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whumpurr · 3 years

Text

Adrien and Sawdust part 5

masterlist

cw: descriptions of an emaciated body, disordered eating, pet whump, it as a pronoun, dehumanization, conditioned whumpee

Adrien swore he’d never moved so fast in his life. The second he saw Sawdust’s bony body tip over, he was running up the stairs to meet him. The instant he got to the second floor, he was dropping to his knees with a heavy thud, and properly touching Sawdust for the first time. He carefully lifted his face, seeing Sawdust’s eyes still open- though hardly.

The pet looked to be in worse condition than he was when Adrien had first gotten him. His skin was even paler, stretched thinner across rigid bones, his face was more sunken, the only color on it being the thick scratched scar across his nose bridge, and the deep rings under his eyes. He felt chilled. Adrien maneuvered his body like it was nothing, putting Sawdust’s head and torso to rest elevated on top of his folded legs.

“What’s wrong, Sawdust?” Adrien muttered just loud enough for the pet to hear. He was at a loss, he thought that everything was okay.

“‘M sorry, Master,” Sawdust whimpered, turning his head so he could look away from Adrien. “Need food, please, I’m- I’m sorry.” His voice was hardly a wheeze, but at least he seemed strong enough to move, so Adrien wouldn’t need to rush him to the hospital right that second. Sawdust’s words only came out in rough little squeaks and hiccups, tears gathering in his eyes. He looked terrified. “Food for- for dogs, please. If- if Master w- uh- Master may do whatever he wants but- pet- but- need-”

“Shit, okay, will you be okay if I leave you here to go get it? It’s just in the kitchen, I’ll be right over there.” Adrien was horrified and disgusted with himself as he looked down at Sawdust’s hollow figure. The tattered, oversized t-shirt he had come with was draped across his body, and with his head in Adrien’s lap and chest upturned, Adrien could see the thin fabric catch on the ridges of Sawdust’s ribs, pooling in the dip of his stomach, raised up by the ranges of his hip bones. Adrien handled him like glass, moving him off of his lap before standing and running down to the kitchen, nearly slamming his foot into the corner of his counter with his speed and recklessness.

He’d never been more grateful that he bought the dog food. He grabbed it out of the plastic grocery bag it still sat in on the counter and sliced the top of the bag with a knife, filling a bowl with it and- resigned to the situation- he poured some water into a bowl to go with it. He carried the two bowls up to Sawdust, putting them on the floor and pushing them towards the skeletal figure of his pet.

It looked like it took Sawdust considerable effort to roll himself from his back onto his elbows and knees, but he managed it and immediately dove into eating the chow out of the bowl without so much as a second thought. Adrien couldn’t help but feel like he shouldn’t be watching this. Like it was some sort of invasion to see Sawdust wolfing down his food in such a manner, but Adrien felt like if he took his eyes off him for a second, something terrible would happen.

Sawdust had never been more scared than when he saw Master racing up the stairs. He continued to break records of fear when he confessed, begging Master to give him something he could eat. He knew that if Master wanted to, he could deny him that, too. Sawdust was never more aware of that fact than when he asked for something to eat, but Master was merciful today. He brought him some chow.

Sawdust didn’t pause to think about whether or not the food could be poisoned, or if it would make him sick or kill him. Going that way, or not eating, it would have been death either way. Regardless of that, if Master saw fit for such things, as much as it made Sawdust want to cry, he would simply have to accept it. So he ate. He ate until the bowl was empty and he felt nearly sick, and he even drank after that.

Master would make him pay for this at some point, he was sure, but for now he could focus on his full stomach. He pulled back from the water bowl gasping, liquid dripping from his lips and chin. With his hunger sated, all he could think about was how tired he was. He didn’t care that Master was right there, and that he’d certainly hurt Sawdust soon. The dumb mutt couldn’t find the energy in him to do much about it as he laid down on the floor, curling up to sleep.

“S-Sorry, Master, pet is- is tired. Sleepy.” Sawdust murmured. “Please forgive it.”

“That’s okay, that’s okay baby.” Master was quiet. It made Sawdust confused, the way Master’s voice broke with his words. But the pet didn’t have the energy to think on it for very long, just nodding against the floor and letting his eyes shut.

Adrien was not going to let Sawdust sleep on the floor of the corridor. The second Sawdust was asleep, he took the pet’s dog ears off and undid the tail, setting those aside before he scooped him up in his arms and pushed Sawdust’s bedroom door open with his back, stepping in.

The room smelled of rot and spoil. Adrien muttered an expletive under his breath as looked around. Everything was as undisturbed as it had been when he first gave Sawdust the room, save for one corner that had some puddles of water sitting on the floor. He sat Sawdust down on the bed, pinching his nose. There was no way the pet smelled this bad when he got him.

He got to work looking for the source of the scent, thinking that an animal had found its way into the room or ceiling and died, but that was far from what he found. It took a few minutes of checking behind the wardrobes and dressers before looking under the bed, lifting the bedskirt only to be buffeted by the foul odour. Hidden underneath the bed was a pile of food scraps, composed of everything he’d been feeding Sawdust. Every piece of food that was missing from Sawdust’s plates was underneath his bed.

Adrien was never someone who was grossed out by things easily, but the sheer smell of the food was nothing short of disgusting. Regardless, he still had to get the room to a condition where Sawdust would actually be able to sleep in it, so with the help of a dust pan to use like a shovel, he dumped the remnants of the food into a garbage bag and tied it shut. He was at a loss for how the pet could have been tolerating this the whole time. He went through the room with a bit of air freshener, trying to solve the problem before he pushed a mop around under the bed.

With the room in a far better condition, he glanced over to Sawdust. The pet was still sleeping soundly, in near the exact same position that Adrien had left him in. Adrien took the edge of the blanket, folding one side over Sawdust’s frail body in hopes that it’d keep him warmer. Sawdust wasn’t disturbed at all when Adrien put the blanket over him, and he continued to sleep as Adrien started working to make the room more comfortable for the pet.

Once he got to see the room, it didn’t take him long at all to put together that Sawdust hadn’t been sleeping on the bed, and that he was sleeping in the corner that all the water was splashed around. Adrien mopped that up and swung by his linen closet, bringing every extra blanket and pillow he had and tossing them into the corner before arranging them in the most nest-like formation he could.

He wasn’t about to leave the pet unattended, not after an occurrence like that. Adrien grabbed his laptop and sat down in the seat in the other corner of the room, remembering just how uncomfortable the guest room’s furniture was, and why it was in this room and not being used in the living room. Disregarding that, he opened his laptop and kept himself busy.

When Sawdust opened his eyes the room was dim and he immediately froze up. The only source of light was warm and coming from one of the corners. Reluctantly, Sawdust sat up, body stiff. Master was sitting in the chair at the corner with a tall lamp on next to him. He looked like he was asleep, but the second Sawdust sat up, Master was awake again.

The very next thing Sawdust realized- not that he had the capacity to care much about it considering he was surely about to be punished within an inch of his life- was the new smell in the room. The old smell wasn’t good, but this new one was giving him a pounding headache. It was far too strong, but that was the least of his worries as he found himself a deer in headlights under his Master’s stare.

“Hey, Sawdust,” Master shifted a little. His voice was low and rough. “Damn, what time’s it?” He squinted at his phone in the dim light. Sawdust clenched his jaw shut, trying to stop any fear from showing on his face, but from Master’s wide eyes, he obviously wasn’t doing that good a job.

“Sorry, Master,” Sawdust whimpered, trembling under the covers. “I- didn’t- it- it-” His eyes darted all over the room and Master got up, walking over to him and sitting at the bottom of the bed.

“You weren’t eating the food?” Master asked, tilting his head. His long hair fell over his shoulder. Sawdust wasn’t ever good at figuring out what somebody really meant with their words, but Master’s tone was steady. He didn’t sound angry, and that made it worse. The punishment would be worse. Sawdust waited for the screaming to start, but all that stretching out through the room was a deafening silence.

“I just want to know why, Sawdust. I didn’t know you weren’t eating.” Master asked. Sawdust reached up to fiddle with his hair, only to realize another thing that was amiss. His ears were gone. His whole body stung with that realization, and he glanced around the room, not seeing them. His tail was also missing and he couldn’t spot them anywhere. Still, Master asked a question and he had to answer.

“Can only eat dog- dog food. Dogs eat dog food.” Sawdust said, flinching and getting ready for when the blows would come.

“Dog-” Master started before sighing. “Okay.” He dragged his hands down his face. “I found that paper with the rules on it. I don’t want to do this and I didn’t think I’d have to, but I have some rules for you, too.”

Adrien didn’t miss the way Sawdust perked up at the mention of rules. It made him sick, but he had to press on now that he said it.

“Three meals a day, with me, downstairs.” Adrien tried his best to sound firm in what he was saying, attempting to walk the line between stern and intimidating. “I’ll come get you when it’s time to eat.”

“Is that all, Master?” Sawdust responded. That sounded rehearsed to hell and back, but more confident and solid than anything else Adrien had heard him say before.

“This room’s yours, treat it as such.” Adrien gestured with an outstretched arm, “The bed’s yours, I put some stuff in the corner if you’d rather stay there.”

“Is that all, Master?” Again. Adrien knew there was probably more he should tell Sawdust, but he was blanking.

“For now, yes. If I think of more things I’ll tell you.” The bed shifted with the movement of Adrien standing up. “Try to get some sleep, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned off the lamp, gathered his laptop, and left, shutting the door behind him as softly as he could.

The second he stepped into his bedroom, he sat down on his bed and ran his fingers through his hair, that familiar, heated upset rising through his body. Sawdust was someone he took into his care and he let him get to such a state. Adrien was disgusted, and thoroughly disappointed with himself. He was in over his head, and he didn’t know what to do.

Night passed slowly for the both of them.

taglist: @starnight-whump @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi@neuro-whump @whump-me-all-night-long @cupcakes-and-pain @whumpzone @whumpcreations @dancinglifeboat @pinkraindropsfell @looptheloup @cowboy-anon @meetmeinhellcroutons @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @firewheeesky

#pet whump #whumpblr #whump blog #whump writing #whump #whump ocs #whump recovery #whumpee #caretaker #whump community #adrien and sawdust

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inviciousx · 3 years

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nuclear winter of our discontent

Fractured strips of moonlight shone down from the caving ceiling as Ryat started mixing several ingredients into a metal bowl he'd stolen from an old diner he'd passed on the way out here. Locals in the wastes called this the Old North Church. He called it a resurrection ground. His mind drifted as he added a bit of purified water into the mixture and pulled out his blade. Slashing it across his hand, he let a few drops of blood fall before he could feel it start healing. The demon couldn't help but replay the last twenty-four hours in his head. It had been more excitement than the last two centuries combined. Latin fell from his lips as his gaze moved over the pile of old bones laid over the debris in the floor. God he hoped he'd dug the right grave. As flesh began to form over bone, he began to hold even the tiniest bit of hope that be wouldn't be alone anymore.

She was waking. Not from a dream, but from darkness. Like Jesus saw daylight again on the third day, light was pouring in from behind her closed eyelids. She remembered, before her eyes ever opened: that awful flash, heat searing her skin, only time enough left to drop to her knees and cling to the soft grass one last time. She stirred, grunting softly, and blinked up into the sky. She inhaled softly. What she was was nothing like the fiery destruction that had knocked her out. It was silver and peaceful, quiet.

Caroline pushed an elbow under herself and began to rise, beginning to look around. The darkness surrounding her seemed to pop as her eyes adjusted from the moonlight pooling around her. There were shapes an figures, perhaps, but she could make out nothing specific. She sat up completely, wincing loudly and clutching her side in pain. Had she been knocked back into something in the blast? "Hello?" she called hoarsely.

Red eyes watched her from where Ryat sat in a dilapidating pew. It was one of few that was still being held together, probably by all the dirt and grime that covered it. Her resurrection had taken longer than most, but he supposed that had something to do with the fact that she'd been dead for 200 years. He really wasn't sure how he was going to explain that yet, but he knew he had to. She was going to be punished into a brand new world, a terrifying world... Just like he had been. It seemed like he had just traded one hell for another. At least now he had something other than his own thoughts, even before he had brought her back. Sitting there frozen, a captive to the body he had once enslaved hadn't done him any favors. "Morning sunshine. It's about time you woke the hell up," he muttered, finally getting back to his feet to move closer to her, stepping into the moonlight. "You're very.... Very late to the party."

The light in the hunter’s eyes brightened with confused realization as the demon’s voice purred through the darkness and echoed subtly off the walls. A sharp creak of wood made her head swivel, and, through the light of the moon, she found two red eyes peered back at her. Her heart slammed in her chest. “Ryat. .” she breathed, but offered nothing else, shifting slightly in the pile of rubble. She watched dumb-struck as he emerged into the circle of light. There should have been a million thoughts running through her mind, but it was empty, save for watching his face looking down at hers. She could barely read his expression, but what else was new? His eyes were shadowed but the irises glowed. He looked different, somehow, but still very much the same. Her face winced as she tried to process what he meant. It all. . . felt like a dream. “What’s going on?” she asked softly

Stooping down next to her, he sat with her in the rubble. He was already dirty, grime and filth covering his clothes. Not to mention blood.... "What do you remember?" He questioned, choosing his words uncharacteristically carefully. "I mean the very last thing you remember, because I need to know where to start explaining, and I don't have much time." Being what he was, he was able to see through the veil of death. He knew the difference between when he was dead and when he was alive, and he knew what happened in between, but he doubted that she had that luxury. Or maybe it was a curse.... He wasn't sure. A while caused crimson hues to look back at the black dog that laid guarding the door. Another whimper had him getting to his feet. "Come on. We need to move. I'll explain, but we need to get to higher ground. He wouldn't take her all the way up to the steeple yet, but he would at least hide them in the stairwell for now. Sitting here felt like being a sitting duck.

The hunter's eyes searched his face wildly for a hint of why he was asking such questions. The last thing she remembered? The last thing she remembered was everything, everything exploding and vanishing and then the sudden lack of everything. The emptiest nothing that she could conceive, and could still feel in her bones, as if she was hollow. Her hand seized on his arm like a snake."Ryat..." Caroline repeated, anxiety growing in her voice and heat swelling to her face. The urgency in his voice and the measured tone was making every hair on her body stick up like a pin prick. Ryat used her grip on him to hoist her up, but she collapsed to her knee, finding the legs underneath her shaking and uncoordinated. "Help me. Please." she asked of him, and braced herself around his middle. The black dog circled around them, but always stayed behind, unnaturally bright eyes glaring at the back of the building--if it could be called that. Half up the stairs, encased in near-darkness, and almost suffocating in dust, Caroline pushed against the demon and let herself sink to a stair. Her legs burned as if she'd been marooned in the desert. The hunter breathed heavily, dropping her hand from him to lean forward, taken by the vertigo in her brain. She looked up to what she could see in front of her face--shocking red eyes and a half-shadowed face looking down at her. "The last thing I remember. . ." Her face contorted at the memory, too painful for even tears. Her gaze searched for the words in the dust particles floating around them. "The last thing I remember is the. . ." The hunter blinked faster, as if the emotions that had been stopped where her memories ended were picking up as she remembered ten seconds over and over again in her mind. The more she remembered, the more the monstrous sounds came back to her. "Oh, God. Oh, God." she whispered. She looked back at Ryat, pleading, reaching out to a hand she couldn't see in the dark. "What's happening? Why am I here?”

The fear and fragility coming from the normally quick witted hunter only added to the gravity of the situation. Even with his superior hearing, Ryat wasn't sure what was waiting for them outside. There were things in this hellacious landscape that put the creatures of nightmares to shame. The large Shepherd Dog sat at the bottom of the stairs, ears twitching with each sound, though he wasn't sounding an alarm again yet. He knew she remembered the end. Her reaction told him at least that much. "What you remember.... That's what a lot of people called the end of the world. As you can see that isn't exactly accurate...." He still picked and chose his words, knowing that the smallest thing could be like a detonator, and right now he didn't have the luxury of having the time to help stitch her back together. At least mentally. "It was damn close though....and that was 200 years ago. The world you knew, hell the world we both knew, is gone. There are things even you can't imagine. Whole damn world went to hell in a hand basket." The air here was too thick with dust and the smell of mold from the nuclear storms that passed settling into the interior of the building. Reaching into his pack once he slipped it off his shoulder, he found a stimpack. "I don't know how much this is gonna help, but it should do something," he stated evenly before injecting her with the medicine inside.

Caroline lower lip trembled fiercely as he spoke, but he brows were set in desperate refusal. His words were gathering like a holy flood at the levies, and she bit her lip, shaking her head. The end of the world. The end of the world. The end of the world. Pictures flashed in her mind as rapidly as film ticking through a camera. Home. People. Friends. Life. Gone. . . “Please stop.” she said quietly, squeezing his hand as it released hers to shuffle inside some backpack. The pinch in her arm barely registered past the screaming her in own head. Voices, like a hundred-strong choir was screaming through their murder in her ears. “Stop!” she screamed through it, bracing her hands on the edge of the step and kicking out sharply at his leg. Something connected and she scrambled up and away, spilling onto the landing and throwing herself towards the next set of stairs. It only look another flight to reach the top, which spilled out into a windowed perch with half the wall broken out. Caroline gasped and looked around wildly. A thin layer of snow was coating the rooftops in her sights, but it all blurred together. Steps were right behind her as she made for the roof.

A hiss of pain left the demon's lips even if it wouldn't last long. "You God damn bitch!" He growled, moving after her with speed only a creature such as himself could possess. Maybe the stimpack had been a bad idea.... He'd thought it would do good to help her feel better and give her some mobility. The dog let out a bark at the sudden outburst and Ryat took off after her trying to ignore the pain in his shin. Snow glittered on the roof as it came into his view and his arm shot out, grabbing her ankle as she tried to scramble to the sloped, rotting roof. From his place on the stairs, he roughly tugged her back, not giving a single shit if he caused a few bruises on the way down. "What the fuck?" He grit, red eyes seeming to look through her as he appraised her. "I didn't spend the last twenty four hours gathering the shit to bring you back to let you toss yourself off a god damn steeple!" His grip on her ankle released only to grab her by the arm and pull her up to her feet, but this time he held her steady.

Caroline yelped and slammed to the ground hard as her feet were wrenched from beneath her. Her vision turned into a dropped snowglobe for a brief moment as he torso landed on the raised ledge were a wall should've been, half of body on the roof, half still inside the tower. All she could manage was a strangled grunt of resistance as she was pulled back over the threshold, icy flakes stinging her face. She lost herself in a flurry of kicks and palm-thrusts into Ryat's shoulders, but it was a charade for all the good it did. The young woman gasped as she was forced to stand, and, wrangled in his unquestionable grip, she looked at him wildly. His dark, hidden face from before now reflected so much silver light it was like he was glowing. His raven hair was tussled from the skirmish and blew slightly in the wind whistling through the broken windows around them. Caroline breathed hard, small fogs of hot breath crystalizing between them. Her eyes were stricken, but clearer, as if the truth was easier to see in the moonlight. "You brought me back?" She paused, forgetting to breathe. "I. . died?" The last word was barely a breath.

@a-beast-in-repose

#ryat;#nuclear winter;

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rotten-games · 3 years

Note

How about “shielding the other one with their body“ for Mordred?

I miss Mordred ;-; even though I haven't technically introduced him yet.

You hit the ground with a heavy thud only barely softened by ninety kilograms of hard muscle beneath you, your ribs taking the brunt of the impact absolutely no thanks to to the arms wrapped around your middle.

The horse rushes past with a whinny torn from its throat, blood trailing behind from the wound in its back leg from the rot hound in its final attempt to get a meal before it bled out.

Head pressed into the crook of your neck, Mordred doesn't move as he cradles you to his chest, heart thumping like the hammering of the wayward horse's hooves but nevertheless still beating. He's a heavy weight against you, all hard muscle weighing you down as you sink into the burning sand, hot, heavy breath huffing against your neck as Mordred gathers himself from the impact.

Your own heart patters traiterously against the inside of your ribcage, skin burning hotter than the heat could ever make it. You want to sink into Mordred's hold, instead you punch him on the arm.

With a hiss you level a glare at Mordred and shove him off, springing to your feet as if your mind and body doesn't wish to mold itself back against the man sprawled on the ground beneath you, face rough with dirt and screwed into a grimace. "What," the protest chokes halfway from your throat, a curse sucked through teeth as you turn away with a huff. You take a breath, try again, "The fuck was that?"

Mordred groans in response, still very embedded in the sand as he cups his hands over his face in what you can only assume is an attempt to ensure it's still there. And it is; horrible and handsome as always. A knife of worry stabs into you for a brief second before Mordred speaks. "A thank you would be nice."

"You don't deserve that, I could have gotten out of the way myself." Or survived the brunt of the horse's stampede, at the very least. You don't mention that. As it is, all you can do is stare with a front of anger at the man still curled up on the ground. "It, it was unnecessary."

"Who fucking cares?" Mordred simply responds, finally sitting up and shaking the sand from his black hair not unlike a dog. Dried blood scabs at the back of his head and it's only then you lunge forward to give him a look over.

"You asshole!" The insult pushes from your throat against your best wishes as you tug and pull what remains of the blood from his hair. Worry creases your brow, you give him a gentle shove, "I could have, could have dealt with it."

"Yeah, well, so could I," Comes the grumble, the usually agitated man suddenly going quiet between grimaces as you pull at his hair. "It was just," He takes a breath, words turning to a reluctant grumble, "Just easier."

"Bullshit." You hiss, struggling away when his hand clamps around your wrist. It squeezes and you're met with yellow eyes and a slack, freckled face. That old scar that cuts across his cheekbone is faded now, you try to pretend you aren't just staring it. Words choking in your dust-caked throat, you can't quite find it in you to say more.

"You being hurt," Mordred mumbles, not quite looking at you, "Isn't something I ever want to consider." Jaw falling slack, he very pointedly lets his head fall from his shoulders, hidden by a veil of that black hair as his grip on you tightens, loosens, tightens once more. "I'd rather be mauled, burned, cut, a thousand times over before I let you go through any pain."

"Oh." The words are pushed from you like a punch to the gut, the air in your lungs suddenly escaping you all at once. Your heart soars, your mind can't help but think he's lying. "Mordred--"

"That's what I promised your sibling."

#coi game #mordred #snippet

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faerune · 3 years

Text

the sun has come to save me

pairing: johnny silverhand x f!v [vera volakov]

summary: in the aftermath of mikoshi's destruction, johnny takes his old body for a joyride and v accepts an offer from the aldecaldos though they can't seem to shake the other's presence. johnny shows up for a drink.

warnings: smut with feelings! drinking! smoking! spoilers!

[AO3]

Johnny Silverhand is on her doorstep and boy, if her teeny bopper self could be here-

But she isn’t and Johnny barely looks at her when he shoves inside with not a hello but a “Where you keep your booze?”

They both seem to realize how redundant the question is when Johnny makes a b-line for the cabinet stocked with half-finished liquor bottles and mixers.

Vera clicks her tongue against the back of her teeth and frowns at him, shoving the door closed. She hasn’t seen him for weeks. Not since Viktor gave him the all clear. She wasn’t surprised. It seemed he was rearing to take his new...well, old body out for a spin.

Still, a text to let her know he wasn’t dead in a gutter would have been nice. She had worked damn hard to get that body back for him. She’s surprised he didn’t take it and run; get back to doing what he does best — shredding in some sleazy bar for free drinks or sniffing out any way to fuck a corp over.

Vera shifts on her bare feet, hip cocked out and her arms crossed. She bites her tongue because it’s weird how much the picture of a pissed girlfriend she must be right now.

She wanders over to where Johnny has uncorked a bottle of whiskey that’s been gathering dust in her cabinet. He pours it garishly into mismatched cups and hands her one. It’s the first time he looks at her, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“It’s like...ten in the morning,” Vera tells him, motioning toward the window aglow with sunlight.

“Like you give a shit,” he counters.

Vera ponders that for a moment and then shrugs, throwing the glass back. The whiskey burns her throat and she makes a disgusted noise, a little shiver shaking through her. Vera has never liked whiskey and regretfully his tolerance for it was not something they shared now. She catches Johnny’s crooked teasing smile before he takes the cup and bottle, swaggering over to her couch.

She wonders if he has noticed that — that they have bled into each other like ink on a soaked page. It is no coincidence that Vera has suddenly developed the ability to write with her left hand. And gained an affinity for shitty 2020s alternative rock.

Vera doesn’t bring her cup with her but follows him and sinks onto the couch with him, folding her long legs underneath her.

“So, where have you been?”

Johnny leans against the back of the couch, long silver arm stretching over the back and mirrors her so their bodies are turned towards each other. He takes a thoughtful sip and Vera fights the urge to roll her eyes. Always one for the dramatics. Though, it’s not like she can judge. Her annoyance with him has simpered to a warm, idle irritation. Something born more out of habit and unfortunate fondness for the asshole.

“Explorin’ the city. Seein’ what’s changed-” he begins. He points at her. “On my own terms. You were a good tour guide, V but-

“So…getting fucked up,” Vera continues with a wry smile.

Johnny laughs and sets his drink down, “Little bit of that too.”

“Why are you here, Johnny?” she finds herself asking, resting her cheek on her fist.

“Realized we never celebrated,” he tells her, relaxing back with a satisfied grunt and aims his eyes at her. “Got our bodies, our lives. Hell, I can’t figure anything better to drink to.”

“We got lucky,” Vera tells him as both a grateful praise and a truthful warning. The cautious paranoia she has adopted has nothing to do with his influence that’s for sure.

“When’d you become so pessimistic,” Johnny scoffs. “What happened to my favorite starry-eyed little merc?”

Vera avoids his eyes, stares down at a scratch in her coffee table. Her manicured nails play with the studs in her ear.

“You miss me?”

Johnny’s voice comes as a surprise, thick and sticky with emotion. When she looks up, he’s staring right at her, studying her face. Vera’s chest tightens. Maybe he does feel that itch, the unfamiliar and haunting foreignness of being alone in the silence of a room. The lingering touch of someone else on the soul.

“You wish,” she teases dryly but the tightness in her throat prevents it from packing the intended punch. Vera reaches out for the bottle because suddenly that burn seems all the more appealing. It’s easier the second time around but she still can’t help the little twist her face does. He takes the bottle from her, again without comment. This time, however, his face looks serious and inquisitive.

Instead of prodding, filling the silence with words she waits patiently. It’s a hard habit to break but she’s getting better at it.

“Fuck,” Johnny grunts, leaning forward to rub the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Feel like I’m goin’ insane.”

Vera watches him — the fall of his hair in a dark curtain around his face, the curve of his back in the black t-shirt he’s wearing. The couch dips with the shift of his weight and it hits her again like it always does. She could reach out and touch him right now.

“I keep tryin’ to talk to you,” Johnny says in disbelief. “Keep forgetting I’m not in your head anymore.”

She lets out a breath of relief.

“Me too.”

Vera’s lips curve into a tight-lipped smile, “Keep doing shit just to piss you off so you’ll talk to me.”

Johnny laughs at that. Well and truly laughs, deep in his belly. Vera isn’t sure she’s ever heard him laugh like that. It’s awfully contagious because pretty soon she is laughing with him.

“Been chewing on that fucking gum you chomp on,” Johnny tells her, snapping his ‘ganic fingers together. “Fuck what is it-”

“Cherrygasm?” Vera grins.

“Shit, yeah,” Johnny says, shaking his head and leaning back against the couch. “Get antsy if I don’t taste that teeth-rotting shit. Got me to quit smokin’ at least.”

Vera lets out an uncharacteristic snort, “Well, shit, I started.”

“Ah, V…” Johnny begins.

She gasps and clamps her hand on his shoulder, sitting up onto her knees in excitement, “Don’t tell me The Johnny Silverhand is about to lecture me on smoking right now.”

Johnny’s hand cups the back of her thigh and moves it to the other side of his waist. Vera blinks dumbly down at him, her hands held up in front of her, limp and awkward. The two stare at each other for a moment but Johnny’s chrome hand doesn’t leave her bare skin. God, he almost looks...scared shitless.

Her voice is tight and quiet when she speaks.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.

Vera’s lips are on his. It’s rough, sudden and desperate as he responds in kind. A frantic kind of want starts to burn in her belly. Johnny is solid. Warm. Real. Her fingers sliding into his hair, Johnny grasping at her ass with bruising eagerness and flips her onto her back. He’s over top of her, around her.

Her thighs spread so his slim hips can settle between them. Johnny’s hand tightens around her thigh and he grinds into her through the soft fabric of her shorts. A little sound leaves her mouth that she can’t manage to swallow. He smells like shitty motel soap and his tongue tastes like fucking bubblegum just like he said. Their frantic hands both war with her shirt for a moment, pulling in every which way as they scramble to get it off.

Vera is exposed to the chill of her apartment, colorful tattoos spread over her heavy breasts, her stomach and the curves of her hips.

He is touching her, touching with long calloused fingers and chilled chrome; and is it a surprise she whines when he pinches her nipple between his silver fingers? Her head swims as it tries to grasp onto reality. Johnny’s warm mouth latches over her other breast with the kind of messy hot licks that make her squirm.

“Fuck,” she breathes, arching up into his mouth as he sucks greedily at her skin. Her breast, her collarbone, her stomach. Johnny nips at skin and soothes away the sting with a hot tongue.

Vera tugs roughly at his hair enough to make him groan deep in his chest. Is this what she has been aching for? To have him inside of her again?

“Johnny,” she huffs impatiently, losing grip on the back hem of his shirt when he shifts to lick and bite at the one of the pistols on her hips. Almost angered by the interruption, he moves up onto his knees and tears his shirt off over his head. Vera’s hands grab him, pull him back down to her. She needs to feel him. The solid weight of his body, the brush of the hair on his chest over her sensitive nipples, the ragged border of his shoulder where skin meets metal.

Johnny licks at her neck, loves roughly at her sensitive skin. Vera lets out another keen of impatience, rolling up against him as he rocks against her through their pants. Then he’s down again, trailing long tails of heat with his tongue.

She’s about to tell him to stop fucking around when he lifts her legs and yanks her shorts off in a swift motion.

“Fuck,” he groans, only giving himself a breath to gaze over her before tossing her legs over his shoulders. A happy purr of pride burns through her chest at that. Johnny buries himself between her thighs. Vera’s hand reaches overhead and grabs the edge of a velvet cushion as he covers her with his mouth and laps eagerly at her.

A moan, a breath-

She presses him between her legs with a hand on the back of his head, tangling again in the silk strands of black hair. Her body shudders, heat having hit her like a truck, burning through her body. Johnny’s tongue drags the small amount of wetness that has gathered at her opening and licks it all over her cunt. His hands grab her hips and yanks her closer to him, her ass lifted a little into his arms.

He lets her hips rock up against his tongue desperately but his clenched fist on her thigh that will surely bruise tells her that he normally does not allow this. Blinding pleasure aches through her all the way to her fingertips. Pretty moans and gasped whimpers offered to the room. It drowns out the news reporter babbling away on the radio.

Vera’s concerns and thoughts of past, future and present have been lost to her frantic train of thought.. It is only the two of them again. It is only Johnny between her legs flicking his talented tongue over her and pressing two warm fingers inside. Vera lets out a breathless, broken moan and bears down on them, her knuckles white as she grasps at the cushions and his hair in an effort to ground herself.

She wants to be filled, wants him, wants more, more, more.

Her chest is tight, her body is crying for it, begging for him and-

Vera’s lips only manage the first syllable of his name as her release crashes through her like a booming stroke of thunder. She moans loudly to the ceiling, her ankles locking together between Johnny’s shoulder blades. This is when he presses her down, holds her to the Earth, while she keens and groans deep in her chest for him.

Johnny doesn’t wait till she’s finished before prying her thighs away from his head and scrambling to settle above her. Her mind is a pleasured daze as he shoves his pants down his hips just enough to pull himself from the tight pleather. It’s good he doesn’t wait because he’s big when he slides into her, her cunt giving way to him in one stroke with how slick she is. Johnny lavishes his tongue over her ear, his breath hot and his hands greedy, touching and grabbing at any part of her he can reach.

Vera wraps herself around him — legs hitched up around his waist, arms around his middle. It feels as if she can’t seem to get her breath back but it’s alright because Johnny’s got her, fuck he’s got her in his arms and he’s inside her. She buries her face into his neck and thinks about how much she doesn’t want to let go of him. Vera cannot let go of anyone. Cannot give up. How many times has he called her stubborn?

Johnny grinds into her; stretches her and licks at her collarbone to smooth the dull sting inside of her. It’s been a long time for her and maybe he remembers that. Memories of hers she didn’t keep too well guarded— far too preoccupied with other parts of her psyche she didn’t want anyone to touch.

He grunts into her skin, bruising grip still on her hip and starts to fuck her hard. He stays seated within her, content not to draw himself out of her tightness. Johnny’s thrusts are hard and quick and shallow, leaving her breathless. Vera concludes that if he stops and leaves her aching and empty she would shatter.

Johnny starts groaning and huffing, breathing V and then Vera and then baby and it could be the force of his pace but she swears she feels him shaking in her arms.

He tightens, stills and grunts a slur of profanities against her neck before he relaxes against her.

Vera starts to chase her breath, staring at the cracks in her ceiling while his weight settles on top of her. It is quiet except for their breaths and the continued drone of the radio. Vera tries to latch onto the words but she can’t seem to make sense of them at the moment, heart pounding in her ears. The two of them, sticky chests pressed together and breathing in an awkward, frantic tandem. Her fingers slide up over his shoulders and back into his hair, his breath hot and wet as it beats against her neck.

Johnny doesn’t seem to be moving any time soon but she still keeps her arms around him, even if her legs have fallen back apart like jelly noodles.

When he finally picks his head up, her breathing has returned to normal. The edges of his hair are damp with sweat when she combs it from his face.

“You good?” Johnny asks her. She isn’t looking in his eyes, a burn of intimacy blooming in her chest that is hard to bear.

“Yeah,” Vera nods and aches when they disentangle themselves from each other. Vera reaches down and snatches up his t-shirt, tugging it on to cover herself. Johnny instead kicks his pants off the rest of the way and sprawls naked on her couch. There is a long and tender moment of silence between them, Johnny watching her curl her legs under her, tucking herself into the curved corner of the couch.

She reaches over the back to grab her half-empty box of smokes. Vera holds her lighter in her shaking hands and lights it with just a bit of difficulty. The burning drag feels good, settles the nerves that are bounding in her body; heart still pounding under his gaze.

Satisfaction. A heart-rending something she still does not want to name and thinks she might not have to. Loneliness, an empty ache with him so far away — though it may just be a foot or two in reality. Guilt too.

“I’m leaving.”

“Fuck, I know it wasn’t bad,” Johnny jokes and smirks lazily. It falls when she doesn’t chide him or smile back at him. Vera takes another shaky drag.

“Joining the Aldecaldos when they leave for Arizona. We leave in two days.”

Vera is an expert now in catching the quick strike of hurt in his features. No matter the words he slings at her she can see it and that fucking scares him. Vera knows because it scares the shit out of her too.

“Spit it out,” Vera huffs in irritation, anxiously flicking the ashes from the cig.

“You’re fuckin’ with me,” he scoffs with a shake of his head, “Why in the fuck would you wanna live the rest of your life with tarmac rats, eatin’ sand and-”

“It’s my fucking life, Johnny,” Vera snaps angrily, forcefully flicking more embers into the ashtray she pulled into her lap. “Finally. Just mine.”

Vera laughs breathlessly and shakes her head in disbelief.

“This city ate us alive. We are lucky to even be sitting here,” Vera tells him forcefully, her finger raised in accusation.

“Be fucking smarter next time then. You’re really going to give up? Let all of them-”

“All of who?!” Vera exclaims. “Arasaka? Millitech? Petrochem? NCPD?”

She stands, almost stumbling in her anger. The ashtray clatters onto the table. Johnny sits back and glares at her, watching her body curl in fury.

“Never thought you’d be a fucking pussy, V,” he snarls, yanking his pants back on when he stands.

“Aren’t you tired of fighting?” V breathes, staring up at him. There is a softness to her body, her voice — not of defeat but of exhaustion. “Johnny, this city takes . That’s all it does. It gives nothing. It took you. It took me. It took-”

Jackie. Evelyn. Her mother-

Vera leans over, blowing a column of smoke from the corner of her mouth and stubs out the cigarette.

“For some fucking reason we have another chance. I’m not going to waste it throwing my bloody corpse against a fucking wall like every promise this city makes isn’t a fucking lie .”

Johnny’s jaw is tight but he doesn’t speak. It’s how Vera knows there are no more walls he can throw up.

“A new start. It’s more than any dirtgirl from Heywood could ask for,” Vera tells him.

“Okay,” he tells her with a shrug.

“Okay?”

“Both know you won’t listen to me anyway,” Johnny grunts, arms crossing over his chest. A flippant flick of his hand. Still, there is something in his resolution. Something bittersweet and maudlin. Her body swims with the same ache.

She kisses him again, softer this time, arms threading around his waist. It isn’t long before Johnny lifts her into his arms.

Vera’s apartment is darkened save for the warm glow of a lamp and the ever-present neon flicker outside her window. One of her neighbors is playing some music that booms through the walls, into her stomach. A bright green and yellow light dances over Johnny’s face, cuts sharp lines into his cheeks. She refuses to let him take a drag of her cigarette, the pair of them tangled in sweaty sheets on her bed.

Vera leans her cheek against the side of his chest, staring up at the ceiling. He has an arm looped around her and she can’t resist playing idly running her thumb over each of his fingers.

“Panam and I are going to say goodbye to the city. Sunset on that bridge in Westbrook. Two days.”

They both know why she’s mentioning it.

The silent dark of the apartment swallows their silence.

Two days later, Vera is bathed in sunset glow as she says her farewells to the city skyline. A tangle of emotions ache in her chest but the heaviness is peeling from her shoulders like a bad sunburn. Panam had told her to take a long look. She left Vera with a reassuring touch on the shoulder and an understanding Vera had only found a handful of times before.

Johnny had left her apartment that morning after without waking her. Neither of them were really equipped for goodbyes anyway. How did you say goodbye to someone who knew you like that? Vera felt untethered, light and bittersweet. Despite herself, when she closed her eyes she could still feel the ache of tears pressing forth. A few fell freely, quickly swept away by a manicured finger.

So lost in fighting back the well of emotion in her chest, Vera doesn’t hear the car until it comes roaring around the last curve in the hills. The tarmac waves with heat, the shiny silver metal reflecting sunrays into her eyes. She squints against the brightness and eyes the red racing stripe that cuts across the back half of the car.

It rumbles to a stop at the curb. Too far away, Vera decides, pushing off the half-wall she had leaned her height against. She is already taking long strides — that might have been a jog if her legs were shorter — when the driver ducks out of the car and loops around to the hood.

“Just so you know,” Johnny begins, arms crossed, leaning back against his Porsche. “I get sand in my asscrack once and I’m leaving-”

“Johnny,” Vera huffs, pulling him down for a hard, messy kiss once she reaches him. An arm loops loosely around her waist, tugging her closer. Against his lips, she lets out a satisfied sigh, a beautiful, peaceful smile gracing her features in sharp contrast to the annoyed, fond tone that leaves her lips. “Stop talking.”

Johnny smirks lazily and straightens with a grunt.

“Know I can’t do that V.”

#johnny silverhand #johnny x v #johnny silverhand x v #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk 2077 spoilers #emily! stop using em dashes! enough!#:) no #writing*#ship: you're in my veins #i can't believe i actually wrote like at least....something sort of productive #i'd say read this on ao3 it's long and i haven't checked the formatting of it on tumblr i just wanna post

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poptod · 3 years

Text

The Breeding Kings, pt. 15, (Ahkmenrah x Reader)

Description: Dripping with dust.

Notes: i have a bunch of chapters backpiled, im gonna post them all and then dip. WC: 2.6k

Despite everyone's attempts to keep up a faster pace, many of you lagged behind, depleted entirely of energy after the long pause. Ahkmen had grown long accustomed to the heat, but that didn't stop him from complaining as he walked beside you, his shoulders sagging.

"I told you I didn't trust Batnoam," he grumbled quietly, half hoping you wouldn't hear.

"We can be dead now if we did not go with him," you said, swatting away the flies that swarmed around your heated head, and around the camel you rode.

"You don't know that," he said.

"And you do not know we would be better with Batnoam not here," you said with a saccharine smile.

He rolled his eyes but chuckled, giving away his true feelings on the matter.

You and Ahk brought up the rear once again, and by choice, allowing you few onlookers and listeners to judge your conversations. The only person that saw you was the one lagging behind––Makko. He'd been silent since his outburst, distant in both physical and psychological terms. There was an air of shame that he carried, one that he made himself, and one he suffered the burden of. Ahkmen spared a couple glances back, but had little idea on how he could help.

"Makko!" You called, twisting around in the loaded saddle.

Makko, who was previously staring at the ground, looked up.

"You do have water?" You asked, holding up one of your last full flasks.

"I, uh..." he mumbled, his words almost entirely muted beneath the footsteps in dry, cracking earth, "ran out a little bit ago."

"Then this," you said as you screwed the cap on tight, tossing it over to him.

"Oh. Zank you," he said in a lighter tone.

Banks of sand that flowed like water turned to arid, hard earth, devoid of any life or water. Red and yellow mountains broke out of the valley plateau, blocking away the edge of the sky and the distant cities beyond. As wide as it was, it was still a valley, and thus a place that would gather sunlight like a thief gathers gold, glowing yellow dust painting every surface around him. His hands were beginning to crack open much like the earth did, dry and deep. A burning sensation was building in his nose from the amount of dust kicked up by those he followed, and there was very little water left at all amongst the caravan.

You had little more than a few bites of dinner that next night. A growling stomach bothered you through a restless sleep, grasping desperately at the body next to you as you sweated from your twitching. Ahk couldn't manage to fall asleep, so he was awake to feel you gripping his hands and shirt, muttering something in a language he didn't know.

"Yogi?" He whispered, blinking away the sand that caught on his eyelashes.

You inhaled sharply, but your eyes remained closed.

"Yogasundari, calm down," he said as he raised his hand, stroking delicate fingers over your cheek and jaw. "It's alright."

You choked on yourself for a few more seconds before the harsh breaths gave way to evenness, slowing to match his own pace. Rapid, sleeping blinks slowed as well, creating a small sense of peace within the hostile desert. Ahk sighed, removing his hand from you.

"There you are," he murmured.

He got little rest after that.

Midnight faded into heated afternoon, the empty stomach, burning eyes and skin, and thirst remaining a staple of his aching body. A massive sun burned above, shining directly in the basin of red stone and dry dust. The water in his mouth turned to sweat on the back of his neck, sticking to his head covering, and running down the back of his shirt. Even the wind brought nothing but heat––boiling them inside a metalworker's furnace.

Days and nights followed in similar fashions, attempting to bring some semblance of comfort to each other, and too exhausted to bother interacting with others. Those walking in front of you turned silent as well, and Batnoam rarely spoke outside of mutterings to himself. Open mouths wasted precious water.

Several days later, in the evening, Ahk sat in the sand, his wooden totem in one hand and his knife in the other. He looked between the two of them, his eyes dragging listlessly from one object to the other as he blinked slowly. If he burned it, he'd be able to make a fire, albeit small since there was only one bush growing in the nearest crevice. Or, you could remain in the dark, and he could give a work of art to you. He turned to you, hoping to find some sort of answer, only to see you already asleep, your hand outstretched to him.

He shifted slowly into a lying position, moving your limp body as he needed till he wrapped himself in you, breathing deeply to slow his anxious heart. His lips, once soft as rose petals, were chapped and often bleeding, even as they pressed a weak kiss to your midsection.

The first signs of civilization were scant––travellers going in the opposite direction on roads you didn't know, causing Batnoam to take a detour to the south, to where the pathways were laid out. In either way there had to be humans, a city, or a village, and even more hopefully a wealth of water and food. But the residences you found yourself in the presence of were small, poorly made, and built upon a hilltop of ruins. On the other side of the town, however, was a vast, flowing river lined with soft grasses and shady trees. You let out a laugh––probably the first one anyone in the caravan had heard in a week––and threw your hands up into the air in victory.

"We did not die!" You cried, pouncing onto Ahk with a fierce hug that nearly toppled him onto the ground.

"Shut up!" Shouted a distant voice from within the village.

Since there were no walls put up around the establishment, there were no guards to protect a particular entrance. Instead, thin streets wove around unevenly placed buildings of clay and mud, many of which had roofs with reed mats set out beside ladders and spreads of drying fruit. As you got deeper into town, a few more intricate buildings came into view. Several floors high and carved in a peculiarly African fashion, they loomed above the other buildings as towers in the vacant sky, the mark of a once booming city state. Forgotten, empty, and rotting.

The people who passed by your large group gave you odd stares, but none wanted to speak to you, which made finding a kitchen or tavern rather difficult. In the end, you all figured they probably didn't have a tavern.

You made it all the way through town and out the other side, where––to Batnoam's knowledge––the Euphrates flowed. Here, the two riverbanks weren't all that far apart, and the water ran in a steady, clear ripple over rocks and mud. The grasses and trees you saw before were now before all of you, and you grinned in relief at the feeling of grass around your feet.

Camels knelt down in the soft dirt the moment they realized they were allowed to do so, and the many travellers that made up the caravan slowly removed all their baggage and belongings. You and Ahk got yours rather quickly, and moved to the side, checking that everything was still in place and unbroken.

As you opened up your first bag, Sephys came jumping out of it, causing you to flinch backwards with your eyes squeezed shut. You sighed once you realized she hadn't hurt you. She was, however, leaving you behind, as she shambled off to the riverside.

"Will she be alright?" Ahk asked, glancing between you and the cat.

"Oh, yes, she is good," you said dismissively.

You shuffled things around in your bags a moment more, your arms stuck deep within, the brim nearly sitting around your shoulder. Afterwards you sat back, taking a deep breath as you lay down.

Ahk made way to say something, but before he could, he noted Makko coming closer, alone with his bags. Crunching footsteps brought you to sit up and recognize him, as well.

"I vanted to say thank you, for being a friend," he said in a quiet voice. "I am going north now."

"With Khawa?" Ahk asked, but Makko shook his head.

"No, I am too much of a danger to have in ze... in a trader's caravan. I do not want Shirat, or any of zem, to get hurt."

Makko looked over his shoulder to Shirat, who was discussing something with Eshai, her long, black robes fluttering in the wind.

"I know," you said softly. "I know what it is, what you are. Hunted. I... hope you are well in your travels. Here, um... take this."

You pulled out a bottle filled with a strange, almost green liquid.

"It is for wounds. A little will do a lot," you said, handing it to him. He hesitantly took it.

"Thank you," he said, his voice cracking as he bowed his head and left.

Sitting from a distance allowed you and Ahk to slowly see the caravan split into different directions, some with and some without the camels that Batnoam began to sell. Soon, there were very few people left at all, and Ahk rose to his feet, gesturing for you to do the same.

"I don't want to have to talk to Batnoam again," he muttered in your ear, "so I think we should go now before he approaches us."

You agreed with a small, but definite, nod.

The two of you hauled your bags on your shoulders and backs, trecking back into town in hopes of finding something to eat, or a place to stay, at least for the night. A much longer pause was needed, but this town didn't seem like a good place to stop and rest up. More of a 'take a breath and keep going' kind of place.

Despite that, it still was the beginning of evening, and you were both irreparably exhausted and hungry. Sick of trying to negotiate food with the inhabitants of the town––which was called Mari, according to Batnoam––you instead took up a place along the river's shore, hiding yourselves from view within thickets of soft, green leaves. There you started up the fire, while Ahk fashioned a long, wooden pike that he drove into the riverbed in search of fish. Sephys eventually made her way to you as well, joining Ahk in trying to catch a meal.

You chuckled when he swore, ripping the stick out from between lodged rocks. He nearly slipped onto his back as he did, so when he caught himself, his eyes were wide as the sky, causing you to only laugh even more.

After a while his feet began to freeze in the water, and he lugged himself up on shore devoid of any fish. In a disappointed heap he returned to you, panting as he sat down, warming his feet on your fire.

"I have no heal potion now," you said, pulling a small mixing pot out from your bag. "I need to make one."

"How'd you do that?" He asked.

"Mint, chamomile, and honey of marigolds. And tears from being sad, but I get those later, when I am sad next," you recited as you once more dug into your bag, searching through your dried herbs.

"Do marigolds grow here?" He asked, tilting his head to the side.

"You know more than I," you said with a shrug.

A few moments later you pulled out two leather drawstring bags, both of them fitting into the palm of your small hands. You didn't do anything with them, though––just set them beside your bag, and stood up with an empty bag at your side.

"You get fish," you said, gesturing to the river. "I do find the flower."

"I'm not sure I can," he said, a feeling of dreariness washing over him as he considered his own shortcomings.

"I know you can," you assured him as you bent down in front of him, meeting his eye with a smile before you turned and left.

He sighed deeply, willing himself to move from his spot in front of the warm fire that contrasted the cool wind coming off the river. Eventually, after staring at Sephys for far too long, he snatched his spear up from beside him and stood, wading back into the water.

When you at last convened back at the dwindling fire, you came back empty-handed, but Ahk had caught a little bit of luck. A fish large enough for the two of you cooked over the flames, attracting Sephys back to you, who batted at the spinning stick. You giggled, pushing her away so Ahk could continue slowly roasting. She returned to the river after a while of being jostled about, leaving you alone with Ahk, your hands unoccupied by the marigolds you couldn't find.

"Tired?" He asked, noting your slumped posture leaning on one hand, your eyes half-closed.

"Yes," you said with a nod. "And you are."

"Can't say you're wrong," he mumbled.

You ate in silence, digging away at the unseasoned fish with gusto unparalleled in the entirety of the past week. The mere scent of water tempted your tastebuds, so the feeling of fresh meat was more of a relief than you ever imagined it could be, even dusted with the dirt you hadn't washed your hands of. You hardly noticed, gulping down the food until nothing remained but bones. The skin, Ahk had cut earlier, before cooking it.

When you finished, you tossed the bones into a small pile near the river. Sephys sniffed the remains and curled away when she realized there wasn't any meat left, returning to sit by you. Dust and twigs scratched at your palms pressed into the ground, and when Ahkmen noticed this, he heaved himself to his feet and motioned for you to do the same.

"Why?" You asked, your head lolling to face him.

"Please," he said, and you did, picking up Sephys with you.

He laid out a blanket, the span of it stretching in a circle beside the fire. You both sat down, keeping closer together as possible, and eager to feel the softness of dirt instead of hard rock beneath you. Evenings were still rather warm, yet remained more of a comfort than anything else. A time of silent communication, speaking through fingers tracing in one another's skin, watching the fire slowly die out to feed the glowing stars above.

It wasn't long till you passed out, your head falling onto Ahk's shoulder. He simply chuckled, situating the both of you till you were both lying down, him on his back to look up at the stars, and you curled into him. Trees with their limbs and leaves blocked portions of the sky, but there still remained small pockets of sprinkled light. What was previously warm turned cold, and the ease of his heart faded into disparity as memories occurred to him, of you, of Egypt, and of Piye. How far he had roamed to follow you, and how far he sat from his home by the Nile.

That was where he belonged, wasn't it? His eyes were weary and he had little room to worry with you next to him and the journey still ahead. But in his dreams he returned to his temples, to the wealth of water and riches, and to his family, for whom he never left a note.

#ahkmenrah x reader #Ahkmenrah #Night at the Museum #rami malek #rami malek character #ahkmenrah x male reader #ahkmenrah x female reader

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thebiscuiteternal · 3 years

Text

Some very lovely people asked for this in the tags of the original post, so have a little fic.

“Mirror Shards” Not Quite A Fix-It, Giving Mo Xuanyu the Rescue He Deserves, Post-Canon, Bittersweet, Ghosts and Stuff, Slightly Illegal Magic Rituals

__________

Mo Manor is unnaturally silent.

Some quiet is to be expected; no one has lived here in nearly two years.

Not since...

But it’s more than simple abandonment. Even natural sounds have vanished. No rustling in the branches of the bushes and trees, no buzzing of insects. Even the air is so very still.

It’s like he has stepped into a void where time has simply stopped, and the feeling makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

No one would know if he simply turned around, since no one knew he was coming here in the first place. It was foolish of him to have done so, really. He had read the notes back then, even if he had only halfway understood them, and they had been very clear that there would be nothing to find here.

He should just... leave.

And yet he doesn’t. He can’t. He keeps walking across the compound, as if pulled by a string around his wrist, until he stands at the door of a tiny, half-destroyed shack.

Against his better judgment, he pushes what’s left of the door open.

There are still talisman papers scattered about, rotted and molding and reduced to little more than slime by sun and rain. There are still some lingering, brownish stains on the floor and the walls that haven’t collapsed. Under the sour reek of decay, he is sure he can still detect the faint metallic tinge of the blood.

He closes his eyes and clenches his hands until his nails bite into his palms, letting the pain ground him against the lightheaded nausea that threatens to overwhelm him.

However terrible this idea is, he will see it through.

It takes awhile to find any kind of cleaning supplies, and what brushes and brooms he does find have been thoroughly decimated by insects.

They’ll have to do.

He’s surprised, but pleased, to find that what water is still in the cistern hasn’t gone stagnant; at least he won’t have to go all the way to the river. He ties up his hair and sleeves and knots his robes above the knees, half expecting the floor to collapse under him when he starts scrubbing.

Thankfully, it holds.

His mind wanders as he works, running down the list of potential rituals he could use, particularly the ones he’s already brought supplies for.

If anyone else knew just how long that list is, they would likely think him insane, and they’re... probably not wrong. He had lost himself in desperation for awhile when he’d discovered the coffin in their ancestral tomb empty. Had nearly given away his entire gambit with how feverishly he’d been hunting down every single scrap of hope he could get his hands on, no matter how obscure or foreign or illegal.

None of them had found his brother’s soul.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if one worked now?

His eyes are watering as he snorts a small laugh, and he tells himself it’s just the dust.

By the time he’s cleared out a decent working space, it’s almost dark outside and he’s decided on a ritual. It’s not exactly an illegal one, but it’s close enough that it’s for the best that no one will see it.

One by one, he produces each piece from the pouch at his belt. Charcoal, candles, ink, a knife. Carefully-wrapped packages of favorite sweets and dumplings. White chrysanthemums bound in wet cloths.

Once more, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath to brace himself, then gets started.

An array drawn three times, one layer over the last, in ink, blood, and charcoal. A ring of candles and half the flowers, the rest burnt to ash in the center. Offerings laid in each map direction.

Everything set in place, exactly as he had done when trying to find his brother, he presses his fingers into the ashes in the center and concentrates, sending a pulse of qi into the array.

Nothing happens.

He sits back on his heels and rakes his hair out of his face, and it’s not the leaving of ash streaks that make him feel like an idiot. He knew not to expect anything, and still-

He jerks with a yelp at a sudden feeling like lightning up his spine. Before he can recover from the shock, the candles go out.

But the room still glows.

His mouth hangs open as he stares at the little blue-green wisps that float aimlessly about the room, as if they’re confused.

As if they’re lost.

Hesitantly, cautiously, he holds out a hand. In the back of his mind, he knows he could be getting himself into very deep trouble, but he can’t let go of the hope that maybe, just maybe- “Yu-er?”

The closest wisp flutters in the air at the sound of his voice, and in his mind, he sees a memory of a familiar young man -before he had become an entirely different but still familiar young man- jerking awake, embarrassed at being caught napping.

“Sorry, sorry, I swear I was listening.”

The wisp settles in his palm and another drifts closer. He sees another, decidedly more uncomfortable memory; the same man, wild-eyed and desperate and angry, slamming a sheaf of papers -the ritual that will end his life- on a table.

“I’m going to make them pay, one way or another. Don’t you want the same?”

He bites the inside of his cheek against the sudden urge to cry.

The wisp in his hand floats back up, leaving his fingertips glowing the same bluish-green shade, curious, he reaches out, and the second seems to be attracted to it.

And a third.

And a fourth.

One by one, he gathers them all, gently coaxing them into the spirit-trapping pouch he’d carried along just in case.

Only once he’s finished tying the strings does he finally let the tears come, cradling the warm cloth against his chest.

“Let’s get out of here,” he murmurs softly. “And then there’s someone I think you should meet.”

#mdzs #nie huaisang #mo xuanyu #fanfic

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paper-cloud · 3 years

Text

i. the crushing weight of what happens next

part of "(there will be a) tomorrow"

fandom: prospect (2018) characters: ezra, cee rating: T words count: ~3K context: post-canon general warnings/tags: see series masterlist warnings/tags for this chapter: ezra's pov. angst. not graphic descriptions of wounds, blood and amputated limbs. mentions of minor characters' death. (probably very) inaccurate but anyways vague descriptions of medical treatments and post-anesthesia symptoms. taglist: @ravensmutty @buttercup--bee @thegreenkid (again, thank you all for your interest and encouragement! :3) @krissology @ezrasarm @bonktime (please forgive my nerve, i won't tag you in the next chapters unless you'll explicitly ask me to! just thought about someone else who might be interested and you guys are AMAZINGLY talented and inspiring "prospect"/ezra writers. it's not my intention to waste precious moments of your time! 🤡

[SERIES MASTERLIST] [MAIN MASTERLIST]

He'd have thought it was almost ironic – opening his eyes to the light only to see nothing. To feel pain.

He'd have laughed about it, most likely. A bit later, he'd have acknowledged it was a reasonably fair compromise; for him and any other wretch that'd ever dared play dice with darkness and miraculously made it out alive.

And in the very end he'd come to laugh at himself, too.

He knows the drill. Someone who trades their own life with the contract of the highest bidder doesn't see the universe in black and white, let alone is in a position to draw the hypothetical line between the two of them.

Must be an even more wicked universe than he's ever cared about, then.

At least, that's where the struggle of opening his eyes made him stumble upon; when a blade of light thrust through that hint of a gap he'd pushed himself to create in the middle, resonating through the dark coils of unconsciousness like a harsh, unforgiving bell.

A skilled mariner over silky rivers of natural redundancy and rapids of professional edges, Ezra is a man who can appreciate a sharp wit when he recognizes one.

That was too much even for him.

Floundering in between a blinding whiteness and a black hole that wasn't even completely black, but permeated by a thick, suffocating haze that filled every ghost haunting his mind with its stench. With the color of diabolically lush leaves.

Forest— spores— poison— death.

It hadn't been enough to let him dangle in apnea above a roaring vortex of lifeless emerald; take him away from the grey flow whose elusiveness he'd come to appreciate more than he'd ever hated to endure its chaos— from the bubble built on the routine series of one last jobs that, in the end, never really were.

There'd been a moment when, from the higher parts of the room, his pupils tumbled down, tripping over a patch of green discreetly lurking in a corner.

He almost threw up.

It had taken him a while to clear out the misty grit clotted in his corneas— focus on white walls, light wood paneling... a harmless seedling in a pot.

He'd breathed heavily, deeply. He sure hadn't got much relief from it. Still, he'd been able to hear its sound, louder than he'd ever heard it before, the musical, cooling mesh of oxygen particles in and out of his lungs almost begging his fingers to be touched.

Oxygen.

Fresh air.

Had he been less sore – less convinced it was just the residual effects of anesthesia pulling pranks on him –, he would have burst out laughing. Even more so if some poor soul of the medical staff nearby would have called for reinforcements from the other side of the space station before storming into his room.

He'd be laughing now, too. The best he can manage is sitting on his bed, leaning his back on the headboard – which is what he's struggling to do right now�� and well, sometimes the room lighting still slightly bothers him. Of course, with all the painkillers and antibiotics they've given him, he wouldn't feel like the wound on his stomach is swallowing the entire arsenal of stitches and bandages.

He just wouldn't like her to get the wrong idea.

He blinks several times, like a man who no longer trusts his eyes. How can he, when they're burning like that, in such a different fire from the one from days before – damp and flickering? For reasons he can imagine, she seems to be faltering. Totally beyond his comprehension, he could swear she's smiling at him. Something inside his ribcage creaks oddly, while the curve of his chest arches upward.

"Birdie."

It's just a huff of breath, weak and hoarse, yet scratches his throat all the same, in a way that its walls feel studded with rock spurs. Actually, Ezra doesn't remember talking since they left the Green behind – which, being him, is saying something – and it's like an eternity has passed since their pod docked up there.

The nurse who let her into his room has just left and Cee sinks her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants. She's still smiling— just the faded shadow of a smile, now that he takes a better look at her.

"How's your wound?"

It sounds a lot less plain than he expected.

She hasn't moved towards him any further, and for now she's not showing any hints at wanting to. In her irises, Ezra recognizes thumping stars and cerulean clouds, all clustered in the black circle cut by the large porthole next to his bed. All before catching the thin mist veiling them. As if she did want to reach those stars, let herself get carried away by those streams of bluish dust, but she had no idea how or what to do there.

He looks down, the borders of the bandages over his abdomen slightly raised under his black short-sleeved tee. He clears his throat.

"S'healin' nicely", he says, with a deliberate lightheartedness that costs him a sharp, bizarre inflection in his voice. He closes his eyes soon after, tilting his head condescendingly. "That's how the nurse feels about it, anyway... S'not like I can feel much more right now."

This reminds him of those vacuous moments between brief, chaotic waking states and delirious dreams. When he'd managed to reconnect some essential key points scattered around in the talks of surgeons and nurses; the weariness he felt from simply gathering he was on a space station due to enter the orbit of Mesos in three cycles and something standard hours. All while his only solid reference point – the only indisputable proof he was still alive – was the sequence of beeps chirped by the medical monitor perched nearby. Constant, not monotonous. Friendly, even. Sometimes, he actually comes to miss it.

"A trust fall to the extreme, I'd guess", he snorts, a sly laugh as weak and heavy as the words trudging out of his mouth. As the whole rest of him.

Whatever answer she's considering, Cee freezes it in a quick purse of her lips – maybe a nod, but for his own good he'd rather be doubtful. Then she starts looking around.

There's a chair under the board firmly anchored to the opposite wall – probably a desk or something he's never needed to test, whatsoever. She grabs it and puts it next to his bed. She sits down, bringing her legs to her chest, squeezing them in her arms.

Waiting for what, Ezra has no idea, and he's afraid she doesn't have any, either.

He doesn't speak, though, nor does he encourage her to do the same. Her pearly gaze roams steadily but unhurriedly from him to somewhere beyond him, her nose buried in the gap between her knees. He studies her carefully, two purple crescents above her cheeks, a few hair strands swinging down her face without her wiping them out. The nights she's slept through haven't been any more peaceful than his.

Trust, he recalls in the meantime.

It sure brings an odd taste to his mouth. Something close to sweaty spacesuits, grimy paths and gone-off ration bars. A single word for two human beings forced to share the same air filter for days; that, and the image of a dead body left to rot miles behind and the desperate commitment not to end up in the same way.

His gaze just happens to trip over his right side, taking in the deflated sleeve over the emptiness that saved his life. When he lifts it back to the girl, meeting her eyes just before they can flutter away, he realizes they were both looking at the same spot. And he realizes something else— something he's already understood, yet not quite.

There is no tube binding them now.

"Why d'you do it?", he mumbles a split second later, almost like somehow the thread of his question has immediately knotted to the one of his previous thought.

He huffs. He shouldn't even have asked her, in all honesty. Seeing her like this, at least he should have put it in another way, danced around it, it's not like he’s never been good at stalling, after all—

"Comin' back", Ezra says instead, and when he swallows, he mainly does it to send his heart back down his throat. If he'd died without being given the last chance to be this straightforward on this matter, he would have probably kicked his ass all the way to the other side.

This time, Cee doesn't avoid his gaze. He shouldn't be surprised by how collected she looks, given the calmness she handled his infected arm with and then told him about when she used to slip into Jata Bhalu carcasses. But he can't help it when he thinks she can't be much older now than what she was then.

He watches her breathing in, wobbling her pupils here and there, seemingly considering his words. She's not afraid, not any more than what she seemed to be when she walked into his room. Maybe she's just better than him at playing pretend – but this, he can't tell whether it's more of a good than a bad thing. Especially for her.

One thing he can tell is that she's not the same girl who pointed a trembling gun at him before running away into the woods. He knows she's not afraid.

He knows...

So is it the hunter's instinct he has to blame if he feels she is?

"Guess I've seen too much death on that forsaken moon to just... turn my back on one I can help– one I can do something about."

If he was standing in front of an entire mountain crumbling down into the ocean, he wouldn't hear its sound. ‘Wouldn't even be the worst he deserves. She did hesitate before adding the last few words, but Ezra refuses to believe she did that because she was afraid of hurting him. He may be a wretch, but not a fool.

Kevva, for a man who's always managed to untwist himself from far tougher situations with the tangles of his tongue alone, he's sure having a deal of trouble – and he wishes he could put all the blame on his current physical condition.

There is no word he doesn't have to weigh carefully now, to prevent it from taking too sharp edges once out of his lips. He may float around it forever. But once he's let her go without saying anything, he'll hardly find the courage to look within himself again, more than after any other job that hardened his hands with calluses and tarnished his eyes with blood.

He doesn't know for sure. In fact, everything he was sure to know – about the turning direction of the universe and the one of the wheels in his head – has already collapsed in front of him, tracing a flaming tail. An unforgiving meteor following a trajectory far beyond his grasp.

He just knows silence scares him, in a way that a wrong word will never do again. It terrifies him. More than as a talkative person, as a castaway on a hostile moon for too many cycles to keep their count – with the only company of a mute. Silence is green; the green of the most poisonous pollen, lethal in his brain just like toxic spores enveloped in his lungs. The green of snake scales ready to stand and scratch his flesh until liquid crimson pours out of it.

And at the end of the day, this is the only fucking thing he can tell himself to know without having his guts churning and chest heaving a beat later.

"Stop looking at me like that."

It's more of an exhausted prayer than an annoyed remark. Ezra blinks, stunned by the sudden return from the shapeless stream of his thoughts.

"Like what?"

"Like you're looking for the words to thank me", Cee settles back into her chair and this time she lets one leg touch the floor, "Tell me you owe me, and you– you're sorry about what you did."

Ezra sniffles. "Would it be bad?"

"No, it—". She closes her eyes for a moment, clenching her jaw. "Just no good", she breathes out, calmer.

And the discordant note in those words conjures up ghosts not yet vague enough for Ezra to be able to tolerate them without something twinging inside him— like a violent flutter of wings. Voices groping their way up ravels of compromises. Damon, deep in the forest. Himself, with the mercenaries in the Queen's Lair. Cee, days before that. After he—

She's right— those words she hasn't said yet, but whose shadow he feels looming every time he catches her wetting her lips.

Some things just can't be split evenly.

"This is not the Green", she states, suddenly more confident but no less exhausted. "If you're going to hang around just because you need to, once we reach Mesos¹ you'd better be on your way."

Ezra doesn't interrupt her. A faded echo starts making its way into his ears. A former prospecting partner, many years ago. An easy job on a forgettable Fringe moon.

Gems don't have an expiration date. Deals do. Strike 'em if you need to, get rid of them as soon as you can. Unless you care to dig a quicker way to your grave.

He didn't pay attention to it, then. He'd thought it was just the empty rhetoric prospectors drop absentmindedly to fill the time between an unrewarding digging and the next. All the more so under the rickety advice of a couple too many.

His eyes still wide open, hands shaky, he merely reciprocated the awkward bottle lift of his partner, whom he didn't know more than the meanders of that quarry. A toast to a faceless future – a nothingness still more reassuring than what was all around and behind them. Not to the darkness of the cave, basically unbreakable if only for the red halo thrown by the twinkles of sharp, sinister Prystines². Not even to the two poor bastards that had set out with them, ending up skewered a few hundred paces behind – one by mistake, the other to return the favor of saving him from the clutches of a furious Aiu³.

Like an idiot.

Several contracts later preventing him from missing a beat in front of similar hiccups, the logic of that statement no longer sounds so absurd to Ezra. Luckily for him, Cee understood it long before him.

"I was just lookin' for the words to tell ya you'll be better off without me—"

Half a truth. Half a heartbeat. After all, she isn't the only one of them who knows how to sell it.

He leans his head back against the headboard, eyes half-closed, a sly grin baring a couple of his upper teeth. It would almost be intimidating, except that the glint hitting them doesn't quite match the dying one in his eyes.

"—But you beat me to it", he finishes, and he sounds like he's about to fall asleep.

He slowly turns his head away, looks through the porthole. His gaze clutches to the passing asteroids outside, distant nebulae spraying the sidereal black with hues of purple, blue, red— then green, again. A climbing plant squeezing him from the inside, discomfort starts creeping on him an inch of his body – what's left of it – at a time.

He doesn't want her to think he's angry at her, and it's the only concrete foothold emerging from the fluid, magmatic chaos in his mind.

How could he be, when she came back to get him?

She didn't have to.

She doesn't have to be here, either...

"I'm sorry", she suddenly blurts out.

He meets her eyes again, a mix of bewilderment and disapproval shading his own. He shakes his head.

"Don't."

"I just—". She starts fiddling with the extra fabric created by the folds of her sweatpants. Then she sighs deeply. "I have no idea what I'm gonna do now."

He snorts. "Not that it's s'pposed to make you feel any better, but... neither do I."

He doesn't have a hazy helmet choking the glimmer in his eyes, an air filter breaking some frequencies in his voice— maybe just those making him sound sincere, while saving those trapping him into the swamp of self-loathing.

He was nothing but honest when he told her the rules of the game on the Green. When he openly admitted he was a killer, and when he assured her he wouldn't trade her for the Sater's Aurelac. And she's always seemed to believe him, maybe for that kind of desperate inertia that washes over people when they need something to cling to. Whatever the case, Ezra can only hope she wants to believe him now. But she doesn't speak, and for a moment his fear of not saying enough overcomes that of crossing her boundaries.

"But w—", he immediately bites his tongue, "—you still have three cycles to figure things out. Someone up here will be able to help you. Even so, please know you'll always have my most sincere gratitude."

The effort of lining up all those words and so few pauses to catch his breath casts a thick fog over his ears. His eyes suddenly hurt again and he finds himself squinting.

What happens next, he just records it, hardly managing to follow each cause-effect relationship. A series of events softly raining on him without making a noise, while he can quite imagine them to be way more prolonged in time. Cee leaning towards the lighting panel on the wall, sliding her finger counterclockwise, and the white coating the walls turning less painfully bright; her getting up, walking away, dwelling just before the door. "I'll come to check on you tomorrow", she says, sniffling.

She tilts her head, holding his gaze in her watery one for an agonizingly slow while – Please, don't ask me why.

He blinks once – Of course.

Then, the automatic door is once again engulfed by the wall, closing behind her with a metallic rustle.

Tomorrow.

His heart is taken by a spiraling jolt that leaves an empty cave behind. When it falls back into place, Ezra finds something has tripped in there, shapeless and quivering like the nucleus of a newborn star.

Hope, terror and everything that lies in between.

___________________

NOTES:

1) Mesos — Invented planet. Its only raison d'être is that "mésos" in Greek means "middle" and my intent was to frame this story in a moment of transition (after those of movies) for both Ezra and Cee. 2) Prystines — Invented kind of crystals. They're implied to be huge, red and very sharp, thus endangering the path through the cave. 3) Aiu — Invented predator, ideally a big feline.

A/N:

Yeah, uhm... at this point, if someone was ever to give me any kind of feedback, constructive criticism or random thought, I think I'd just melt into a puddle for the attention alone. And to all those who came all the way down here, your bravery shall not be forgotten. ♥️✨

In my defense, it's (almost) all P**** P*****'s fault & of his habit of taking orphans under his wing from one planet to another.

I know people in the fandom generally tend to make Ezra and Cee go along straight away after the movie, so this will be a slightly different take on things, I guess... But even if I don't know if I'll keep this series going atm (life & maturity exam suck), a final reconciliation is definitely on the way. ;)

Oh, and any beta reader that should feel like helping me out for when I'll have the next chapters ready is warmly welcomed! My DMs are always open and I swear I don't bite! :3

#prospect (2018)#prospect movie #ezra (prospect)#cee (prospect)#pedro pascal #sophie thatcher #my writing ☁️#geez what tf did i write this so long for?#it's all sadness and insecurities and introspections #hopefully i'll fit more dialogues in for the next ones...#which means kevva help me when i'll have to put my hands on that verbose space rascal's dialogues #i already know i'll ruin him but i really don't want to but he's so fucking intimidating but—#*goes hiding in her cave*

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keelywolfe · 3 years

Text

FIC: A Lonely Impulse of Despair (standalone)

Summary: They knew about the anomaly and the resets, but forewarned is not always forearmed.

Notes: I got this idea into my head that what-if all the skeletons knew at least something about the anomaly and the resets and this is where it went. Read the tags!

Tags: Spicyhoney, References to Undertale Genocide Route, Dark, Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Rough Sex, Lemony

Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

Snowdin always lived in darkness, broken only by the lighted lamps along the streets, powered by the core. There was no sun underground, no illusion of dawn and dusk. It was morning simply because the clocks stated it to be so, and that morning, Edge left his home to walk down the empty streets to the shops at the far end of town.

The other houses in town stood vacant. There was an occasional window lit, flickering light casting shadows out onto the snowdrifts, but their former inhabitants were gone.

There was no sign of any violence in those homes. None of those windows were broken, the doors undamaged. He’d gone into one where the door was standing open and found dishes in the sink, a pie sitting on the back of the counter for an upcoming dessert. Half-folded laundry sat in a basket, books and toys strewn about as if they were only waiting for their owners to return.

Edge touched nothing, only left and closed the door carefully behind him.

On this morning, snow was falling in a silent flurry. The flakes were piling up on streets that were no longer cleared daily by the Bun family. It was barely a hinderance. His boots cut easily through the loose drifts as he walked, alone, down to the other side of town.

There were children here once. Not so carefree as the ones he’d seen in the other Universes but even here on clear days they played in the snow until their parents called them back inside as the more dangerous night hours came.

A ridiculous notion. The illusion of safety during the day hours was just that, an illusion. There was no difference in the Underground and every minute of any day could bring treacherous events.

From a distance, Edge could see the lights were still on in the store. He’d left them on the day before when he’d come this same way. The store was the closest building to the edge of town that led into the woods surrounding it. If anyone were still out there, those lights could guide them into Snowdin.

The bell over the door rang as Edge pushed it open, a cheery warning to no one at all. The shop was as empty as the homes. The shelves had never been fully stocked at any time in Edge’s memory and the meagre offerings lining them were thinner than ever. There were no more fresh baked goods and only a handful of dried food remained. Most of the commodities left were canned, their lids coated with a thin layer of dust.

(dust, so much dust, how could it be)

Half of the remaining stock would have fit in Edge’s knapsack. It would make more sense to take all the food there and bring it home with him. Spare him the walk out in the open, keep him with necessary provisions for a time. Sensible.

Edge only took enough for the day and carefully noted what remained so he would know if anyone else came scavenging. Monster food would not rot or spoil, but eventually, he was going to run out of rations.

He gathered up the day’s supplies into his knapsack and went back outside into the swirling snow. He didn’t follow his half-buried tracks back home, instead going around the outskirts of town along the perimeter. None of his traps were disturbed, there was no indication that anyone had traveled this way. Just as it had been yesterday and the day before and the day before that. No signs, no people, no other Monsters.

There was nothing in the woods but hungry shadows that beckoned and cajoled for him to join them. Come to us, they said, there is nothing left for you in that town but emptiness and death. Come with us into the swirling snow and listen to secrets that only the mountain knows.

Edge ignored their call. He stopped at the borders of Waterfall where the snow began to melt into sludge and turned back, heading into town along the main road. He was nearly home when he caught sight of something that stopped him in his tracks. A figure in a familiar orange hoodie was sitting on his front porch steps, casually disregarding of the signs to ‘keep out’ and ‘beware’ that were strung on the barbed wire fence around it. There was a lit cigarette in his hand and Edge watched him lift it to his mouth and take a long drag, the exhaled smoke lost in the falling snow.

He hitched his knapsack higher on his shoulder and resumed his stride. Stretch didn’t look at him as he approached. “hey.”

Edge said nothing.

“you’re still here,” Stretch said. He tapped ash from his cigarette, exposing burning red at the tip. “thought maybe you’d’ve headed into new home.” He tipped his head back and looked up at what was not sky, but the high ceiling of a cave deep beneath the mountain that was both their prison and their home. “might be other refugees there keeping ahead of—” He hesitated, then added in a voice like hollow ice, “the anomaly.”

The anomaly, yes. The Human child whose soul offered no salvation, only death and dust.

A child, that was what Edge saw in that one brief instant when he came upon them on the road leading into Snowdin. An innocent child, and in his shock, he didn’t consider how they’d gotten past the Dogs or the traps. He didn’t notice the dust coating their clothes, didn’t even notice the knife in their hand. All he saw was the striped shirt, the round, cherubic face and in that instant, he was so taken aback that he paused. That moment of hesitation was all it took.

If Edge saw them again, he wouldn’t hesitate to strike them down, Edge told himself. He would cut that angelic head from their striped shoulders with a single cutting blow and leave them dead where they stood, even knowing he would never get the answer to his one question.

Why didn’t you kill me?

He told himself that was what he would do the next time and knew it wasn’t true.

It never was.

Stretch finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into the snow. “doesn’t help much to know this,” Stretch sighed, “but what the hell. you’re gonna forget this all. one morning you’ll wake up and it’ll be an all-new day. you’ll forget everything, the kid, the pain.” His grimace twisted into a crooked smile. “you’ll even forget me, for a little while. silver linings, am i right?”

“Why are you here?” How many days had it been since he’d last spoken? Edge wasn’t certain, but to his hearing, his voice was harsh with disuse, painfully hoarse.

Stretch rolled his shoulders in an approximation of a hug. “checking in. no one’s heard from this ‘verse in a couple weeks. wasn’t too hard to figure out what was going down.”

Not a difficult guess at all, he was sure. They all knew about the resets, all of them. They knew an anomaly came and what it did, and the price Monsters paid for their hubris was death. He’d known what was coming, he’d been braced for it since his brother took him down to the basement and showed the machine, the path to the other worlds where skeletons with faces that resembled their own lived in towns that were not their home. Anomalies, they explained, resets where time flowed backwards and took memory with it.

He’d known and he’d still failed, failed, because he hadn’t expected death would come with the face of a child.

“Come inside.” Edge didn’t wait to see if Stretch followed.

Inside, Stretch paused on the doormat, glancing around the living room. “keeping the homestead clean, i see, i—whoa!”

His breath left him in a grunt as Edge took hold of his sweatshirt and swung him around, shoving him up against the closed door. The faces were inches apart as Edge gritted out, “Why are you here?”

There was no fear on Stretch’s face, only that same irritating smirk beneath a deadened gaze. “told you, wanted to check on you.” He shrugged again, this time tight and nervous. “no one else was gonna. no one’s real sure what’ll happen if the reset comes while someone from another ‘verse is in town. probably shouldn’t even be here, but, eh, guess i ain’t too bright.”

The question of what would happen if you were in a different universe when the reset occurred had been asked before and it was one without an answer. There was simply no way of knowing if anyone had already tested it. For all anyone knew, they might all once have had an elder brother who tested the theory and found the price was a high one. “You might be leaving your brother alone.”

“heh.” A soft laugh, but Stretch’s gaze shifted, moving to look past Edge at the wall on the other side. “ain’t like i’ve ever been able to save him, anyway.”

Edge didn’t step back, but he loosened his grip on Stretch’s sweatshirt, let him slide a little down until his feet were firm on the floor. “If you’re here to try to convince me to leave Underfell—"

“nah. wouldn’t do that to you. see, i’d ask and you’d say no but you’d feel bad about it.” Stretch shook his head. “nah, you already don’t want to travel, i’m not about to send you on a guilt trip. who’s to say it’s safer, anyway. maybe you’d come over to visit and when the reset hit here, it’d drag you back on home through time and space. not my idea of fun.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Edge demanded. “For fun? Come to see Underfell at its safest?” He stepped back enough to wave a hand towards the window as mockingly as Mettaton on their latest game show. “Please, feel free. Wander through the woods, stroll down main street. But I warn you, the scenery will disappoint. There’s nothing out there. I’ve looked. There’s no one, nothing.” His voice was rising, going shrill and Edge shut his mouth, teeth clicking together painfully.

Patiently, hinting at petulance, Stretch said, “i told you, came here to check on you. it’s hard to be the last one around, all you can do is sweep up, put the chairs on the table, and wait for them to turn the open sign on again.”

Edge searched his face. Their skulls were more malleable than simple bone, their magic gave them life and Stretch’s skull was creased from worry, wearing his exhaustion like a skin. Beneath his sockets were grey shadows that spoke of sleepless nights.

They’d never gotten along, he and Stretch. Something about the other skeleton grated on him past the fact that he despite his face, he was more like Red—

(don’t, don’t think about him, don’t)

--than Edge. Not his twin, but a reversal, a twisted mirror image come to visit from the other side of the looking glass.

Despite his smiles, right now he looked more like Edge than ever, blank and bone-weary.

There was nothing inside Edge. Even his soul was empty, its contents drained by loss, cold and bitter as the snow that danced as it fell.

Yet, deep in the dregs of soul’s ashes there was a single spark left, and Edge reached for it, desperate for any lingering warmth. He leaned up and kissed Stretch, their teeth grinding together almost painfully.

Between their mouths, Stretch made a startled sound, but he made no attempt to pull away. He stood there with his shoulders pressed to the door and let Edge take his mouth, their tongues meeting in a furious tangle. He tasted sweet and did not flinch from the jaggedness of Edge’s teeth, licking daringly at the points in a silent, mocking challenge.

The spark inside him flared, kindling caught, and Edge tore away, panting. Before Stretch could offer a word, taunting or otherwise, Edge took him by the wrist and dragged him stumblingly over to the sofa. He pushed Stretch down, bent him over the threadbare cushion of the arm. Tall as he was, if he’d chosen to struggle, it would have been difficult to pin him. Instead, he sagged willingly down against the sofa arm, let it angle his pelvis upward even as he shifted in a deliberate writhe of offering.

The gray that had haunted Edge’s vision for days receded, like a shroud pulled from over his sockets. He took hold of Stretch’s ridiculous, saggy pants and yanked them down to his ankles to rest on top of his dirty sneakers. Beneath them he was bare, his magic forming in his pelvis. The bright orange filled his sight to overflowing and the slit of his cunt glistened like a taunt.

Without warning, Edge pressed two careless fingers to the opening, slipping both inside and Stretch lurched under him, a strangled cry escaping him. He was merely damp, not nearly wet enough for what Edge intended.

He kept a hand at Stretch’s hip to hold him still and dropped to his knees to bury his face against those soft folds, pushing his tongue in alongside his fingers. A sudden buck nearly threw him off and Edge held him down more firmly, slicking his tongue up that cleft between his scissoring fingers, wetting him thoroughly. Stretch whimpered, shivering, his hips rocking back desperately against fingers and mouth both.

“oh, fuck,” Stretch whined. His breath came in ragged blurts, catching and resuming in a shattered cadence. “edge, your mouth…fuck!” His fingers were curled into the sofa cushion beneath his skull, gripping tightly as Edge pushed his tongue deeply inside, tasting a sudden blurt of honey-sweet wetness that allowed his fingers to move easier.

Slowly, Edge stood, letting his fingers slip free and wiping them on his pantleg. He stood there a moment, taking in the sight in front of him. The quiver in Stretch’s shoulders, the perfect arch of his spine beneath his rucked-up sweatshirt, his femurs spread as wide as his hobbling pants allowed. The shift of his hips was as eager as the wet pussy between them and wordlessly, Edge unzipped his trousers and pulled out his cock. He spit in his hand and spread the wetness on his shaft before lining up. He held there a moment, pussy lips parted around the broad head and the slippery opening clenching around it as if trying to suck him inside.

Over his own unsteady breathing was a constant stream of obscenity and begging, words spilling endlessly from Stretch. With a long, slow thrust, Edge pressed inside, ignoring Stretch’s increasingly desperate pleading and the urgent rise of his hips. When he was hilted inside, their pelvic girdles grazing against each other, Edge was forced to pause, closing his sockets at the unbearable intimacy of it. Edge couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched someone else, but it was before the anomaly (child) ever came here. Even the person he was closest to, his brother, never touched him, not since he was small and they curled up together to sleep, less affection and more to share their body warmth.

The slick tight heat surrounding his shaft was an overload to his touch deprivation, the rippling clench dragging a ragged cry from him as he tried not to come in an instant. Edge took a steading breath, licked his teeth and tasted his own sweat mingled with the sweetness of cunt, and only then did he move.

“nnngg, god!” Stretch sobbed out, his limp body battered against the sofa as Edge found a rhythm, pounding into him with a metronome-steady pace. His scant ectoflesh offered little cushion, their pelvic bones clacking together achingly. Edge ignored the discomfort, thrusting harder still and listening for protests that did not come.

Beneath him, Stretch covered his mouth with a hand, stifling himself even as he pleaded for more, for harder, fuck me harder, you bastard. His other struggled to reach beneath him, his skinny fingers briefly jabbing where they were joined as he sought out his clit. Edge felt it from within as he found it, the strangling clench of his cunt around him, and choked on a curse as he fucked in hard, his driving rhythm faltering, breaking, as orgasm struck him. He was empty inside, but he filled Stretch with the heat of his come, spilled in thick, hot pulses as Stretch whined and quivered, accepting his offering.

Withdrawing was difficult, made harder by both the spasming clutch of cunt and his own reluctance. In the end, Edge snatched himself free with the haste of someone (a child) pulling off a band-aid from a barely healed wound. He watched the crimson spill of his magic as it followed, wet streaks dripping down to paint the inside of Stretch’s femurs. Stretch didn’t move, his breathing still coming in hitched gasps as he laid in a half-crumpled drape over the sofa arm, his long legs still splayed, leaving him used and exposed.

Edge tugged his pants closed, his zipper loud in the silence. “You need to go.”

“heh.” Stretch stirred, his sockets slitting opened as he shifted enough to look over his shoulder. “kicking me out already? your afterglow sucks.”

“Be that as it may, you can’t be here when it resets.”

Perhaps something of the kindled spark in Edge transferred to Stretch somehow, in his kiss, in his come, in his words, he didn’t know which. There was some emotion in the smirk Stretch offered him, his gaze less empty as he asked, “worried about me, edgelord?”

“Yes.” The raw honesty was all he could muster.

Stretch exhaled, long and slow, turning his face briefly into the cushions where they’d all sat once, crowded together on the cushions to watch silly movies that were scavenged from the dump. With a low grunt, he slowly pushed up to his feet. He staggered and Edge caught him by the arm, holding him up as Stretch reached awkwardly for his pants, hauling them up over his stained femurs.

“yeah, i should probably go,” Stretch said. He didn’t move, his hands fluttering nervously to his pockets as if to reach for his cigarettes then aborting, moving aimlessly before returning to his pockets before repeating (resetting) again. “listen, you won’t remember this after and my memory is gonna get all smudgy again, but.” For one moment, Stretch’s gaze was entirely unshielded. Edge couldn’t decipher what he saw in his eyelights before he took reached out, taking hold of Edge’s face between both hands as he leaned in to kiss him, softly. A brief, gentle meeting of mouths still sore from the brutality of earlier, then he pulled away. “maybe we can do this again sometimes.” Unguarded eye lights above a crooked smile, then Stretch turned away as he added, carelessly. “hell, could be we already did.”

“Stretch.” He paused at the door, browbones raised, and Edge blurted out, “Do you think they remember what they’ve done? After a reset, do they know?”

A brief silence, then Stretch said, slowly, “to be honest? i’m not even sure it’s the same kid every time.” Stretch shrugged, a loose roll of his shoulders as if his ligaments still weren’t too tight. “maybe somewhere out there someone is sharing a controller. anyway, your bro should be sending ‘em back to the start menu soon enough.”

“Yes.” His brother. If he was still alive and don’t, don’t, don’t.

Stretch left without another word, the door closing softly behind him, and Edge gathered up his knapsack from where he’d dropped it to get his supplies.

He ate directly from the cans and tasted nothing.

Afterward, Edge curled up on the sofa that smelled of their sex, his cheekbone resting on the faded fabric close to the still-damp stains as he waited for the world to end or to begin again.

Whichever came first.

-fin

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #standalone

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suoyou · 3 years

Text

[wip] 一日三秋; one day, three autumns

1633 words, rated t.

a complete chapter 2 in an incomplete series of oneshots titled 一日三秋; one day, three autumns, in which wwx is the autumn king and lwj is the winter prince.

ch 1.

they say that missing someone is the most powerful force of pain a person will know. a pain that can wilt the heart. a pain to carry. a pain that can turn one day into three autumns.

In the middle of Lan Wangji’s left thigh is a scar, round and hollow in the center, like a coin. It had been a burn once, angry blisters deadening into a purple keloid into, now, a little white moon on his skin.

Of the five floors of the castle, Lan Wangji is only allowed in three. Evidently, little does it matter that he is the only other heir to the Winter Throne should his brother ever be incapable of holding it; he’s often pictured how woefully unprepared he would be should the Kingdom of Summer ever revolt again, or, as the Defectress Luo Qingyang had promised, if the Autumn King showed up seeking revenge.

For what, Lan Wangji doesn’t know.

“You don’t need to know,” has always been his uncle’s reply.

“You won’t need to know if I have any say in it,” is what his brother says, kind, still double-edged.

“You should know,” said the Defectress Luo Qingyang, over her teacup, and jade has never looked so threatening, “that your kingdom is still carrying out the crimes of war right under your nose, and if your family does not wake up, the Autumn Kingdom will leave the decade-long peace treaty in the dust the same way you have.” She said it all like she was simply commenting on the races. The Jin Imperial Family was winning.

“How do you know? What kind of war crimes?” asked Lan Wangji. He’d spoken too brusquely, but Luo Qingyang hadn’t been fazed. All around them, the Dragon Boat Festival surged on, air humid and painted green-red-blue, an overfull tea kettle of a day. “Why is it your concern?”

“That you think it shouldn’t be my concern is the same line of thinking that got your Kingdom into this mess,” she said, and her words have been ringing in Lan Wangji’s ears ever since, an unwelcome jabber of sparrow song and raven squawks that won’t leave him hours later. The telltale signs of spring. She holds her position well.

“What kind of war crimes?” he repeated.

She’d taken her time sipping the rest of her tea before placing her empty cup on the table to be taken away. “Do you recall, when the Wen Imperial Family went rogue and the Snowfire Wars tore the lands apart,” she said, “there was a division of mages known as the Core Reapers?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t really believe, do you, that they simply vanished after those wars?”

Lan Wangji had stared at her.

The Core Reapers had vanished after the Snowfire Wars. They’d ridden through the war-torn battlegrounds after blood had been spilled like red ghosts, gathering the dying bodies of civilians and mages alike to, as Lan Wangji had heard, harvest their cores. Word was that the Wen Imperial Family was creating elixirs, weapons, medicines out of them. Hearsay had it that they were creating monsters.

He stares at his scar now, where his jade pendant had burned him through three layers of clothing thirteen years ago, and had never lit up again. In the dusk of the evening, it’s almost invisible, as if it had never existed—vanished, like the Reapers, after the war.

Lan Wangji stands up and shrugs his outer robe back on. Unthinkingly, he opens the drawer where he keeps that pendant, like it’ll have answers for him. It doesn’t. Jade does not dull with age, but in the red velvet of the drawer it could be leached bone. A small one—a skull bone.

Lying beside it is its bonded match. Once they had been identical, though Lan Wangji’s pendant was wrapped in blue ribbon. The other is broken on one side and missing a segment, red knotting and tassels unraveled, the jade circle incomplete like a horseshoe. When the Snowfire Wars raged around him, Lan Wangji wore his half of the pair with more attention and care than when he carried his sword.

“Wangye,” his attendant inclines her head when he opens his pavilion doors.

“I have some personal work to attend to. Can you see to it that, if any of my family seeks me, to let them know I will greet them accordingly when I return?”

“Yes, Wangye.”

So he goes.

Three of the Kingdom’s floors are aboveground. Two are below. He’s been to three in the middle—never the topmost, never the bottomost, and he’s not sure what he’s looking for. He has to look, to be sure, or else it will be another evening of Luo Qingyang’s voice in his head, jerking him awake long before dawn.

Strange dreams have been plaguing him since the Dragon Boat festival, the sorts of dreams that someone would tell themselves didn’t mean anything. The night of the festival Lan Wangji had gone to bed and found himself in a place where the sun never set, simply bobbing up and down in the sky, turning from green to gold and back again as the days and nights passed. Then, the next night, the scar on his thigh had opened up and begun bleeding afresh, and no matter what magic he used, it would not stop. The more magic he used, the more blood poured down his leg.

Last night, he dreamed of Wei Ying. Not in the way he’d been in life, so bright that Lan Wangji couldn’t bear to look at him sometimes.

The Kingdom of Winter had been blanketed in snow for their cycle, and Lan Wangji was in the woods outside the royal walls alone. A dark sweep of Core Reapers had passed by. Their hoods had been drawn over their heads. It looked as if the entire forest was bleeding.

One of them in the center of their tight pool of red had paused and turned their heads, and under the scarlet, mink-lined hood had been Wei Ying’s face.

Lan Wangji shakes himself as he greets the guards that stand outside the gates into the Kingdom’s undergrounds. A question floats through their expressions but they open the gates for him without question, bowing again as he passes.

He picks his way through the first underground level without wasting his time. Here they keep their forbidden texts, their spoils of war, here they hold sensitive political meetings. A damp, sweet smell of soil clutches fat little hands at his robes, happy for visitors, and he raises his hand to upright some of the overgrown vines and planters that line the walls. His hand glows a dim blue, and the drooping foliage picks its flower heads up again. Blooms are coming.

Even if he’s never made the descent into the lowest floor of the Kingdom, Lan Wangji knows there are two ways to get there—the prisoners’ entrance in the Pavilion of Discord, and the one he faces now. The jailers’ entrance, through the Hall of Justice.

He doesn’t feel particularly just, facing the round door that he knows will take him down the staircase into the Kingdom’s dungeons.

Blue fires light his way.

In times of peace, there aren’t many prisoners to speak of. The few that the Kingdom of Winter persecutes are petty thieves, suspected spies, and the occasional revolutionist, all of which are bent into fearful submission before they ever even make it to the dungeons. Lan Wangji knows it. He’s seen it.

And he’s right, almost, for at least part of the dungeon. It’s bright and clean, with mainly empty cells, but the blue fires end abruptly in the middle of the long walkway between the rows. There are scuffles, noises of things living, hushed in the gloom. He pauses and strains his eyes. Then he lifts his hand, summoning some of the fires in the torches to his palm to light his way.

He doesn’t know what he expects to see. Prisoners, perhaps, curled up like hungry mice.

The icy sheen of his fire falls over the bodies in the cells, and Lan Wangji frowns before he steps back, breath stuttering in his chest.

They are prisoners. It’s the most human thing left about them. Some of them have lost all their hair, ragged clumps gathering in rolls thick as dead cats beside them. Others have clawed their own backs bloody, as if they’d been trying to dig their own spines out of their bodies, and still others were covered in a thick, tarry ooze, as if blood and lymph had leaked out of them and gained its own sentience. One of them lay in silence with a stained white strip of cloth over his eyes, a line at his neck like his head had been stitched back on.

Lan Wangji’s stomach writhes, hot and sick, in his belly.

The end of the walkway widens into a larger chamber where no one is kept, but as he passes his fire over the space he can make out the outlines of odd contraptions—long rods with fluted holes, boards with three holes in them—one larger, two smaller, for a neck and hands. A splintered wooden gurney like a rotting log. Old blades sprout off of it like oyster mushrooms. They blink sleepily back at him, eyes in the night. A bizarre device like a chair, outfitted with two horns on both sides. Anyone sitting in it would have their head position between the mouths of both.

He frowns. A long skein of red fabric has been tossed carelessly over the back of the chair, wrinkles rounded and warm. A cloak. Someone’s just taken it off.

“Wangji,” a voice comes from behind him, “what are you doing down here?”

#fic wip #wx #incomplete

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panharmonium · 3 years

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@captain-jaybird @solo-by-choice - i love you guys XD

So, the fic in question was originally a collection of ten location-based vignettes following the development of Obi-Wan and Padme’s friendship from AotC to RotS. I wrote it seven years ago and only ever showed it to my sister and @dyingsighs, so unless I fall hard back into Star Wars at some point, I probably won’t ever post it in its entirety, because I don’t think I have quite enough energy to do the kind of rewriting it would need in order for me to feel like it meets my current standards. HOWEVER - given your replies, I pulled the only two vignettes from it that I do actually still like, because I know it has been literal years since I made any Star Wars-related work for you, and I feel like this is the least I can do to thank you for your many years of fandom friendship! 😊

@all my old Star Wars peeps: Ancient fic snippets under the cut! Consider this an affectionate “hello there” from me - I hope you guys are all doing well out there! <3

-naboo-

Anakin is insistent.

“Come on, Padmé,” he cajoles her. “Just a little walk. I get to be here without breaking any rules for once and you want to just sit inside?” He flings open the embassy’s balcony doors and gestures out over the city. “Look at this day!”

Sunny skies or not, Padmé can’t quite wrench her gaze away from the festival itinerary in her hands. However many times she’s been over it, she can’t help but feel they must have missed some small detail, and in a situation as precarious as this one, the slightest slip could be deadly. “I can’t, Anakin.”

Anakin’s carefree expression starts its rapid but familiar descent into a scowl. “Why not? No one’s going to bust a Senator for showing one of her Jedi guests around. We can just walk the perimeter of the Festival platform – ”

“Anakin – ”

“You can pretend to show me the security arrangements or something – ”

“Anakin! You’re supposed to be here to prevent an assassination attempt on the Chancellor. This isn’t a social call.”

Anakin lets out his breath in a huge gust, waving a hand dismissively. “That? We’ve got that under control, Padmé. Don’t even worry about it.”

“I am worried about it.” Anakin opens his mouth as if to make another placating remark, but Padmé cuts him off. “This is serious. I can’t leave the embassy right now. I’m not going out for a stroll. I’m not doing anything until the Festival is over and done with tonight.” When Anakin’s scowl does not subside, she sighs and makes a passing attempt at smoothing things over. “I’m sorry, but the Festival of Light is enough of a headache without adding assassination threats into the mix. I’m just a little tense right now.”

Anakin comes extraordinarily close to signing his own death warrant by rolling his eyes at her, but he stops just short of an irrevocable mistake. “Yeah, you and everyone else,” he says instead, a very particular brand of irritation edging into his voice. “But whatever. Go ahead and read that thing again. I’ll just come back when everyone’s got their bad feelings under control.” He sweeps out of the room with the type of stormy bluster only he can manage.

Wrestling down a surge of irritation of her own, Padmé tosses the itinerary onto the desk. Anakin, for all his moodiness, is partially right – she has the elegant program memorized back to front, and poring over it further is only going to make her feel worse. And, come to think of it, there are a few other security measures she needs to double check with the rest of the Jedi task force.

Pushing back her chair, she sets off in search of Anakin’s derisively referenced “everyone else.”

Most of the embassy’s guests, including the recently arrived contingent of Jedi knights, appear to have vacated the premises – emulating Anakin’s shining example and enjoying the day, perhaps, or, in the case of the Jedi, probably walking the security perimeter in preparation for tonight’s festivities. After making inquiries, Padme finds a staff member who directs her to the rear of the ornately decorated building, where she discovers Everyone Else in the courtyard, boots and cloak discarded against the wall, dappled sun playing over his inner tunics.

She hesitates on the steps. It’s bad form to interrupt a Jedi in meditation, not that she has much opportunity to commit such faux pas. Anakin rarely meditates, resorting to the ancient art only when he has failed in his attempts to outrace or outright beat his troubled thoughts into submission.

But this doesn’t seem like meditation, exactly, not the kind she recognizes. Obi-Wan is performing what looks like some kind of kata with a ritual slowness, pivoting and stretching with unhurried grace, flowing smoothly out of one stance and into the next, like liquid filling a clear vessel. He holds himself suspended for an interminable count between each position, bare feet rooted on the sun-warmed flagstones, the only thing moving around him dust motes drifting through heavy beams of sunlight.

She doesn’t really mean to stay and watch, but there’s an almost hypnotic quality to the rhythmic motion – exertion of the body, sun and warmth and muscle and bone intertwined with stillness of the mind, an empty calm space, peace in the eye of the storm.

He sinks into a low stance with his back to her, head bowed, upward-facing hands loosely fisted, elbows bent and tucked in at his sides. Then, after a long, still stretch of time, the calm murmur of his voice, rippling with something like amusement. “Good morning.”

She blinks. “Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“That’s quite all right.” He seems to come back from some far place, and straightens, turning to address her. Holding her gaze for a moment, searchingly, he draws some private conclusion. “You are disturbed.”

She presses her lips together by way of response, grudgingly impressed yet cursing Jedi perception to the lowest pit of Chaos. “It’s not important,” she says. “Just the festival.” She changes the subject. “What’s that you were doing?”

Obi-Wan paces over to the courtyard wall to retrieve his footwear. “One of the alchaka forms,” he says, pulling on the soft nerfhide boots. At her blank look, he adds, “It’s...a type of moving meditation. One of the oldest known to the Order.”

“It looks relaxing,” Padmé says. Would that she could expunge her own anxieties with such artfulness.

He shrugs slightly. “In theory.” He bends down and scoops up his cloak with an easy physicality. “The intended goal is to clear one’s mind. To...release troubled thoughts.”

Something about the crease in his brow seems to belie this statement. Thinking back, she remembers suddenly what Anakin had said earlier, and, surprised, frowns. “Are you worried about the festival tonight? About the assassination attempt?”

He blinks at her for a moment, as if she had only just reminded him about the possible catastrophe. “No. No, I don’t think so. Even if the intelligence we’ve gathered is accurate, I doubt the Separatist forces will be able to achieve much when they must first go through six Jedi. And Naboo’s finest,” he adds, glancing up at the overhead balconies, where far-away security personnel stand sentinel, their uniforms smears of dark red across the golden walls.

“But you are worried about something.”

A beat. Then, “No. Merely practicing good habits.”

She laughs humorlessly and sinks down onto the steps. “Tonight could be a disaster.”

Obi-Wan thinks for a moment before responding. “If so,” he reminds her carefully, “it is one which all your worries will be completely unable to prevent.”

“I know. But when it’s my people concerned...and the Chancellor, obviously...” She ticks things off on her fingers. “Public support for Queen Neeyutnee...the well-being of the Republic...”

“Fate of the galaxy.”

“Little things.”

They exchange almost shy grins, private smiles. Padmé feels one tiny knot of tension uncoil inside her, and she breathes out an exasperated sigh, ineffectually commanding the rest of her anxieties to untangle and be gone. “I need some of that alcha-whatsit business, clearly,” she says ruefully. “I’m a mess.”

Obi-Wan takes a step back and looks her up and down. “I agree,” he says.

Excuse me? Padmé suppresses a surge of indignation.

“You will forgive me for saying so, but a senator is no good to her people preoccupied. She must keep a cool head about her at all times.”

“I beg your pardon –

“Therefore,” Obi-Wan plunges ahead, and Padmé suddenly sees the glint of humor starting in his eyes, “I feel it is my duty in this case to help you attain such calm.”

She narrows her eyes at him in mock severity, but inside, she feels her mood beginning to lighten. “By insulting my competence?”

“By exposing you to some of that alcha-whatsit business,” he says. “If you like.”

Padmé hesitates. This is Jedi business for sure, far outside her arena. But Obi-Wan just smiles reassuringly at her and extends a hand.

“Not to worry, Senator. I have it on good authority that I am a reasonably competent teacher.”

Padmé eyes his hand for another moment, then slaps her own lightly into his open palm. “Very well then,” she says. “I submit myself to your reasonably competent tutelage.”

“Obi-Wan, I don’t think this is for me.”

Padmé looks down at her bare feet, torn between luxuriating in the warmth of the sun-soaked stones and fretting over the ever-widening stance Obi-Wan is asking her to assume.

“Patience.” He sticks his own soft-booted foot against the inside of her ankle and slides one of her feet out to the left.

“Obi-Wan – ”

Still applying a gentle pressure against one foot, he pushes the other further away.

“I don’t know how to do a split, Obi-Wan,” she warns him, tamping down on a little flare of alarm.

“That’s far enough.”

Thank goodness she’d worn a relatively uncomplicated dress today. Senatorial garb was nowhere near so flexible as the Jedi’s simple tunics.

She looks up at Obi-Wan, who, by virtue of her lowered, bent-kneed stance, is now slightly above her. “What now?”

“Now,” he says placidly, sinking into the same low stance beside her, albeit with considerably more familiarity and ease, “you do as I do.”

All right, then. She waits for him to begin, but the only thing he does is close his eyes, and she can’t close hers if she’s going to follow him, so she waits, doing nothing. Her legs begin to protest the prolonged exertion in this unfamiliar position, but the trace of fire starting to bloom in her muscles doesn’t bother her. It’s...ferocious. It burns the way she does inside, sometimes.

Obi-Wan cracks an eye open and looks at her. Padmé doesn’t flinch. “What?” she challenges. “You aren’t doing anything yet.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “I am breathing,” he says.

“So am I.”

“Not yet, you aren’t,” he says, and in the span of a moment, he seems to grow in authority before her. His voice shifts into the calm certainty of a millennia of tradition, the well-worn tracks of an ancient, unbroken line of instruction. “Attend.”

He closes his eyes again, and this time she watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, the slight shift of tunic as his ribs expand. “All meditation begins with the breath. You breathe in life, I breathe in the Force; without either of those things both of us are nothing.”

What a strange thing to say. “I’m not Force-sensitive, Obi-Wan.”

“It does not matter. You are not Force sensitive, but the Force is in you nonetheless. We are all of us full of it. Your people are full of it. Your planet is full of it.” He breathes in, slow, and she attempts to follow him. In. Full. “Your breath must fill more than your lungs. Without breath, the body starves. Without the Force, life starves. Therefore you must let it suffuse you. Breath; the Force. Everywhere. Small, forgotten places. Empty places. You must allow yourself to be full. A gas expands to fill a container – your breath will expand to fill you, if you allow it.”

She does not answer. She is breathing. He falls into silence beside her, joining her rhythm. Inhale, beat, exhale, beat. She does not count the minutes. They slip by into nothing.

“Now,” he says. “With me.”

She trains her eyes on him and follows as he moves, one bright light and its smaller, slighter reflection, moving in a bumpy sort of unison. The fire in her leg muscles climbs higher, but it doesn’t faze her. She breathes it out, from everywhere, the small, forgotten places. She exults in it.

“Balance,” he says, maneuvering her hands to the proper places, the knuckles of one fist pressed flat against a vertical open palm, two hands meeting just in front of her lower abdomen. “Two opposing forces.” He sticks his foot back against the inside of her ankle, and she slides her feet apart without needing to be told, dropping back to the correct position. “Close your eyes. Breathe.”

In. Full. Small, forgotten places.

“Now,” he says, stepping back from her. “You will count.”

“How high?” she asks. Her legs are screaming with a pleasant sort of exhaustion, but she’s wobbly, and this position isn’t easy to maintain.

“One hundred,” he replies. Then – “Three times.”

Her eyes fly open. “Obi-Wan, that’s – ”

His eyes are glowing with suppressed mirth. “Three times, apprentice.”

If she starts laughing, she’s going to fall. “Obi-Wan, three times is too many – ”

“Protest again and it shall be six.”

“You know,” she grunts, wriggling down in an attempt to find a slightly more comfortable position, “I’m beginning to think I’ve done Anakin a disservice.”

He raises an eyebrow archly. “Because...?”

“All this time, he was telling the truth about you.”

Obi-Wan snorts. “Impudence. I’d have been running circuits around the Temple for that kind of insolence.”

“Somehow I doubt that ever stopped you.”

And there’s the smile – trademark Kenobi, dimples and all, subtle and half-hidden behind the close-trimmed beard. “No,” he agrees. “You are quite correct. I became an accomplished marathon runner.” Dropping down to the same low, planted stance she is struggling to maintain, he returns to the matter at hand. “Let us begin.”

“Obi-Wan.”

“Mm.” He has already closed his eyes. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already made it to twenty while she’s still dithering around trying to get her breathing in order.

“This is the silliest thing I’ve ever done with anybody.”

He doesn’t open his eyes, but the corners his mouth curl up.

“But,” she says, never one to skimp on gratitude, “I like it.” Her legs are shaking and she can’t count the number of joints she’s heard crack since they started this ridiculous exercise, but the anxious tangle in her chest is now tiny threads blowing in the wind, unwound and strewn about by breath and motion. “And I do feel better about tonight. So thank you.”

“I come to serve, Senator.”

Formal response, for someone who just moments ago had been shoving her into positions more suited to a gymnast than a senator. She smiles to herself in private amusement and closes her eyes. Reminds herself to breathe, full, everywhere.

And begins to count.

-chandrila-

Padmé has to give Obi-Wan credit. By now, she has watched him extricate himself from Senator Se’lab’s clutches three times, and while a moonlit cocktail party in a garden of this size provides the Jedi with plenty of spaces to hide, the shadow cast by a group of hulking Ithorian senators is a more creative choice than she had expected, even from him. Observing him from her position on the other side of the lush garden, she bites her lip in an attempt not to laugh at the deadly seriousness with which Obi-Wan keeps the Ithorian delegation between himself and the beverage table towards which the Bothan senator had stumbled.

She cannot pass up such a rare opportunity to tease him. Excusing herself from her group of colleagues, she sidles across the garden towards him, ensconcing herself in the shadows behind the wide backs of Ithorian senators Stonk and Bendon. “Master Kenobi,” she greets him, smoothly.

Obi-Wan’s cool voice betrays nothing. “Senator.”

Padmé fights to keep a straight face. “I see you’ve made Senator Se’lab’s acquaintance.”

“I have made his acquaintance several times,” Obi-Wan replies. “He had little memory of our first meeting at our second, and no memory of our second at our third. Forgive me, but if I can avoid a fourth such performance, I will. I grow tired of introducing myself.”

Padmé stifles a smile. It isn’t fair, that one so skilled in diplomacy to earn himself a galactic-wide nickname should hate it so much. “And did the Honorable Senator from Bothawui tire of your company?”

“Sadly, no.”

“Then how – ” She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously. “You didn’t – ”

Obi-Wan gives her an affronted look. “Senator Amidala, what sort of nefarious rogue do you take me for?” He chances a harried glance past the Ithorians, checking for any signs of his unwanted companion’s return. “Along with the memories of our previous two meetings, the good Senator appeared to have forgotten how exactly it was that he’d been able to achieve such an impressively amnesiac and befuddled state. I merely reminded him about the open bar.”

“Formidably underhanded,” she says, approvingly. “But then, that’s why they call you the Negotiator.”

Obi-Wan makes a face at the nickname. “Yes,” he says. “And if I could only negotiate myself out of this whole affair, I would perhaps believe the title to have been aptly bestowed.”

“Obi-Wan,” she chides him. “The best negotiators know when to call for assistance.”

He raises an eyebrow, just slightly, in what might be a faint feather-brush of amusement, then follows her gaze over his shoulder, to where the clearly intoxicated Bothan senator is making his weaving way through the festive crowd back towards them. Obi-Wan’s eyes widen very slightly, in definite alarm. “Indeed. Very well said. In that case, my lady, consider my distress signal activated.”

She extends an arm to him formally. “Walk with me.”

Thanks to the friendship she and Bail share with Mon Mothma, Padmé knows the Chandrilan Diplomatic Gardens better than most in attendance. She knows Obi-Wan, too, better than most, not because he opens himself to her, exactly, but – well, being in her position, one hears things, and Padmé is well-practiced at extracting trivia and truth from Anakin’s well-worn litany of complaints, worries, and fears.

She guides them serenely down a lesser-used path, the raucous festivities behind them fading into a murmur. “Here,” she points. They turn through a simple, cream-colored arch into a wider space, far-away party sounds now faint, distant enough not to grate on the nerves. All about them, only the cheerful babble of water, tumbling from multiple small falls into a network of mossy pools and rock-bordered streams.

Obi-Wan turns his head from side to side to take in the shimmering falls and eddying pools, chin rising as if in response to some sound only he can hear, features lightening. “We’ve a place very like this, in the Temple,” he says. “The Room of a Thousand Fountains.”

Padmé knows this. Knows too that it is a favorite haunt of his, though she will not tell him so. Better he think her fortuitous choice a welcome coincidence, for she knows what she knows about him from Anakin, and, strictly speaking, should not have access to such confidences.

“I’ve heard of it,” she says instead. “It’s much larger than this, though, I think.” She waves a hand at the small garden.

“Size matters not,” Obi-Wan intones, as though reciting an oft-repeated adage, and extends a hand gracefully under one of the falls’ streams. To Padmé’s surprise, the water curves around his upturned palm, bending as if repelled by an invisible barrier before continuing its swan dive into the clear pool below.

“Just a game,” Obi-Wan says, in answer to her unasked question. “And an exercise in control. One practiced by Temple younglings.”

Not any game Padmé knows. She and her sister – then later, her handmaidens – were more apt to occupy themselves with jumping straight into the water, shrieking with glee, than with avoiding its flow. “What’s the objective?”

“Just this,” he says. “Stay dry.” He curls his fingers up to his palm and then flat again in a gentle wave, the water above his hand twisting in a delighted dance before resuming its tumble around an untouched sleeve. “Even the youngest initiates, when exhibiting proper control, can easily redirect a flow of water around their forms. One stands under the falls, keeping dry, while their agemates or teachers attempt to break their focus.” He quirks a smile, one laced with equal parts memory and mischief. “One gets distracted, one gets wet.”

She smiles at him. “I take it you were good at this game?”

“I was passable,” he says with a diffident shrug. “But I did not win every time. My own clan members’ antics were at times difficult to ignore.”

“And Anakin?” she asks. She can’t help herself.

Obi-Wan pull his arm out from the falls, hand disappearing back into the long sleeve of his robe. “Terrible,” he says bluntly. “Without a doubt the worst in his class.”

Padmé refrains from making an unbecoming snort. So she will have something amusing to hold over Anakin’s head when she returns to Coruscant.

“You mustn’t misunderstand me, of course; Anakin is highly capable and could easily manipulate the water were he left to his own devices, but I’m afraid his mental discipline left much to be desired.” Obi-Wan sighs and shakes his head. “Anakin is so easily distracted – he reserved his limited ability to focus for very singular pursuits.”

“Such as...?”

Obi-Wan looks to be almost on the verge of rolling his eyes, but that would be un-Jedi, and he settles for a narrowing of them and crooking his fingers sardonically into the universal sign for quotes. “‘Fixing stuff,’ I believe he said.”

Padmé can’t help but laugh at that, and Obi-Wan indulges her merriment graciously. Looking re-energized, far more hale and hearty than he had in the reception area proper, he stretches out a hand. Ribbons of water arc away from the falls all around them, streaming through the air and coalescing into a shining globe above his palm, a miniature model of Mon Cala. The sphere’s globular surface ripples and turns slowly, casting small refractions of moonlight over the courtyard. Small-scale beauty, to be sure, but Padmé only has eyes for Obi-Wan’s face, lit with reflected light from below, a study in simple happiness.

A Jedi at play, she realizes. Most people didn’t believe there really was such a thing.

“That’s lovely,” she says, peering into the globe’s transparent yet distorted depths. Something about it...she is suddenly reminded of Anakin, in another time and place, levitating a muja fruit in much the same way, and with the same burst of simple enjoyment. “But I thought frivolous uses of the Force were discouraged.”

Obi-Wan raises his eyebrows at her, accepting the friendly challenge. “Frivolous?” He turns his hand so that the palm now faces outward. Rippling with light, the globe coasts several feet away and comes to rest over a pathetically drooping momus bush, its leaves yellowed and cracked, balmgrass spiky and dry around its exposed roots. Obi-Wan twitches his fingers downward, and the globe disintegrates, water sluicing down in a joyful shower onto the parched earth, transforming the yellow dust to a rich, wet brown. He gives her a significant look. “The preservation of life is never frivolous, Senator.”

Her smile climbs its way out of her with ease. Of course. An answer for everything. “I stand corrected.”

In the distance, a chorus of laughter rises above the sound of burbling water, followed by what sounds like someone calling for a toast. Obi-Wan casts a lingering glance at the falls, then back at the arched entrance to the grotto. “We should return,” he says, and if that is reluctance in his voice she will not comment on it.

She nods in agreement. “You’re right. Typho will start to worry.”

Taking her outstretched arm, Obi-Wan frowns. “I am quite certain I gave Captain Typho my word that no harm would come to you whilst I am your escort. He must learn to trust me.”

“He does trust you. But he’s a worry-woolamander. It’s his job.” It was, after all, why she had personally selected him to replace his retired uncle as her new head of security. But, at the same time, she had grown weary of the constant trail of guards orbiting her at all times, rings of human satellites, so many she can hardly blink without catching a glimpse of security burgundy in her peripheral vision. Far preferable to have an escort of one Jedi, especially this Jedi, than that wall of armed guards.

And besides, Obi-Wan had promised. While Captain Typho may not appreciate the import of such a gesture, Padmé does – Obi-Wan Kenobi’s word is worth his weight in solid aurodium bars and more. He has nothing left to prove to anybody, on that count.

At the threshold to the main garden, wide flowering pathways thronging with diplomats and officials and lackeys alike, Obi-Wan takes in a resigned breath. “Once more into the breach,” he proclaims, with tragicomic stoicism.

She cocks her head at him in sympathy. “Straight to the dance floor,” she advises, and they set off, she steering him in the proper direction. “I doubt even a Bothan will try to cut in on a Jedi.”

Obi-Wan snorts under his breath. “Her Highness is grown very devious, in her slippery Senatorial position,” he murmurs.

“And Master Kenobi very witty, in his old age,” she shoots back.

Obi-Wan favors her with a grin, a real grin, full and shining with rarely displayed pleasure. He bows to her, ushering her onto the formal dance floor with a graceful sweep of his hand. “You had better hope your earlier supposition is correct,” he says, eyes glinting with the same clever playfulness she’d seen in him earlier. “The Bothan senators have hooves, you know.”

#pan sharing star wars fic in 2021 - no one could have predicted #anyway as i said these are seven years old #please forgive them #XD #star wars #fic

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jenniferisacommonname · 3 years

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Bonus Level Unlocked

This week marks the release of Jason Schreier’s Press Reset, an incredibly well-researched book on catastrophic business failure in the gaming industry. Jason’s a good dude, and there’s an excerpt here if you want to check it out. Sadly, game companies going belly-up is such a common occurrence that he couldn’t possibly include them all, and one of the stories left out due to space constraints is one that I happen to be personally familiar with. So, I figured I’d tell it here.

I began working at Acclaim Studios Austin as a sound designer in January of 2000. It was a tumultuous period for the company, including a recent rebranding from their former studio name, “Iguana Entertainment,” and a related, ongoing lawsuit from the ex-founder of Iguana. There were a fair number of ghosts hanging around—the creative director’s license plate read IGUANA, which he never changed, and one of the meeting rooms held a large, empty terrarium—but the studio had actually been owned on paper by Acclaim since 1995, and I didn’t notice any conflicting loyalties. Everyone acted as if we always had been, and always would be, Acclaim employees.

Over the next few years I worked on a respectable array of triple-A titles, including Quarterback Club 2002, Turok: Evolution, and All-Star Baseball 2002 through 2005. (Should it be “All-Stars Baseball,” like attorneys general? Or perhaps a term of venery, like “a zodiac of All-Star Baseball.”) At any rate, it was a fun place to work, and a platformer of hijinks ensued.

But let’s skip to the cutscene. The truth is that none of us in the trenches suspected the end was near until it was absolutely imminent. Yes, Turok: Evolution and Vexx had underperformed, especially when stacked against the cost of development, but games flop in the retail market all the time. And, yes, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling had been hustled out the door before it was ready for reasons no one would explain, and the New York studio’s release of a BMX game featuring unlockable live-action stripper footage had been an incredibly weird marketing ploy for what should have been a straightforward racing title. (Other desperate gimmicks around this time included a £6,000 prize for UK parents who would name their baby “Turok,” an offer to pay off speeding tickets to promote Burnout 2 that quickly proved illegal, and an attempt to buy advertising space on actual tombstones for a Shadow Man sequel.)

But the baseball franchise was an annual moneymaker, and our studio had teams well into development on two major new licenses, 100 Bullets and The Red Star. Enthusiasm was on the upswing. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention when voice actors started calling me to complain that they hadn’t been paid, but at the time it seemed more like a bureaucratic failure than an actual money shortage—and frankly, it was a little naïve of them to expect net-30 in the first place. Industry standard was, like, net-90 at best. So I was told.

Then one Friday afternoon, a few department managers got word that we’d kind of maybe been skipping out on the building lease for let’s-not-admit-how-many months. By Monday morning, everyone’s key cards had been deactivated.

It's a little odd to arrive at work and find a hundred-plus people milling around outside—even odder, I suppose, if your company is not the one being evicted. Acclaim folks mostly just rolled their eyes and debated whether to cut our losses and head to lunch now, while employees of other companies would look dumbfounded and fearful before being encouraged to push their way through the crowd and demonstrate their still-valid key card to the security guard. Finally, the General Manager (hired only a few months earlier, and with a hefty relocation bonus to accommodate his houseboat) announced that we should go home for the day and await news. Several of our coworkers were veterans of the layoff process—like I said, game companies go under a lot—and one of them had already created a Yahoo group to communicate with each other on the assumption that we’d lose access to our work email. A whisper of “get on the VPN and download while you can” rippled through the crowd.

But the real shift in tone came after someone asked about a quick trip inside for personal items, and the answer was a hard, universal “no.” We may have been too busy or ignorant to glance up at any wall-writing, but the building management had not been: they were anticipating a full bankruptcy of the entire company. In that situation, all creditors have equal standing to divide up a company's assets in lengthy court battles, and most get a fraction of what they’re owed. But if the landlords had seized our office contents in lieu of rent before the bankruptcy was declared, they reasoned, then a judge might rule that they had gotten to the treasure chest first, and could lay claim to everything inside as separate from the upcoming asset liquidation.

Ultimately, their gambit failed, but the ruling took a month to settle. In the meantime, knick knacks gathered dust, delivered packages piled up, food rotted on desks, and fish tanks became graveyards. Despite raucous protest from every angle—the office pets alone generated numerous threats of animal cruelty charges—only one employee managed to get in during this time, and only under police escort. He was a British citizen on a work visa, and his paperwork happened to be sitting on his desk, due to expire. Without it, he was facing literal deportation. Fortunately, a uniformed officer took his side (or perhaps just pre-responded to what was clearly a misdemeanor assault in ovo,) and after some tense discussion, the building manager relented, on the condition that the employee touch absolutely nothing beyond the paperwork in question. The forms could go, but the photos of his children would remain.

It’s also a little odd, by the way, to arrive at the unemployment office and find every plastic chair occupied by someone you know. Even odder, I suppose, if you’re actually a former employee of Acclaim Studios Salt Lake, which had shut down only a month or two earlier, and you just uprooted your wife and kids to a whole new city on the assurance that you were one of the lucky ones who got to stay employed. Some of them hadn’t even finished unpacking.

Eventually, we were allowed to enter the old office building one at a time and box up our things under the watchful eye of a court appointee, but by then our list of grievances made the landlords’ ploy seem almost quaint by comparison (except for the animals, which remains un-fucking-forgivable.) We had learned, for example, that in the weeks prior to the bankruptcy, our primary lender had made an offer of $15 million—enough to keep us solvent through our next batch of releases, two of which had already exited playtesting and were ready to be burned and shipped. The only catch was that the head of the board, company founder Greg Fischbach, would have to step down. This was apparently too much of an insult for him to stomach, and he decided that he'd rather see everything burn to the ground. The loan was refused.

Other “way worse than we thought” details included gratuitous self-dealing to vendors owned by board members, the disappearance of expensive art from the New York offices just before closure, and the theft of our last two paychecks. For UK employees, it was even more appalling: Acclaim had, for who knows how long, been withdrawing money from UK paychecks for their government-required pension funds, but never actually putting the money into the retirement accounts. They had stolen tens of thousands of dollars directly from each worker.

Though I generally reside somewhere between mellow and complete doormat on the emotional spectrum, I did get riled enough to send out one bitter email—not to anyone in corporate, but to the creators of a popular webcomic called Penny Arcade, who, in the wake of Acclaim’s bankruptcy announcement, published a milquetoast jibe about Midway’s upcoming Area 51. I told Jerry (a.k.a. “Tycho”) that I was frankly disappointed in their lack of cruelty, and aired as much dirty laundry as I was privy to at the time.

“Surely you can find a comedic gem hidden somewhere in all of this!” I wrote. “Our inevitable mocking on PA has been a small light at the end of a very dark, very long tunnel. Please at least allow us the dignity of having a smile on our faces while we wait in line for food stamps.”

Two days later, a suitably grim comic did appear, implying the existence of a new release from Acclaim whose objective was to run your game company into the ground. In the accompanying news post, Tycho wrote:

“We couldn’t let the Acclaim bankruptcy go without comment, though we initially let it slide thinking about the ordinary gamers who lost their jobs there. They don’t have anything to do with Acclaim’s malevolent Public Relations mongrels, and it wasn’t they who hatched the Titty Bike genre either. Then, we remembered that we have absolutely zero social conscience and love to say mean things.”

Another odd experience, by the way, is digging up a 16-year-old complaint to a webcomic creator for nostalgic reference when you offer that same creator a promotional copy of the gaming memoir you just co-wrote with Sid Meier. Even odder, I suppose, to realize that the original non-Acclaim comic had been about Area 51, which you actually were hired to work on yourself soon after the Acclaim debacle.*

As is often the case in complex bankruptcies, the asset liquidation took another six years to fully stagger its way through court—but in 2010, we did, surprisingly, get the ancient paychecks we were owed, plus an extra $1,700-ish for the company’s apparent violation of the WARN Act. By then, I had two kids and a very different life, for which the money was admittedly helpful. Sadly, Acclaim’s implosion probably isn’t even the most egregious one on record. Our sins were, to my knowledge, all money-related, and at least no one was ever sexually assaulted in our office building. Again, to my knowledge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure we remain the only historical incident of corporate pet murder. The iguana got out just in time.

*Area 51’s main character was voiced by David Duchovny, and he actually got paid—which was lucky for him, because three years later, Midway also declared bankruptcy.

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noocturnalchild · 3 years

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Of Thieves and Poets

Paterson X original female character

warning: bad language, mention of abuse, mention of death, light depiction of violence.

Summary: The night falls on Paterson City, A mourning bus-driver-poet saves a thief from her victim’s clutches, Will that simple gesture of kindness change the course of both their lives?

All the passages in italic are from a William Carlos williams poem : These.

Chapter 1

The bus exhaled a death rattle. The stars twinkled far above the cloudy night sky, unperturbed in their eternity. His eyes scratched the deep purple of the firmament and his tired lungs liberated a shaky sigh.

The year plunges into night and the heart plunges lower than night.

It still happened; the face floating before his eyes, in the crowded streets, the hem of her dress in the wind, the tinkle of her laugh, the sparkle in her brown, warm irises. All six feet under.

It still happened when he set the table for two, when he dusted her nightstand, hung her dresses in her wardrobe, ironed and still smelling faintly like her, cupcakes and paint.

Paterson’s hands squeezed the wheel.

“Stupid bitch!”

A slap.

A strident scream.

All six feet under.

It had been a while since Paterson had applied the brakes with such force. With panicked eyes he followed the scene unraveling through his rear-view mirror. What seemed like a serious dispute broke out in the rear of his bus; a dozen of passengers circling someone, beating someone up, insulting someone Paterson couldn’t see but only hear.

Sky piercing mewls of an abused animal.

Six feet under. Paterson’s eyes hurt. Paterson wanted to go home.

“Stop the bus! Are you deaf? Stop the fucking bus now!”

His hands stiffened around the wheel, it was slick with his cold sweat. He stood up and the noises ceased. Long strides, clean shoes, stopped right above where her head rested.

She was clutching to the Rolex for dear life. Fragile little fingers shaking, blood on her knuckles and on her nails and on the bus floor.

“Dirty little thief!” The man shouted, eyeing Paterson with disdain and pride “about to dash off the next station.” “Right in the-”

“You broke her wrist.” Paterson cut off the bragging man, kneeling already at the side of the little sack of bones, wailing in pain.

“She stole my Rolex, sir, what was I supposed to do!? Thank her maybe?!” The man fumed, high pitched voice from hell.

The crowd hummed in agreement, Paterson closed his eyes.

“Please, I think it’s best if everyone regains their seats now. I… I have this in hand” Paterson gently slid the Rolex from a cold trembling grip as the other passengers dispersed. Noses returned to phones, fingers furiously tapping the screens, eager to tell, to collect. Pity and compassion for sale.

“Here sir, your watch” He didn’t spare a glance to the man who appeared to still have many things to say.

Paterson stared at her bloody hand. The little thing sobbed quietly, curled on herself, head inside her arm, broken wrist on display. A damaged, cheap porcelain doll.

Dirt and stains on her pale blue jeans, holes and scratches on her thin white crop top, ribs like knives, hair like a sad abandoned willow nest. No, a chiffon doll, crumbling under old garbage in a basement, where no child would ever find her again, alone to rot and disintegrate. Paterson’s eyes hurt.

“It’s not over, scumbag, I’m pressing charges. Next station, she’s going with me.” The man puffed his chest, over checking his Rolex, disgusted and haughty.

“She is not going anywhere” Paterson stood, mimicking the man attempt at “Mr Menace”. But Paterson was a natural; the man quickly understood that, retreated in his fake fur mantle. You’ve either got big mouths or big balls.

“Sir, you have your watch, she has a broken wrist. I think you are more than even”. Paterson didn’t even has to rise his voice.

The man chewed insults but, like the others, regained his seat at last. The bus driver poet, knew always how to keep discipline in his wheeled kingdom, a natural gift he was barely aware of.

Now silence was only cut by quiet sobs, muffled hip hop notes, neon lights whirring, and Paterson’s gentle rustling as he tried to gather the little woman. One big hesitant hand on her back, the woman shuddered, recoiled, and her injured hand jolted, another sob of agony.

“I’m not gonna hurt you”

The poet’s eyes softened. She sensed kindness, maybe, because now her head straightened up, and Paterson looked at himself. Eyes so watery he could see his reflection, dark golden beryl, just like his. Bleeding little nose and chapped plump lips, little high cheekbones and a greasy dark fringe swallowing a sweaty forehead, and for a moment, Paterson wondered if he looked just like her, if people could see how he truly looked like, if people could see the tears of his soul and the bleeding of his heart. If they could see all the bruises and the wounds and the decay. If when they closed their eyes, they could see her name on the grave stone, like he did.

“…It’s all good, just try not to move your wrist… there, let me just help you a little” Paterson muttered as he gathered her like she was nothing. Not even the weight of one of his blue tip matches… It was a bit of a surprise, the complete absence of resistance, she was yielding, completely defeated. Empty stomach and empty pockets. He sat her far from the others, far in the back. Not a sound emitted from her. The bus emptied little by little, he took off his jacket, covered her. She looked like she could fit all her puny self inside the warm wool of it. From time to time he stole a glance at the dark shape through his rear-view mirror.

Finally, the last passenger got off the bus, and finally she spoke.

“No hospital, don’t take me to the hospital” Her words came scattered, little voice uneven, like her hair, he noticed now. It was short, wrongly cut, as if someone had taken a handful of it and started slicing, with a knife, with anger, and a desire to do harm.

The bus was quietly parked in its nest of steel and red bricks, and Paterson could attend to her, at last.

“Your wrist is broken” He stoically stated, hands in pockets, considering his options in the back of his mind.

“I said no hospital, you dweeb” Her eyes sparkled with defiance. It was a strange way to thank someone, to say the least, but Paterson didn’t flinch.

White plastic bags rode with the wind, like mad ghosts. The crime rate rocketed in town, Paterson had before his eyes one of the little thugs that populated the underground, the run-down warehouses and the bridges flanks.

“I’ll ignore that. It’s the hospital or the precinct” He sounded sorry.

Paterson had bad bags under his eyes, fruit of many sleepless nights. After her passing, he refused to spend the night, alone in the blue bed. He changed his shifts to night hours. Sleeping the few hours before dawn on his sofa, their room a shrine to her memory.

“Fuck you”

“It’s the hospital then”

The ER wasn’t flooded that night. Paterson sat quietly, in the waiting room orange plastic chair, while a diligent doctor wrapped her wrist in a cast, scribbled antibiotics and painkillers, asked the routine questions, did the routine job.

Laura would be proud of him. Laura was smiling, sat beside him in her polka dotted dress, she was taking his cold hand in hers, her warm brown irises thanking him silently. Laura.

Now Paterson was standing behind the pharmacist counter, prescription in hand and she was the one sitting, quiet, wrist against her heart.

Mina. 24.

Just that. Cold black on white.

He forced himself not to imagine her lonely two syllable name carved on a gravestone.

“Where do you live?”

The warehouses, the subways, the streets, the basements, the bridges flanks. The rat holes.

The silence became awkward once out on the wet tiles of the sidewalk. Paterson switching his weight from one long leg to the other, still holding the bag of medicines, Mina looking at the orange flickering of signalization lights, his vest still on her shoulders. She looked like a kid from a dystopian future, from the 80’s science fiction novels he used to read.

“None of your business” She extended her valid hand, waiting, impatience in her big amber eyes.

“You need to eat, and a bath, and the doctor said—”

“I know twat! You’re not my dad, gimme the fucking bag and fuck off!”

Her chin was wobbling. Paterson spun on his feet and walked away. Stoic and tall. Damn him.

“Hey!”

She knew she should run to catch his wide strides.

Mina rarely realized a mistake when made, and as she tugged on his sleeve to make the gentle giant stop, she wasn’t sure either. Her judgment wasn’t to be trusted. Her mind was a mess, just like everything, just like her life and her wrist and her hair, just like her heart.

“Your… vest”

“I know, you can… you can keep it, my place is just ten minutes away”

“Ok, let’s go then.”

She smiled.

to an empty, windswept place without sun, stars or moon but a peculiar light as of thought

“Wouha! Dude your place is cool”

Mina was everywhere, inspecting the living space and the kitchen with round curious eyes.

He laughed.

Dude. No one called him dude since the campus days. Dude. That was different.

“I… I have chickens wings… some broccoli, apple pie…”

He fetched the leftover boxes from his fridge and proceeded to put them in plates to reheat, but the little sack of bones jumped on the apple pie first, two bites and only crumbles were left on the counter.

“Mhm…goohd” Mouth and cheeks still full, she slid the cold chicken wings plate into her lap and attacked the tender flesh like a starved panther.

Paterson stood there like a stranger in his own house. A bit out of breath by the chain of events. The situation starting to sink in his lonely mind.

His routine was all shaken. He felt funny. Didn’t know if it was good or bad or just…ordinary. Laura was looking at him with surprised eyes. Laura was looking at the girl with amused questioning eyes. Paterson shrugged.

She deserves another chance, everyone does, don’t they, honey?

#paterson #adam driver fic #paterson 2016 #fan fiction #paterson needs a hug #paterson is a sweetheart #paterson is so kind #thief needs a hug too #she's a mess #adam driver #angst #mourning #some poetry #william carlos williams

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captainseaweedbrains · 4 years

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Promises

Katniss made a promise she couldn’t keep.

1930s Everlark in an orphanage. Angst

Trigger: Abuse

Ao3: x

The sun is beating down on my sunburned face when I spot the familiar black Cadillac sitting in the driveway. I stand there for a moment, my basket of gardening tools clutched in my hands, as I stare at the car. I know this car. It’s the same one Prim and I rode in coming to this horrid place.

“Mr. Heavensbee?” I question aloud, walking toward the driveway in a daze. What is he doing here? Is it for business?

“Katniss!” Sister Effie shrills, breaking my trance. My head snaps in the nun’s direction and she points to the rose garden where I’m supposed to be helping with pruning. I sigh, looking back at the car once more, before trudging back to the garden where the rest of my group works diligently. We were promised a special treat if Father Snow approves of our work and it wasn’t often we were rewarded, so we all took our tasks more seriously today.

My knees groan in protest as I sink to the ground to inspect the lower branches for anything dead. Days like today were my least favorite to work in, where the sun is merciless and the heat doesn’t let up for a second. Gardening the extensive gardens at St. Thomas’ makes me feel forty times older than my thirteen-year-old self ought to feel.

I’m cutting away dead branches when a hand caresses my back. I jump, squeaking at the touch, and turn to see a grinning Peeta standing next to me with the basket of branches we’ve been collecting for burning. My eyes squint as I look up at him and smile back.

“Care to help the needy?” he jokes in a creaky ol’ beggar’s voice, shaking the basket with a hunched back. “You, miss,” he acknowledges me, “please help the needy, or rot in Hell for all your sins!”

I cover my mouth to hide my laughter, glancing over to see if Sister Effie had heard, but she sits, unfazed, under an umbrella she’d set up earlier this morning to supervise us, fanning herself, and I hand him my branches.

“That’s quite the punishment,” I play along. “Going to Hell for not giving you my branches.”

“Oh, God watches all, wretched child,” he continues in the voice, and we both duck behind the rose bushes to cover up our laughter before someone sees.

“You’re so lucky you get to go inside,” I whisper once we’ve calmed down. “I’m going to have a burnt head for weeks.”

“Hardly,” Peeta scoffs, popping his head up and deciding to take a break while I continue pruning. “Coin is there each time I go into the shed, inspecting everything I dump into the pile. It’s annoying.”

I nod, imagining the coolly composed woman standing watch as Peeta and the other select boys brought in their baskets of branches and dead leaves, closely inspecting each branch with the same critical cruelty she holds when inspecting our daily chores. “She’s like God, only worse!”

“Don’t ever compare that woman to God, Katniss. It’s insulting.”

I continue pruning the dead roses, their snow white petals wilting as I work while Peeta fans himself with his hand, complaining how it’s not fair that the boys are forced to wear pants in the humid summers while the girls got to wear dresses. I point out how I’m always cold in the winter time, but that doesn’t stop him from complaining over how unfair it is. We get into a tiny spat before Sister Effie starts to voice how our piles are gathering up. “Peeta? Has anyone seen Peeta?”

“Duty calls. I’ll see you in the kitchens,” he hisses before grabbing his basket and running to the next row over.

Carefully, so he won’t see me, I pop my head out and watch him run over to Annie Cresta’s pile. Peeta could complain all he wanted about the boys’ uniform, but I, well I kind of liked them. I liked how snug his shirt was against his broadening shoulders and the way the short sleeves seemed to bring out the small muscles he was gaining from working in the kitchens for so many years. His animated smile that I see in every dream he stars in is on his face, laughing at a joke Annie must have told him, and the small butterflies I’ve been feeling for weeks now flutter again. I know it’s a sin to be looking at him when I’m supposed to be working on my chores, but God won’t mind my looking for another second, right?

A blood curdling scream howls from the house, breaking my focus, and we all pop our heads up in its direction, wondering who Coin’s latest victim is this time. Screaming only worsens your punishment, so I have to give the victim credit for taking a chance, especially if the car does belong to Mr. Heavensbee, and that’s when it hits me.

The last time I heard that scream I was seven years old at the Hawthornes’, trying to help my mother drag a screaming Prim to the car, screaming how she didn’t want to leave Rory, the second-oldest Hawthorne son who was the same age as her. Prim didn’t have many friends at home since we lived with my dad’s parents in an older neighborhood than the Hawthornes, and Rory and Prim had clicked instantaneously. She begged and begged for Mama to leave her there, screaming when she was told no, and I remember pinching my ears closed, trying to block out the piercing sound. Wishing she would stop.

Before registering why she could be screaming, I bolt from the rose garden, ignoring Sister Effie's threats, and run through the back door, trying to target where the screaming is coming from.

What did Prim do to get Coin’s attention? Didn’t I always tell her to blend in? That standing out was a bad thing here?

The screaming sounds like it’s coming from the foyer, an area we are forbidden from entering unless scrubbing the floors and dusting furniture. Prim must have been curious about something and gone in there. I run toward the sound, sweat burning my eyes, and there at the bottom of the stairs, holding onto the door frame for dear life, is my sister. Mr. Heavensbee is pulling at her to follow him, insisting they’re going to be late for their train. Prim continues to scream, telling him she doesn’t want to leave.

“I want to stay! Please let me stay!”

“Now, now,” Mr. Heavensbee consoles impatiently, “Child, we’re going to be late, and your new family is waiting. Remember how much you liked them?”

Her screaming continues and I have to shout over it, hoping she hears me.

“Prim?” my voice cracks. “Prim!” I race down the stairs, almost tripping on my own feet. Did he say she’s leaving? A new family? But what about me; didn’t he promise we’d stay together?

She looks up, her eyes puffy with tears, and yanks free of Mr. Heavensbee, running into my open arms. I run my hand down her sweaty hair, shh-ing and telling her everything is going to be alright.

“I don’t want to leave,” she cries into my dress, clinging onto me so tightly I fear she may break a rib.

“Who says anything about leaving?” Looking up at the large man, I ask what’s the meaning of this.

He opens his mouth, stuttering out a response, when a cold voice sharply replies: “That is not how a child speaks to an adult.”

My arms stiffen around Prim’s body as I look over my shoulder at Madame Coin standing on the bottom step, her bony hand clutching a small bag I recognize as Prim’s belongings.

No... No! She can’t!

“You’re sending Prim away?” I pray this isn’t true, that God is playing a cruel prank on me.

“Primrose has the opportunity for a better life,” Coin sniffs.

“She’s my sister!” I turn to Mr. Heavensbee. “You promised we’d stay together! You promised!” Tears of betrayal start to fall as I cling to my little sister. “You told me you’d make sure we’d stay together!”

He nervously traced the bushy mustache and glanced at his watch again. “Things change,” he tells me. “You can never tell in this profession.”

“But you promised!”

A sharp tug of my braids breaks my grip on Prim; Coin’s arm holding me in her clutches as Heavensbee captures Prim. I fight with all my might, knowing the consequences of acting out like this will be severe, but he promised! I promised! We would stay together after Mama and Papa passed.

“It’s been a pleasure having you under God’s house,” Madame Coin states with false sincerity. “May you find grace under your new roof, Primrose Williamson.”

I can barely see I’m crying so hard as the realization that my sister is leaving forever hits me. I’ll probably never see her again. “Prim! Prim!” I break out of the witch’s grasp and run outside to the car, begging Mr. Heavensbee to take me, too. “I’ll cook, clean,” I beg. “I’ll do anything to stay with Prim, Mr. Heavensbee. Just—please, let me go with you.”

He peels my hands off his suit, pushing me into the grass, and gets into his car. I watch in a teary blur as my sweet little sister drives farther and farther away until finally, the car is completely out of sight. My heart cracks to pieces. My body numb. The world spins and breaks all at once.

My eyes break away from the driveway and target the group of children peeping out by the side of the house, even a few curious nuns joining them. I try to compose myself, to brace myself for the inevitable punishment that is waiting for me inside, but all I can do is gasp for air, curling my arms around my legs. My little Prim is gone. She’s going to a new family. Without me. I truly am alone now.

“What do you think you children are doing?” Madame Coin snaps at the audience, shooing them with her cane. “Be gone and finish your chores, or God will punish you for meddling in others' business!”

I see Peeta in the crowd, his recent growth spurt making him a few inches taller than the other children, and my stomach sinks so low I’m sure the Devil can see it. This is my punishment for looking at a boy. Madame Coin, and even Father Snow, always insisted that we do not look. It is a sin to look when we were put on this earth to serve. I looked and lost my sister. I’m sure He’s laughing from above at my foolishness.

My eyes avert to my too small shoes, hoping everyone would just leave me be so that I can be punished and sent back to work.

“That was quite a scene you exhibited, child.” I know I should look up—children must look up to their superiors—but the thought of that woman’s cruel smirk at the sight of my tears made my blood boil.

“I apologize, Madame,” I hiccup, running my hand across my snotty nose. “She’s my sister.”

“Was,” Coin corrects and I do look up now, rapidly blinking as my eyes adjust to the bright sun hitting her light blonde hair. “She’s no relation to you now and I suggest you remember that. You lost all relations the moment your parents dropped dead.”

She was trying to get to me, wanting me to say something that would cause a bigger punishment than I could ever imagine, and I should keep my mouth shut and falsely accept her statement, but a little voice inside my head reminds me that lying is worse than a beating.

“Pardon me, Madame Coin, but aren’t we all God’s children? Doesn’t that mean we’re all related?” I regret the words the moment they leave my mouth. A lie would have been better.

“You insolent little girl!” she growls, reeling back her cane. I instinctually cover my face, praying to God for how sorry I am and for Him to please make the beating bearable. I don’t want to limp like Peeta, or flinch at every sound like Clove Anderson.

Please, I beg. Make it fast.

The wooden cane never strikes and I peek out from under my arm in surprise and see Coin standing there, a calculated look written on her face.

“Stand,” she commands and I oblige, too curious and confused at what was happening. “I should give you thirty lashes for that scene alone,” and the ball in my throat gets stuck at that. I’ve never received thirty lashes before. “But I’m going to be merciful today. Follow me.”

We walk past the gardens, my chin high in the air as heads cautiously pop up to watch us pass. I don’t know where we’re going, but soon we are close to the woods, about a mile I’d guess from the house. Questions fill my head as I wonder if she’s actually going to kill me out here in the wild, where no one can hear me scream. It’s numbing knowing I wouldn’t put up much of a fight if she did decide to kill me. There’s no point trying, now.

Coin stops in front of a small hut that’s no bigger than our gardening shed and pulls out a ring of keys. She unlocks the door and steps to the side, motioning for me to step in. I peer inside, cringing at the smell, and I know this is my punishment for acting out in front of Mr. Heavensbee and for talking back when I wasn’t supposed to. She’s going to lock me in here.

“Well get in!” And she grabs my collar, shoving me into the dank, dark room. From the smell alone I can tell no one’s been in here for years and I feel around for anything, the tiny hole near the floor supplying no light. The room is empty. “You will spend 40 hours in here. One hour for every lashing you would have received had I not been in such a good mood. You will repent to the only person out here: God. And when I return, I expect you to recite an explanation on your sins and what you have learned from your time out here. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Madame Coin.”

She closes and locks the door and I am shrouded in darkness. Alone, I can finally cry without worrying about eyes watching, and I cry until God takes mercy on me and I fall asleep.

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, or how late it is, but a tiny knock on the door alerts me awake.“Who is it?” I demand. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” Peeta hisses, knocking again.

I stand up and feel my way to the door. “Peeta? What are you doing here? Did you sneak out?” I accuse, wondering why he always put himself into harm’s way for me.

“What? No! No, Katniss.” I hear him sigh and I lean my head against the wooden door, imagining the way his chest rises, his hands in his hair because he’s agitated. “I brought you some bread and water.” A tray slides through the tiny hole by the ground and I stumble to it, my stomach growling at the knowledge of food. It’s hard to keep myself at bay while eating the single slice of bread, but I manage and take a tiny sip of water, savoring the refreshment I’ve been denied all day.

“Does she know you’re out here?” I ask at last, hoping he won’t get into trouble because of me again.

“She told Annie to bring it, but she’s afraid of the dark and I offered to take the tray instead.”

“Does Coin know you’re out here, Peeta?” I clarify.

He doesn’t say anything for the longest time and I know his answer before he even says it. “She knows you’re being fed, but no, she doesn’t know that I’m the one who’s bringing it to you.”

I sigh and roll onto my back, looking up at darkness. “God’s punishing me.”

“What? No! You can’t believe that, Katniss. Madame Coin is insane. Possessed, I’m sure.”

“I sinned, Peeta, and He took my sister away,” I simply tell him, my voice emotionless. I must have cried longer than I thought. “Prim’s gone because of me.”

“Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe in all that.” His hand finds my arm through the hole and I scoot up so that our hands are holding onto each other. I wonder if this is another sin we’re creating, but holding hands doesn’t seem terrible. I’m sure Jesus held his best friend’s hand and Peeta is the only person I can depend on in this place now.

“I don’t know what to believe.” And that’s all I say until he tells me he has to get back before they lock the doors, squeezing my hand in parting.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he promises, but I’m beginning to lose hope in promises.

#Everlark #Everlark fanfiction #The Hunger Games #The Hunger Games fanfiction #Everlark fanfic #Katniss Everdeen #Peeta Mellark #Primrose Everdeen #Angst #I wrote this back in 2013 #So hopefully it still works lol #Enjoy and let me know what you think!#my writing

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cozy-the-overlord · 3 years

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Dances and Daggers

Summary: The Summer Festival is upon Asgard, as is the tradition of the dagger ceremony, where each unmarried gentleman chooses a lady to bestow with the honor of carrying his dagger for the night. As Prince Thor’s betrothed, Teki’s only goal is to accept his dagger with grace and hope that her violent stepfather doesn’t find fault with her in the process. But Prince Thor is unpredictable, and when he ignores his engagement on a whim Teki finds herself in a desperate situation. Luckily, Thor isn’t the only prince in Asgard…

Pairing: Loki x Original Female Character

Chapter 8: The Musician

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Word Count: 3,135

Chapter Summary: Loki and Teki track down an old friend of her father’s.

Thanks for reading! :)

TW: mentions of child abuse

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae

if you want to be tagged, feel free to just send me an ask! :)

Read it on Ao3!

“That was lovely!” Queen Frigga applauded from where she was seated on the couch. “Did your father write that one as well?”

Teki hummed in affirmation from the piano. Frigga had been kind enough to give her stacks of new music to play, but she still preferred her father’s notes. This piece in particular was one she had only just discovered the night before, a beautiful, lilting ballad scrawled across some of the final pages in her father’s journal. She had been surprised to find something that she didn’t recognize (she had been under the impression that her father taught her everything he wrote) until she saw the note he had left for himself in the corner of the page: Teki’s nameday.

Eyes burning, Teki had sworn on the spot to learn it by heart.

Frigga stood, moving to sit with her at the bench. “I have been meaning to ask,” she said. “How have you felt about taking dinner with us? Has everything been all right?”

Teki nodded. It wasn’t a complete lie. She still didn’t like how sitting at the royal tables put her on display for the whole court, nor how people seemed to notice her more now as she walked through the halls, but it could have been worse. It made her mother happy at least. And it was an excuse to spend more time with the younger prince.

“Thor has been treating well?”

She nodded again. Well enough, she supposed. Usually, Thor asked her to dance as soon as the meal ended. He was always polite, always cordial, but Teki knew that dancing with her was a formality he was eager to rush through so he could run off with the people he actually liked. That was all right. She preferred dancing with Loki anyways.

The Queen smiled, reaching out to stroke an errant strand of hair back behind Teki’s ear. “You know you can tell me if there’s anything you’re struggling with, right Tekla?” she asked. “I want you to feel welcomed here.”

“I do, Your Majesty.” She could practically hear Loki hissing in her ear. Tell her. Teki bit her tongue. She … she wanted to. She wanted to tell Frigga everything. Maybe he was right. Maybe that would change everything.

But what if it didn’t?

Her mind was elsewhere as she left Frigga’s quarters, cradling her sheet music and her father’s journal to her chest as she wondered. Was it worth the risk? Could it really be that easy?

She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice Loki in front of her until she ran into him.

“Oh!” Papers scattered across the marble floor as she jumped back in surprise. Teki almost followed them, but Loki caught her before she could completely lose her balance.

He looked mortified. “I’m so sorry!” he cried. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Teki’s cheeks were burning, quickly kneeling to the floor in order to pick up her sheet music. Why must you always make a fool of yourself? “I—I wasn’t either.”

Still, he knelt alongside her as he helped to gather up the strewn pages. “Actually, I was just looking for you,” he confessed. “I checked the court records to see who played with your father when he was a court musician.”

Teki inhaled. “And?”

“Well, it seems he was one in a troop of five. Out of the other four, two have moved off world, and one passed away a few years ago. But the fourth is still alive, and still living here, in town. His name is Völundr Vidarson. Here—” he fumbled for something in his pocket, pulling out a small scrap of paper. “I have his address.”

Teki studied it. She didn’t recognize the street, but even so excitement was welling in her stomach. “Do—do you really think he’ll know anything?”

Loki shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it’s worth a shot, right?”

Yes. Yes it is.

“When can we go talk to him?” she asked.

“We can leave now, if you want. I don’t have lessons today.”

She nodded eagerly. “Perfect. Just let me drop off my things at my room.”

No one was home when she got back to her apartment, so Teki ended up changing as well. She told herself it was simply because her silky crimson dress was too ostentatious for a jaunt about town. That she changed into a muted green skirt was pure coincidence.

If Loki noticed she was wearing his color, he didn’t say anything, something Teki wasn’t certain if she found relieving or disappointing. She followed him through the palatial labyrinth, marveling once more at how easily he navigated through the twisting halls. Teki had lived here all her life, and yet she had no idea how they managed to end up in the courtyard in front of the palace.

Teki’s spine tingled as they passed the guards lining the courtyard. The determined excitement that had swelled in her chest when they had first decided to leave was beginning to give way to nervousness. She leaned towards Loki.

“We’re—we’re allowed to leave on our own, right?” she whispered. It felt like a stupid question—after all, they had ridden off to Himinbjorg without a problem—but sneaking off into town seemed different.

Loki nodded. “Technically, I’m supposed to bring a guard,” he whispered back. “But we’ll be fine.” He slipped past the gate. Gulping, Teki followed.

She was hardly a stranger to going to town. Her father used to take her all the time when he was still there, and even now her mother sometimes had occasion to bring her and Brant in to pick something up (although her mother didn’t find the experience nearly as enjoying as her father always did). Teki had a superficial level of familiarity with the streets, the buildings, the vendors.

But without an adult, everything seemed more intimidating. The dirt roads seemed busier, the people pushing past them more impatient. In a market stall across the street, two women were screaming at each other over the price of eggs. Without thinking, Teki grasped Loki’s hand. At first, he stiffened, but then he squeezed her palm, interlacing his fingers with hers.

A wizened old woman pulling a vending cart of rattling bottles came alongside them, ringing a bell as she went. The paint on the side of the wooden cart was peeling with age, but Teki could just barely make out the crooked letters: Apothecary.

The old woman smiled at her, wrinkled face pulling apart to flash crooked teeth.

“Might I interest you, sweetling?” she rasped, tapping the side of her cart with her faded boot. “Potion of luck for good fortune? Potion of devotion for catching a man?” She leaned forward, so close that Teki could smell her breath. “Twist your fate a little?”

Words froze in Teki’s throat. The hair on her arms was standing on end, but the woman wasn’t moving. Go away. Go away please.

Luckily, Loki intervened. “She’s not interested, Asta,” he said, pulling Teki closer to him. The old woman bowed, ambling on her way.

Teki frowned as she continued along, ringing her bell and stopping to talk to other passerby’s. “Do—do you know her?” she asked the prince.

He nodded. “I think everyone knows her around here. She’s been selling potions around here for as long as I can remember. My mother likes her.” He led her down a narrow lane, away from the main street and Asta the Apothecary. “This way.”

They were in the poorer side of town, where the ramshackle houses seemed to lean against one another for support, where faded stalks of grass choked their way through the chalky topsoil. It was a good thing she had changed—her boots and the hem of her skirt were coated in a layer of dust, something that would have surely been noticed by her mother if it happened to one of her red dresses.

In one shabby yard, two children were kicking dirt at each other, laughing at the cloud of dust that poofed into the air. They quieted themselves abruptly when Loki and Teki passed, staring in glassy-eyed silence. Teki got the uncomfortable feeling that she and the prince didn’t exactly fit in.

Loki continued unbothered. He scanned the splintered fence posts for address names, eventually stopping before one dilapidated house that seemed no different from those that surrounded it.

“I think this is it,” he murmured. Slowly, they made their way past the fence and up the rotting porch steps, the floorboards creaking so loudly that almost sounded as if someone was moaning beneath their feet.

Loki rapped on the door. There was a muffled yell from within, more creaking and shuffling about, and then the door opened. The shaggy man who stood in the doorframe leered at them suspiciously.

The prince inhaled. “Völundr Vidarson?”

“Yeah?” he asked. Teki couldn’t tear her eyes away from how the curls of his scraggly beard bounced as he spoke. “What do you want?”

“We’re trying to—”

“Gudmund didn’t send you, did he?” Völundr asked sharply. “Because you can tell that son of a bitch that I don’t owe him shit—”

Loki was startled. “Forgive me, I—”

“He can go to the authorities if he bloody well pleases, he can’t prove a damn thing—”

“Sir Völundr?” Teki stepped forward with a small curtsey, swallowing her unease. “My name is Tekla Steinndottir. We’re trying to find my father.”

The bearded man peered at her, and she nearly wilted under the weight of his stare. But soon enough, his features softened.

“Yeah, you are, aren’t you?” he said gently. “You have his eyes.” He held the door open wider, beckoning them over. “Well, come on in.”

Völundr didn’t strike her as one who entertained guests often, but she couldn’t deny that he made an effort. Despite Teki and Loki’s protestations, he insisted upon making a kettle of tea, bringing it out to where they sat perched on the edge of his derelict sofa in mismatched mugs. The liquid in the mugs was a pallid shade of gray. Teki forced herself to take a sip, while Loki only stared at it suspiciously. Their host didn’t seem to mind.

“I never understood Steinn,” he was saying as he poured himself an overflowing mug. “That old man Ásvaldr offered him so much money just to fuck off. He could’ve made off like a bandit – just bought a place in the country and spent the rest of his life writing music. It’s all he ever wanted to do, you know. But no. Him and his fucking honor—he insisted upon marrying that girl. Said the only man who’d be raising his child would be him. Threw his whole fucking life away—they wouldn’t even let him stay on as a court musician, because he had to be a gentleman.”

Völundr paused to take a sip of his tea. Teki could only gap up at him. After so many years of her father only existing within her secret memory, there was something hypnotic about hearing him spoken of so easily out loud.

“He took it well, I suppose. He was real proud of you, you know,” he nodded towards Teki, the hint of a smile under his beard. “He took you to meet the troop once. Do you remember that?”

Teki shook her head.

He sighed. “You wouldn’t, I guess. You were just a toddling little thing. You got up on the piano with him and played Elf Song,” he chuckled. “We got such a kick out of that. This tiny little girl, couldn’t even talk properly yet, but here she was playing Elf Song. We told Steinn that he was teaching you the important stuff!”

Elf Song. Now that he mentioned it, Teki thought she almost could remember. Although maybe not. There had been so many times she had sat on her father’s lap and tapped out the melody across the keys… she hadn’t realized how close she was to crying until a fat tear splashed into her dubiously-colored tea. Embarrassed, she wiped her eyes as fast as she could. Come on, pull it together.

Loki’s gentle pats on her thigh brought her back to reality. She looked up to see him gazing at her with concern. Of course he noticed. Teki couldn’t bring herself to mind, though. Without really thinking about it, she let her hand rest on top of his.

Luckily, Völundr hadn’t. “You still play piano?” he asked her.

Her head spun at the abrupt question. “Yes—” she stuttered. “A little.”

“Good. That’s good,” he nodded distantly, taking another gulp from his mug. “I was always more of a violinist, but piano’s good.”

Teki swallowed. As much as she wanted to hear more about her father, there was a reason they were here.

“Sir Völundr—” she started.

He waved nonchalantly. “Völundr’s fine. I was never much of a ‘sir’ anyways.”

“Völundr.” She breathed in deeply. “My father vanished several years ago—he left a note to dissolve his marriage and never came back—”

“Yeah, I heard about that.” He sat back, shaking his head. “Didn’t fucking believe it. Still don’t, really. Steinn wasn’t the one to back out of a commitment, no matter how miserable he was.”

Loki looked up, frowning. “Miserable?”

“Hel yeah. That marriage was a fucking joke” Völundr motioned towards Teki. “I’m sure she could tell you.”

Teki froze. It was well known that there was certainly no love lost between her parents, but she had never imagined their relationship described like… that.

“I—I don’t know what you mean” she stammered. “They didn’t really talk much—”

He laughed loudly, spilling tea down his beard. “Of course they didn’t! Áslaug was too busy fucking her way through court to have time for that shit.”

Her heart stopped. “What?”

She heard him wrong. She had to have heard him wrong.

“Oh yeah,” he said, downing another gulp. He seemed almost surprised by her shock. “Didn’t you know? If it had a dick between its legs, she took it to bed. Didn’t even try to hide it, either—I think she was trying to piss him off into leaving.”

Her mother … her mother, who spent an hour fussing over her hair because of her worries over how people would perceive her? Who made Brant practice his “la” sound in the mirror every morning because she didn’t want him looking like a fool? Who stayed with Osvald because she didn’t want to be an embarrassment?

Teki shook her head violently. “My mother wouldn’t do that. She’s—she’s a proper lady of the court!”

“Uh huh,” Völundr sounded amused, but there was a hint of sympathy in his eyes. “If that were true, you wouldn’t exist, darling.” He sighed. “Steinn tried not to let her get to him. He just looked the other way. Said he didn’t care what she was doing, as long as he had his daughter. That’s why it’s bullshit, him leaving. It’s bullshit.”

Teki wanted to scream. She wanted to stand up and list out all the reasons her mother could never do such a thing, no matter how much she hated her father. But… but… they hadn’t slept in the same bed when he was still there. They almost never spoke. Calling them man and wife—Völundr was right, it was a joke. And … there had always been other men around. Lords, noblemen, warriors … Teki had never questioned it, never thought to question it, but now …

“Norns …” she whispered shakily, covering her mouth with her palm.

Loki moved closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and rubbing her arm soothingly. It didn’t do much to lessen the racing in her head, but she was grateful for the attempt.

“I take it you haven’t heard from Steinn?” he asked Völundr.

The man shook his head. He moved from the chair to crouch before Teki, the curls of his beard just barely grazing her knees.

“I’m sorry to have brought you pain,” he said somberly. His eyes were a deep hazel, and Teki found herself unable to look away. “But there’s nothing else I can tell you. I don’t know what happened that night, but I know there’s no way in Hel he left you of his own accord. No fucking way.”

His words were still swirling in her head as they made their way back up the dirt lane, along with a thought that she was scared to put into words.

“Loki, do you—you don’t think my mother …” she swallowed. “Did something to my father, do you?”

“I—” Loki’s voice was unsteady. “I don’t think we have any reason to think that.” They were silent for a long while as they reached the main road once again.

“Does your mother love your stepfather?” he asked suddenly.

“I—I don’t know.” Yes you do. “They fight a lot,” she mumbled.

Across the street, Asta the Apothecary was making her way back up the line, still clanging her bell. It seemed louder this time, even though she was farther away. Teki felt herself shatter with every ring.

“I wonder why she married him,” Loki mused.

She frowned. She knew that well enough. “What’s there to wonder? He wanted to be the father of a queen. Who wouldn’t?”

“Yes, of course, I understand why he’d want to marry your mother.” Loki’s brow was furrowed in thought. “But why would your mother want to marry him? You say there’s little love between them. Why would she willingly tie herself to someone like him?”

“She was an unmarried woman with a child in court. She needed a husband as soon as possible. It didn’t matter who.” Teki remembered that mad rush to get married. Everyone had been in such a flurry, her father had been forgotten by the end of the week. She had sat quietly at their wedding feast, picking at her food and pretending to smile while everyone toasted to her mother and Osvald’s happiness, praying to the Norns that it wasn’t too late for her father to come back.

“But it didn’t have to be him. You said it yourself—who wouldn’t want to be the father of a queen?” Loki was frowning. “Besides, if our new friend is to be believed, your mother had … a plethora of other options. Why Osvald? Of all people?”

Her head was spinning. “What are you saying?”

Loki shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. None of this makes any sense.” They slipped through the palace gate and back into the courtyard. “Here,” he said. “I’ll walk you back to your rooms.”

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