of the opposition parties in the House of Commons; that he signed it under duress; that it represents neither his views nor those of the Cabinet; and that the next Conservative government would be committed to leaving the European Union.The Queen’s signature on the signing of the Royal assent on the Benn Act was about making ‘no deal’ not a possibility, pushed through in haste before Parliament was prorogued, later that very evening. When Article 50 was invoked, ‘no deal’ was part of that invocation and passed as law.
On 29 March 2017, the UK invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). On March 16,2017 HMTQ signed Article 50 into law which cleared the way that formally started talks to leave the EU.which began the withdrawal, commonly known as BREXIT, by the way see the film Brexit with Benedict Cumberbatch, it’s great, l believe l have recommended that before! In compliance with the TEU, the UK gave formal notice to the European Council of its intention to withdraw, from the EU to allow withdrawal negotiations to begin.
The PM is f#@%d.
Refer the above, by proroguing parliament, No deal was signed into law. UNCONSTITUTIONAL per the BREXIT REFERENDUM!
any of them
Any or all of them. Who are all suspect, who will be the next. Any of the ‘five eyes’ countries may have arrests to be made.
⚖️🇬🇧🇨🇦♟😱😱😱
The justice systems of the U.K. and Canada are each dealing with security/national/international issues. Why the chess piece? It’s a game of cat and mouse literally. And once the legal dust settle people will be both shock and horrified by what is made public. The information sealed would be too much for people to handle l believe. I would not want to be making those decisions. Security services of the U.K,, Canada, U.S., Australia and New Zealand are collectively known as ‘the five eyes’. They are all interactive, information sharing to keep us all safe as possible on an international level. You must read about these things and educate yourself.
game ,set and hatch.
Game, set, match is the usual phrase. The spy game, trap is set and 🐣 hatch, something is born of the trap. Now we’re not talking babies here, although there was a fascinating case in the U.S. back 20 years a pair of Russian agents lived covertly as a married couple in America. They even went so far as having two children. When they were finally arrested the children were traumatized they had no idea. They tried to seek refuge in Canada, the children, but if my memory serves, they were extradited to Russia. THATS how far these things go folks, please be aware of what’s happening in our world, l beg you.!
GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦
So sorry you are feeling poorly once again! We so appreciate you doing the riddle, as we know you struggle! Prayers for you dear PG! Wow! This is fascinating stuff….we are learning so much! Thank you🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜🙏🏻💜
Ask Skippy submission
53 notes
Sep 14th, 2019
———————
60: Sept. 16
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
I am sorry it’s sooooo late, l had checked earlier and there was no riddle. PLEASE this is far from my best work, l apologize in advance
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜 I had checked with Skippy late afternoon and there was no riddle, now, so late l came on and saw the riddle. Folks, l am tired and this will be far from my best work, l apologize.
MM Anon
MM ANON, ………”fi fi faux fum”…… happy birthday …… 🎼 “The baby ‘as gouuun daun the plugole ‘again “🎼 …… sticks and stones …… “ honestly Mater it had nothing to do with me”…… amazingly illiterate …… Ahhhh !!!!! , no longer hidden…… 🎼 the wonderful wizard of Oz 🎼…… leave this one to William …… “ that sir is your prerogative “
”fi fi faux fum”
Fe fi faux gum, l smell the blood of an Englishman. Might this be BOJO. Running from country to country seeking help to cover up his blunder at misleading HMTQ? Court rules Tuesday, but it may be a political decision not a legal one, what a quandary. His blood pressure must be sky high. HMTQ, this is the very last thing she needs now!!
happy birthday
HAPPY 35TH BIRTHDAY HARRY! I remember clearly waiting for your arrival. How beautiful your mum looked leaving the Linda Wing in red and white, precious memories. I hope you had a blessed wonderful day!
🎼 “The baby ‘as gouuun daun the plugole ‘again “🎼
The song is a traditional Mother’s Lament. Having too many children, they’re all skeletal thin. She was bathing one and turned round for the soap and the babe slipped away down the drain, gone forever but not lost. Who’s is the mother who has too many and loses one? I wonder if this is a lament for Prince Harry not having his mother here for his birthday. I wonder also if this is meaning something quite literal, l , no offence to anyone, wonder if this is referencing voluntary termination of a pregnancy by madam. Just pure speculation on my part.
Sticks and stones.
Sticks and stones, may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. So deflect away, all the negative press doesn’t matter.
Madam just carries on with everything, water off a ducks back$$$££££€€ keeps rolling in.
“ honestly Mater it had nothing to do with me”
Mater is old English for mother but l am positive l have seen or heard that term used elsewhere, l just am drawing a blank. Who is the Mater of England and the U.K., and Commonwealth? HMTQ. Who is telling her he didn’t do it? Is this referencing BOJO again L trying to earnestly say he didn’t intentionally mislead her??
amazingly illiterate
Word salad again by madam on the birthday Instagram for HRH Prince Harry. Nothing eve changes or improves. Read one of her twitter feeds, yikes , now those are a lesson in not how to use the English language!
Ahhhh !!!!! , no longer hidden
What’s no longer hidden?? Clear face of baby Archie in newly released photo today on the Sussex Instagram, with a collage of photos of Prince Harry. There do appear to be some ‘oddities’ in this yet again black and white photo.
🎼 the wonderful wizard of Oz 🎼
Prince Edward has completed his tour of Malaysia and is headed to Australia. The song is from the film with Judy Garland, one of my faves, about a young girl and friends she meets along the way to see the great and powerful wizard in the land of Oz.Oz is a nickname for Australia.
leave this one to William
William is sound, and l have a very strong hunch working very closely with LG. William is the one who will be King.
“ that sir is your prerogative “
Prerogative means a right or privilege exclusive to a particular individual or class, or in British Law, arising from the prerogative of the Crown (usually delegated to the government or the judiciary) and based in common law rather than statutory law. So if this referencing the prorogued parliament and the PM’s choices?
GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦
Thank you dear PG….it looks wonderful! Amazing once again. We so appreciate you doing this for us. Prayers and hugs to you!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Ask Skippy submission
31 notes
Sep 16th, 2019
———————
61: Sept. 16
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜
MM Anon
MM ANON …… “What!!! , cook him bloody breakfast “… Another Firm message …… the African question … … “ he’s hiding behind your skirts “ …… an oz apology … a noticeable habit …… “ They have all gone quiet”…… VB’” “piss off David, she’s the kiss of death” …… “Do it on the QT”. …… it’s a palace directive …… “ Have you read the comments on SM” …… he’s putting on a brave face.
“What!!! , cook him bloody breakfast “
This morning, on her twitter , one of a few, she posted the bespoke breakfast she cooked for her husband including blood sausage and she said she had a bowl of fruit😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. I won’t give the two accounts l know of , because l don’t want trouble.
Another Firm message
The palace is know as the Firm, those who run the show, poor choice of word l know, but it’s the truth. The disaster that is BOJO running now to various EU countries to get them to vote no, so he doesn’t have to make a request of them for a Brexit extension. The Queen is Firm, the will of the people should be heeded. The issue will be brought to court today, but in the end it may not be a legal issue that they can deal with, it may come down to a political one. Then, this constitutional crisis becomes a disaster. With all HMTQ is dealing, for him to put her in this position at this point in Her reign is unconscionable!!!
the African question
The trip to Africa will she go?? Thus far the itinerary l have read refers specifically to PH. The bigger and more important relationship building question is will Angola join the Commonwealth. They made verbal comments last year that they wanted to. Whilst there PH will have private meetings with various leaders and work towards that goal. It would be a great thing for him to achieve as diplomatic duty has not really been in his wheelhouse. He has been great at relating to people and developing charities such as the Invictus Games, and Sentebale in Botswana with Prince Seeiso which was founded in 2006.
“ he’s hiding behind your skirts “
Is this reference to PA, spending time at Balmoral and was seen Sunday going to Craithie Kirk with HMTQ? Hiding from questions, demands, and interviews from law enforcement all potentially waiting in the wings.
an oz apology
Strong rumours whilst PH and mm were on their tour she was VERY rude to staff and , l believe the High Commissioners wife was told to f*** off. PA, since then made a pit stop there for apologies. I do believe on PE current visit further apologies perhaps even written one from HMTQ were extended to ensure relationships stay strong. Just imagine spewing foul language could potentially destroy years of harmony.
a noticeable habit
We have, most of us here, notice when PH is with her or on her outings he wears grey suit, old shoes. When he has been on his own representing HMTQ he is so well dressed and appears so much more contented.
“ They have all gone quiet”
The Markle’s have all gone quiet again. Papa popped up as a distract awhile ago. But since then, crickets 🦗, nothing, except her nephew becoming a millionaire selling pot he gave his family name to.
VB’” “piss off David, she’s the kiss of death”
VB, has now started a cosmetics line. As a professional collector of high end cosmetics, l can say my reaction and online is very lack lustre. David has had to spend millions and what l have read tens of millions bailing out her fashion line. Let me step back, sorry, VB Victoria Beckham, former Spice Girl posh, is married to footballer David Beckham. I am wondering if he suggested having madam model clothes and cosmetics, as you can see she didn’t like the idea.🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂
“Do it on the QT”.
QT means quiet, unobtrusively, so something is to be done in that manner. It is surveillance of madam? Since returning from ‘fauxmegnancy’ leave she has been out and about more, and we love it! The more pressing issue which l am not certain is the security threat assessment in Afghanistan which is ongoing ahead of their tentative tour there. This is a non Commonwealth country but relationship building is important but security and safety must be paramount. Those are my two thoughts possible.
it’s a palace directive
Buckingham Palace staff have been instructed to alert guests who have audiences with HMTQ NOT to bring up PH or mm. Very firm directive to ‘Talk about anything except one subject.’ Brexit? ‘No. The Sussexes.“ Rumours are Queen is growing tired of Meghan’s snubbing of Royal Family occasions.
The Mail on Sunday understands the Queen was 'hurt and disappointed’ when Meghan made a last-minute dash to New York to watch Serena Williams in the tennis instead of joining the Royals in Balmoral as planned. The annual Highland holiday is the Queen’s favourite time of the year and she was, according to a source, looking forward to 'a few days of merry chaos’ with the great-grandchildren, including Archie.
Have you read the comments on SM”
The vast , Major, huge, majority on social media worldwide are just loathing, mistrust, disbelief, disgust, and on and on about madam, the way she conducts herself. Now this Smart Set, using the name of a Canadian company, Reitmans, she worked with in Toronto. This capsule collection, contains limited sizes, dresses were old stock from 2018 that never sold, the white blouse l believe from a 2015 collection that didn’t sell. The bag ridiculously expensive with a backstory that can be found online, l won’t put it here, but pure vindictiveness.
he’s putting on a brave face.
This is PH. He is doing his duty, and doing it well. He has been at it for quite some time. I have no doubt he has very healthy distractions, supportive loving family and lots of us here supporting him and believing in him!
GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦
Thank you so much PG! This is sounding great…always the best from you we get my dear PG! God Bless you!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Ask Skippy submission
27 notes
Sep 16th, 2019
—————————
62. Sept. 18
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON AND PRAYER REQUEST 🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻As l was working on this, l got a call regarding a friends mother, l am desperately asking for prayers. She is 55, teacher planning to retire at Christmas l she had the flu, went tomER last night, the queue was hours so they went home. Today she had a massive heart attack, air ambulance flew out, she was too unstable for a flight journey but was driven to a bigger hospital. She is in I.C.U. Likely brain damage. Please pray for her adult children madly trying to fly in from across North America. She has two step children here. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
MM Anon
skippyv20
MM ANON …”I have a nose for these problems … M Andealerson… seek Professional assistance …… Anonymously helped … EXAMINE THE WEDDING GUESTS!!!……… One family member of dubious provenance …… A disgusted dignity … “Look closer old thing”…Harried into it… “ both well hidden”. … A homing instinct
”I have a nose for these problems
Interesting, the usage of the word has the obvious meaning of the part of the face but it can also mean someone can use their instinct or ‘spidery sense’ to detect something. In this clue, MM ANON 💜💜💜💜💜💜YOU, This is so cleverly telling us what we have been speculating and down right knowing, given her behaviour, her nose appearance etc that substance , sniff sniff, is a massive problem. Probably has been for years we are just getting official confirmation now that this is correct. Thank you for that MM ANON, because we no longer have to assume, we now know it to be fact!
M Andealerson
Well,well, well, looks whose name, sort of, has popped up after being MIN for months now. So the insertion of the letters eal in his name combined with the letter d in his name spells deal which has long been my, and many others, suspicion that this vile disgusting man has flipped and made a deal. Just imagine this stuff he has on his ‘guests’, the wealthy, the Hollywood elite, who was his backer? My heavens , l feel confident now this is why he has been off the radar. He is in custody, protective or otherwise.
The other thing that jumps out is dealer, likely not dealing cards at a casino🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. He very likely has supplied madam and a whole slew of other a variety of candy.
seek Professional assistance
Obviously there has been some detox or intervention in the past year, because she has been out of the public and the clues we have been given here told us where she was receiving medical treatment likely for substances. She needs a team, medical, psychiatrist, legal, etc etc etc.
Anonymously helped
Again, anonymous is mentioned, this was mention a few days ago ? Days or week, l have lost track of time with the flu bug and resulting exhaustion l anyhow, this again l believe refers to our beloved 🐼 her blog, and her almost three year fight to be a truth seeker in this unholy alliance. Folks, just so you know, l NEVER EVER use the word Holy, lightly! Lots of information here has shown up in the papers so interesting. Just imagine who must read here!
Or is someone anonymously filling her bank account to keep her afloat? We know out popped HRC in an instagram, why? Why? Why is she wading into these deep dark waters??????
EXAMINE THE WEDDING GUESTS!!!
Well, we have, everyone, spoke how odd it was that she had no long term friends at her wedding and no family except DR. Where is DR? We are still trying to figure out who she really is, that fake photo of her supposedly holding baby madam , her head is photoshopped on there so crookedly it looks so bizarre. But l digress again. Those at the wedding made no sense she, like, OW , GC AC, et al. A line up of backers right across from the Queen smugly gloating over their victory in HMTQ church. Disgusting l GC has had his own problems for years now, why do you think he lives in Italy and a beard marriage. Look up that term, educate yourself please on what is really going on! The rumour are swirling and becoming more widely known! Imagine the unmitigated gall! The entire guest list on her side is suspect, we have LR , and the other lady whose name l forget sorry easily googleable for you. They were with her at Wimbledon when she was so ‘stoned/high/ill’ l think she’s got some serious issues! They had to be on either side propping her up, telling her to put her hat on and smile. Anyhow, for me, the uppercase use in this clue affirms for us that we have been and are on the right track in our discussions about what is really going on.
One family member of dubious provenance
Well well again, we have all discussed this a million ways. Who is mm? Who is DR? Are they real who they say they are? Why TM hiding oops living in Mexico? Where is DR? As l mentioned above the baby photo is so suspect. As with baby amw, her past ‘family’ photos are fuzzy, bizarre. Who is she really? She was raised by TM after a certain age, l can’t recall. Where was DR? We have no confirmed information on that. Is she really her mother? Are any of these people really in the role they say they are?sister or mother, mother or grandmother, or not related at all. With the exception, especially at TTC madam resembled DR tremendously, so there is definitely some DNA shared. It’s all such a sham of grifters and liars. The only way you know they’re lying is when they talk or write. At this point, actually a long time ago, we all have expressed our doubts.Thank you MM ANON for again confirming our ideas and thoughts about her provenance are correct and we shall continue our digging into the past.
A disgusted dignity
HMTQ, greatest respect and honour , as She does, has quietly gone about doing her duty, getting up every day, carrying on. This Brexit stress on top on madam, l pray for HMTQ. Dignity is the perfect word to describe HMTQ. But bear in mind, we were told in the media and many posting here, HMTQ suffers no fools lightly, and Her royal command is NO MENTION OF THOSE TWO when you speak with her, should you be so fortunate.
.“Look closer old thing”
This confuses me, l cannot imagine even PP calling HMTQ ‘old thing’. Does this mean look closer at something old. Look closer at photos? Seeing the photoshop? Look closer at facts? Putting information together, seeing things in a different light??
Harried into it… “
Let’s review the definition of harried. Harried means feeling strained as a result of having demands persistently made on one or harassed. It does not take much imagination to think of the level of harassment PH has suffered from she who shall not be named and the media. Is this the wedding or having to continue this charade?
“ both well hidden”.
I am hesitant to give words to this out of respect to a certain prince we know and love.
A homing instinct.
A homing instinct is an instinct that enables an animal to return home after travelling great distances. Like our great Canadian geese migrating, man that is something to see, flock after flock, millions of them filling the sky, you can hear them too, it’s one of God’s miracles. People have a homing instinct as well, nesting is common for women who are pregnant and nearing delivery. There is also something called a homing device which is a mechanism incorporated into a guided missile, airplane, etc., that aims it toward its objective.
So this clue, who has the homing instinct, is it PH who is giving all for HMTQ?
GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦
First….Prayers indeed for your friend’s mother. How very sad!
Great job once again PG! Love what you do….learn so much from you, you are loved and appreciated!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Ask Skippy submission
41 notes
Sep 18th, 2019
————————
63: Sept. 18
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON 🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG thanking you for all your prayers and sympathy for the family. It’s greatly appreciated 🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
Thank you MM ANON💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
MM Anon
MM ANON … Pakistan ‘ Mmmm!!………🎼”coca cola , ginger beer and Canada Dry”🎼…… “put on the hat ‘ hug the orphan and SMILE!!”…… “try not to swear at the Diplomats wives”…… “if you wear those to the reception ………O’f*** “……… diamond deal…… “It started at SH. it’ll end in Malibu “… “ She’s going to what?, a f#@ing politician”…… number 4 Kate??( another little girl). 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Pakistan ‘ Mmmm!!
This is the planned trip for William and Catherine to visit Pakistan.Very few details have been released, the security issue is massive. The British foreign office is still recommending that its citizens avoid travel to that part of the world. I know relationship building is important, but the security risks makes me pray they reconsider this.
🎼”coca cola , ginger beer and Canada Dry”🎼
MM ANON what you do to me! I find nowhere these song lyrics, you have them in quotation marks so they must stay together. For lack of that, l will say this, coca-cola is the all American soda, ginger beer is classic in Jamaica, where TI wedding was, that she crashed and Canada Dry is our national drink other than beer😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Each beverage is reflective of a portion of her life, America, Toronto, and Jamaica. Please tell me what song this is!!! Driving me batty(or battier, at this point🤣🤣🤣).
“put on the hat ‘ hug the orphan and SMILE!!”
This is a similar incident at Wimbledon, surrounded by two ‘friends’ who had to tell her to put on her hat and to smile. How will she manage her hobbies in Africa? How will she manage anything official? Will she have friends accompanying her?? Interesting times. We love seeing her because we get more information, SpongeMeg gets more material 🤣🤣🤣😂😂 and we further our work here of truth-seeking and telling.
“try not to swear at the Diplomats wives”
During their first tour in Australia and that part of the world, there were multitude of reports of her foul language and disrespect of staff. I mentioned the other day she told the High Commissioner’s, l believe it was her, told her to f*** off. Both PA and now PE on his tour now have being making amends for her abhorrent behaviour. So hopefully she will take this piece of advice and apply it on the Africa tour.
“if you wear those to the reception
Usually she looks horrendous, no matter the designer or cost of the clothes. They are likely working on her wardrobe for the tour. This is shock at what she wants to wear. Again this is an exact repeat of the Australian tour, then she wanted to wear a tuxedo, pants to an official reception dinner. That time PH said absolutely not, no way, she did not wear a tuxedo. Goodness only knows what she is conjuring up for this tour!
O’f*** “
There is an apostrophe, so O’hara for example, but this is an apostrophed vulgar word, never ever used in civil conversation, ever! So is this an expletive or something with an apostrophe?
diamond deal
This girl has so many different engagement rings and wedding rings it’s hilarious, all fakes, butterfly earrings fake, bangle bracelet fake. She is marching these things we know she would merch her exhaling if she could. So she has likely made yet another merching deal. Africa is known for many precious gems especially diamonds and the worst are blood diamonds. Oh goodness, if she is involved with those, l can honestly say l would not be surprised but ever so disgusted. Wonder if she’s dealing down there and somehow gets in trouble with the law, might this FINALLY BRING her under legal control. Since it’s Africa, she could never scream the race card!
“It started at SH. it’ll end in Malibu “
Soho is where mm began her journey that has led her to where she is now, along with the connections she made there. Rumours are rampant that they are looking for a mansion in Malibu versus another location for its privacy and younger set that lives there. Does ANYBODY believe this PR? I am waiting……crickets 🦗, yep just as l thought, NOBODY believes this.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂
“ She’s going to what?, a f#@ing politician”
Rumours have been around awhile now oh her going into politics and l have even read, 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 hold on, l can’t say it without side splitting laughter…..rumours of her running for president. Bloody delusional eh? HRH PP. This is hilarious to me!
number 4 Kate??( another little girl). 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Speculation has been rampant that Catherine is expecting based on her hairstyle change, gossip supposedly from little Lottie. I hope she is and let’s pray with all we have that it’s a girl.🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 l am taking this to mean she is indeed expecting!🥳🥳🥳🥳🥰🥰🥰🥰
GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦
Fantastic PG…..looks like interesting times ahead! Great job. Thank you dear PG😄💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Ask Skippy submission
22 notes
Sep 18th, 2019
———————-/
64: Sept. 19
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜
MM Anon
MM ANON … a no no in the via xx settembre … silent flight …… “Harry’s gone rogue”? …… a lying express-ion… disaster aPRon disaster …… “we’re gonna need a smaller pub” …… W&K, higher and higher …… 🎼” ba ba Iran”🎼……” ones sick and tired of being sick and tired “…… “ Tower Bridge is in negotiations” …… the long con…… Plod-ing along …… tying up loose ends.
a no no in the via xx settembre
Settembre is September in Italian. A bestie Misha NoNoo, is getting married in Italy this weekend. EA printed that the Sussexes had reportedly arrived there. This is telling me that they are NOT attending, because the play on words of Misha’s last name two no’s via XX, l am taking this to mean two people.
silent flight
Flight to Africa will be absolutely silent, l have no doubt there will be absolutely not a civil word spoken!
“Harry’s gone rogue”?
The media has gone rogue more like. They are printing such awful things, his mental health Apple TV focus with the big O. The media and lots of the public are voicing their disgust at their perception of PH giving in to everything she wants. He is at the receiving end of unprecedented bad press.
a lying express-ion
The Express has doubled Dow, tripled down or more on their foul media regarding the Cambridge’s. The article about Catherine spending an unbelievable amount of money on clothes more than madam, which is documented to be untrue. SS 🐍 lying, vile, vipers. It’s going to get worse NOT better. Please let’s remember to pray for them. The business paper is increasing their criticism too, paper/media once thought respectable, money buys anything l guess!
disaster aPRon disaster
A PRathon is right MM ANON! Item after item, but by bit, the public is slowly getting information about what’s really going on, and what has been going on, what led to this charade and sham. Her twitters are BEYOND PATGETIC🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣. Bit by bit, madam, drip, drip, tick tick, time is getting closer. You should read The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe!
“we’re gonna need a smaller pub”
Fake fake fakity fake empty pub photos, no baby cot, but the “sussexes’ and amw went to their local. Now this was ‘reported’ over a week ago if not longer. The owners of the pub deny this. TMZ has fuzzy photos look like taken from my Kodak instamatics with the row of flashbulbs🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. Remember those anybody? The meta data, again showed lies, dates September 17,2019. Yes madam you’re really getting your moneys worth with SS.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂
W&K, higher and higher
The Cambridges💜💜💜💜💜! Their Instagram passed 10,000,000! This week! TEN MILLION PEOPLE,🥰🥰🥰🥰🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳💜💜💜💜💜AWESOME,,
🎼” ba ba Iran”🎼…
Barbra Ann , Beach Boys! Oh MM ANON you’re so clever, THIS SONG l knew right away😁😁😁😁💜💜💜😁😁😁. So Iran, given what’s been happening, l will not type it all, if you so choose, educate yourself please oh what is happening in that part of the world. Is this going to affect the trip to Pakistan???
” ones sick and tired of being sick and tired “
Indeed, speaking in first person format is always, only the Crown. HMTQ is feeling as described above. Please, let us pray for her, strength, health, discernment. Thank God LG is with her. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦.
“ Tower Bridge is in negotiations”
BRF have code names, l believe PP is Tower Bridge, so this is telling us that he is involved, he is smart as a whip, has a lifetime of experience dealing with very sort of problem, he has certainly been ever present here in riddle clues. I imagine his wisdom has been indispensable!
the long con
This has been and remains a long term game. The planning of this con started years ago. The backers got together and came up with this plane. Our madam went rogue and changed the plot. Continues to con, grift her way through Europe and Africa. The more she does, the more we see her, more evidence. These types of international investigations take a very very long time and we want it done 100% right , so justice will be served!
Plod-ing along
Plod, horses plod in their gait, both HMTQ and PP love to ride, he loves his buggy, pardon if that’s not the right word! To see them on those massive horses is tremendous, there is a real love of animals and the outdoors and must be especially therapeutic in these times.
tying up loose ends.
Details, always details, is the inferring the end is near?? On the humourous side, will there finally be a hairstylist on the African tour that can tie up those horrible extensions and make madams hair at least presentable.😂😂😂😂😂
GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦
Thank you so much PG….looks amazing! You are the best!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
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distant-rose · 5 years
Note
I just read the last chapter of Once and a Future Thing and it was amazing! I was wondering if you could maybe tell us or write about Beth's adjustment to the world and the rest of her family's reactions? Thanks so much for your awesome writing! I always love when you update Little Pirates and I always enjoy your other stories!
Notes: Okay, I owe you the biggest apology. This has literally been in my inbox for half a year? I honestly don’t remember when this entered my inbox but I know it was a long time, so long that whoever sent this probably forgot all about it. I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, I hope you can forgive me for how long this fucking took. I was inspired to work on the Jim and Beth reunion by @clockadile and I knew that I couldn’t work on it or post something new OAFT-related without doing this. Now, I don’t really have Beth adjusting to life in Storybrooke, so much as her family’s reactions to her return, namely Harrison’s because he is legitimately the sanest and most well-adjusted member of the Jones family, and I say that objectively. He is. So, I felt his POV might be best for this chapter or coda or whatever. Anyway, a special thanks to @shireness-says and @optomisticgirl for allowing me to spam them with this nonsense. I hope you enjoy it. There’s a bit of Arabic in it, but it’s translated at the bottom.Summary: Beth’s quest for vengeance against her boyfriend’s killer goes a bit haywire when she and her former best friend Jim Hawkins are sent into thirty years into the past. Now, they must figure out how to find a way back to the future without wrecking the first meeting between Beth’s parents, Emma Swan and Killian Jones. Rating: T+Chapters:  One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Epilogue | Coda IWord Count: 4,300+
The large clock on the wall said 6:30am and years ago that would have meant that it was way too early for him to be up, but Harrison Jones didn’t sleep anymore. Time had simply muddled together and all that mattered was that he got at least one cup of coffee on the hour or his brain was going to ooze out of his ears. He wasn’t quite what he was going to die from first – his heart exploding or exhaustion.
His fingers tap impatiently against the kitchen counter as he stared down the ancient machine gurgling to life. He never liked coffee, in fact he hated the very taste of it, but it become so integral to his daily functions that he no longer gagged at the bitter taste.
Feeling agitated, he began rummaging sluggishly through the cabinets in search of the sugar. When he found the container in the back of the spice shelf completely empty, he threw it against the wall while muttering dark curses under his breath. He knew exactly who was behind this crime against humanity. No one had a bigger sweet tooth than Wes and he had a tendency of finishing off products without replacing them.
He hoped his younger brother’s wifi wasn’t working this morning. The asshole deserved it.
Bitter and disappointed, he put as much cream into his coffee as he could. Taking a seat at the breakfast table, he picked up his kindle and began reading the last few chapters of his Ken Follet novel. The house was quiet at the moment and he was going to enjoy it while it lasted. As long as he had been alive, the Swan-Jones house had been one prone to chaos and any lull of silence was worth its weight in gold.
“Holy Christ, Harrison, you still live here? At twenty-seven? Jesus.”
The coffee mug slipped from his fingers, missing the table by a fraction of a hair and falling to the floor with a loud crash. Pieces of ceramic glass shattered as they made contact with the hard tile, scattering everywhere.
Harrison barely registered it.
He was too busy staring at a ghost.
She looked so much older and impossibly thinner than the last time he saw her, but there was no mistaking the green of those eyes and that riot mess of untamed dark hair. His sister, whom he hadn’t seen in three years, was standing in the doorway in a probably the most dramatic pirate gear that he had ever seen.
“خرة,” he breathed out in disbelief.
“What did you just swear at me?”
“In Arabic, yes,” he responded faintly.
“I’ve never been prouder of you,” she laughed merrily, tossing her hair over her shoulder. He continued to gape at her, unable to process what exactly was happening.
“I swear. Always have. I’m not a saint, despite what you all think.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father move past his sister as if everything was normal and ordinary. Without even commenting on the broken mug at Harrison’s feet, Killian Jones made a beeline for the coffee machine and made himself a cup. He offered no comment on the fact his long-lost daughter was standing in his kitchen.
“Are you going to just gawk at me like an idiot or are you going to say something?” His sister asked somewhat impatiently, crossing her arms in front of her chest and arching her eyebrow at him mockingly.
“You’re alive?”
“Did you think I was dead?” She snorted in amusement at the question, but Harrison didn’t find anything about this to be funny.
“Well, yes.”
“Well, considering I’m standing right in front of you. I can assure you, I’m alive.”
“Considering how sleep deprived I am, I was convinced you were a hallucination.”
She scoffed at him, stepping forward. She rose up on the tips of her toes and poked him between the eyebrows like she used to do back when they were kids; back when she was trying to get his attention away from his guitar. It was annoying then and Harrison found it even more annoying now.
“I can’t believe you thought I was dead. I’m insulted.”
“Well, I haven’t heard from you in three fucking years, Beth. What the hell was I supposed to think?”
“That’s…fair…I guess,” she replied. She took a step backwards, shifting on her feet uncomfortably. The move reminded him of when they were younger. She always did that whenever she was caught doing something she shouldn’t.
Simpler times.
Her eyes shifted back towards their father who was still leaning across the cabinets, watching them both with tired eyes. She seemed to be silently pleading with him.
“Don’t look at me,” he said to her as he took a sip of his coffee. “This is your hole to dig out of, not mine.”
“Thanks Dad,” she replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
“No problem, minnow. I told you this wasn’t going to be easy.”
“Yeah, you got that right.”
“Well, honestly, Beth, what did you expect?” Harrison replied, raising to his height and crossing his arms in front of his chest, anger fueling him faster than caffeine could ever have. “I hate to be repetitive, but it can’t be ignored. It’s been three years. Three fucking years. No phone call. No note. No nothing. You just vanished. As if it was nothing. As if we were nothing.”
“I understand why you’re mad. Look, I get it —"
“No, Beth. You don’t get it,” he interrupted, nostrils flaring in anger.
She flinched at his words, but he having a hard time feeling sympathetic. Her disappearance had nearly torn them all apart. He still remembered the sound of their mother crying in the back room of the police station, the amount of times he had to walk their father back to the house because he had drunk himself into a stupor on the docks waiting for her to come back and how they had put Ned through counseling because he thought it was all his fault. He could see Wes in his mind’s eye running himself ragged trying to find the right locator spell and how he had torn through her room trying to find a single strand of hair to use.  He could still recall the nights of he stared blankly at sheets of paper, unable to write music because his mind kept drifting back to her and the maelstrom of emotion she had left inside of him. His knuckles were still scarred for the times he had tried to beat his self-loathing and anger into a punching bag until it broke, and sand spilt onto the floor of his basement. She owed him at least seven bags.
“You don’t get it,” he repeated. “And you don’t get to say that because you weren’t here and that isn’t okay. This entire family almost crumbled when you left. Ned almost failed out his senior year and almost didn’t get into college.”
“Ned’s in college?” She whispered in disbelief.
“Yeah. He’s in his second year and if you were here, you would have known that!”
“That’s not fair, Har.”
“No. What’s not fair is that we’re still picking up the pieces that you left behind and now you think that can be just swept under the rug.”
“Harrison.” Their father straightened himself up, giving him a warning look. “Enough.”
“Are you kidding me right now? I know she’s your favorite but this is ridiculous! She broke our hearts! She broke your heart, Dad!  You drank yourself into the bottom of a bottle waiting for her to come back! You’re just going to let bygones be bygones?”
“I don’t have favorites, Har.”
“Bullshit. Look me in the eye and tell me if I pulled the fucking nonsense she did that you wouldn’t punch me in the face if I dare showed my face afterwards.”
A muscle in Killian’s jaw ticked and there was a dangerous look in his eyes, but Harrison stopped being scared of his father the minute he was taller than him.
“Don’t go putting words into my mouth, lad. I never said any of that. There is a time to address things. And that time isn’t now. Right now, let’s focus on the fact that your sister is home.”
Harrison worried at his jaw, glaring at him. He took three steps forward, away from his sister and crowded into his father’s personal space. Any other man would have shrunken away from a fight with a man of Harrison’s stature, but not Killian Jones. He met his son’s gaze with his own furious blue eyes, straightening his shoulders and refusing to backdown. For a brief moment, Harrison thought his father might actually punch him.
“Good morning everyone.”
The tension in the room was immediately cut by the appearance of Nasira. She gave them all a tired smile as she walked into the kitchen, their three-month old son cradled in her arms. Harrison immediately turned his back on his father and ignored the choked noises Beth was making in the background. His focus was on the love of his life and his infant son.
“هلتتصرفبنفسك?” She asked him, raising her eyebrows at him as she rose up on her toes to kiss his chin. He was making an effort not to be insulted by her insinuations about his behavior.
“دائما.”
She gave him a look like she didn’t quite believe his reassurances but didn’t say anything to him as she adjusted her hold on their son and turning to address his sister.
“Hey Beth. It’s been awhile. When did you get in?”
All three Joneses jolted at Nas’s nonchalance. Her tone held no underlaying sarcasm or anger. It was a friendly, casual remark, as if she were talking to someone that she had seen almost every day of her life. Killian nearly spat out his coffee while Beth stared at her, clearly shaken by the question.
“She got in this morning,” Harrison answered tersely, scowling still.
“توقف,” Nas responded, striking Harrison across the abdomen in reproach. She then turned her attention back to Beth and smiled at her. “Your brother can be an ass.”
“I’m well aware,” Beth managed to croak out, still looking a bit uneasy. “You’re too good for him.”
“Absolutely not. I can be an ass too. We’re just the perfect amount of ass for each other,” Nas responded with a laugh. “But how have you been?”
“Busy. But you seem to have been busy as well…” She gestured to the child in Nas’s arms.
“Yeah, yeah, I definitely have,” Nas beamed. “Between him and his brother, I’ve been very busy.”
“B-brother?” Beth’s eyes went wide. “You have more than one?”
“Yep! I had Sam nearly three years ago. He was a bit of a surprise, but we loved him so much that we decided to have another. We’ve had Kam for three months now and he seems pretty good, so I think we’re gonna keep him.”
“You have babies.” Beth looked like she was one second away from having a panic attack.
“Yep!” Nas responded brightly, deliberately ignoring his sister’s obvious discomfort. “They’re great. I would ten out of ten recommend.”
“I don’t think that’s in the cards for me.”
“Nas, my love, my jewel,” Harrison spoke up, giving Nas a tight smile. “I’m so glad you’re happy and proud of our children, but I feel the need to point out to everyone, because clearly seems you’ve all forgotten, but Beth has been out of our lives for three years. She left us. For three years. Without a word.”
“Harrison, my love, my sweet, gentle, understanding man,” she responded, giving him the same time smile and now speaking a sugary tone that belayed a message that was more steely than sweet. “I’m so glad that you’re happy for my happiness, but I feel the need to remind you that this is Storybrooke. We deal with all sorts of things from time-traveling witches, cursed gems, megalomaniacs and not to mention brothers who try to pull political coups to try and steal your kingdom. This family drama? It’s honestly just a blimp on the radar. We’re getting married. Your sister is going to be in the wedding party. I’m not having the groom feuding with his sister.”
“You guys seriously aren’t married yet?” Beth asked in disbelief.
“No,” they answered at the same time, Harrison sounding angry while Nas was wistful.
Beth immediately turned to their father. Killian merely shrugged his shoulders at her and sipped his coffee.
“I don’t know why you keep looking at me for answers. You’re all adults. I have no control over your decisions.“
“We just haven’t found the right time,” Nas replied, giving a placating smile.
It was then that Kam started crying and Nas began making shushing noises, bouncing him up and down in hopes of calming him. Harrison envied his infant son’s ability to be so free with how he felt. He wanted to scream too.
Harrison opened his mouth to make a comment but was stopped when the front door opened loudly, and a very familiar voice called out.
“Good morning Vietnam!” Wes shouted merrily, making his way towards the kitchen. Harrison winced at the volume, afraid that his brother was going to wake his still sleeping three-year old and their mother.
Wes seemed to be in good cheer, chuckling to himself as he swaggered in. He was dressed in a black leather jacket and the tightest pair of pants that Harrison had ever seen. The smell of cigarettes immediately filled the kitchen and it was quite clear that he had come to the house straight from closing up the bar.
The smirk died the second Wes’s eyes land on their sister. For a brief moment, the entire room was silent, save for the tail end of Kam’s whimpering. No one spoke as Wes stared at Beth. Their eyes met for exactly five seconds. Harrison counted them.
“Nope,” Wes said quietly, shaking his head and turning on his heel.
“Wes!” Beth shouted, stepping forward to run after him.
He stopped at the sound of her voice. He turned again to face them, his face pinched with concern. He tilted his head and took a tentative step towards her.
“Guys,” he said slowly, still staring at their sister. “Don’t get mad at me, but I think I might be a little high from getting hotboxed all night at the Hole…because I’m legit seeing Beth right now and there’s no way that could possibly be happening right now.”
Beth scoffed, rolling her eyes at him.
“Good to see you haven’t changed a bit.”
“She’s snarking me right now. Fake Beth is snarking me, guys.”
“Fake Beth is Real Beth and she’s five seconds from punching you in the face.”
“And now, she’s threatening me!”
“We know,” Nas snorted. “She’s real and we can hear her and so help me, Westley Jones, if you’re high around my children, I will castrate you with a rusty spoon.”
“Oh,” Wes blinked dumbly before turning to look at their father. “Dad, I’m going to need your flask, because…damn.”
“Sorry, it’s empty,” Killian responded, not looking up from his coffee. It was very clear to everyone in the room that he was lying.
“Okay,” Wes responded, drawing a shaky breath before heading towards the sink. "This calls for drastic measures.”
He bent down and took out the emergency bottle of rum that they kept behind the dog treats. He uncorked it and placed it down on the counter before grabbing a clean glass from the drying rack. He contemplated it for about three seconds before placing the glass back down and deciding to drink straight from the bottle. He took a long drag from it before turning to address them.
“Okay, good,” he said, smacking his lips. “Good. Now I can deal with this.”
“Are you going to share that?” Beth asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Absolutely not. You owe me at least ten years of alcohol.”
“I was gone for only three!”
“Yeah, three years plus the seven extra years I’m going to spend talking about this in therapy. Welcome home, sis.”
“You’re an ass.”
“So are you,” he replied, taking another sip. “It runs in the family.”
“Why am I not surprised that you’re taking this so casually?” Harrison snapped, feeling irritated.
“Well, to be honest, I’m still not convinced I’m not hallucinating right now and it seems kinda silly to argue with a hallucination.”
“Trust me, I thought she was a hallucination too, but I got past that pretty quickly.”
“Yeah, well, you’re more well adjusted than me. I’m a little mad at my subconscious right. I mean, seriously? My sister? Why couldn’t my hallucinations be more hot? Kate Hudson? Sienna Miller? Giselle? Something I could actually enjoy seeing?”
Beth moved forward and hit Wes across the shoulder. He let out a yelp of pain, massaging his shoulder and glaring at her.
“See? Not a hallucination.”
“God, I forgot how vicious you are.”
“You’ve gotten soft without me.”
“Well, it’s not like I have any good sparing partners. The last time Harrison and I fought, he picked me up and tossed me over the fence like I was Benny Booth.”
“Benny Booth?” Nas asked, frowning in confusion.
“The asshole who nearly knocked up our sister. Harrison threw him over a fence, except he didn’t quite clear it and Moe French had a fence with an ass shaped cut out for like three weeks,” Wes explained with a quirk of his lips.
“He didn’t nearly knock me up,” Beth scowled.
“Henry bought you a pregnancy test. He nearly knocked you up,” Wes volleyed back at her.
At that comment, their father spat out his coffee and began to cough profusely. Harrison gave him a healthy whack on the back.
“He did not!”
“He did!”
“He. Did. Not.”
“Yes. He. Did. Your eggo was almost preggo.”
“Ugh! Stop talking! To think I actually missed you!”
“You actually missed us? Wow, maybe you’re the one whose gone soft.”
“Beth?”
Their mother was standing halfway down the stairs, staring at her daughter the same way Harrison and Wes had previously – like she was looking at a ghost. Beth returned her gaze with one of her. This time she didn’t look self-assured, however. She looked on the verge of tears.
“M-mo-mom?”
“Beth? Is that you? Is that my daughter?”
Emma didn’t wait for an answer. She raced down the stairs, nearly tripping over the final step. The stumble seemed to wake something inside of Beth because she finally regained her senses and was scrambling past Wes to meet her. Their mother grabbed onto their sister’s arms and yanked her almost violently forward. Beth fell into her arms and a loud, almost inhuman sob sounded through the entire kitchen as the two embraced each other, rocking side-to-side in a forceful but erratic sway.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Beth’s voice was muffled by Emma’s shoulder, but Harrison could still hear her words as she kept repeating them like a broken record.
“You’re home” was their mother’s mantra. He could tell by the waver in her voice that Emma was also crying.
Harrison couldn’t stand it.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He couldn’t handle this any longer. If he stayed, he was going to break something. His father and Wes’s easy acceptance of Beth had been hard enough to swallow but seeing their mother tearful and happy to see the daughter that had abandoned them was just too much.
Nas seemed to sense this.
“هلانتبخير?” she asked, looking at him in concern.
“Can you give me the baby?” he asked in a barely measured tone. “I’m thinking he could use some air.”
Nas studied his face for a moment, frowning. He briefly thought she might not comply with his request, but she gave him a curt nod and handed over their son without a word. Kam was whimpered loudly, clearly unhappy with being given over to his father.
“Thank you,” he murmured, bending down to kiss her cheek before making his escape.
While everyone was focused on the reunion between mother and daughter, Harrison made his escape with his son in his arms. He went out the back door and leaned against the deck railing, staring out into the backyard at the old rusted swing set. It had been a long time since anyone had used those swings and he tried to think of the last time Lucy had used them.
It was equally surreal and frightening to think that his own children would soon be old enough to use them.
“Do me a favor, bud, and don’t grow up too fast,” he murmured to the infant.
Kam stared up at him crankily but waving his arm in displeasure and hitting him across the nose. Harrison jolted at the unexpected contact, rearing his head back away from his son. He adjusted his hold so he could massage his injured nose. He felt equal parts proud and embarrassed about getting whacked in the face by a mere infant. It was almost comical.
“You might have more Jones in you than we realized,“ he mused aloud, trying to appease his unhappy son.
“Which is a bit shocking considering he’s your kid and you’re a helluva lot more Charming than you are Jones,” a voice called out.
Beth.
She was standing in the doorway, her arms crossed in front of her chest and looking at him with pensive expression.
“Aren’t you supposed to be chatting with Mom?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow at her.
“You know when you do that, you look disturbingly like Dad. Like really disturbingly like Dad. I didn’t really see it when we were kids, but I can see what everyone was saying now. You look a lot like him.”
“So I’ve been told,” he responded, eyebrow lifting even higher on his forehead. “And you’re avoiding the question.”
“I am,” she nodded.
“You know, when people ask questions, they kinda expect a response.”
“Those people should get used to disappointment.”
“They already have.”
Beth flinched, staring down at her feet and biting her lip.
“Look, I know you hate me, but —”
“Beth, I don’t hate you,” he cut her off. “I honestly wish I did. Things would be easier then. If I hated you, I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t have lost sleep worrying about you for the last three years. I wouldn’t have cried. I wouldn’t have let Nas stall the wedding for you.”
“Nas stalled the wedding? What!” She looked horrified.
“She accepted my proposal and refused to plan the wedding without you,” Harrison responded, trying to keep his voice even. “She said if you weren’t there, I would regret it for the rest of my life.”
“I’m sorry…”
“You can be sorry. I’m glad to hear it in fact, but that doesn’t mean I have to forgive you…”
“I know,” she sighed. “I know. And I don’t blame you.”
“I love you. You’re my sister and you’re always going to be my sister, and someday I’ll probably forgive you, but I can’t today. Not today. There’s been too much pain, Beth. I can’t just forget that. I can’t look at you without thinking about how Dad destroyed his liver over you, how Mom threatened the Dark One to find you and how they tracked to track you for years despite the fact you obviously bought protection spells against that. I can’t just forget that Ned went to actually depression and almost stopped playing baseball, which he loves more than life itself. Henry worried himself sick enough he had ulcers. And Wes? Wes was so focused on finding you, he forgot to shower and Gideon begged me to come over and literally force him away from his research. I can’t just get past that. I’m not like that them, I can’t forgive and forget like that. I know you guys like to call me perfect and if I was, I could forgive you, but I can’t.”
“Oh, Harrison, they haven’t forgiven me,” she laughed bitterly. “No one is letting me off the hook. They’re just in shock right now. Like you said, I’ve been gone for three years. Once that shock fades away, the anger will be there. Just you wait.”
“That anger is justified.”
“I know that,” she snapped, hot angry tears spilled down her cheeks. “Lord knows, I know that. I know I deserve it. I half expected to be disowned upon arrival.”
“We don’t do that.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” she replied, wiping her cheeks and turning away from him. “I’ve come to except the worst.”
“Expect the worst but hope for the best.”
“Hope is a very dangerous thing. Nothing worse than false hope.”
“Dangerous, but powerful. A little hope can go a long way, Beth. You’ve proved that, yourself.“
"You really are a Charming. You legit sound like Grandma.”
“I know you’re trying to mock me but I’m being serious,” Harrison replied, slightly frustrated. “The thing about hope is that…it can drive you, but it can’t take you all the way there. You have to put the work in too…No one is going to forgive you unless you actually try. Don’t just say you’re sorry. Show us you’re sorry. Until you put your money where your mouth is, nothing is going to get accomplished. I can’t forgive you until I see it.”
“That’s what Dad said…That the path to forgiveness…I need to put the work in.”
“He would know better than anyone else,” Harrison said gently. “And I’ve never known you to back down from a challenge.”
“Never,” she responded fiercely, eyes flashing with determined. And for the first time since he saw her, Harrison felt a flash of warmth. He had missed her fire.
“Good.”
He pushed himself away from the railing, tightening his hold on Kam as he did so. He made his way towards the doorway, his sister watching him warily. He bent forward and placed a brief kiss on her cheek.
“Nice to see you, Beth.”
“Nice to see you too, Har.”
خرة - shitهلتتصرفبنفسك - are you behaving yourself?دائما - alwaysتوقف - stopهلانتبخير - Are you okay?
27 notes · View notes
grindellore · 5 years
Text
fanfiction: and when he falls (chapter 3)
Fandom: Harry Potter | Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Gellert Grindelwald, Ariana Dumbledore Rating: M
Summary: Third chapter of my Summer of 1899 Grindeldore fic.
Also available on my AO3 (see the link in my profile).
When Albus came back up the stairs, it was with a look of tired relief on his face. Ariana was trailing behind him, idly playing with what looked like a game of skill. She glanced at Gellert as she passed him on the way to her room, giving him a shy smile. Albus was beaming at him.
“Everything is alright,” he said as he closed the door behind Gellert and himself. “She just overturned her chair by accident when she got up from the table.”
“I’m glad,” Gellert replied. “It must be hard to be constantly on the lookout for your little sister ... I suppose we all remember how it was when we couldn’t control our own magic yet.”
At that, Albus gave him a very peculiar glance that made Gellert wonder if he, perhaps, couldn’t recall such a thing. Of course Mr Model Pupil would have been able to control his magic at a very early age... But when Albus spoke, it was still of his sister.
“I’m just worried Ariana might actually breach the Statute of Secrecy someday,” he confessed. “If she does, it will be my liability alone because I am the only adult in this house.” He sighed.
“But that wouldn’t be fair!” Gellert exclaimed. “It’s neither her fault nor yours she can’t control her abilities yet! You can’t always watch over her...”
“No, perhaps not,” Albus interrupted him firmly. “But I’m still the closest person to a parental figure left to her, and therefore both her well-being and her conduct are my responsibility.”
“I see your point,” Gellert admitted. “What I still don’t see is why the burden of secrecy needs to be thrust upon the parents and guardians of our kind in the first place.”
“You question the Statute of Secrecy?” Albus blinked.
“I do indeed question the Statute of Secrecy.” Gellert gazed at him levelly. Now, he thought. How Albus reacted now would decide if he could confide in him.
“But it is an ancient law of the wizarding society that was introduced for good reason!”
“For good reason at the time,”Gellert countered. “Witch-hunting is over, so the major reason why it was introduced has become void. Laws can be changed.”
“And you think you can change the Statue of Secrecy?” Albus gave him a calculating glance.
“I will abolish it,” Gellert said firmly. Albus raised both eyebrows.
“Oh, a revolutionary, are we?” he said completely unimpressed. “But how would you muster the courage to stand up against the law if you’re already afraid of a little flower?”
“I’m not afraid of a flower!” Gellert said passionately. “But I’m sick and tired of the name-calling and the derisive laughter whenever a man is thought to be in a relationship with another man. I’m sick and tired of hiding every single part of who I am in front of Muggles, whether it is this or the fact that I’m a wizard.” He lowered his voice for effect. “I want a world in which everyone is allowed to be who they are without fear of being humiliated or persecuted. A world where it is not an offence to live freely and without fear, but where it is an offence to restrain people from doing so.”
Albus didn’t respond to Gellert’s short speech at once. He only looked at him, expression unreadable. But Gellert had the impression that something in his gaze had shifted.
“That ... is quite an ambitious goal you’ve set for yourself,” Albus said at last. “I’m sure Bathilda told you that I was British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot. It’s a very ... traditional institution, I must say. The majority position there seems to be to stay out of Muggle affairs whenever possible, and of course all members are required to abide by all national and international laws of the wizarding society. I don’t see how it would be possible to convince them of your opinion, and those are only the witches and wizards of the British Isles.” He started to pace up and down in his room, lost in thought. “In fact, I’m fairly certain the Statute of Secrecy cannot be recalled unilaterally by only one party who signed it. However, I’d need to read up on that again since I never researched this specific question.”
“Oh, Albus, you’re so young and yet you already think like a politician.” Gellert smiled indulgently. “But didn’t you realise it already? I don’t want to wait and see if I can convince some old farts of something that will never have their support anyway because it’s too far out of their comfort zone.” He paused for effect, seeking Albus’s eyes. “What I want is a revolution.”
There seemed to be something about the things he said or about the way he said them that made Albus pause. Then Albus looked directly at him. There was something unsettling about Albus’s eyes; something that made Gellert’s heart skip a beat and then speed up. These bright blue eyes seemed to pierce into his very soul.
“How?”
“Beg your pardon?” Somehow Gellert’s brain seemed unable to catch up with the information from his ears.
“How?” repeated Albus. “How do you want to achieve this goal?” Almost as an afterthought, he added: “And how do you think the Hallows will help you achieve it?”
Gellert stared. Albus Dumbledore was amazing. He had realised at once that his quest for the Hallows and his aim to overthrow the Statute of Secrecy were interconnected.
Then again, he shouldn’t have expected anything less.
“Maybe it would help if you closed your mouth and then used it to utter some words,” Albus suggested dryly. “Unless, of course, this is a test whether I’m able to retrieve the answers to my questions from you via Legilimency.”
And he is a Legilimens too? Gellert felt a strange urge to get on his knees in front of Albus or do something similarly old-fashioned and ridiculous.
Finally, he thought. Finally I’ve found someone with whom I can talk, actually talk about my ideas.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just ... fascinated you made the connection so fast.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Albus raised his eyebrows. “What I know about you is that you’re dedicated to find out as much about the Deathly Hallows as you can, and I also know you want to abolish the Statute of Secrecy though a revolutionary process. Assuming a link between the two seemed only logical.”
“If you put it that way...” Suddenly Gellert felt dumb in comparison to Albus’s quick wit, and he hated that feeling. He tried to make it up with an eventual reply to Albus’s questions.
“I will travel to all the countries that signed the Statute of Secrecy where I will convince as many witches and wizards of its negative effects as I can,” Gellert said in the same confident tone in which he had explained his reasons to repeal the statute. “I will show them all the evil Muggles will not only do to us but to each other if we fail to contain them.” Again, he made a short pause, lowering his tone. “It is only us who are able to ensure human co-existence without war. We are much more willing to see beyond the conflicts, territorial and otherwise, that modern Muggle states have with each other. Ultimately, the ability to do magic unites us well beyond the nationalist quarrels of Muggles.”
Albus acknowledged Gellert’s words with a curt nod, closing his eyes for a moment while he raised his eyebrows. Gellert waited for him to pass his judgment, heart pounding.
“Alright,” Albus said. “You still didn’t answer my question about the Hallows, but I’ve got another one: Showing them the evil Muggles will do?” He gave Gellert another piercing look out of bright blue eyes.
Gellert’s first impulse was to deflect that question; to talk about how anyone who had all but a cursory glance at Muggle newspapers on the Continent once in a while would know how eager they all were—the Germans, the French, the Austrians, the Russians—all so eager to measure their strength with each other. How it was only a question of time that they would finally clash; that there would certainly be a war nobody had seen before...
He realised it would not do. He wouldn’t be able to fool him. Not Albus.
“I Saw it,” he said simply. “I’ve been Seeing ... a war like none there has ever been before ... terrible things people do to each other ... ever since I was a kid.” His first impulse was to look away from Albus; to avoid the look of doubt that had always been a given after confessions like this; the calming tone: Surely you’ve just been dreaming. Horrible nightmares. Perhaps you shouldn’t read so much if it’s giving you bad dreams...
“That must have been terrible.”
Gellert stared at Albus wide-eyed. He only saw compassion in the way Albus gazed at him; no doubt, no incredulity. I bared my soul to you and you did not tear it apart, he thought. This was a first.
“I learned to deal with it,” Gellert said. “How to control the visions so they can’t overwhelm me at any minute. Just sometimes, when I’m agitated or asleep...” He broke off, giving Albus a small, bitter smile. “But yes, I had ... quite an interesting childhood before I learned how to control my magic.”
At that, Albus raised his arm as if to touch him; to return, perhaps, the hug Gellert had given him earlier. But he seemed to think better of it, focusing, instead, on a spot somewhere above Gellert’s head.
“Do you have a means to show your visions to other people?” Albus said eventually. “To the wider audience you want to reach?”
“I’m ... experimenting with something, though it’s not quite ready yet,” Gellert admitted. He wasn’t prepared to lay all his cards on the table all at once. “But you said you were a Legilimens?” He gave Albus an inquiring look.
“Some people say I’m quite good at Legilimency,” Albus admitted with a smile.
Gellert grinned. That, he supposed, translated to Not to boast, but I’m actually brilliant at it in Albus speech. He made an inviting gesture.
“Go ahead.”
“Right now?” Albus laughed incredulously. “Better sit ... I don’t know, on my bed? Having someone look at memories ... visions ... like these can get quite intense, I imagine.”
“That’s really not necessary.” Gellert tried to brush Albus’s concerns off. “But thank you nonetheless. I appreciate the opportunity to sit for a bit.” He flopped unceremoniously on Albus’s bed. “I just need a moment to sort my visions...” And lock my other thoughts, he thought to himself. There were many things on his mind that he didn’t want Albus to find out right now, from his expulsion and the reasons for it to his fascination with and admiration of Albus himself. He did plan to tell Albus eventually, but all in due time and certainly not by accident because he wasn’t good enough at Occlumency.
“Now,” he said, consciously thinking about the men in dirty trenches; the machines, cannonballs, explosions and, of course, that dreadful vapour.
“Legilimens,” he heard Albus whisper, and then the images became as clear as in his visions again; as if he was standing right beside those men who were wiped out in this cruel, faceless machinery of war where you rarely even saw the enemy that killed you.
“Gellert,” a deep voice said softly. “Gellert, it’s alright. You’re here, in my room. Open your eyes.”
Albus’s auburn hair was the first thing that swam into focus. His bright blue eyes followed, and then Gellert was seeing him clearly. It was only now that he realised he was shivering. Albus was holding him by the shoulders, steadying him.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “It ... I should have become used to it by now, but somehow...”
“I hope you’ll never become used to that,” Albus said. There was a raw sincerity to his tone that made Gellert want to lean in and have his hair petted, just like his mother did when he was little: Semmi baj, Gellért, minden rendben van... He straightened himself instead, gazing directly into Albus’s eyes.
“There will be men who won’t get that choice,” he said. “Not to become used to that, I mean. Unless we act.”
“I see that now,” Albus said, staring into the void as if it was him who was able to look into the future, not Gellert. “And this is coming from someone who always thought Divination was humbug.” He gave Gellert a lopsided smile and took his hands from his shoulders. The moment when Gellert could have leaned in was gone.
“Divination is a tricky subject if you don’t have any natural talent for it,” Gellert admitted. “In that case, the best you can do is foretell events with a certain plausibility.” He returned Albus’s crooked smile. “Your intuition is probably more accurate than the predictions of untalented people who try their hands at Divination.”
“I should hope so.” There it was, that tiny, confident smile, only noticeable for the twitching corners of Albus’s mouth. Gellert felt himself fall into those sparkling blue eyes, acutely aware of how physically close Albus was to him. This time, his racing heart had nothing to do with his visions.
Then Albus rose from the bed. Gellert already thought another precious moment lost, but Albus returned soon enough with the bowl of sweets from his desk. Sitting down next to Gellert, he pulled a wrapped chocolate frog from the bowl and offered it to Gellert.
“Do you like sweets?” Albus asked. “I’ve always found a little bit of chocolate quite comforting after emotionally troubling experiences.”
Gellert nodded gratefully and took the enchanted piece of chocolate. He was a little picky when it came to sweets, but he did like chocolate in any way, shape or form. Even if that form was moving and threatened to hop away if you didn’t catch it fast enough.
Gellert took no chances. He grabbed one of the frog’s legs as he was unwrapping it, putting it in his mouth as soon as he had freed it from the paper.
“Ah, a connoisseur!” Albus smirked, unwrapping his own chocolate frog in a similar way. “So which card did you get?” he asked, mouth full. Gellert chuckled. Normally, he didn’t like when people spoke with their mouth full, but if Albus did it, it was somehow endearing.
“Faris Spavin,” he said, holding the card up. It showed the very old, very wrinkled face of a wizard with thick reading glasses.
“Oh, the Minister of Magic himself,” Albus said. He had swallowed his frog in the meantime. “The longest-ever serving Minister and also the one with the most long-winding speeches. They call him Spout-Hole behind his back.” Albus chuckled. “Though I must admit it’s less funny if you sit in the Wizengamot and can’t leave because he won’t stop talking.” He pulled a face. “I started bringing books with me to have at least something to do while he kept babbling. Sometimes I wonder if I should thank him for acing all my N.E.W.T.s.” Gellert couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing.
“See?” Albus said with a satisfied smirk. “A bit of chocolate always cheers you up. Especially if it’s a chocolate frog.”
“Oh no,” Gellert replied, still grinning. “It’s you who cheered me up. And I appreciate it.” Toning down his obvious flirtation, he added: “But now I want to know which card you got!”
Albus gave him a melancholy smile. He held up his card so Gellert could see it as well. It showed another old man, much frailer than Faris Spavin. The wrinkled face was devoid of Faris Spavin’s impressive beard and moustache.
“Ah!” Gellert’s eyes widened in recognition. “That’s Nicholas Flamel, isn’t it? The famous alchemist?”
“None other.” Albus’s smile faded and he stared pensively at his card. “Do you want it? I’ve got several already.” Gellert ignored his question.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look so sad.”
“Oh, it’s just...” Albus sighed. “Mr Flamel and me corresponded. He invited me to visit him in Paris during my tour on the Continent...”
“But since you couldn’t go, you can’t meet him now,” Gellert completed the sentence for him. “I’m sorry, Albus, but I’m sure you’re going to meet him eventually.”
“I hope so.” Albus tried another, more confident smile.
“You will.” Gellert took Albus’s free hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“Thank you, Gellert.” Albus looked into his eyes. Gellert felt a sudden urge to lean forward and try to kiss him; try to kiss away the melancholy and the sadness in Albus’s life. But it would have been too early—they knew too little about one another—and there were several things Gellert wanted to tell Albus before he burdened him with his feelings.
The moment passed. Gellert withdrew his hand, passing his chocolate frog card from one hand into the other.
“Do you have that one already?” he said, holding Faris Spavin’s card up again. “If not, we could exchange our cards.”
“I do, actually.” Albus chuckled as if nothing had happened. Gellert suddenly realised that this was Albus’s way to deal with negative emotions: Laughing past the sadness. And perhaps, Gellert thought, he wasn’t all that different; filling his life at Durmstrang with pranks and capers that sometimes got out of hand.
“In that case...” Gellert held out his hand, smirking. “I’ll gladly accept your offer to gift me the Nicholas Flamel card. Let it be a token of our beginning friendship.” Now Albus actually laughed, handing him the card. Gellert took the pouch from his belt and put both cards inside, wiggling his eyebrows at Albus.
“Don’t think you can chicken out of my question about the Hallows just because you’ve declared the card a friendship token!” Albus said as soon as he had stopped laughing.
“Chicken out?” Gellert said, pretending to be affronted. “You wound me. I don’t chicken out of anything!”
“Well then.” Albus grinned at Gellert’s mock annoyance, but his posture had become more serious. “How will the Hallows help you achieve your goal?”
“Not all of the Hallows,” Gellert replied. “Wait.” He retrieved an old book from his pouch, realising belatedly that it still had a Durmstrang Library: Restricted stamp on its spine. Well. Albus didn’t know yet that he had been expelled. He also had no means of knowing that while Durmstrang pupils were allowed to read books from the Restricted Section of their library, they weren’t allowed to borrow them.
Placing the book between Albus and himself so both of them could read in it, he tipped on it with his wand, casting a wordless spell. Then he flicked to the page where it all started; the page he knew by heart at this point.
“Here.” He used the tip of his wand to point Albus to the relevant passage, knowing better by now than to use his finger. Albus’s eyes flicked over the passage with remarkable speed.
“Ah!” he said at last. “Godelot, the author of Magick Moste Evile, explains in his notebook that he wrote his famous reference book on Dark Arts with the help of his ‘moste wicked and subtle friend, with bodie of Ellhorn’!” Before Gellert could say anything, Albus placed his finger over the word “Ellhorn,” only to pull it back with a pained yelp.
“Ouch!” Albus frowned at the little drop of blood that came out of his index finger. “That stung!”
“Sorry,” Gellert said with a contrite smile. “I should have warned you.”
“You should.” Albus glowered at him, licking the drop of blood off his hand. Gellert suddenly found it uncomfortably warm in the room. He hurriedly looked away, staring at the open page.
“And you should wash your finger rather than lick it after touching an old book,” Gellert scolded, trying to divert Albus’s attention from the blush that had surely formed on his cheeks by now. “You never know which forms of mould and magical contamination the parchment could contain.”
“I doubt there is any real danger,” Albus said with a shrug. “You got stung, too, didn’t you? And you’re still alive as well.”
“But I didn’t lick my darn index finger!” Gellert glowered at him. By contrast, Albus’s gaze softened and he gave an amused chuckle.
“Your concern for my health is quite endearing, but I assure you it’s entirely uncalled-for,” he said with a smile. Then he bowed over the book again, and Gellert decided that maybe it wasn’t so bad that their heads were almost touching as they read in it.
“Well,” Albus said after his eyes had darted over the passage. “I’m afraid that’s not as helpful as it could be. Yes, it may serve as evidence that a particularly powerful wand made of elder actually exists, but all we know is that the early medieval wizard Godelot had a powerful wand made of elder that he used to help him write his collection of dangerous spells. We also know he was starved by his own son Hereward so he could gain ownership of that wand. What we don’t learn, sadly, is the exact amount of power Godelot’s wand had and what happened to the wand after Hereward gained possession of it.”
“That’s true,” Gellert admitted. “I—we?” He gave Albus a hopeful glance, but the other boy’s expression remained unreadable. “We,” he continued nonetheless, “need to find later evidence for the Elder Wand’s existence, and we need to learn if it is really as powerful as legend has it. But if it is...” He looked up, staring directly at Albus. “If it really is that powerful, and if you can really learn ancient spells from it that its former owners performed, it will be of great help to us because it cannot be easily overcome.”
“Very well.” Albus slid away from the book, resting his back against the wall. “Assuming that I decide to help you, and assuming that we actually manage to find the Elder Wand ... which one of us should have it?” His tone was not suspicious, not accusatory; merely curious. “You—or me?”
“I thought we could ... maybe ... share it?” Gellert glanced nervously at Albus.
“Share it?” Albus raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you want it just for yourself?”
“I...” Gellert blushed. “I think that’s exactly the problem all the former owners of the Elder Wand had. They boasted with it, like the eldest of the three brothers in the tale, or they wanted it so much they killed their own family for it, like Hereward did with his father.” He thrummed his fingers nervously, stilling them as he realised that he was quite close to putting them on the stinging pages of the old book. “I admit the story of the Hallows fascinated me ever since I first heard of them, but I don’t want the Elder Wand just to possess it. I want it because I want to use it for my—our cause.” He paused, only to add in a low tone and in a very rushed manner: “I so want this to be our cause, not just mine.”
“Why?” Again, something in Albus’s gaze had shifted; something Gellert couldn’t quite read.
“Because you’re brilliant!” Gellert exclaimed. “And I don’t say that because Aunt Batty told me so; I say that because I’ve never been able to talk about any of my ideas the way I did today. I believe I’ve only got a glimpse into your magic so far, but what I saw—what you made me See ... That was amazing.” He looked at Albus, half expectant and half nervous of his reaction.
“Gellert,” Albus said. Gellert was still unable to read his tone and it was almost driving him up the pole. “What you said about the freedom to be who you are ... that we need to prevent the dreadful scenario you Saw ... your idea to use the Elder Wand to make sure you can overcome the forces opposed to the idea of change ... All of that sounds quite appealing to me.”
Gellert stared at him, full of hope and yet reluctant. Quite? What did Albus mean by quite?
“But I think you’ve focused too much on your ideas so far,” Albus continued. “What you need is a strategy. A method to convince people in a way that goes beyond showing them your visions.” Albus locked eyes with him. Gellert’s heart was beating faster. He had realised by now Albus tended to avoid looking directly into someone’s eyes unless he thought it necessary to get a point across.
“I can help you come up with a strategy,” Albus said. “Let’s make this our cause.”
Notes:
Semmi baj, Gellért, minden rendben van... is Hungarian for Nothing’s wrong, Gellert, everything is alright... Thank you to the lovely Ivett (isabellaofparma on tumblr) for helping me with the Hungarian! ❤️
Neither Faris Spavin nor Nicholas Flamel are mentioned as characters on chocolate frog cards by JKR, but I figured there would likely be cards at the end of the 19th century that aren’t printed at the end of the 20th century anymore. They’ve probably become expensive collectors’ items by now. (I do think it would be reasonable to assume Nicholas Flamel has his own chocolate frog card, though.)
The “quote from Godelot’s notebook” is taken from Albus Dumbledore’s commentary on “The Tale of the Three Brothers” in The Tales of Beedle the Bard. (As someone who’s interested in the history of the English language, I feel the need to point out that Godelot, as an early medieval figure, should have written in Old English rather than in this toned down mock Middle English. Then again, maybe Albus is quoting from a later source that didn’t retain the original Old English... ;) )
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Seventeen (Once and Never Again)
The joke: a Themis graduate/rock star falls in with another alumnus whom he hated and a Great Thief. The punchline? Who better to understand how it is to be shaped by betrayal.
on ao3
A lot of the faces at the Prosecutors Office are familiar, even after years away, because the average age trends about two decades older than Klavier and at that point little changes other than the one Payne’s horrible hair. The most familiar face he absolutely does not want to see is two days after he gets back — he is coming out of the elevator, still puzzling over a conversation he had this morning with Prosecutor Edgeworth that felt like it had at least three hidden layers. And there in front of him is someone he remembers from school who he wishes he didn't.
Sebastian Debeste looks older, but not by much — not by seven years, with his round face and hair much the same — and wears glasses now, his eyes gone huge behind them as he recognizes Klavier. They stare at each other, Klavier struggling for something to say, anything, even just "Hello, Prosecutor Debeste," and he manages nothing before Debeste, who was probably going to the elevator, makes an undignified retreat toward the stairwell. He is barely out of Klavier's way before Klavier bolts for the main lobby, sure that Debeste’s eyes follow his flight.
He isn't assigned to a case that goes to trial for a month and a half after his return; it does not take him long to refamiliarize himself with the office, but it gives him time to come to know the people who have arrived since his departure. He ends up down at the precinct a lot, consulting with the detectives there, learning the faces he hasn't seen before. He wishes he could work with Daryan again — one of the things he likes about Daryan is that even if he has his moments in which he is an asshole, he is consistent in it, and Klavier knows what to expect from him.
Others, not so much.
The first time he realizes that he is going to have trouble is a week after he returns to the office and he is sent down to the precinct to seek out Detective Gumshoe. Klavier recognizes the name, remembers the detective from that damned Gramarye trial, and recalls him being amiable. This recollection ends up in pieces approximately ten seconds after encountering the detective. Klavier manages to say, "Herr Gumshoe, I have some files that were requested from the office. My name is—"
"Yeah, pal, I remember you. Gavin, the kid who made Mr. Wright lose his badge!"
Something in his chest flash-freezes, brittle frost clinging in between his bones. He thrusts the files into Gumshoe's hands without a warning. "Phoenix Wright," he says coldly, his throat beginning to lock and leaving every word clipped short, "lost his badge himself, for forging evidence."
"Tell yourself that all you want, pal," the detective says (and Klavier does tell himself that, often, every time that trial's ghost emerges from the grave to haunt him. He has to tell himself that, he can't have been wrong; it has to have been Phoenix Wright, all him, only him), "but I know Mr. Wright, I knew him for a long time, and he would never do something like that!" The detective is at eye-level with Klavier, seeming a little shorter when he hunches, his shoulders high, staring down Klavier, like a bull about to charge.  
"Then I'm sorry that he disappointed you," he says, and the lump in his throat has dissolved into a bitter-tasting bile, knew him for a long time and he would never, "but sometimes no matter how many years you've known someone, you don't actually at all."
Something must show on his face because for a moment the detective falters, something like pity flashing across his features, and even when he again appears as though he wants to charge Klavier down, something of his anger is gone. "Yeah, but not Mr. Wright."
What would it be like, he wonders, to have the detective's staunch, unreasoning loyalty; his is the faith of hundreds of witnesses Klavier spoke with in his time as prosecutor, every loved one, family member, friend, of a suspect who insisted again and again, they would never do this, they could never do this, I know them and there's no way—
Is everyone like that in some way? The thought flits across his mind and lodges itself in his heart which feels swollen too big for his chest, like it will soon suffocate him. Is it Klavier who is wrong, somehow, to think that the only thing that even seemed remotely implausible about the story is that Kris left behind enough evidence to be caught?
Much as he hates the tailspin into existential crisis, hates the reminder of the case that led him to flee the office, sometimes he thinks Gumshoe’s objection to him is better than the alternative. Gumshoe at least had a real, concrete problem with his real, concrete past actions, rather than, like other detectives and prosecutors he keeps knocking heads with, taking issue with a facsimile of Klavier Gavin constructed only on rumor and presumption. He’s used to people reading him wrong; he just expects it from the tabloids, not coworkers.
“You’re not on tour anymore, dude,” Daryan says to him one day at lunch, in the middle of May, three weeks after their return. “Nobody loves you here.”
“Quite rude of you to say,” Klavier says. “Not even you, Daryan?” He tries to put his chin on Daryan’s shoulder but is shoved away with a hand in his face before he can manage. “My own friend, betraying me like this? After everything we’ve been through?”
“I’m gonna hate you in a minute if I didn’t, dude.” Daryan rolls his eyes but is laughing.
“You’re also quite wrong. I’ve met a few fans down here at the precinct.” It’s the opposite side of the coin from those who dismiss him as a vapid rock star; these detectives, the fans, still only know him as a construct. But at least it is a kind of interaction at which he is well-practiced.
“Almost evens out the fact that Skye hates you extra.” Daryan shakes his head. “She’s a fuckin’ ice queen, hates everyone, but god, dude, what did you do?”
“I have never seen her before in my life.” Another virtue of Gumshoe: he aired his grievances, not like Skye, who told Klavier to fuck off without either preamble or a follow-up. “I suppose it is my natural effect on women, ja?”
“You mean the part where you instill in them an insatiable lust for murder?”
“Yes.”
“Cool; just wanted to be clear, so that we — oh my god not again.”
“What?”
Daryan is looking at something through the doorway to the hall, at an angle Klavier can’t see. He sits up and leans over Daryan’s shoulder to follow his same line of sight. “Vending machines,” Daryan says, gesturing to the machines, and the young woman sitting on the floor in front of them. “She’s always fucking doing this.”
“Who, and what?”
Daryan stands and motions for Klavier to follow. “Yo, Faraday,” he calls on approach.
The woman looks up. She has long beautiful glossy black hair that she swings over her shoulder with a toss of her head. “Hi, Daryan!” she chirps. Klavier can see now that she has her hands stuck through the flap of the vending machine, maneuvering what appears to be pliers duct-taped to two pieces of rubber tubing. He thinks he can see the concept behind it — the tubes as extensions of the handles to operate the pliers and grab a bag of chips — but in practice it does not seem to be working out that way.
“There’s other vending machines in this building, you know.” Daryan sounds like he has said this before. He sounds weary.
“Yeah, but none of them stock Snackoos, and I paid for my Snackoos, so I want my Snackoos!” The pliers clatter noisily against the inside of the glass pane as she attempts to extract her innovative mechanism. “Haven’t seen you around before,” she says to Klavier, apparently unconcerned with holding a conversation from the floor. “Are you new here? I’m Detective Kay Faraday!” She grins and extends a hand up to him.
“Prosecutor Klavier Gavin.” He has to awkwardly double over to shake her hand. “I worked here before but have spent several years on leave.”
“Oh, so like Daryan.” About five seconds pass in silence and then Faraday gasps. “Wait! Are you in his band too?”
His band? Klavier does not have to look at his friend to know the smug expression that must be on his face, but he chances a glance anyway and yes, Daryan looks very smug. “Ja, he is in my band.” Daryan shoulder-checks him right into the vending machine. With the collision, the bag of Snackoos is jarred loose.
“Thanks, guys!” Faraday says brightly, retrieving her snack from the machine and jumping to her feet. “Anyway that’s cool that you’re in a band. That sounds way more exciting than the average day around here.”
“It is,” Daryan says.
Faraday shoves a handful of chocolate into her mouth and her bright eyes dart between the two of them. Klavier can see the question, the obvious why did you come back to work, then? and he forces the detached mask of celebrity and its empty smile, back into its place. “Hey, you know what’s cool about here, though?” she asks. “Me!” She places a playful punch on Klavier’s chest. “Maybe we’ll get to work together!”
Klavier knows a genuine smile when he sees one; Faraday’s is. “Perhaps we will.”
“I’ve gotta get going,” she says through another mouthful of chocolate. “See you later, Daryan!”
She darts off down the hall with her hair swinging behind her like a cape. “That’s Faraday,” Daryan says, still sounding something between tired and bored. “The unstoppable force to” — he hits the vending machine — “this ol’ bastard of an immovable object.”
“I think I like her,” Klavier says.
Daryan rolls his eyes. “Always a sucker for a pretty face.”
“Blatantly untrue.”
Daryan looks at him.
“Maybe a little true.” But he has to admire the tenacity of someone who has improvised an invention that attempts to optimize her vending machine experience. Plus, she didn’t blow him off like more of his coworkers than not have.
And she is pretty. That is true.
He isn’t lucky enough to be assigned to work with her on his first case back out on investigation. He has to work with Skye instead, which is a miserable experience for both of them, and he is almost ready to wish he had never returned right until he meets the reason exactly why he returned. When the girl, pouting about not being allowed to investigate the crime scene, hands him the letter of defense request, he looks down and nearly drops it in shock, faced with the name Apollo Justice. That is the man who has been staring unabashedly at him, then.
He escorts them into the crime scene anyway, because he has looked it all over and will know if something has been changed. And Skye remains with her Snackoos and fury and he imagines if they touch anything she will tear them apart. If Justice is corrupt and tries anything, he and Skye will catch it, and he will nail him to the wall in court tomorrow and be done with it.
That isn’t how it happens and by the end of the case he thinks he has a little more measure of the man and no more perspective on Kristoph, which doesn’t really surprise him. Daryan heckles him for losing his first trial back. Faraday hears half of their conversation and, apparently having talked to Skye about the investigation at another point, demands to know who on earth if not the mafia prince was the murderer. Daryan wanders off back to work after getting tired of Faraday snickering like a child at the word panties as Klavier tells the abridged version of the trial. “Finally, an interesting case, and Ema doesn’t even appreciate it.” She pats Klavier on the shoulder. “It’s okay though; she doesn’t like anyone.” She pauses, her hand hovering in the air. “Except me, of course.”
The next three weeks of cases he continues to work with Skye. He is starting to grow used to hostility — from her, from other prosecutors, especially Edgeworth, and Klavier can see himself thrown out the door when the mantle of Chief Prosecutor falls to him as it looks wont to do sometime in the next year — and started to ignore it. It’s isolating, certainly, when the three nicest to him since he arrived back have been the dog he didn’t know Kristoph had that he is now responsible for, and at work Faraday, who he sees less frequently than the hawk that at some point took up residence in the courthouse. (And if he really wants to feel lonely, the only other two names he can add to the list of “most pleasant interactions with people I didn’t already know” are Justice, the man who put his brother in jail, and his assistant who Klavier took to be his little sister until he saw her name is Wright.) But he’s spending more time back with the band, prepping for a concert in their home city for the first time in years, and that takes a little bit of the sting away.
He does email Faraday, and Justice and Fraülein Junior Wright, inviting them all to the concert. He’s definitely not desperate for a social circle outside of his band. He’d invite the hawk too if it wasn’t a bird and thus probably unable to read, or have an email. Fraülein Wright emails back with no less than a dozen smiley faces and five less-than-three hearts. Faraday’s response is much less prompt and contains about seventeen frowny faces interspersed between phrases about how she already had plans and save a ticket for me for the next one!!
Sincerity is the hardest thing to gauge in text and Klavier has no way to know how genuinely Faraday means what she wrote until he runs into her at the Prosecutors Office two days before the concert. Or rather, she runs into him, with no more warning than a yell of “Yo! Klavier!” before he is knocked off-balance by a fast-moving humanoid shape.
“H-hello.” He manages to stabilize himself against a wall and Faraday is beaming at him.
“You know, Daryan mentioned the concert last week and like — Sunshine Coliseum is kinda a big deal — so I went and looked you guys up and shit, you guys are actually legit celebrities! And your music is actually really good!”
There is a moment during which what she says has not registered; and then it does, and Klavier doubles over wheezing.
“You thought we were bad?” he manages to gasp out.
Faraday throws her hands in the air. “Well, how was I supposed to know? The only pop culture I’ve been in tune with in the past decade are some eighteen new derivations of the Steel Samurai!” She wrinkles her nose but is still grinning.
“I preferred the Jammin’ Ninja, myself.”
She glances around as though she expects the Steel Samurai to materialize through one of the walls for the slander. “Word of warning,” she says in a voice dramatically hushed. “I might agree, but don’t say such things ‘round these parts.”
“What, that the original Steel Samurai was an overrated show with poor production values and—”
Faraday slaps her hand over his mouth with such force that his head bounces off the wall. “No!” she cries. “Sorry, that probably hurt.”
Klavier wonders what anyone else passing through the lobby thinks of whatever is happening here. “It did,” he says when she removes her hand and steps back, putting a little space between them again.
“I swear I didn’t come over here to beat you up,” she says with a grin that does not look very apologetic. “If I give you my schedule in advance, you’d pick the date of your next concert based on that, right? I would really love to go.”
In that, he can read her sincerity. “I have not a clue when our next show will be,” he says, because this concert is meant to be something of an end note, and an apology, but also mostly to rectify the fact that he didn’t get to perform with Lamiroir before he had to come running home, “but once a day is chosen, I will inform you immediately, ja?”
“It’s a date!” she exclaims. “Get me front-row tickets so I can heckle you.”
“Don’t push your luck, Fraülein.”
She sticks her tongue out at him. “Well, I think — oh, hey, Seb!” She bounces on her heels and waves across the lobby to flag someone down.
It’s just Klavier’s luck that she’s friends with Prosecutor Debeste.
“Kay, what are you — oh. H-hi, Prosecutor Gavin.”
“I had something to run by Mr Edgeworth. You two know each other?”
Debeste eyes Klavier with suspicion benefitting a stray alley cat. “We… were in the same year in the same school,” Klavier answers, when it looks like Debeste won’t.
“Oh.” Like a balloon sputtering out, Faraday deflates. She looks at Debeste and her mouth twitches into a frown, just momentarily, but long enough that it is clear something is unspokenly passing between them. “And you studied abroad, too, right?” she asks, and the chirp like a songbird is back in her voice, pushing aside whatever it was that made her falter. They talk about banal things, where in Europe he was, where in Europe she and Debeste assisted on Interpol cases — and if anything has Klavier reassessing his old impressions of Debeste, it is that — until Debeste nudges her in the shoulder and points at his watch.
She sprints out the door yelling her goodbyes across the lobby, receiving dirty looks from everyone else around, and leaves Klavier and Debeste with each other since they saw each other two months ago. “So you, uh, know Kay,” he says, twisting his hands together and toying with the fingertips of his gloves.
“Ja. You are friends?”
Klavier almost takes pity on him and goes for the stairs instead of the elevator, but instead they both wait there, Debeste’s foot tapping at the floor with impressive speed. “Yeah, we — we’ve worked together for a long time. Since — well.”
Since something he doesn’t want to talk about. Klavier can guess. He had been at the Prosecutors Office since January. He remembers the events that started off April.
When the elevator doors crawl open, Debeste almost looks like he wants to run. “Herr Debeste,” Klavier says, staring at the numbered buttons and wondering which floor Debeste’s office is on. Debeste stops on the threshold and the doors bounce open again off of him. “I find myself thinking, since our last encounter, that I am far from the man I was at seventeen, ja?” And better, too, he hopes.
Debeste keeps his face firmly turned forward, but his eyes dart toward Klavier. He takes that as a cue to continue. “And I should hate to be judged as who I was seven years ago.” And maybe that can’t be helped, maybe the Gramarye case will be his mantle for all time, but he at least can be less of an asshole than he was in that trial. He won’t let Kristoph decide how he should act toward anyone else. He decided that with Justice. “And I think then I should offer you that same courtesy as well, to not be judged as who you were.”
Because frankly, Klavier remembers him being an idiot.
(An Interpol consultant, really?)
“Ah, yeah.” Debeste chuckles somewhat nervously. “I was, um, insufferable when I was seventeen.”
“Ach, I was quite the douchebag myself.”
Debeste snorts. “I mean — Kay hated me at first. How hard to you have to work to get Kay to dislike you?”
Rather hard, Klavier thinks, considering that she likes Daryan, who is off-putting on first impression to most people. “Well, she never met me at seventeen.”
Debeste’s office is on the twelfth floor. He stops with his hand over the door, frowning like he has something difficult to say, but when he opens his mouth all that he says is, “See you around, Prosecutor Gavin.”
And Klavier doesn’t think more of it that day, but later, when the dust has not settled but is no longer being stirred up higher into the sky, he is staring at an email from his manager, cc’d to the publicist team, a charred guitar on the table behind him, and he thinks, at least he’s one more person I can add to the “pleasant interactions” list.
He didn’t know it was possible to be this tired.
He starts talking more to the hawk and to Vongole. He ignores an email from Professor Courte and three of deteriorating professionalism from Faraday. He chats about the weather with Debeste, ignores the look around his eyes that shows him struggling to figure out how to broach the topic. He lies to his bandmates and says that he was asleep when they send concerned texts checking in, even though he doesn’t sleep before one am most nights.
He doubted the accusation leveled against Daryan more than he ever doubted the initial news about Kris, right up until the reasoning started to line up too well, make too much sense; but the conversation of several months ago with Gumshoe still haunts him, the way the detective believed even in the face of evidence. I knew him for a long time, and he would never—
But he did, Wright did and Kris did and Daryan did. Sometimes no matter how many years you've known someone, you don't actually at all. Isn’t that what Klavier said? Isn’t that what he keeps discovering for himself? How could the detective still believe in Wright? It isn’t supposed to be like that, not after the verdict comes down. Not after the evidence is —
Evidence is everything.
At the end of July his attempts at work one morning are interrupted by a furious banging on his door. “Klavier Gavin!” The voice is surprisingly unmuffled by the solid wood in between them. “Yo! I know you’re in there! Seb says he sees your bike still here when he leaves and already in when he comes in. Do you sleep here? That’s kinda gross, like go home and shower, dude.” A different intonation of thump comes from lower on the door. Klavier assumes she kicked it. “I see the light on in there! I know you can’t be sleeping through this racket! Show yourself, villain!”
Klavier rests his head on his desk. His attempt to tell her to go away comes out of his throat a barely-audible croak.
The door handle rattles, then stops. When the silence has gone on for about a minute, he starts to think that he is free, only for the lock to click and the door to slowly swing inward. He springs to his feet, nearly overturning his chair, and Faraday appears on the threshold, kicking the door fully open. “Faraday, what the—”
“You weren’t answering your door,” she says. “Or your email.”
“Then take a hint!”
She steps into his office and pushes the door back closed behind her. “Nice guitars,” she says brightly, and as her eyes drift from the wall to Lamiroir’s still on the table, she frowns. “It’s a shame about that.”
“Faraday.”
“About everything,” she adds. “When you find out someone’s not who you thought they were.”
She’s trying to sympathize. Klavier can only half-swallow the anger that was brewing in the pit of his stomach. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he says. He’d already had to talk about it. He’d had to say something and then it had to be filtered and curated and caked in stage makeup to be acceptable to be read by the world. The statements released to social media were barely made of his words, by the end; because his words weren’t coherent and the feelings they conveyed couldn’t be sanitized and rather were quarantined.
They are celebrities, him and Daryan, and they never belonged to themselves. Their meteoric rise and the blazing place of glory from which they fell were never theirs.
“Then can I talk?” Faraday asks. She’s sitting on a precarious stack of binders that he hasn’t returned to their places. He starts to raise a hand to gesture her to the door and stops. He combs his bangs out of his face instead. He doesn’t say anything.
“I wondered what people were saying, like online and stuff,” she says, and Klavier looks back at her in alarm, trying to read from her face whether she has stumbled into that part of the fandom. Her expression doesn’t hint as to the presence of repressed horrors working back to the surface, so it seems she didn’t. “And it’s weird, that there’s all these people who never met you who are mourning this thing that happened, and that even me knowing him for a couple months means I knew someone different than they’re thinking.”
She leans toward him like she’s offering him the chance to follow that. He does not take it. “Because I actually knew him as a person, you know?” And still didn’t even realize that they were celebrities until they basically told her. “I split a pack of Swiss rolls with him that last day. He was pissed about not being on the case” — Klavier knows this — “and I told him not to worry, because the truth always comes to light and we always make sure the innocent get their due.” She frowns. Her perch wobbles beneath her and she plants her feet back firmly on the floor. “I meant that to be reassuring but I guess it didn’t work like that.”
“Nein. Not at all.”
Her dark eyes stay fixed on his face. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s all.” When she stands, the tower of binders slips apart to scatter across the floor. “Ah — shit.”
“I will arrange those,” Klavier says, waving his hand to dismiss her from the mess she has made. “Just try not to sit on anything else, ja?”
“I will sit on everything,” she says, looking and sounding very serious despite the actual words. Her eyes are wide like an owl’s when she stops on her way back out the door. “Everything.”
She sends him the culmination of the unprofessional emails the next day, consisting of seven emoticons, three words abbreviated and two misspelled, inviting him out to drinks with herself, Debeste, and Skye. He declines. Better not to push his relationship with Detective Skye from “workplace antagonism” to “off-hours hostility”, although some of the concert evening before the murder happened probably tripped them over that line. He can tell when he’s not wanted. It might not cause his behavior to change in any way, but he can tell, and this one isn’t a fight worth having.
Except Faraday keeps emailing him invitations, and then whether she convinced him or he made the step himself, Debeste starts asking him if he wants to join their outings. It’s harder to decline him, in person, when he’s making sad puppy eyes at Klavier over cheap sushi they grabbed for a quick lunch. The sudden sensation of guilt blindsides Klaiver; does he feel bad for disappointing Debeste? Is that what this is? How is one of his few friendly relationships with someone he knew just well enough to hate in school?
“Why does Kay like you?” Skye asks him.
“Why does she like you?”
Skye flips him off. He isn’t sure when she dropped the act of cool professional disdain but now at least they can be honest about where they stand: sweet sweet mutual antagonism.
“She doesn’t really like me either,” Debeste says. “She knows how to hold grudges.”
Klavier should know how to navigate that kind of person, but really, he doesn’t. His conversation with Debeste turns to the “secret project” that there have been rumors of since the start of the summer — some foundational plans for reform, Debeste says, which he has apparently learned from Edgeworth, though that is also all he has learned from Edgeworth — and an Interpol case that very likely will be pulling Debeste and Faraday off the continent for the month of September. Once they are gone, Faraday sends more emails that come at odd hours for both Los Angeles and France — and then Cohdopia, then Romania, then Germany. Klavier knows absolutely nothing about what the pair are up to besides their ever-changing locations. Their case keeps them away into October.
The winds are shifting back at home, too. He and Skye are told the morning of that they are the prosecutor and detective presiding over the (pardon the pun) trial run of those mentioned reforms. Klavier starts to say that he really would have liked to have had some advance warning as to his role in the Jurist System, and to know at least a little about the committee that has been working on this since — when, exactly?
And then he is told that Wright is involved and he throws his hands up. Of course there is no warning. Of course there is no preparation time. A man who has never once in his life thought ahead about anything would not offer others the courtesy. The only thing he and Skye can agree on is that they don’t like to be left scrambling but aren’t surprised that they have been.
It’s Wright. This is the best he will give.
The victim’s name is Drew Misham. Klavier tells himself he doesn’t know that name. He tells himself it’s coincidence. He tells himself it has nothing to do with that.
(But it’s Wright. He must have an extra ace up his sleeve. Why else would he want the man who disbarred him to stand as prosecutor for his pet project?)
And it’s not a simple case (of course not), and it’s not coincidence. Face the music, Gavin; there’s no way out but down through the dark.
When he gets home after the first day in court, after a second investigation that yields nothing but frustration, he passes out on his couch and ignores emails from Courte, Debeste, and Faraday, all asking about the Jurist System.
He ignores new ones the next day, too.
Instead of calling in sick, which he probably couldn’t be blamed for doing, he goes in to the office while the last vestiges of night still cling to the slowly-lightening sky. It could be inspiration for a song; it could be a metaphor. He lets it go without further acknowledgement. He doesn’t get any work done; instead he remembers when his brother came to visit him in this office seven years ago. He remembers his brother’s laugh, yesterday. He still leaves late and goes in early again the next day. It means he doesn’t have to talk to anyone but still almost feels useful for being there.
At nine am, still early enough that some of the less dedicated have not yet arrived, someone knocks on his door. He wants to ignore it.
“Prosecutor Gavin?”
He stares at the computer screen in front of him which has gone dark. His reflection — a hot fucking mess if he can say so himself — stares back. He can’t let anyone see him like this. He has a face to uphold, a reputation that has already been tarnished enough.
“Prosecutor Gavin? I saw your motorcycle in the garage. I know you’re here.”
When did Debeste get back?
Klavier opens the door.
Debeste doesn’t look much better than Klavier feels — clothes rumpled, hair a ruffled mess, eyes visibly bloodshot beneath his glasses. “When did you get back?” Klavier asks, because Debeste looks surprised at his appearance, as though he was prepared to keep knocking and had no plan in place for if Klavier were to answer. “You look terrible.”
“To the office? An hour ago. I had some things to clear with Prosecutor Edgeworth. To Los Angeles? Three hours ago.” He blinks for a whole second and shudders, shaking his head, trying to wake himself. “I wanted to know what your thoughts on the Jurist System are, from being there.”
It made me lose my brother.
As though he didn’t lose Kris long ago.
Klavier steps aside to let Debeste in. “I think it could be a very good thing,” he says.
They talk about other cases where they have been left scrambling for evidence, because evidence was everything; about how to possibly even begin implementing this system on a larger scale; about the kind of shifts in office culture that will need to happen; about how it would affect curriculum at Themis Academy. Klavier thinks he might escape having to talk about the cause of that look of pity that Debeste keeps shooting him. There’s so much else to discuss, and Klavier can skirt around the details of the case just enough that a certain name isn’t mentioned. Not by him.
But when there’s a lull, Debeste says, “I’m sorry.”
“I need to get back to work,” Klavier says.
He stands and gestures to the door. Debeste gets to his feet but does not move.
“I didn’t know what to do when my father was gone,” he continues. “I faced him and said what I wanted to but then I had no idea what to do after that. I knew who I wanted to be but how to get there seemed like an impassib—impassable wall. But I learned to accept help from other people. That’s what I had to do.”
Klavier had looked it up out of curiosity, some months ago. Blaise Debeste was executed last May, falling squarely in the middle of the average five-to-seven years from sentencing to conviction. “I’m quite fine on my own, Herr Debeste.”
But the question that Gumshoe left him with nearly half a year ago still hangs over him like a shroud. “When the charges were first raised against him, did you think, simply, there is no way he did this? Were you surprised?”
“Of course I was,” he replies, which is not really the response Klavier wants to hear. “Someone I trusted made the accusation and I couldn’t believe it.” And someone who Klavier was sure to be corrupt brought the charges, and Klavier barely doubted. “I thought my father could do no wrong, certainly not murder. And then — and then there was one piece of evidence, one detail that was so distinctly my father that I… I realized. Even I couldn’t miss that one.”
He fidgets nervously while he waits for Klavier to respond, but he does not say anything else, not even the question he must be thinking: Why do you ask?
Why does he ask? Maybe he needs more than a hawk or his brother’s dog to confide in. Maybe he needs to clean the skeletons from the closet he alone keeps. After the secrets he and Kristoph shared came to light, maybe it is time for this, too.
“I was… surprised, quite, to learn he had committed murder, but I did not doubt it. I did not question the veracity of the charges until I saw Wright’s name as a person involved and only then did I wonder, could my brother have been framed? And even then, I asked myself, is Kris capable of murder, and I figured, yes. Who believes that so easily, so readily, of their own family? What is wrong with me?” He stumbles back into his chair, sinking down in it, clutching his head with his hands. The silent screaming inside his skull has taken physical form, a pounding from the inside out. “And after all those years that I trusted Kris too much — I trusted him enough that I ruined an innocent man’s life! Unthinking! Unquestioned!”
Only later, only too late, did he question, and he did not allow himself to consider other answers. “I trusted him just as long as it took to fuck everything up! I should have asked more questions — I should have been more suspicious — how could I not even have questioned why he knew about the forgery! How could I have been such an idiot?” He hears from Debeste the sharp intake of air through gritted teeth at the word. “To not even ask! To think nothing was wrong when so much did not make sense! I was a prosecutor! It was my job to question! To never assume — to never simply believe!”
Klavier looks up. Debeste is quiet, his expression stricken and his eyes wide and teary and fixed on the window behind Klavier. He moves to sit on the table next to him, misses, and thuds down to the floor. Blinking fiercely, he says, “If you’d stayed at Themis and not gone off to study abroad, you should have been valedictorian.”
“You were valedictorian of our class,” Klavier says, head back in his hands. “Why should my presence make a difference in regards to your standing, ja?”
“No, I mean — you should have been. You wouldn’t have but you should have and I—” His breath shudders when he inhales and he holds it for a moment before his shoulders slump with his exhale. “My father bought my grades.”
Klavier blinks.
“I don’t know if it was with money, or influence, or threats, or the agge — aggregate, of the possibilities, but none of my accomplishments were mine. My class rank wasn’t mine, my badge wasn’t mine, and I didn’t notice. Not until he told me.” Sebastian fiddles with the badge on his lapel. “Everything was because he wanted a shining star of a son to crown his rule and even if he didn’t have that he could at least make people think he did. He made me think I was what he wanted. I didn’t question it. I never doubted.”
“He was your father,” Klavier says. “He was Chief Prosecutor, he was Chairman” — he had power of the likes that Kristoph could only dream — “and surely a man like that is trustworthy, ja? Surely you can trust your father, ja? Surely your father has no reason to lie to you, and you were seventeen.”
Sebastian is still blinking back tears but his lips curl into the tiniest smirk. “Yeah,” he says. “And surely you can trust your brother, yeah? Surely your brother has no reason to lie to you. You were seventeen.”
A turnabout worthy of any of the trials in which Apollo stands behind the bench.
Klavier rubs his eyes. “Perhaps we should not have been prosecutors at seventeen, ja?” But Klavier had a harder time facing down his brother at twenty-four than seventeen, while Sebastian at seventeen could still throw his father’s yoke from his shoulders.
“And maybe our families shouldn’t have been…” Sebastian makes a noncommittal noise and shrugs.
“Manipulative douchebags?”
Sebastian’s laugh is weak. “I don’t think that was what I was going for but it might be a synonym.” When he drags his fingers through his hair he doesn’t smooth it down but instead pushes strands up out of alignment. “It’s hard to face the truth but it’s always better once it’s done.”
And Klavier knows that. He’s always known that. But there’s something slightly comforting in someone else caring enough to make the reminder, like Apollo, almost adorable in his earnestness, try to remember what’s really important to you. “It is,” he agrees softly.
“I’ll let you get back to work,” Sebastian says, clambering back up to his feet. Klavier starts to tell him that was an excuse, a hollow pretense for Klavier to throw him out before he had to talk about the pain of the past six months; but Sebastian probably knows that, right? Knows that and has given them both a graceful way out. “And I need to go shower and sleep because I haven’t for thirty hours.”
“You didn’t sleep on the plane?” Klavier asks.
“Not with Kay around. She gets very excited finding out which of her favorite movies she can watch. And insist that I watch.”
Klavier does not know what Faraday’s tastes in film are, but he has a hunch that there is very little good about them. “Ach, perhaps you should deal with that,” he says.
“See you around, Prosecutor Gavin,” Sebastian says.
Klavier stares at the closed door long after he has left. Maybe he should get some sleep, too.
He deliberates it with eyes unfocused on the darkened screen of his computer and after some ten minutes he gathers himself together to call out. He goes home to Vongole’s tail thumping on the floor, no idea of his turmoil — just happy to see him again so soon. There’s something to consider there but hell if he knows what. For a moment, when he lets himself collapse into bed, there is no weight of anything his brother has saddled him with more than the dog who thinks him a more comfortable pillow than the three beds he has failed to convince her to use.
When he wakes up around dinnertime, it is to an email from Faraday inviting him out to drinks on Friday with Sebastian and Skye. His usual answer is already typed out, his finger hovering over the send button, before he really starts to think. Vongole is barking from her bowl and he deletes the message as he pours out some food for her. His new reply is one word: Sure.
Maybe he’ll regret it, but Skye throwing a drink in his face or him making Sebastian hate him again or whatever could happen will be no worse than the ever-growing stack of regrets from every other point in his life.
Skye doesn’t directly address him all night, which is about what Klavier expected, but the surprising thing is that she seems to tolerate Sebastian quite well, despite what he said once about her disliking him. She leaves early, to Faraday’s chagrin, saying that she’s taken a vacation “after that shitshow Mr. Wright dumped us into” (that “us” being the most neutral way she has ever acknowledged Klavier’s existence) and is flying out to see her sister in the morning.
“You’re gonna be getting drunk on the plane anyway!” Faraday whines, hanging halfway out of her chair with her arms around Skye’s waist. If Skye takes one more step, Faraday will hit the ground hard. “Why not just start hungover?”
“Your Interpol trips must be a blast,” Skye says over her shoulder to Sebastian as she pries Faraday’s arms apart. She looks more amused than Klavier has ever seen her. Faraday seems to have that effect on people.
“They are… something,” Sebastian says.
Faraday falls out of her chair.
When the three of them leave, later, Klavier intends to just go home, but then he is wedged between Faraday and Sebastian and somehow lets them drag him into a cab that they take back to Faraday’s apartment. “We do pizza and movie nights,” Sebastian explains as Faraday laments to no one in particular that she is craving mozzarella sticks. “Sometimes with Ema but usually just us and really awful movies.”
“Klav,” Faraday says. “Klav. Klav. Have you ever seen Giant Octopus Tsunami vs. MegaShark?”
“Why the hell would I have ever seen that?”
“Because it’s fuckin’ awesome and you are going to stay and watch it with us because Ema won’t. Like. It’s a tsunami full of giant octopuses...es and it’s gonna make landfall and destroy the city unless the scientists can engineer a giant shark to eat them all before it can—”
Klavier tips the cab driver extra.
Faraday’s apartment is a mess with the decor of a dorm room, Christmas lights strung up around the living room and pictures without frames taped up in a collage on one wall. Faraday goes into her kitchen and starts tossing bags of snacks in to Sebastian. Despite working with Skye for six months, Klavier had no idea there were this many flavors of Snackoos. He stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, unsure of where he should be while they argue about what kind of chips she needs to put on on her shopping list. The pictures draw his eye again.
A lot of them are selfies but rarely is she alone; by Klavier’s rough estimation, Sebastian is in over half of them. Most have a strip of masking tape stuck beneath them with the year and the location, and most are in Europe. Vacationing in between Interpol cases, perhaps. A woman who appears to be about their age with short grayish hair and a scowl appears in several, her expressions comical next to Faraday’s huge grins. Skye shows up a few times as well. Klavier recognizes Detective Gumshoe, of all people, in several of the photos that are unlabeled, but two include the dancing Blue Badger outside of Criminal Affairs. In one Faraday has her badge shoved toward the camera, Gumshoe beaming behind her.
In the center, in a place of honor, is a photo printed larger than the others, of Faraday, younger, and Gumshoe with, of all people, Prosecutor Edgeworth, who does not look happy to have been dragged by the neck by Faraday into frame.
He thinks of all of the curt conversations he has ever had with Edgeworth, both before he left and now that he has come back, and wonders if Faraday has lucked her way onto a barely-existent good side, or Klavier has for reasons unknown gotten on his bad side. Could it be as it was with Gumshoe — something about Wright?
Faraday and Sebastian are yelling at each other about pretzels.
On the TV stand, there stand four framed photographs. Three include Faraday: her a small child, beaming at the camera with a man with brown hair half pulled into a bun; her, slightly older, and a tall man with graying hair and a ratty gray trenchcoat; and her about the same age as prior with an older, white-haired couple. The last is of the two men together, without Faraday, the photo centered awkwardly in the frame and too small for it; the edge next to the brown-haired man is torn but the shoulder of someone else is visible.
“That’s my dad and Uncle Badd!”
Klavier jumps. He doesn’t know how Faraday got behind him without his noticing. “My dad was a prosecutor,” she says, pointing to the brown-haired man. “And Uncle Badd was the detective he always worked with, like me and Sebby now. Oh, and those are my grandparents. I lived with them after Dad was murdered.”
Klavier opens his mouth and closes it. He wouldn’t know what to say to that even if he were completely sober. “Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“It was… it was just over fourteen years ago, now,” she says. “Sometimes still hard to believe.” She smiles but it’s a sad look. “I think he’d be proud, though. Uncle Badd says he would be, whenever I go see him — he’s in prison now,” she adds, casually, like she hasn’t just dropped the heaviest parts of her life on Klavier’s shoulders with no warning. “Seven years out of fifteen for covering up evidence of thefts he and Dad committed.”
Klavier turns to stare at her. “They felt the law was too limited for some things,” she says, tugging at her scarf and swaying a little on her feet, “and that some wrongs never got brought to court, convictions that should’ve didn’t, and a smuggling ring that they were chasing — there was never enough evidence, you know? The smugglers’d do whatever to get evidence back, or kill witnesses, or whatever underhanded. And in the law they felt, like, they couldn’t do it in the law. That it’s all about evidence and sometimes there’s no legal way to get permissible evidence.”
“And evidence is everything,” Klavier says.
Kay plops down on the floor. “So they’d steal it, all these corporations who dealt with the smugglers, they’d go in and steal it and release all their shady documents to the media, and then when the break-in was investigated, Uncle Badd would make sure there was no evidence for them to catch my dad. But then they caught on, and they killed Dad.” Her sad smile reappears. “We caught ‘em eventually. I helped. And Mr. Edgeworth did too. Us and Gummy.”
Sebastian drops a bag of Snackoos on her head and offers a bag of pretzels to Klavier. They are all sitting on the floor now. “I can’t wait to tell Uncle Badd about the Jurist System,” she continues. “I don’t think it would’ve helped for the smugglers but the rest, the limitations of the law that they saw…”
“The law isn’t absolute,” Klavier says. “It has to change.”
Kay nods. She misses her mouth when she tries to eat a Snackoo. “Change to better serve justice and the truth,” she says. “I bet Dad would be happy with it too. What’s the plan for uh… um… like doing the thing, all over—”
“Implementing it?” Sebastian asks.
Kay sticks her finger in his face. “That!”
“For now the talk is that a trial will have a jury when the prosecution requests it,” Klavier says. “Ease us into it, and the public too, ja?”
“Cool,” Kay says. “That’s cool.” She flops back to lean against Sebastian’s shoulder. “I wanted to be a prosecutor once. Be just like Dad. And then I helped out on some investigations, and then watched the trials, and I decided I’d rather be out there on the crime scene than standing in court. So I became a detective instead. But wouldn’t it’ve been funny if I was a prosecutor with you guys too? Or if I’d been then maybe you’d be different things.”
Klavier shakes his head. “I only wanted to be a prosecutor,” he says. “Music was a hobby and I went to Themis and didn’t have any other plan.”
Sebastian doesn’t say anything but Klavier remembers the conversation they had about his father and doubts that there was any other path for him, either. “Oh yeah,” Kay says. “You went to Themis, too.” She reaches over and grabs a handful of pretzels from the bag Klavier has. “What was it like? I wanna know, because I went to public high school and the only thing I learned about the law is whether it’s legal to grow weed beneath the bleachers; and the answer, my friends, is shockingly no.”
“Shockingly,” Sebastian deadpans. “I mean, it was, um… dubious, considering, you know, the grades thing.” She must know the story of his father because she nods without questioning the vaguery. Didn’t he once say that the two of them had been friends since then? “Is that more or less dubious than bleacher weed?”
“One time the school got evacuated because there was a kid setting toilet paper on fire and it got mistaken for a bomb,” Kay says, which is absolutely not an answer to the question that Sebastian asked. “But I guess Klav you left and went to wherever-the-fuck in Europe—”
“Deutschland.”
“Dutch-land, where’s that?”
“Germany.”
“Oh.” Kay considers that in silence for several seconds, her eyes going crossed. “I’m super drunk.”
“I am aware.” Her story about her father and uncle was surprisingly coherent, all things considered. Klavier tries to remember what she was saying to him about Themis. It’s more difficult than he thought. He might be drunk too. “I had always wanted to study abroad,” he says. “And I knew I could likely get my badge sooner there. It wasn’t a problem with Themis, ja, that I left, though the experience did… very much depend on the professors.” He remembers the head of the prosecution course to be entirely unexceptional — or rather, he doesn’t remember. “Herr Debeste, did you ever have Professor Courte?”
“Courte… Courte… no, doesn’t sound familiar.”
“She taught the judge course — was my favorite professor. Taught me there should be no truth but that found properly, that justice cannot come from unjust means.” And it had been that which brought him to a different conclusion than Kristoph: that the law cannot be static.
Sebastian shakes his head. “No wonder I didn’t have her,” he says. “My father wouldn’t let me take a class with someone he couldn’t buy.”
No; and Courte would rather die than let herself be bought. “She was a big inspiration for me,” Klavier says. Her, and his brother; so at odds with each other. “We stayed in touch while I was studying in Germany.” And now if he could just have the guts to push through the shroud of shame to reply to her emails. How did Sebastian grow from where they were at seventeen, but Klavier regress into a neurotic wreck?
“Most of my memories of Themis are kind of terrible,” Sebastian says, “but maybe we should go back sometime. Show Kay around—”
“Best bleachers to grow weed under,” she says.
“—Introduce me to your professor.” Sebastian continues like he hadn’t heard Kay. She pouts at being ignored.
“Ja; perhaps we’ll have to do that someday.”
Kay is watching him now, and even with her face pink, her eyes a little glassy and unfocused, he can still see that she is evaluating the expression on his face, deciding what needs to be done with his crestfallen look. “Did you guys even have bleachers?” she asks, prodding his leg with her foot and grinning at him, attempting to draw one back out from him. “Or do law nerds not know how to play sportball? Hand-eye coordination test, quick!”
She throws the whole bag of Snackoos at him.
After they have spent another ten minutes reminiscing on Themis and hearing Kay’s Public School Stories that they have no way of knowing if true, Kay stands up, stumbling and nearly falling over Klavier, to find her phone to order pizza. Klavier stops her to tell them that he has to go home to let the dog out, expecting a fight with Kay like Skye had earlier. What he does not expect is Kay to whirl around to stare at him, her eyes huge, looking at him like she has never seen him before. “You have a dog?” she asks. “Holy shit you have a dog! I want to meet your dog. Klav. I gotta meet your dog.” She tumbles onto the couch. “Party with your dog. Klav. Klav. I am inviting myself over to your house. Where do you live.”
Sebastian looks absolutely mortified. “Kay—”
Klavier had known he was lonely; he had figured that out easily for himself, even before losing Daryan. He just hadn’t realized how lonely until for this portion of the evening he wasn’t. “We can get pizza with my dog, ja? So long as you do not actually feed it to her; she is getting a bit round.”
Kay is already crowing something about sleepovers and Sebastian is saying something else and Klavier thinks for a moment that he is a teenager again, naivety gone but the rest — unselfconscious and surrounded with people for a movie or games in a dorm room—
He doesn’t want to ever again be who he was at seventeen, but there might be something to keep from then in spite of it.
His apartment looks nothing like Kay’s; her mess is obviously lived in, and cozy despite itself. After six months his is still barren, empty walls and boxes containing both his and Kris’ material lives stacked in the corners. But with the three of them sprawled on the floor, Kay with her face shoved into Vongole’s fur but still arguing with Sebastian over pizza toppings, Klavier almost feels like it could one day be a home worth staying in.
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fallenloverecords · 6 years
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Interview:  Gentle Brontosaurus
Hi lovers! Here at Fallen Love headquarters we periodically interview people that we adore in order to shine a spotlight on our wonderful pop planet. We post all those interviews right here for your education and enjoyment.
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Gentle Brontosaurus are an indiepop band from Madison, Wisconsin, USA. They are Huan-Hua Chye (ukulele & keyboard), Nick Davies (keyboard & trumpet), Cal Lamore (guitar), Paul Marcou (drums), and Anneliese Valdes (bass). Fallen Love head Harley interviewed the band through a computer. Fallen Love Records: How did Gentle Brontosaurus begin? Huan-Hua: Get ready for some band lineage in excruciating detail:
Nick and I used to be in a band called TL;DR that broke up after a couple of band members moved away, so we decided to start a new band.
We knew Paul and Jon from having played with their old band, Baristacide, and we recruited Michael to play bass for us through Craigslist.
Eventually Jon decided it was time to part ways with us and we asked Cal to play guitar. Nick and I had met Cal through a songwriting website called FAWM, February Album Writing Month.
Last year Michael moved to Milwaukee and decided to leave the band so we recruited Anneliese, whom I had met via a community ukulele club called MAUI and who had filled in on bass for us a while back for a Buffy The Vampire Slayer Musical Episode cover show we did with our friends Croaker.
And here is a curated selection of a few of our other related current or recent projects you might want to check out - we are busy individuals: Square Bombs (Paul & Jon) The Werewolverine (Anneliese) The Ferns or C. H. Lamore solo (Cal) Vowl Sounds, Red Tape Diaries (Huan-Hua) Spiral Island (Nick)
FLR: All five of you sing. Was that something planned on from the early stages or did it just discover itself? HH: We used to only have three vocalists (max one lead and one backing at any given time) but decided that seven instruments and three vocals between five people wasn't making the sound guys' lives hard enough (not to mention ours) so we added some more. It has definitely been a voyage of self-discovery. I think we'll try to streamline a bit more in the future, though, since venues almost never have enough mics. FLR: Based on your social media some people might expect you to be a comedy or novelty band. Are new listeners ever caught off-guard? Nick: Is this regarding the Facebook account where we share dinosaur memes or the Twitter account where we post things like Baha Men trivia? Early on I had our genre listed as "brony rock" on Facebook just as a joke and it’s come back up occasionally. Like the time Jimmy K, a local radio personality, had both us and The Ferns (Cal's previous band) on an episode of his show and he got his intro cards mixed up and called The Ferns "brawny rock." HH: Also we got invited to put a song on an actual brony rock compilation, which was unfortunately vetoed by other band members. Anyway I aim to keep expectations at rock bottom so that new listeners can only be pleasantly surprised when we turn out to be (hopefully) honest and charming and good. I don't usually aim for funny when I'm writing songs (although sometimes it ends up there) but I usually aim to be entertaining on social media. (I usually man the Facebook account and Nick the Twitter account). I feel it's the least I can do. FLR: Who writes the lyrics? Each song carries a real depth, like a full short story condensed into four minutes. HH: Nick and I are about 50/50 on songwriting. On the first album our old guitarist wrote one and our old bassist wrote one but I think on the new album it's more or less evenly divided between me and Nick as far as lyrics go. I think the two of us share a love for possibly ill-advised wordiness and allusions so sometimes people have been surprised to find out who wrote which songs. I wrote poetry for years before ever turning to lyrics and a few songs, like "Rabbit Test", are remnants of poems or stories or concepts I could never quite make work on the written page. N: I don't intend to give every song a narrative but in addition to FAWM in February I participate in NaNoWriMo in November. Maybe some of that bleeds over into songwriting. Storytelling does provide a way to address topics without being tied to your own perspective. I'd be kind of uncomfortable writing songs all about Nick and how Nick feels right now, especially if we might decide to have someone else in the band sing it. HH: I, on the other hand, love writing songs all about HH and how HH feels right now. Maybe this is why we have so many songs about food.
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FLR: Your debut album, Names Of Things And What They Do, came out in November 2015. What was the process to get there and how has the path shifted since then? HH: That album was very DIY like our new one will be. We recorded it over a period of months in our old practice space and our old guitarist Jon mixed it. Similar approach this time around, all home recordings. It's going to be an interesting mix as some of these songs, like "Kevin Bacon", we've played for years (it almost made it onto the first album) and others, like "A Shot" or "For Emma, Forever Ago", we'd only been playing for a few weeks and had never played live before starting to record. So for those newer songs we're kind of figuring out arrangements and parts as part of the recording process. We recorded all the drums and scratch tracks live, the way we're used to playing, and are now going along and re-recording individual parts to replace the scratch versions. One of the things that's pretty interesting about our piecemeal recording process is that we often can't hear/process the cool things everyone else is doing since we are distracted at the time with our own performances. Sound balance is also difficult to get right live with five people,so there have been a lot of moments where, once you're listening to a clear recording, you go "Oh, I had no idea you had this awesome part happening here." It makes you appreciate everyone and their contributions and musicianship just that much more. FLR: Do you think dinosaurs had feathers or scales? Anneliese: Yes, and some had neither. FLR: Why hasn't Netflix rebooted popular '90s sitcom Dinosaurs yet? A: This might be a question for the Jim Henson Workshop. Fun fact: Kevin Clash, who's the voice of Elmo, was also the voice of Baby Sinclair. And Jessica Walter (of Arrested Development) was the voice of the mother. HH: I'm sure it's on the horizon since we are apparently officially in the midst of a serious worldwide franchise shortage. I will officially volunteer us to provide the soundtrack for the inevitable gritty, sexy reboot. (I mean have you seen Riverdale, the gritty, sexy Archie reboot? Anything is possible.) The theme song will be called "Nobody's Baby" and will be in the style of Julee Cruise and everyone will wear black leather jackets and white undershirts in a very sexy James Dean kind of way. Also, if you don't have a physical copy of our album, Baby Sinclair fans should check out the art on the inner sleeve. FLR: Do you ever get tired of answering dinosaur questions? Will your choice of band name haunt you for the rest of time? HH: No and no. Since we are from the Land Before Time I'm not totally sure yet what this "time" thing is but I'm sure I'll figure it out one of these days. (Sorry to the random person on Tumblr I stole that joke from.)
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FLR: What's your earliest musical memory? N: The first songs I wrote were entirely MIDI, written in a sheet music editor. Sadly they were lost forever in the mp3.com buyout of 2001. I thought I had a cassette copy but I went back to my parents' house in D.C. this past summer and the cassette is gone too. After that era I started recording angsty stuff with a beat-up acoustic guitar and some ill-conceived "rapping." Unfortunately there are surviving copies of that. A: Dancing around the living room to my dad's old boogie-woogie records when I was three or four. HH: They gave us recorders in grade school because the only thing better than one five year-old playing the recorder is fifteen of them all at once so I clearly recall making some really avant-garde noise rock as part of my early musical education. Also one of our music teachers was a grad student at the UC Berkeley School of Music and wrote an opera called The Nightingale that he made us learn, like a troupe of performing opera monkeys. FLR: What song have you listened to the most this year? HH: I went to look at my Spotify stats and some of my top tracks in recent months have been: Frankie Cosmos- "Fool", Big Thief - "Masterpiece", X - "The World's A Mess, It's In My Kiss", Eux Autres - "Other Girls", and Jens Lekman - "To Know Your Mission." N: I'm also enjoying the new Jens Lekman album! Crying's Beyond The Fleeting Gales has been the album that has hardly left my car stereo this year. FLR: What's one question you've never been asked in an interview that you would love to be asked someday? HH: You are standing in front of two doors. Behind one lies immeasurable riches, behind the other lies certain death. There are two guards guarding the doors, one sworn to always lie and one sworn to always tell the truth, but you don't know which is which. What is the best song ever written, and why is it "Africa" by Toto? N: If we're ever interviewed by Nardwuar [The Human Serviette] I hope he knows that I dressed as him for Halloween once. HH: Also I think Paul and Anneliese were hoping to do a Jerry Springer-style interview someday with paternity tests and chair fights in front of a studio audience. FLR: What does 2018 look like for Gentle Brontosaurus? I know you're working on your sophomore album. N: We've started recording out at Cal's parents' barn in Cambridge, WI. You must have seen the big chart on Facebook. Once we get that released I think we're hoping to go out on tour again. Maybe reconnect with some of the folks we met on the road in 2016 or maybe play some shows around the upper midwest where we actually haven't been yet. FLR: The first album came on CD with a piece of toast. Will the new album come as a download code in a jar of jam? N: If someone bought our toast in 2015 and is still hanging onto it in 2018, I don't think jam is going to make it edible. HH: I'm not really into jam bands. Gentle Brontosaurus on Bandcamp Gentle Brontosaurus on Facebook
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realrhythmskrp · 7 years
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DISPATCH, (05/03/17): Kaleidoscope Records has officially released information about soloist, Han Sebin, on the official website! Sebin is a ‘91 liner and has been beloved by fans since her soloist debut in 2015. Find out more about Sebin below!
I, Han Sebin, have read and understand the terms and conditions as my position of soloist and agree to honor the standards that are to be expected of me as an employee of Kaleidoscope Records.
OOC INFORMATION
Preferred name: Yachi.
Pronouns: She/her.
Timezone: GMT.
Other muses: None.
IC INFORMATION
Faceclaim: Song Ji Eun ( Secret ).
Name: Han Sebin.
Stage name (if applicable): N/A.
Idol concept: Under BKB, Sebin was pushed to embrace a cute concept alongside her fellow silverBEAT members, which she had no issue with initially. She didn’t object to maintaining a bright, cheery demeanour until the idol life wore her down and she found it increasingly difficult to act accordingly. However, it was at Kaleidoscope that Sebin could finally have a say in what she wanted to do, and is now commonly known for her mature yet youthful image; a stark contrast to her debut.
Birth date and age: May 10, 1991 (25).
Company name: Kaleidoscope Records.
Group Name (if applicable): N/A.
Group Position (if applicable): Soloist.
Strengths:
VOCAL RANGE / natural talent, in addition to the endless lessons during her youth, sebin is well known for her vocal technique, especially when it comes to reaching high notes. in fact, it’s quite rare for her to falter due to the amount of control she exerts upon hitting the high notes. in pop music, sebin’s power is most noticeable, meanwhile in ballads, her ability to convey emotion receives praise from both critics and the public. she does admittedly enjoy singing songs that she’s comfortable with, but has demonstrated a willingness to challenge herself across various musical genres and continuing to improve on her skills.
PROFESSIONAL / having been part of the entertainment industry for a long period of time, sebin is very much aware as to what’s expected of her. politeness is key; words and gestures are chosen carefully, while any concerns are masked beneath bright smiles and high pitched laughter. she’s quick to greet seniors, never failing to use the appropriate honorific during brief conversations, and staff are individually thanked at the end of a long shoot. image is everything; a single slip up is capable of ruining a career in an instant, and sebin knows better than to reveal her true thoughts to the world, at least in the public eye.
VARIETY / any opportunity to poke fun at herself is taken up almost immediately, mostly to temporarily ruin her image. sebin quickly picks up on the cues to laugh at a joke before responding with a clever quip of her own. upon debut, she did struggle in joining in on the fun and would rely on her group members to help cover for her, particularly on shows where she wasn’t familiar with the concept. but, she’s since mastered the art of saying enough to contribute to a lively atmosphere, yet not enough to be caught up in a far fetched rumour or scandal.
Weaknesses:
DANCE / by no means is sebin a horrible dancer; she can follow choreography relatively well without making a mistake, but in comparison to her former group mates, she wasn’t a stand out. her movements might’ve been fluid, yet it lacked the sharpness and power to truly “own the stage”, so to speak. as a soloist, sebin is dedicating plenty of time towards perfecting her abilities now that she no longer shares the stage with other proficient dancers— and it hasn’t been easy when she has no one to hide behind.
PERFECTIONIST / there’s no such thing as a half-assed attempt at mastering a particular task — either go hard or go home. sebin doesn’t hesitate in pushing herself to the brink time and time again in order to achieve a flawless result. whether it regards practicing a dance routine or tweaking a song prior to release, it’s no surprise to find her holed up in the studio until dawn, refusing to leave until she’s certain everything is of a high standard. reassurances by others that it doesn’t require further adjustments usually falls on deaf ears.  
POOR HEALTH / after years of unhealthy eating habits and inadequate rest, it’s to be expected that sebin’s health has suffered as a consequence. gastrointestinal issues often interfere with her schedules, and strong medication is sought to overcome the pain in the lead up to performances. though she tries to hide her discomfort in the public, there has been times when she’s been photographed looking a little worse for wear, sometimes avoiding interactions in an attempt to return home and rest, which gives anti fans further reason to bombard her with hate.
Positive traits: Humble, determined, sociable.
Negative traits: Lonely, insecure, secretive.
PERSONAL HISTORY
i. )
the household is calm and void of drama, where she’s constantly showered with love and affection, apart from the times she’s chastised for taking her older sister’s dress without asking for permission. both parents instil the importance of hard work from an early age; laziness is frowned upon, meanwhile self improvement and contributing to society is praised. in comparison to her sister who’s fixated on a career in science, she decides the arts, specifically music, is the area which she intends to explore, and informs anyone and everyone of her goals for the future: a singer. her mother is admittedly a little worried about her career choice, and although she offers to cover the cost of singing classes as a belated birthday present, she believes this is a phase that’ll pass soon enough.
ii. )
singing lessons are conducted every sunday afternoon in a building opposite her father’s dental clinic, and every sunday afternoon she appears right on the dot, ready to hone her skills. which isn’t easy, even with natural talent. the lower notes are problem free, yet striving for those higher notes rattles her to the core, prompting the teacher to suggest she stay within her range if she wishes, sticking to something she’s more comfortable with. perhaps it’s the assumption she can’t do more, combined with the dogged determination to improve that pushes her to practice over and over again, until going up several octaves is nothing. she isn’t paying fees to be deemed a mediocre student, she wants to be the best of the best.
iii. )
the audition for bkb eventually overtakes planning for her upcoming thirteenth birthday. she switches between songs, unable to fully make up her mind when she stresses over the possibility of humiliating herself and ruining her chances. the indecisiveness ceases to disappear on the train ride to the venue, before being overcome by nerves when she’s confronted by the long queue of potential stars, kids like her eager for a taste of stardom. she spends a good portion of her time bouncing around to maintain her cool, then overhears the velvety voice of a stranger and immediately begins to lose said cool. what her parents expect is for her to arrive home to share bad news, what they don’t expect is for her to arrive home with bkb’s coveted card in hand.
iv. )
reality strips her of her innocence. training is harsh, and if she hasn’t cried in the female bathrooms following a long, exhausting dance practice, then she clearly hasn’t pushed herself hard enough. compliments are difficult to come by when everything she seems to do isn’t up to par. she’s either too slow or too fast, too awkward or too meek in her movements. even her singing voice, the one thing that has led her here in the first place goes unnoticed by staff who prefer to criticise her appearance than utter a few kind words. except it’s the shared suffering alongside the other trainees, her future group mates, which stops her from deciding to catch the next train home and encourages her to stay.
v. )
in her opinion, debut couldn’t have come at a better time. standing on stage in front of a screaming audience distracts her from the hardships she’s experienced to get this far; the tiring practices, strict dieting, homesickness. the group rises up the ranks in a short amount of time, and it would be a lie to claim she doesn’t become addicted to life under the spotlight, completely oblivious to the issues set to plague the rest of the girls, herself included. the packed schedules do slowly get to her, along with the lack of consideration towards sleeping properly and visiting family members. she can barely recall when she’d last seen her parents face to face, but she knows better than to complain when the company has already done so much for her.
vi. )
silverBEAT’s popularity soars— and unfortunately, so does her intentions to leave. of course, such a thought hasn’t stemmed from any discord with her members, all of whom she’s grown attached to over the years together. fears instead linger on how long the group is meant to carry on when they’re falling apart, bit by bit. she desperately tries to hold on; smearing layer upon layer of concealer beneath her eyes to hide the lack of sleep, forcing another smile during another late recording for a variety show she’s forgotten the name of, gritting her teeth when she’s berated for her supposedly “lacklustre” performance. but she too has her limits, and after her mother tearily begs her to eat more during a phone call home, enough is enough.
vii. )
the contract termination becomes one of the trending news stories for the next few weeks. is she surprised by the various articles more focused on addressing rumours than fact? no, she isn’t. nor is she caught off guard by the barrage of hate comments left behind on her social media posts, labelling her a “traitor” and a string of other names unacceptable for everyday conversation. though it’s not to say she isn’t hurt. these same people who were cheering for her, supporting her only years earlier, are the same people cursing her existence. alone and despised, she turns her attention to what her new company has to offer, as if to convince herself that what she’s doing is for the best— even if it doesn’t feel like it.
viii. )
step by step, day by day, she adjusts to being a soloist. a new EP on the agenda allows her to channel her energy into establishing a brand new beginning, rather than wallowing in self pity over a harsh anonymous comment. for once, she can safely say she’s finally happy with the opportunity to look over the material she intends to release; something she thinks would never have happened at bkb, not unless she wanted a stern talking to behind closed doors. despite taking it in her stride, there are occasions when she finds herself missing her members, especially when she stands on stage for promotions. she’s singing a song she loves, but without the people she loves. it’s all bittersweet.
ix. )
the concerns suggesting impending failure has disappeared, or at least is drowned out by the determination to capitalise further on her success. pessimism is replaced by optimism, the fresh faced former silverBEAT member is making an appearance once more—to the delight of her parents and fans. the passion for performing has returned, and she vows to strive forward, if not to pen her many life experiences through music, then to assure the public that she has no intentions of going anywhere anytime soon. nevertheless, she realises her situation isn’t shared by those she’s left back in bkb, and is very active in following up on both their individual and group activities, fully supporting their endeavours from a far.
x. )
han sebin is back— and about time too.
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