#& broken shards behind a mask of lies [ ic ]

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

Flames

Prompt: Mission fic

Rating: T for battle violence and mentions of injury/blood

Setting: after the 10 year timeskip

Synopsis: After a mission to eradicate some dangerous Hollows goes badly, Momo protects a badly injured Toshiro.

AN: once again I am writing a fic for the prompts from @yearoftheotpevent's challenge. This started off as a completely different idea and somehow ended up like this. For me it's a bit of a weird one, but I still liked how it turned out. I realised I often write about Toshiro coming to save or fight alongside Momo, so I decided to do the opposite this time around.

Hope you enjoy it!

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The distant roars of a Menos sends a shiver up Momo’s spine. The answering calls of the Huge Hollows makes her will her legs to run faster. She hasn’t seen any yet, but she knows lower class Hollows lurk in the forests, waiting to take the scraps of whatever the Huge Hollows and Menos left behind.

She sheathes Tobiume back against her hip despite the pain lancing up her right side and it’s not long before her throat burns from panting.

However, her focus is on finding Toshiro. He’d been flung in this direction, but she can barely sense his reiatsu. She tries to stay focused on the few erratic whisps that reach her. An attack like that wouldn’t kill him, not even close, but it likely put him out of this battle for good.

She cringes at her captain’s distant calls, barely heard over the Hollows. She normally wouldn’t abandon his side during a fight, but he’d ordered her to find his fellow captain. Rangiku had to stay with her officers, but Momo saw the flash of fear across her face after Toshiro had been knocked out of the sky. He’d want her to keep their officers safe above all else, and so she only nodded at Momo and said she’d call Fourth Division after the fight was over.

His reiatsu is getting closer and closer, but it suddenly changes from bursts into pulses. Momo’s throat tightens in worry. He’s either on the verge of or already unconscious. If she injuries are that severe, she won’t have enough to heal him as best as she can.

Her fears are confirmed when she stumbles to a stop and let’s out a breathless shout. Several Hollows have gathered around where she senses Toshiro. A few are bent over in what appears to be a wide hole, roaring into it. Around them are shard of ice, broken away from Daiguren Hyourinmaru. One Hollow’s horn, mark, and arm are covered in ice; it’s the most determined of the group to get down to where Toshiro likely lies.

Momo can’t take them all on alone. It hardly seems to matter in the wake of an anger she hadn’t felt in over a decade. It burns her, causing her the shake and grit her teeth. The pain in her side evaporates and Tobiume's flames boil her blood, screaming for her to attack.

She rushes forward, tearing through the trees while she unsheathes and releases Tobiume into her shikai state. She cries out as she unleashes fireball after fireball at every Hollow. Some howl and scurry away, others turn to attack her, snarling as the fires either die down or continue to burn on their furs or skins.

A few Hollows charge at her, talons and limbs raised and teeth bared. Jumping one of them in a flash step, she raises and swings Tobiume into it’s mask. Not risking a second, she pulls her blade out before the Hollow even begins to disintegrate and launches herself at the next one.

This one is quadrupedal, but with a wince, she dodges an attack of one of it’s spiked tails. When the other tail flies at her, she slices Tobiume into it, cutting deeply. As the Hollow roars in pain and attempts to fall back, she points her middle and index fingers and chants, “Hado Four, Byakurai!”

The blue bolt bursts from her fingertips and slices into the Hollow’s mask, and continues until it cuts through another Hollow behind it through the torso. As one disintegrates, Momo launches a fireball at the other in a finishing low.

She doesn’t have time to catch her breath as more stomp towards her. To her chagrin, two of them looking like they are the most power of the group, bordering on becoming Huge Hollows. She launches more fireballs, but it does little to deter them.

She’s distracted by the few Hollows behind them who have returned to the hole. The adrenaline cools a fraction. No, she can’t take them all on her own, and she changes her tactics.

She flash-steps out of the way of striking talons and dodges her way between the Hollows’ legs to get behind them. Without a second to waste, she fires another barrage of fireballs at the Hollow’s still lingering at the hole, sending them dashing away with howls and yelps. In the seconds before their pain would turn to fury and they’d launch at her, she flash steps the gap between her and the hole. With only foot on the ground to propel her and not seeing the bottom, she leaps into it.

She winces at her landing, fresh pain now flaring up in her legs. she’d underestimated the depth of the hole. Flinging her head around, she only takes in three things: she’s in a cave system, Toshiro lies with a protect layer of ice over him, and he has indeed fallen unconscious.

“Hitsugaya-kun,” she says without realizing, voice raspy.

The howls from above snap her attention back to the hole. Hollows bend into the cave, trying to either reach in and attack her, or worse, fall in.

She uses the first kido that comes to mind. She stabs Tobiume into the ground and raises both hands. With as much calm as she can muster, she chants the full incantation for Sokatsui. With every inch the Hollows get closer, her heart races a beat faster and her voice gets louder. At the incantation’s last word, the blue-white energy flies from her hands and explodes into a massive wave that engulfs the entire hole.

As soon as it dies down, she casts a kyomon. Beyond it, most of the Hollows have been injured; a few were completely disintegrated by the blast. The surviving ones try and fail to break the barrier. It’s almost a whole minute later when they stop and edge away from sight. Momo remains rigid, listening to their heavy steps and snarls grow distant until they’re gone.

She falls to her knees with a relieved gasp. Quivers take over her, the adrenaline draining from her completely. She dislodges Tobiume from the ground and returns her back to her sealed state before sheathing her away.

With the state Toshiro is in, she can’t transport him somehow back to the others. With a sigh, she realises she has to wait for them to come find them. Toshiro’s reiatsu, even this weak, would still be felt by Shinji and Rangiku from the battlefield at least. If it weren’t for how dire the situation is, she might have laughed at the notion that of all the places Toshiro could have fell into, he fell through a hole into a cave; or maybe he’d created it himself, but with a lack of rocks and broken earth on the ground, it doesn’t look like that happened.

With some struggle, she stands again. She’s about to turn her sights to Toshiro, but remembering she is in a tunnel, panic grips her at the idea that the Hollows might eventually come across where the cave entrance was, or if there was another hole that led into the system.

She moves over to Toshiro. The ice encasing him was actually one of Daiguren Hyourinmaru’s broken wings, and with some effort and ignoring the piercing cold, she lifts it away. He lies on his right side, his fringe falling over his closed eyes, and Hyourinmaru rests on top of his palm, the fingers barely curled towards the hilt. His bankai had been deactivated, but pieces of ice like one of his wings, the small chunks are scattered around him, and the sheet of it lining a section of the cave wall remain. Ice also sealed over a gash in her head the other open wounds across his arms. He has drying blood in his hair and on his skin, but he’s not bleeding out.

It’s with this in mind she chooses to us the last of her kido to raise kyomons over both ways of the tunnel. Casting the last one, she collapses back against the cave wall in exhaustion. She winces as the pain in her side returns. Her uniform had been ripped by an earlier attack, but she doesn’t look down to confirm whether it’s only a bruise or an open wound. It wasn’t enough to stop her reaching Toshiro, it couldn’t be too bad.

At the thought of her friend, she looks over to him and slides down the wall until she’s sitting next to him. She’s careful to not disturb him, keeping her feet close to her and lowering her reiatsu so it wouldn’t melt the ice over his wounds. She wishes she could inspect his wounds, but she take what meager comfort she can get in the steady rise and falls of shoulder and chest from when he breathes.

Still, she doesn’t resist the urge to gingerly brush his fringe back. Dirt cakes his forehead and cheek, but that isn’t what makes her freeze. His frown is gone.

And it reminds her again of how vulnerable her friend is right now. The blood dying his hair red at the back and making the spike sticky doesn’t help either; it was so rare he got wounded like this. Without the poised stance, the deep frown, and the icy gaze, he looks younger. Like he doesn’t belong in the uniform he’s worn for decades. As though he should be back in the Rukongai with his Granny.

She smiles sadly at the thought and careful withdraws her hand. They’d both been young when they’d been accepted into the Academy, but Toshiro’s age became a factor many couldn’t overlook. It only added to his status as a prodigy. He couldn’t ever escape it, whether it was those admiring him for having achieved so much at such a young age, or even when with her whenever she called him ‘Shiro-chan’. She’d never meant it to demean him or show she saw him as only a boy, it was a habit. A tie to the past she always had.

It's been a constant, like him.

And despite herself and the dire situation they’re in, she wonders why she had always expected him to follow her. She’d told herself it was because she recognized his spiritual potential when he expressed being hungry as though it weren’t an odd occurrence for a Soul.

‘Anyone who experiences hunger can become a Shinigami’, she’d been told by other children in Junrinan. When she realized that included herself, she couldn’t have been more happier. It was a naïve thought at the time - especially after she discovered there were Souls in the lower districts who never had their hunger satiated without having to do some awful things to get food – but she could fulfill her dream of becoming a Shinigami and enroll in Academy.

She’d imagine her life there, dressing in the Academy’s uniform and going to all the classes, learning how to cast kido and training with wooden swords and making friends who also had spiritual potential like her.

At some point in her imaginings, Toshiro appeared in the background, then as part of her everday life at the Academy. He’d in a year behind her, studying just as furiously as she. Unlike her, he’d complain often about the adults that taught to classes and would probably excel in the zanjutsu training; she had no basis for the latter, just a gut feeling. She’d hope he’d make friends, but never in her imaginings could she see him with others. He’d be alone, and the thought saddened her enough to imagine even more unrealistic scenarios where they took classes together along with her other friends so he wouldn’t be alone.

She liked the idea of him being there, of seeing him and talking to him about classes and Shinigami-related matters. Even when he’d adamantly refused to ever go to the Academy, she knew – no, she always hoped – he would change his mind.

Her thoughts as disrupted by a groan. Toshiro barely moves, but he’s undoubtedly coming back to consciousness.

“Shiro-chan,” she says, voice still hoarse.

His eyelids scrunch up for a moment, then blink open. His gaze his hazy, trying to coming into focus. Momo shifts so she can lean her head closer to his. “Shiro-chan, can you hear me?”

His brows furrow in confusion. “Hina…mo…” With another groan, he angles his head upward.

Her surprise gives way to alarm. “No, don’t move!”

He doesn’t listen, raising his head from the ground to look at her. He goes rigid with a wince and he falls back to the ground.

Momo quickly checks the ice over his head wound and let’s out a relieved sigh that it hadn’t cracked. Still, it hurts her to see him in this much pain.

“You need to stay still,” she advises while checking his other wounds. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t heal your wounds. If you move, you’ll start to bleed again.”

His gaze is clearer, and without having to say anything, she knows he understands. "Where...?"

Momo recounts to him what happened on the battlefield, when she saw him thrown aside by the Hollow, and then her discovery of him and confrontation with the Hollows.

He eyes her from head to toe after the latter. Is he checking for injuries? Typical of him, to worry about her even when he's like this.

She's suddenly thankful she's seated in such a way that he can't see the tear in the side of her uniform and the wound beneath it. Even if it's mainly just bruising, he would likely make a bigger deal out of it than it needed to be.

She waves her hand in reassurance. "I'm okay, I wasn't hurt by them." She leans away and points to the hole above. “I’ve put up barriers in case the Hollows find us, but we’re safe for now. Hopefully Captain Hirako or Rangiku-san find us soon.”

Toshiro lowers his gaze to the ground, his lashes brushing over his cheeks. A resignation, accepting he can’t do anything and has to wait.

Momo is about to offer what little words she can, but Toshiro’s frown deepens. His hand under Hyourinmaru twitches. He’s trying to move his fingers to curl around the zanpakuto’s hilt, but judging from his scowl, he’s barely able to move. Momo only then notices his nails are blue and his skin is so pale she can see most of the veins in his arms. She’d barely touched him before, but now wonders how cold he is right now.

He heart tightens at watching him trying to hold Hyourinmaru. He may have resigned to waiting for help, but she can understand if holding on to Hyourinmaru would comfort him.

She slowly reaches over to his, giving him time to see her action. He’s too focused though, and he lets out a gasp when her hands help to curl his fingers. Indeed he’s freezing, perhaps the coldest his hands have ever been. She will ask him later, but for now she chalks the lower temperature to not being conscious to reign in Hyourinmaru’s abilities.

Despite the cold, she’s gentle and unhurried, making sure to not disturb the sheen of ice encasing a scrap on the back of his hand. Her face burns knowing Toshiro is watching her wide-eyed.

She still doesn’t meet his gaze even when she has curled his fingers around Hyourinmaru. No, her eyes are glued to her trembling, peachy hands over his still, pale one. It’s that vulnerability again, of having to do this for him when he couldn’t do it himself. It’s the paleness and cold of his skin. It’s the callouses he had built up over the years. It knowing that she knew this hand since they were children.

It's a young person’s hand, one that has done many things. Its reached out to help, it’s gripped a sword in too many battle, it’s bled and scarred over, and it’s held her. It’s not the first time she wonders if they were too young to become Shinigami, if either she or Toshiro should’ve waited until they were adults before going to the Academy. She knows residents in the Junrinan around their ages living more peaceful lives, their hands softer and their minds not filled with memories of blood and battle.

Why had he chosen to go to the Academy? He’d been so stubborn about not going, and then with little explanation, he enrolled.

It's then she meets his eyes. That determination has returned, but it softens at her gaze. She can tell he wonders what she’s thinking. For whatever reason, she smiles.

She had been delighted back then’ now they could fulfill all of her daydreams in one or another. If only she knew what came after, then maybe she’d try to convince him to leave an re-enroll decades down the track.

It can’t be helped now. They both knew and experienced things that couldn’t be taken back. But they had each other despite it all. No, she realizes, through it all.

She stays like that with him until Rangiku and a few other officers arrives several minutes later. Her hands are stiff and cold when she pulls them to deactivated the all the barriers. Gradually, the flames of Tobiume warm her fingers up.

She doesn’t leave the cave when the Fourth Division officer jump in to examine Toshiro. An officer tends to the wound in her side, but she watches the other medics tend to Toshiro. They heal his wounds as best they can before getting him on to a stretcher. As they deliberate how to transport him out of the cave, Toshiro watches her in return.

It’s only then she realizes the last of the cold had disappeared in her hands, and she misses it.

[tragedyforged]

@whatsthepoop

                  A ray of sunshine, tiny and good and nothing like him but as Olive held up her phone and sang her notes the melody danced between them in a sweet waltz.   A beautiful rhythm with amusing lyrics, a sneak peak of their shared project and yet he stood next to her with his lips drawn into a tight line.   Albeit reluctant enjoyment crept at the back of his mind, her skill undoubtedly there but all of this not much to his taste.   Fools had spread lies with forked tongues and fools had believed them but in the end, he had to endure the ‘affection’ had to play at being in love even though thorns replaced veins at the mere thought of truly giving his heart to someone else.

                  The camera panned to Iwan and he forced his mask to play along, no smile but a humorously unpleased face.        ❝          Lovely ?           ❞

[peachy-panic]

2 & 3 for the micro fiction?

So, uh. This got a little longer than 2-3 sentences.

Thank you so much for the prompt! This went in a direction I fully didn't expect it to, which I guess is the best case scenario for these kinds of things.

(picks up directly after this piece)

Warnings: BBU/BBU adjacent, creepy whumper, mouth whump (kind of?), talk of blood, implied future noncon.

Jaime keeps his gaze fixed on the scattered ceramic rather than his Keeper’s disapproving eyes, which he can feel boring into him like a sunburn as he stands over him on the kitchen floor. He hadn't moved from this spot when he heard the garage door, even knowing that Mr. Torley would be upset when he didn’t find him kneeling and waiting in the entry hall at his arrival like he was supposed to.

It was between staying there and trying to clean up his mess before he could be caught, or going to kneel and hoping he could explain the accident before Mr. Torley walked into the kitchen and found his favorite mug shattered.

Instead, his body had seized in panic, aided by his bone-deep exhaustion, and he had frozen in place. Unmoving. Until his Keeper had walked in to find him hunched over the evidence of his mess.

“What happened here?” His voice is edged with a teasing lilt rather than the anger Jaime had expected, but he’s pretty sure this is worse. Definitely worse.

“It was a mistake.” He knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as the words leave his mouth, and he blinks hard when Mr. Torley’s shadow drops into a crouch in front of him, bringing him closer to eye-level.

“A mistake?” He tilts his head, a mask of false-sincerity veiled over his features.

Jaime stutters in his recovery, shaking his head once. “I’m sorry,” he says, the apology natural on his tongue. Automatic. Easy. Placating.

But Mr. Torley is having none of it.

Jaime watches in his peripheral vision as his Keeper picks up a triangular shard of broken ceramic, examining it between his finger and thumb. The uneasy feeling swells to a peak behind his ribs.

“I trust you to take care of my things when I’m gone,” he says calmly. Dangerously. Jaime swallows. “I find trust to be instrumental in maintaining an orderly household. So you’ll understand why I find this so disappointing.”

It’s just a fucking mug, is the answer locked behind his teeth. I’m sorry, is the louder answer, perched on his tongue.

But before he has time to voice either, Mr. Torley rises from his crouch. Jaime’s eyes follow him this time, all the way to the drying rack where Jaime had placed the rest of the freshly-washed dishes only minutes ago. Something spikes in his chest when he watches his hand close around a small whiskey glass, and before he can process it, the sound of shattering explodes in his ears. Crystals of glass firework out around him on the floor, mingling with the white ceramic. His eyes are drawn to a particularly sharp corner that has landed just before his knee and he feels his breathing go shallow.

He blinks in surprise when he goes to look up at Mr. Torley and finds him crouched again, closer to him than before. Jaime does not move.

With the hand that is not holding the chip of ceramic, Mr. Torley picks up the gleaming shard of glass that had caught Jaime’s attention. He holds them both up in front of him, watching Jaime’s face with a fascinated amusement.

“I think it’s equally important that this trust is a two-way street,” he says. “Don’t you?”

Jaime nods, because he’s pretty sure he would agree to anything his Keeper said just then. A smile breaks over Mr. Torley’s face.

“Good,” he breathes, and for a split second Jaime thinks he might be off the hook. Then, something darker passes through the older man’s eyes. Something he’s seen pieces of in other rooms in the house, most often under the golden glow of a bedside lamp. “Then I’m sure you’ll agree it's apparent you have some learning to do.” Jaime’s eyes flicker up to his, finding his malicious grin to have widened. “Do you trust me?”

Once again, Jaime nods. His lies mean nothing anymore.

“Open your mouth.”

The air in the kitchen freezes, tiny ice crystals falling to the ground with the rest of the debris in his mind. For a rare moment, Jaime hesitates. Mr. Torley’s eyes lose half a second of the amused glimmer and Jaime’s heart stalls.

“Ceramic is thicker,” Mr. Torley says casually, by way of explanation. “The edges are blunter when it fractures. Sharp enough to cut, but you’ll need to apply much more pressure. Unlike glass…” he pauses, twisting the glass fragment in the overhead light of the kitchen. “One wrong slip of the tongue and you’ll be swallowing blood.”

“Please,” Jaime’s trembling voice betrays him, voicing a plea he hadn’t meant to release.

The sternness returns to Mr. Torley's eyes. “Open your mouth,” he repeats with no room for objection. “And close your eyes.”

Jaime pulls in a deep, stuttering breath. He lets it out. Then he obeys.

“Hold still,” Mr. Torley says. “If you trust me, you have nothing to worry about, right?”

Jaime nearly cries out as he feels something smooth lay flat on his tongue, but he forces the urge down, channeling the terror into utter stillness. Warm tears trickle out from beneath his pinched eyelids and run down his jaw.

“Close your mouth.”

The whine that escapes his throat might have been humiliating if he could feel anything other than the blind panic that consumed him. He has nothing at his disposal. He can’t move, and now he can’t even beg without shredding his tongue to pieces.

The jolt of light fingertips brushing the underside of his chin is all the motivation he requires. Even the most petrified part of him knows that whatever pressure Mr. Torley would apply if left to his discernment would be far crueler than what he could do to himself. Paralyzed, Jaime does as he is told and closes his mouth and--

A full-body shudder wracks a sob from his throat as his teeth find the coarse edges of the broken mug, gritty and blunt and fucking beautiful. The blood has drained from his body, leaving him cold and wrung out on the kitchen floor, but he could fucking die from relief.

Two firm taps against his bottom lip signals him to open his eyes and his mouth, breathing out as Mr. Torley pulls the piece from his mouth and discards it back onto the floor.

“See?” He smiles, speaking down at Jaime like a small child who had been needlessly afraid of a doctor’s visit. “It’s all about trust.”

Jaime is frozen as his Keeper stands to his feet once more, nudging some of the scattered remnants toward him with his polished-black shoe.

“Clean this up.” His voice is back to its usual bluntness; ceramic instead of sharp-cutting glass. “And then come see me in the bedroom.”

[scribeofmorpheus]

Himmeløyne [25/?]

Pairing: Loki Odinson x Reader

Catch Up Here | Masterlist

Warnings: Violence / Angst???

A/N: ... 

Taglist is open! Reblog, comment or leave a like please ☺

~Y/N

“You shouldn’t be here,” Loki said.

Shivers ran up your spine. For the first time since you knew him, he looked terrified. Helpless.

The Creature—the monster—that materialised from the mist inched closer. Its steady pace was unnerving, like pinpricks to the skin.

You took Loki’s hand in yours, felt his grip, ironclad, and said, “Right here is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

He smiled sheepishly, “Then our reunion was fated to be a short one.” He glanced at the creature, at its eyes, and clenched his jaw as tightly as his muscle could allow. He took an instinctual step back, pulling you behind him. “There’s no escaping it.”

You turned to the creature, unsure of what it was entirely that you sensed from it. It wasn’t fear—at least, not your own. Not hate either. Though it was masked in those emotions well. There was a drive behind its instinct, a purpose. Keenly aware of the fact you still had your magic, you let your magic do the searching where vision failed you. Tendrils of energy waned as if something unseen was pushing back, resisting. You planted your feet, took a deep breath and blocked out everything except the creature. There was familiarity there. A sense of pain. Grief. A broken heart.

Bestla’s words rippled back to you, reminding you of what she had said about Loki, “Loki is a fraught boy. Torn apart by two halves that will always be at war.”

A tendril of magic managed to touch the creature and incoherent flashes distracted you, making you lose balance.

With a grunt, you and Loki were both flung back, the wind knocked out of you. You rolled from your side and noticed the creature was undeterred from his path. A strong magical barrier surrounded it.

The creature lunged, its bone and flesh sword for a hand tearing the seams of Loki’s subconscious world.

You had to get Loki away from the creature, find a way to reassure him, give him room to process everything in safety. As long as the creature was a stone’s throw away, you wouldn’t be able to help him. “How do we escape it?”

Loki turned to you, downcast, “We don’t. I’ve never escaped it.” He looked at his hands. “I have no powers here.”

“But I do,” you forged a connection to his subconscious through your linked hands. “Think of a place, a memory, anywhere you feel safe. I’ll take you there!”

The creature neared and Loki’s mind flooded with too many images, too many years condensed into a barrage of smells and touch, hot and cold, emotion and emptiness. Steeling yourself, you clung onto the strongest sensation: smell. Berries. A burst of blue and purple. Warmth from an oven. A hug.

Instantly, the both of you were sucked into a portal of light, teleported deeper into Loki’s mind. Before the portal shut, the creature let out a roar, snagging skin from your elbow as it slashed and slashed in a frenzy. You seethed from the surprising burn of its cold touch.

You were thrust forward and wrenched back, a tension to your muscles, adrenaline soaking tissue. Your magic sparked, and you lost your bearing. When the world stopped spinning, you were in a kitchen, not the human kind with a hearth and cast iron pots, but Asgardian. Polished stones greeted your feet while gold embellishments decorated everything; curtains, fine dishes, the liquid within crystal clear tumblers.

“Where… where are we?” you glance around, unfamiliar with your surroundings.

Out from a blind spot, two boys darted into the kitchen area. Frigga followed soon after, a youthful blush on her face, hair the colour of magnificent straw. The boys played with wooden swords, clashing in a dull thud. Laughter keeping the room vibrant. The boy with the sandy hair yelped, and before your eyes, his wooden sword transformed into a snake, slithering away.

The raven-haired boy turned ghostly pale, frightened by what he’d just done. He clenched his fists in horror. Frigga calmed him, a sweet smile on her face as she ran her fingers through his hair. She hesitated for a moment before she hunkered low to hug both her sons. Soon after, a baker walked into the room with a silver tray of pastries. Blackish filling spilt over the folds, the smell of citric berries permeated into the space like a blanket, sweet and tart.

“Home,” Loki said. A look of longing crept over his face, a slouch to his shoulders. “I remember this day… This was the day before Father had taken us to the vault to tell us stories, of our grandfather, of the war…the Giants. Mother had asked the baker’s to make her favourite pies. We helped her pick the berries from a thicket near the edge during the day. It was the first time I used transformation magic. I was so scared. So was Thor. But not Mother… she just held us till we stopped crying. Made us feel safe in her embrace. She said I got my magic from her. That we were born under the same stars. Blessed by the same spirits.”

You placed a hand on his back and he leaned into the contact. “It seems like a happy memory.”

“Many of them were… before…” he turned to look away from the homely scene unfolding. “They were my family. My blood.”

The child version of him smiled with pie filling smeared over his round cheeks. You recognised Baldrick in his features. Slight, but distinct. The same dark hair and wide eyes. An impression more than anything.

“They still are,” you said.

“They are not my family…” he sneered, clicking his tongue. “And after what I’ve done, they couldn’t forgive me. I wouldn’t forgive me.”

“You did nothing wrong.”

“I have done plenty wrong!”

You flinched, his anger turning the room cooler, snuffing out the air, closing you in. Mist crawled onto the windows, and, suddenly, you knew. This feeling—this dread—it had been warped around the creature too, preventing you from fully penetrating its barrier. That same magic now surrounded Loki. More apparent after his outburst.

“Not from where I’m standing,” you said. “Perhaps there is much you need to take responsibility for, but not this”—you placed your hand on his chest, felt the thrum of his heart—“not for who you are…what you are.”

 “They lied to me! Made me think I was one of them. Hid my birth rite from me. Hid me,” he shouted.  “I’m a monster!”

The mist had enveloped all the windows now. Cracks spread like veins. A chill wracked through the air.

You ignored the foreboding signs and kept your focus on Loki, “By that logic, so am I.”

His eyes snapped up meet yours, his lower lip trembling. “Not you. Never you.”

Your heart ached at his words. “I’ve taken life… Life that I now see was more than a simple monster made real from under my bed.”

Recognition flashed across his face, “The Giant in Jotunheim. The one who...”

You nodded, slowly. “Yes.”

“But he took something from you,” Loki held your shoulders, speaking in haste as he shook you. “You deserved vengeance. And wanting it… that doesn’t make you a monster.”

You let out a sigh, somehow feeling older as you did it, feeling the heft of another’s life—of Bestla’s life. “Only because something had been taken from him, too. Something that was rightly his.” A sad smile came over you. “Do you know what he said before I killed him? He said his kind were always the villains in my stories. I never thought much of it, at the time. But then I met someone…your grandmother. She told me things, about the Great Wars, the histories of the Giants, the truth. And I see now…”

Loki rambled, taken aback by what you said. "My... grandmother? H-How? When? I—I don't..."

The creature materialised into the room, stone walls exploding into flecks. It growled and Loki stiffened. He was about to pull you away, but you stopped him, mustering all your magic to urge the Jotun beneath his pale skin to surface. His breath hitched as he staggered, fighting the process. You kept watching as the creature continued on its approach. You had a few seconds at best.  

“I see now that there’s more than one side to any story. And war… war destroys more than the past. It takes history. It takes truth. It makes martyrs out of monsters and monsters out of martyrs. Makes kings. Destroys empires. Breeds hate. And these effects ripple out, for generations. You and I are but small grains of sand taken by the whims of the past, struggling to be still.”

“What are you—” Loki’s eyes went wide, making him look so small, so human, as his blue skin surfaced. You trailed along his arm, magic between the two of you building with a charge. With possibilities. He shuddered, taking a few deep breaths to centre himself, to grow used to his reflection in your eyes.

“And this is my truth…” you kissed him gently as the mist clung to your robes and feet. “I love you, Loki, Son of Asgard, Last Prince of Jotunheim... Trickster God. I love all of you. And I bent the world to save you, but the truth is, you aren’t lost, you’re running away.”

The creature lunged, and the wind died out. The creature’s shadow fell behind Loki. From over his shoulder, you could see it raise its arm high, ready to strike… ready to kill.

“It’s time to face who you are…” you whispered.

The creature struck. Loki shouted your name, cradling you close. There was a boom. A rush of air followed by a harrowing silence.

Loki stumbled backward, shocked. All around him were shards of ice, suspended in the darkness until it receded back from where it came. In the light, the creature sloughed away, like fungus being scraped off wood. The layers turned to snowflakes and dispersed all around you. Under the rage and strength of the creature was Loki’s double, pale skinned, blue eyed.   

You walked over to Loki’s double and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Do you see now? Do you see what you were running from?”

Loki paced from left to right, never letting his eyes leave his double. Then he took a step forward, mouth agape, the reality of everything dawning over him. “It was me.”

“You blame yourself for everything. For what happened to my village and what happened to me in the throne room. I suspect you’ve always done so. Resolved yourself to hate the part of you that was different. That was hidden. And that part of you, stricken by self-loathing and doubt, guilt and grief, remained buried here, in the depths of your mind, alone. Apart from you. And when you went under, you could no longer supress him. But after the throne room, those feelings grew in your subconscious, giving form to the very thing you feared. The Jotun in you. The Giant. The monster of your stories.”

“N—No… I—It can’t be.” Loki shook his head, conflicted.

You held out your hand for him to take, “Do you trust me?

He nodded, at a loss for words.

“Then connect them, the two pieces that have been separated for so long. Accept the truth,” you delicately ushered him closer to his double who just blinked, expression empty, hollow.

As the two Lokis stood face to face and the world shook. You took several steps back and watched as Loki put his hand up. His double mirrored his action. When they joined palms, a torrent of emerald light streamed outward, both cold and hot all at once. As bright as a star. As piercing as an arrow. Everything melted out of view until it was only you and him, the illusion of a night sky forming in the background.

He stood close, his smile not quite right. Snaking his arms around you, he held you flush to his chest. You looked up, chin resting on his chest. Finally, you were home.

 “Thank you,” he whispered before kissing you. The kiss was life affirming, as though he was saying a thousand things in a single act. You kissed him back, lips tenderly caressed by his own.

A swell flourished in your belly. Warmth you hadn’t felt since the last time you were in his arms flooded back. It was joy. You gasped as that feeling of solace returned from where it had been stripped away. Elated that you could feel his magic again. Feel him again. For the first time in a long time, you felt like you could finally breathe again. Be at ease again.

“I—” Loki steadied himself, as though he were about to speak the world apart. “I—”

But before he could finish, you felt a third presence tunnel its way to your subconscious. A message warning you from the other side, from the woken world. It felt like Heimdall’s magic. And it was filled with desperation. “Wait! Heimdall… Something’s wrong!”

“I feel it too,” Loki said.

You felt yourself being pulled from the world, out and through. The world adapted to the invasion. Tears of reality blended into the space.

The voice of a guard shouted, “Captain! She’s resisting. We can’t separate them!”

“Pull harder!” the captain shouted back, her voice heated and coarse like lit charcoal.

Through the tears, you saw the healing chamber. Heimdall and the rest of your companions were defeated, huffing for air. They were being ushered out of the room in shackles. The resisted to no avail, dragged out one by one by the guards in shining armour.

Through the distortion, and past the ebbing flow of sound, you saw Odin enter the room. He carried a familiar tome in his hands. Bestla’s amulet!

You had forgotten that you’d left it in Heimdall’s care. Odin must have taken it from him as he was being dragged away.

“I haven’t seen this in a long, long time,” Odin said wistfully. His thumb brushed against the bird bones, beads catching light from the golden castle. He whispered to the captain, the amulet trading hands between them, from his to hers. Spine bent, Odin took his leave.

The Captain narrowed her eyes at you, and, had you been in your body, present and aware in all senses, you were certain you would have taken a step back.

The captain loomed closer, the tug of so many unfamiliar hands on your wrists and elbows. She shouted again, but the world phased and her sound never reached your ears.  

With a dimmer, Loki’s world had begun to flitter out of view.

Sensing this, he drew you close, desperate to have you hear his next words. His lips moved with fervour, words spilling out harried and muffled, incomprehensible. The outside world grew louder. More real. Loki tried to hold onto you, but you felt his hold on you slip away.

With a mind splitting headache, your body greeted your subconscious in the woken world. A wave of exhaustion washed over you as you were overpowered by the guards.

Loki, awakened, reached for you again as he shouted for the guards to desist. Some took a moment to consider, conflicted, but the captain silenced them with a look.

Loki struggled to keep his feet steady. The weeks suspended in the chamber had taken their toll on his body. It was spent. Just like his mind.

“I am Loki, Prince of Asgard, I command you to release her immediately!” he said, anger sparked within his eyes. He motioned to summon his magic, to use a spell to fend off the heavy men with heavy grips. 

Softly, you shook your head. Speaking low enough for just his ears, “No! Loki… No more violence.”

“Hold her still,” the captain ordered. You were wrenched further back. Loki was still reaching for you, just a little out of reach, staggering with weak knees.

“I’ll make this right!” he swore. “I promise. I’ll make it right.”

With a grimace, the captain placed Bestla’s amulet close to your neck and it came alive, a will of its own as it twined uncomfortably around your neck.

“Wai—”You recoiled from the deadened aura of the amulet. Once it settled in place, you fought the urge to cough. The amulet’s distinct lack of presence overpowered you. It made you limp and you felt sparse. Lacking. No magic. No warmth. Eyelids as heavy as boulders. The strength to stand seeming impossible in the moment. It was worse than the leeching. At least that came with pain, with something.

“Take her below,” the captain said before turning her sights on Loki and ushering a few healers into the space. “The prince needs assistance. Hurry.”

Woozy, everything seemed far, far away. The drag of your feet away from the healing chamber came with less resistance. Loki shrunk in your peripheral, still staggering to close the gap.

[hellowkatey]

Febuwhump Day 13

Prompt: hiding injury 

Read on AO3

Note: I connected the next three Febuwhump days within the same plot, so day 14 and 15 will be parts 2 and 3. 

The Further I Fall 

With a parka zipped all the way up to his chin, hood up, two layers of snow pants, and his arms crossed against his chest loosely (since his many layers of clothing have decreased his range of motion), General Skywalker has never looked more like a pouting child. Rex watches in utter amusement as he quarrels with a very tired looking General Kenobi.

"Hoth? You realize when people describe cold icy hells, they are actually talking about Hoth, right?"

"We're not taking a vacation, Anakin, this is a mission and you are welcome to stay on the ship if you are afraid of a little chill," the Jedi Master replies without even looking up from his datapad. It is an absolute wonder to Rex that Kenobi has put up with Skywalker for over a decade now. He's known the guy for like a year and even that has been draining, albeit, amusing in most cases.

His pouting only increases at that suggestion. "I'm not afraid. And I can't let you go alone, either."

"Cody and Rex will be with me," he says, glancing up as Cody walks into the room in his own cold-weather gear. "Really, Anakin, it's just a recon mission. Checking on a crashed Separatist ship and then we're done." he finally looks at his former padawan. "So are we going to complain, or get this over with?"

The younger Jedi grumbles something that Rex can't hear and stomps away. Sometimes he forgets that Skywalker is still very young. Practically a teenager-- why they gave a teenager another teenager of his own is beyond him, but the Jedi seem to operate a little differently than logic would suggest. He supposes he can't really argue since his brothers are all technically pre-teens in standard time, but at least they have adult development and the ability to grow facial hair.

Rex leans over to Cody and elbows him in the ribs. "How long do you think your Jedi lasts until he blows up on Skywalker?"

Cody raises an eyebrow. "Are you bettering on our generals getting into a fight?"

"Uh, yeah. Have you met them?"

A pause. "Okay, are we talking a verbal or physical fight..."

By the time they reach the surface of Hoth, Rex is shocked by the cold that immediately cuts straight to his bones. No matter how many layers he thought was sufficient, he was wrong. Luckily his armor hides the shake of his body and his helmet modulates out the chattering of his teeth.

"We shall make this quick," General Kenobi yells over the wind as they walk from the ship. It takes a moment for Rex to see it through the raging storm, but he soon can make out the outline of a Separatist cruiser half-buried in the snow. Their intelligence indicated it crashed only a week ago by Hoth standards, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the ice-covered ship. Already it seems to be feeling the effects of the cold, some parts looking to be concaved in either from the crash or the weight of the snow. The ship is quickly becoming a permanent part of the landscape.

They find an entrance and slip into the ship, which is thankfully resting on its belly. Thankfully, these ships are made for deep space and have the insulation to keep the cold out at least a little bit. Rex can see the general's breaths forming clouds, but it's better than the bitter windchill from outside.

"What a dump," Skywalker mutters as they traverse the ruined halls.

"Agreed," Rex whispers back. They aren't exactly sure what they'll find-- hopefully an operational computer they can download data from, but taking out a few cold clankers would also be a plus. So far all the droids seem to have had a bad time in the crash. Their parts are scattered around at random, a head here, half an arm there. Rex and Cody kick a ball socket from the hinge of their elbows back and forth to one another as they walk.

"So let me get this straight," Skywalker starts, an edge in his voice that Rex knows well. "They sent two Generals, and two high ranking troopers to walk through an abandoned ship at the edge of hell?"

"You must be forgetting the part of the council meeting where they assigned only you to the mission, and you managed to rope me into accompanying you."

Skywalker grimaces, and Rex smirks under his mask. "But what about Rex and Cody?"

"They volunteered."

"Someone's got to watch your back, sir," Rex grins.

Maybe the universe decided to make Rex put his credits where his mouth is because the ship lets out a low groan and suddenly their horizontal trek down the hall becomes vertical. Rex hardly has time to react before falling onto his back and slipping down the hallway like some sort of demented slide.

"Hold on!" he hears General Kenobi yell out, and suddenly Rex is being thrown in a direction that is not in line with gravity. He and Skywalker collapse into a heap on the wall beside a blast door, Rex's armor crashing into the electrical panel and shattering the display. The door slams closed with an echoing boom.

"Obi-Wan!" Skywalker groans, looking wide-eyed around the wall they now sit on. "Self-sacrificing, bastard," he curses, realizing that he and Rex are alone on one side of the blast door, and assumedly Kenobi and Cody are on the other. He reaches for his commlink to contact Cody, but to his dismay, that too was crunched in the fall.

"Alright, the ship's structural integrity is probably compromised so we ought to--"

Skywalker doesn't wait for whatever Rex has to say before thrusting his lightsaber into the wall. I don't know why I even try.

If there is an argument he knows he can't win, it's anything that involves getting between the Jedi. Rex learned very quickly it is better to just let them do whatever it is they think is the next step. Skywalker cuts out a circle in the wall and moments later it drops into the hallway below. Rex internally counts how long it takes to hit-- 1...2...3...4...5...6

The piece of durasteel slams into something that is definitely not the wall of a ship. It makes a transperisteel-like shattering noise that resonates back up through the vertical corridor, but that is not what concerns Rex primarily. The time it took to fall makes him nervous. He glances up at the Jedi, wondering if he too is concerned they heard no noise from below. No yell of surprise at a falling piece of durasteel or even talking amongst the General and Cody.

"I got you, Rex," Skywalker says, standing at the edge of the hole. Rex, again, knows what's coming. The Jedi doesn't think twice before jumping down through the hole, and Rex-- having done this song and dance a few times with the Jedi follows close behind. He's plummeting through complete darkness, the updraft nearly sending his helmet flying off his head. Rex squeezes his eyes shut, knowing nothing he does now can save him-- it's up to Skywalker.

Sure enough, he gets the strange sensation of the air around him thickening, slowing his velocity until he is practically floating right above the floor. His general releases him from his Force powers, and Rex's boots land with a solid thud on the ground. From the light of Skywalkers' saber, he can see why the durasteel circle didn't make the noise he expected-- it appears in this portion of the ship was torn apart, giving way to the interior of an icy glacier.

So where are Kenobi and Cody?

"Rex," General Skywalker says, having walked up ahead a little further. He can now see the large tunnel that goes deeper into the icy mountain. There is a clammer, and then to the clone captain's surprise, the tunnel illuminates. Skywalker stands at a control panel, staring pensively down the lit-up passage.

"Sir, I don't think this ship crash was an accident," Rex says. He scans the entrance using a thermal scan in his helmet. Most of it is a bright white or blue, but thankfully there are faint yellow footprints leading down the tunnel. Two pairs of them. Rex walks up next to Skywalker, turning off the display. "Looks like General Kenobi and Cody decided to check it out."

Skywalker seems to have relaxed by this news, shaking his head. "And they didn't even think to wait for us."

__________

As much as Obi-Wan was hoping he would have the time to use the Force to cushion his own fall, he supposes slamming into a wall of ice and snow works as well. The sudden change of medium surprises him, as he was expecting to reach out for a durasteel wall.

The impact knocks the wind out of him completely, and for a few long moments, he's worried he'll blackout. Pins and needles run up his arms and legs, but he isn't sure if it's due to the cold or the fall.

Thankfully, the shift of the ship must have caused a blanket of fresh powder to gather in the exact spot he landed, giving him just enough cushioning to keep him conscious. While Anakin might argue this is a moment for him to believe in luck, Obi-Wan would argue that the shard of ice that has embedded itself in his back would beg to differ.

He lies there for a moment, a little afraid to move just yet. Obi-Wan takes a quick assessment of his condition. The shard isn't horribly long-- maybe the length of his thumb, and it seems to have missed his vital organs.

The concern will be for his ribs. He can definitely feel at least one broken-- if not completely shattered-- which could be bad news if he has to move too much.

In summary, he will live. He will be fine once they get off this Force-forsaken wasteland, and an upside to the cold is it will make him numb to the pain for a little while. Nature's anesthetic.

Obi-Wan hears rustling around nearby. He wonders who landed with him-- he's fairly sure he managed to get two to safety on the other side of the blast doors and aid the fall of a third down to the lower levels with him. A moment later, the visor of Commander Cody appears over him.

"General! Are you alright?"

Okay, so Cody is here, meaning Rex and Anakin are above. Sure enough, when he reaches out with the Force, he senses two strong presences nearby. They appear to be uninjured, which is a relief. Obi-Wan lifts his hand, ignoring the sharp pain that comes from his side as he does so. "Quite alright, Cody." The commander helps him to his feet, and Obi-Wan finally gets a better look at their location.

"It seems the ship was resting on a hinge point, and our weight caused it to topple, sir."

"Fantastic," he says dryly. "And conveniently it has deposited us at the mouth of some sort of tunnel or cave."

"Appears so."

"My old master used to tell me there was no such thing as coincidences," he says shaking his head. Of course, a simple recon mission would turn into finding a secret hideaway. The question is, who's hideaway? "Shall we?"

They begin down the hall, Obi-Wan allowing Cody to lead while he covertly tears off pieces of his tunic and stuffs them into the puncture wound to keep pressure. When he's finally satisfied that the makeshift bandage will hold for a little while he catches up with the commander. As they get deeper into the passage, the icy tunnel turns more and more manufactured. Durasteel beams offer supports, and Obi-Wan spots some lighting periodically. Perhaps it is a good thing the lights aren't on... hopefully means nobody is home.

"Who in their right mind would set up shop on Hoth?" Cody says, his teeth obviously chattering under his helmet.

"Probably not someone in their right mind," Obi-Wan smiles. "I suppose it's a desolate location. The chances of being found are very slim."

"Unless a Seppie ship crashes into you. From the looks of the construction, this place has been around for far longer than the ship."

Obi-Wan has a bad feeling about this. Maybe it's skewed by his steadily bleeding wound, but it just seems strange to him that a ship would crash right on top of some sort of secret tunnel. All of Hoth and it reveals this?

Suddenly the lights flicker to life, revealing the tunnel opens up ahead of them into a larger area. He and Cody look up and behind them in surprise.

"What are the odds that was Rex and General Skywalker?" Cody asks, tightening his grip on his blaster.

"I'm optimistic, though, I don't suggest waiting around to find out." Obi-Wan is curious where all of this is leading. They approach the large area, which turns out to be a massive rotunda made entirely of carefully sculpted ice. It's rather grandiose in appearance, but not in practice as his eyes are diverted from the gorgeous ceiling to the remainder of the room. He would expect to see a grand ballroom of sorts, perhaps a dual-staircase traversing delicately down the sides of the slick walls, but no such hidden beauty lies before them.

It's a lab. Operational as of recently from the looks of it. Various tables cluttered with beakers and chemicals make a large U shape in the center of the room, surrounding what seems to be a primitive prototype of a bacta tank.

Most disturbing of all, a tilt-table is bolted to the ground off to the side, its durasteel restraints unlocked, but around the base lies the dark crimson of dried blood. Lots of blood.

"Oh good," Obi-Wan says, sighing deeply. The lab of a mad scientist is not at all what he expected to find (they must be crazy to set up on Hoth of all places). He is unwillingly reminded of a particularly sensitive portion of his padawan years where Qui-Gon was abducted by Jenna Zan Arbor to try and figure out the scientific basis of Jedi powers. He was tortured, his blood drained so he was kept on the very brink of death in hopes for her to study Force healing.

She also took Anakin once. Escaped yet again. Every time they come close to finding her, she manages to slip away. Though it has been years since she was committed to the cause of figuring out how the Force works, he is still uneasy by what he sees. He can't deny the similarities in the set-ups.

Cody walks further into the cavern carefully, but Obi-Wan suddenly feeling a bit weak decides to stay back and watch the tunnel entrance. He watches as the clone commander takes a holovid of the scene, careful to step over the puddles of blood.

"Hard to tell with the cold," Cody says as he finishes his assessment. "But I'd say it's been abandoned about a week."

"Ship crash probably scared them off... Whoever it is."

Cody bends down to take a sample of the blood, but in Obi-Wan's vision there seem to be two of him. He is quite sure they didn't bring a second 212th member though.

Footsteps echo through the tunnel, and his instincts kick in. He grabs his lightsaber, igniting it and whirling around to meet whoever runs after them. The Force is murky now, only confusing him more. Two figures appear from the dim lighting, one in armor and the other with floppy brown hair. Obi-Wan blinks, taking a staggering step forward.

"Master?" he mutters, his lightsaber dropping to his side and rolling away from him.

"Obi-Wan?" the man yells, his name echoing multiple times through the chamber.

"Master watch out! It's Arbor!"

"Obi-Wan!"

He's on his knees, vision tunneling. A hand rests on his back, carefully yet frantically tugging at him to look up but his head is heavy.

"I'm fine," he says as his world is turned upside down and now he's staring at the beautiful ceiling, which is very quickly fading away. "I'm okay."

[words-writ-in-starlight]

prompt: modern MDZS, Wen Qing berating someone as she does DIY bullet removal

Leverage AU, huh?  Sounds like you want to talk about a Leverage AU.  For this H/C ask meme!

“Everything was under control, Wen Qing,” Wei Wuxian says, smiling through clenched teeth.  There’s drying blood gluing his slacks to his skin and sweat beading on his forehead and throat, but his hands don’t tremble as he lowers himself into a chair.  He at least has the good grace to sit at the table, so that she’ll have somewhere to put her supplies.  She’s going to murder him anyway, but it’ll be much more convenient to kill him in a kitchen chair than on the couch.  Wen Qing likes her couch.  She intends to keep it blood-free.

“Clearly it was not,” Wen Qing half-snarls, and she snaps a hairtie around her bun to keep her hair out of her face as she glares down at him.  A quick rummage in her pockets produces several purple exam gloves, liberated from the hospital during a shift and forgotten.  “A-Ning, get me a towel from the kitchen, one of the flour sack ones, and a bowl of warm water, and the shears kit from the junk drawer.  Everyone else, figure yourselves out, I’m not running a daycare.”

A-Ning, who’s always been a good boy even if Wen Qing is taking pains not to know what he does with his time these days, vanishes like a cat into the kitchen.  Mianmian, who has sense, promptly knocks her knuckles against Wei Wuxian’s head and says, “Be good, Yuandao,” before she flops down onto the couch without regard for her regal evening gown and apparently goes to sleep.  Nie Huaisang, who knows when he’s no longer needed, picks his way across the room to Wen Qing’s only armchair, and folds himself up like an origami figure that looks very unlikely in his suit.  

Lan Wangji, who has never done anything convenient in his life, remains standing beside Wei Wuxian’s chair and blinks at Wen Qing.

Wen Qing has no idea why everyone pretends Lan Wangji is completely unreadable.  He couldn’t be clearer if he printed make me move, I dare you on his forehead.  He’s smeared with blood, all down one side from half-carrying Wei Wuxian to her doorstep, and he’s bruising up blue on one cheekbone, and there’s a table knife tucked into the pocket of his suit jacket, bent out of shape into makeshift brass knuckles.  Wen Qing doesn’t really feel like fighting the point just now.

“Fine,” she snaps, “just stay out of my way.  And you,” she adds, pointing at Wei Wuxian.  He cringes a little, because he’s smart.  “We’re going to have a talk.”

“Jiejie,” A-Ning says, reappearing with towels and trauma shears in hand.  She doesn’t twitch when her brother pads up behind her and lays the lot on the table.  Wen Qing is used to her brother drifting around like a ghost, and to his wide-eyed expression of trying to get on her good side.  “Don’t be mad at him.”

“I am very mad at him,” Wen Qing says.  “Bring me the water or I’ll be mad at you too.”  Wei Wuxian snorts out a breathless laugh, and Wen Qing grabs the trauma shears from her tidy pack of tools to shut him up.  “So,” she says, crouching down and briskly cutting up the seam of his pants toward his knee.  “What the fuck happened?”

“Got shot,” Wei Wuxian says, helpfully.

“I can see that,” Wen Qing says, and only barely resists the urge to give his leg a shove and see if that makes him focus up.  She cuts the extra fabric away, straight across the knee crease, and gives a light tug on the rest, just to check if she might be able to get it off immediately.  Wei Wuxian makes a breathy noise, like a swallowed gasp, and she absently touches his calf, a soothing gesture until the trembling eases.  “Can I get a little more detail?  Was it a cop?”

“No!  I’m--I’m just a hacker, people don’t shoot hackers,” Wei Wuxian says with completely false confidence.  “People shoot, I don’t know, cat burglars and hitters.  Lan Zhan’s been shot, right, Lan Zhan?”

“Clearly, people shoot hackers too,” Lan Wangji says flatly.  But then, because he’s weak, he adds, conciliatory, “But yes.  Five times.  It is my job.”

“My brother’s never been shot, right?”  Wen Qing raises her voice at the end, over the rush of water in the other room, and hears a squeak of alarm.

“Uh--that’s right, A-jie!”

“Because I would kill him,” Wen Qing tells Wei Wuxian matter-of-factly.  “And then I would kill his entire team that got him shot.  You understand that, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nie Huaisang confirms from the armchair, because he might be a ruthless son of a bitch when he feels like it, a mastermind whose best game is poker and has the mask to prove it, but he’s also a well-trained younger brother and he’s never once had the guts to fuck with Wen Qing.  “Wen Ning has never been shot.”

“Good,” Wen Qing says forbiddingly.  “Because I don’t ask questions about what you get my brother into,” she continues to Wei Wuxian.  “Just like I didn’t ask questions about how my brother paid for my degree.  But that doesn’t mean you get to show up on my doorstep at eleven on a Saturday night with a bullet hole in your leg, and answer no questions.”

“That’s fair,” Mianmian says, without opening her eyes.  “You have to give her that one, Yuandao.”

A-Ning slips back into the room and puts a metal bowl of warm water on the floor next to Wen Qing’s knee, and then walks into the bathroom, because he’s a good boy and he knows what she’ll need before she can even ask for it.

“This is going to hurt,” she tells Wei Wuxian, quiet and serious.  "Keep talking, it’ll keep you awake.”

“You’re so mean to me,” he complains as she wrings out a cloth until it’s only damp.  “You won’t even let me pass out?  I got shot!  I got shot taking down the CEO of an oil company, by the way, you should--fuck!”

Wen Qing’s free hand locks around Wei Wuxian’s lower leg, a practiced grip to hold him in place as he startles at the pressure on the wound.  “Hold still, and it’ll be quicker.  Tell me about your latest idiot crusade, Wuxian.”

She soaks the blood-stiff cloth until it can be cut away and lets Wei Wuxian’s shaking voice wash over her, barely listening.  Something about an oil spill, and a family whose entire town was crippled when the fishing industry went belly up.  It’s all very idealistic.  It’s all very Wei Wuxian.  They got the guy on camera shooting a civilian, though, which is apparently just icing on Mianmian’s grifter cake of very illegal bank transfers and a burgeoning RICO case.

“Okay,” Wen Qing says, when she’s cut away the rest of Wei Wuxian’s pant leg and exposed the bullet wound--halfway up his outer thigh, blessedly clear of the artery, but clearly a very small caliber, the kind of thing a CEO might be able to get into a benefit without looking excessively paranoid.  Which brings her to...  “Well, this is going to suck a lot,” she says.

“It already sucks a lot,” Wei Wuxian says, and his laugh is a little hysterical.  “What in particular are you thinking about?”

“Next time,” Wen Qing says, carefully dipping her tweezers in rubbing alcohol, “get shot with a bigger gun.”

“Absolutely not.  What?  I’m not getting shot again, and definitely not with a bigger gun, what is wrong with you?”

“This bullet didn’t go all the way through,” Wen Qing says.  “So I’m going to have to take it out.  A-Ning, come here and hold a light.  Lan Wangji, hold him down.”

Wei Wuxian lets out a breath and it trembles, but for all his dramatics, he’s never been a coward.  Once, when Wen Qing was in undergrad and she and her brother were surviving the fallout of the Wen mob going to prison in droves and Wei Wuxian had just been kicked out of the Jiangs, he cut open his palm with a broken glass.  He sat on the floor and let Wen Qing pick shards out of his skin for twenty-five minutes, and joked and teased the entire time.

“Okay,” Wei Wuxian says.  “I’m ready.”

It’s a bad hour, as Wen Qing pulls the bullet from his thigh and then puts two stitches in the hole.  Wei Wuxian doesn’t scream, doesn’t cry, just takes shallow, shuddering breaths and doesn’t move.  Sometimes he even laughs, a ragged sound of apparently genuine amusement when A-Ning wonders aloud if Jiang Yanli is going to kill them before Wen Qing gets the chance, and a bark of vicious humor when Nie Huaisang reports that their target’s been arrested on more fraud charges than you could shake a stick at.

“We’re not telling A-Li,” Wei Wuxian says when Wen Qing finally tapes down gauze and collects her bloodied tools into the emptied water bowl.  “She’ll come look sad at me.”

Wen Qing summarily ignores him.  Instead, she looks at Lan Wangji, who looks nearly as shaken as Wei Wuxian.  He’s not holding him down anymore, but his hands are still resting on those stiff shoulders, a thumb smoothing over the skin at the nape of Wei Wuxian’s neck just above his collar.  Wei Wuxian’s head tips a little toward that side, resting lightly on Lan Wangji’s forearm without apparent concern for the blood on the hitter’s wrist.  Maybe Wei Wuxian’s, maybe whoever got to experience the pleasure of being punched by one of the Twin Jades.  

“Don’t let him do anything stupid,” Wen Qing tells Lan Wangji firmly.  "I can get him antibiotics--you are taking them, Wei Wuxian--but I’m not getting him painkillers, because the second he feels okay he’s going to get A-Ning to teach him to free climb a building or something, and A-Ning is going to do it because I raised him terribly, I guess.”

“Hey,” A-Ning says.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I will keep Wei Ying from doing anything stupid,” Lan Wangji recites obediently, and goes up a few notches in Wen Qing’s estimation.

“We’ll get out of your hair, Qing-jie,” Wei Wuxian says, stirring like he’s going to get up, and Wen Qing stands and sighs and scowls, and peels off her gloves to make a neat little ball of latex in one palm, all the blood concealed inside.

“You can stay here,” she says.  “You can take A-Ning’s room and he’ll sleep on the couch.  Everyone else, you have to get out unless you want to sleep on the floor, though,” she adds, pointing to the two in her living room.

“I will stay,” Lan Wangji says.

“Yeah,” Wen Qing says, already distracted by the odds of being able to find a pharmacy open at this hour.  “A-Ning has a full, you’ll fit.”  Wei Wuxian makes a choking noise, which she ignores.  “I’m going out to get ahold of some meds for you.  Don’t do anything stupid, and lock up if anyone leaves.  A-Ning, don’t let this idiot leave.”

“I won’t, A-jie,” A-Ning says obediently, and Wen Qing stomps into her bedroom to change into something not speckled with blood.

[godblooded]

NOTES OF IMPORT: DR. ALANA BLOOM

(heavy trigger warning for r*pe mentions, alcoholism mentions, death mentions, abuse mentions, gaslighting mentions, HEAVY themes of cannibalism, & mental illness)

EXTENSIVELY CANON DIVERGENT/SUPPLEMENTED

• dr. alana marie bloom was born the middle child to jean and victoria bloom. her older brother, jesse, is 4 years her senior, & eddie, her little brother, is 2 years her junior

• her birthplace was chicago, illinois, in the year 1975 (yes, she does enjoy the 1975)

• she’s autistic & experiences hyper empathy, incapable of looking at anyone and not feeling them innately in her skin, incapable of hearing a story & not putting herself right inside its gory details. as such, alana avoids eye contact— she makes it superficially but in a way that’s well dressed up. she focuses on a shoulder or a point behind someone. she has no filter whatsoever, but is also self-aware of her lack of filter. she can feel overwhelmed in a room of people and tends to ‘perch’ to just watch, a comfortable wallflower. intense intimacy with someone prompts eye contact from alana, & then she ticks her pupils all the way across their face like reading a wide open book.

• alana has: shattered a hip, cracked her pelvic bone, received a full-on spinal fusion, broken 23 more minor bones, punctured a lung with a shard of glass, been defenestrated, sustained an extreme brain injury (and severe residual scarring), sustained tinnitus, & broken a clavicle

• alana also deals with: a major depressive disorder, a hallucinatory disorder brought on by a chemical imbalance after years of (unknowing) drug use, suicidal ideation, a severe dissociative disorder, harm ocd, chronic pain, infrequent aphasia, auditory & visual hallucinations, & flat affect

• as a person who has been through serious abuse with little to no knowledge of the fact that it was happening, alana’s fight or flight instinct has been cranked up to the maximum extent. she’s nothing but afraid a hundred percent of the time, & perceives her entire environment as a threat

• born with a genius level intellect, alana’s true talent lies in her ability to read people as though she is them, as though she could pilot their very soul. she takes in every detail and puts together immediate understandings of what may or may not have happened to them/who they might be/what they might be doing or thinking. in youth, she was so blunt she couldn’t understand why people were so stubborn against being told their own problems. in adulthood, she’s learned to mask well enough to filter herself

• DR. BLOOM IS A GOOD FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST, MAYBE THE BEST.

• she does exactly what will graham does, which he says verbatim to jack crawford, her boss at the bau. as in, she too is capable of empathetic profiling so extreme she can put together the bloodiest tableaux into a comprehensive tale written in a gruesome ink

• her eyes are her most identifiable and incredibly obvious trait. they’re the same blue as her mother’s— the kind of blue like water thrown over a sheet of ice. they can be incredibly cold to a frightening extent, or they can be loving beyond reason. she emotes through them almost entirely

• alana is 46 years old & feels no shame in this whatsoever

• she’s beginning to silver at the temples, & it’s faintly obvious as her hair is an extremely deep black, always neatly waved & very thick

• she earned her doctorate by age 24 after an overwhelmingly accelerated load of courses, attending NYU. she’s also skipped a couple grades and has literally never gotten a grade below an a. this did not come without extreme isolation, excessive studying to an obsessive degree, massive episodes of severe depression, & yet more studying

• alana is bisexual with a heavy preference toward women & a strong distrust of men. she’ll swiftly form an attachment to a woman & trust them in the stead of the years it takes for her to trust a man. her first serious relationship was with a woman named vicky keller, a renowned new york fashion photographer who she still speaks to at least once a month. at that time it had elements to it that would condition alana toward tolerance of abuse to an extent, being vicky’s extremely unchecked mental illness & alana’s refusal to give up. vicky would eventually leave alana on the morning of their wedding for her father’s apartment in budapest. alana would wake to no one & nothing, a bank account in her name with $800,000 in it, an apartment full of wedding accoutrements, & a wedding she had to cancel on her own after being humiliated publicly due to the public spectacle this wedding was expected to be. she sold the house she couldn’t afford to keep and then met hannibal lecter not long after.

• hannibal had never taken a protégé, so alana’s being chosen was both a huge deal and a point of contention in her cohort. they resented her for gaining the attention of the hospital’s most esteemed & notable doctor, and then for keeping it to work under. this happened because alana, well aware a doctor had been sexually exploiting his patients, laid him out in the cafeteria line in front of everybody. in addition to her incredible credentials and her impressive age, he was delighted by her vivacity. it made her a perfect alibi & it proved to him her sense of justice was immovable— a trait he heavily admired

• alana is a people-pleaser & a risk-taker, to whatever extent or extreme there is. on her second day under lecter’s tutelage, he willfully hindered a security guard from intervening in a situation with a violent patient, forcing alana to inadvertently take charge of the scenario. she sustained a relatively deep stab to the arm & felt nothing but exhilarated by having made hannibal so proud, by having proven herself to him in her bravery & her expertise. she’s a gryffindor

• she believes she is and unfortunately is very frequently right in most scenarios. she’s always the logical one and the one to speak bluntly and frankly. she always tries to keep everyone’s best interests at heart. she is also the type of person to underhandedly manipulate someone else into positive situations under the assumption she just knows what’s best for them. she’s both a virgo & an older sister with a genius level intellect. a deadly combination

• at 14 her father took her little brother to his very first hockey game— a hawks one, of course— for his birthday, being such expensive tickets were a luxury. on the way home they got into a collision that wrapped the car around a pole, killing their father & leaving eddie with a broken arm, severe facial bruising, & a burgeoning alcohol habit

• alana helped him dye his hair pink at 15, eddie 13, in an attempt to bond with him and bring him closer after the loss of their father. their mother worked as a waitress & a receptionist at a small doctor’s office, & jesse, the eldest brother, dropped out of college (& a promising possible football career) & worked as a mechanic to support the family. alana worked illegally off the books as a server, & it was anyone’s guess, where eddie was at any point

• victoria died of an aneurysm brought on by an inoperable brain tumor they didn’t know anything about until the incident occurred. alana propped up the family until the funeral in which she checked out, just as hard as she did at her father’s funeral, which was her first dissociative episode at 14

• alana’s leanings toward psychology were brought on largely by herself feeling isolated & different from the rest of the world, & a desire to help & understand people like her brother who were also at vulnerable points in their lives. this resulted in a doctorate in forensic psychiatry with a specialization in adolescent trauma

• alana was extremely punk as a teenager and edged into being relatively alternative. she once started a protest that got 73 people arrested and set a trash can on fire, promptly rolling it toward a pair of cops before leaping a turnstile to escape into the dark of a subway train

still goin

[veryberrybrenda]

Just One More Bet

Pairing: Adam Du Mortain x Lucia Langford

Prompt: Guilt

Notes: I goggled the French curse words because I don’t speak French, so idk if they are 100% correct. I’m sorry in advance. This is Day 5 of Wayhaven Week 2020 by @otomefandomevents 

Respect was something that came easy to Lucia. Her work ethic in the office was what granted her the promotion to Detective after all. What people respected most about her was her ability to do what was needed. Whether it be staying late to finish paperwork or helping out Verda with his work, she was always the one who did what most people didn’t want to do. It was something she took pride in, that was the case until recently.

Adam made her question everything. He made her own body betray her. Pulse racing, cheeks flushed, voice stuttering. She was used to being the one with the cards in her hands, but the world decided her winning streak should come to an end.

But right now, she was in control. Perspiration made her bare feet slick against the blue mat. Her breathing was ragged as she kicked the punching bag. It stood its ground, barely swaying against her valley of kicks and punches, mocking her.

She had been getting better, thankfully, not a small part due to Adam. He had been sacrificing his brooding time to train her – make her stronger against those who wanted to hurt her.

Lucia hated the feeling of being helpless, having to rely on others. Being a burden doesn’t sit well with her independent nature. That was why she chose combat with Adam over research with Nate. Although she was better suited to learning about the weaknesses of supernaturals, with her unquenchable thirst for knowledge and all, knowledge itself, won’t stop a creature from snapping her arm off like it was some crispy taco.

Creak.

The sound of the door opening interrupted her assault on the punching bag as she turned to face the person responsible for the noise. Before even taking a glance, she already had a guess to who it could be.

Who else would train at 10 o'clock at night.

Standing at the doorway was a man with an approved expression, posture as stiff as always. “Your form is getting better,” Adam said, voice echoing in the large room.

“That’s progress,” Lucia panted, breathing rough from exertion.

Adam walked, his usual brisk strides, over to Lucia. His hand clasped behind his back as he eyed Lucia as though he were critiquing a piece of art. “Have your legs spread a bit wider when you punch. It will help you keep your balance better.”

A devilish grin formed on Lucia’s lips. This is too good. The man is setting himself up.

“Spread my legs. Got it,” she replied with a smirk, eyes searching for the slightest crack in his once impenetrable walls.

The flirtation only made Adam narrow his eyes, jaw clenched. “This is not some game, Detective. Your life is at stake.”

“I make fun where fun is needed. I heard it makes it easier to remember stuff,” Lucia quipped confidently as she awaited the leader’s comeback.

“Your life is no joke. It is precious to me- I mean us.” Adam’s eyes widen at his slip up, but he hastily plastered back on his stoic mask. “Besides, Agent Langford would be highly disappointed in me if something happened to you.”

His almost confession had Lucia blinking for a few seconds. Maybe there is hope after all. She just had to do what was necessary to get it out of him.

Taking a step closer, she fully gazed into his emerald eyes, searching for some sign of the real unguarded soul behind it. “Would you be disappointed if something were to happen to me?”

She saw it. The slightest twitch of his lips as he concentrated on maintaining his mask. “Yes, of course. It would be quite an annoyance to have one less team member to utilize during missions.” Although his expression was unreadable, his voice wasn’t. There was a slight pitch to it that betrayed him.

I hooked him. Now it’s time to see if the world will deal me a good hand.

This was turning into a gamble as she took another step, his eyes trailing her every move, but thankfully he wasn’t fleeing…yet. Rolling the dice yet again, she reached out to grab his hand, his fingers limp against hers. She could sense the smallest tensing of his fingers like he’s fighting himself not to hold her hand.

Lucia still gets surprised each time she feels the delicate skin of his palm. Where she expected them to be hard, rough, and calloused from his centuries of work, they were soft, smooth, and lacking any imperfection. He would make an amazing hand model.

His mouth opened then promptly closed shut with unsaid words. Adam’s pupils were blown, turning his eyes dark as the green disappeared. A battle is raging inside of those eyes. The man who wants to be set free vs. the vampire who has survived centuries of loneliness and pain. Lucia can only hope her bet on the former wins.

There is no better time than now to confront him. I just hope he doesn’t run away this time.

Her volume has died down to a mere whisper, “Adam, I want to say- “

As though he knew where she was going with this, he suddenly whips around, yanking his hand away from hers, and knocking down a wooden dummy in the process. Lucia flinches at the loud thud the dummy makes when it hit the floor. Adam just stares at the dummy menacingly as if its existence offended him.

After a few seconds of silence, Adam crouches down to pick up the dummy. His eyes still radiating hatred when he sees Lucia also couching down to help him.

“I got it!” Adam snarled, tone low and threatening.

“I want to help.” Her tone not making any room for argument, but Adam always seemed to find a way.

Adam grips the dummy. “I don’t want your help.” His voice coming out in a single breath as he heaves the dummy up.

She desperately tried to think of something to say - to prevent his walls from rising up again as he wipes the dust off the dummy. Clenching her hands, she builds her resolve that she hopes will be enough to stand against a 900-year-old vampire.

“Tu Omnia.” It comes out as more of a command than a statement, which she hopes Adam will obey.

The phrase had Adam’s body freezing up like ice, his back, taunt as it faced her.

“You are everything.” She said the phrase slowly, afraid that if she said them a little too quick, she would’ve spooked him. This time, raw emotion spills into her voice, making Adam’s knuckles tighten over the wooden dummy, fingers white.

“Where…did you hear that?” Adam questioned accusingly.

Determination filled Lucia once again. “You told me that just before the medication kicked in after the fight with the trappers.”

“I…never said such thing!” Adam shouted defensively that emphasized his continued digging of his grave.

She crossed her arms, anger starting to simmer inside of her at the man’s lies. “Just ask Nate. He was the one who translated it for me.”

“No, you’re wrong!” An animalistic snarl escapes from his lips. The wood under his fingers finally break with a snap. “Fils de pute (son of a bitch)!” Adam curses in what she assumes is French as he chucks the broken wood aimlessly to the side. He throws it with so much force that it shatters the mirror beside him, sending shards scattering everywhere.

Without a word, she bends down to pick up the shards on the ground. Adam is still turned away from her while she silently cleans up the collateral damage, something she has gotten too used to doing.

Unfortunately for her, she made the terrible mistake of forgetting that she’s bare foot and she steps on a shard, a subdued scream escaping from her lips.

“Fucking hell!” She shouts angrily, while clutching her injured foot. Crimson drips readily from the sizable shard embedded in the center of her foot.

Maybe it was the pain of her wound or the frustration of being lied to by the person she trusts the most, but she just couldn’t take it anymore. She felt tired. Tired of pretending that it didn’t hurt every time Adam would show her a piece of his heart then proceed to snatch it away, leaving her to deal with the consequences. She knew this was no way to live her life, but if she was honest with herself, she was addicted. Addicted to seeing him smile at a joke she made or when his gaze would soften around her. Living 900 years alone had its baggage, sure, but her stupid heart couldn’t help itself. She’s neck deep in her bad habit that she just can’t bring herself to quit.

Maybe I’ll win the next round, she keeps telling herself, but the cards were slipping from her hands and she was powerless to stop it.

She would never be able to quit Adam Du Mortain for as long as she breathes.

Tears were forming in her eyes as her own walls that were meant to defend her, came caving in, trapping her under the rubble.

-

Lucia’s scream pulls Adam from his state and he instantly appears behind her in a blur, arms wrapped around her waist as he gently eases her down on the mat away from the broken glass. Her hands are coated in warm blood. The aroma of it overpowered his senses, crying out to his primal side to surface, to drink it, but he suppresses it as he tucks a piece of stray hair away from her face that have come undone from her ponytail.

Her black eyes always fascinated him and the same time, annoyed him. They gave him a hard time because he could never see her pupils that mixed with her black iris. Not that he has to of course, her hammering heart always was a telltale sign of her true feelings - ones that he tries his best to ignore, for his sake. They were two black holes, reeling him in and refusing to let go until he was consumed by them. They contrasted nicely with her bright lavender hair that set her apart from everyone else, but right now, he wishes he could see those eyes.

Lucia’s bloody hands covered her dark eyes as she chokes on her sobs. The sight of her in such a state because of him made his heart constrict in guilt.

Crying didn’t come naturally to her, so it wasn’t the glass that had tears racking her body. It was something else – something that he refuses to acknowledge because once he does, he won’t be able to stop himself. The only time he had seen her cry was when she visited him when he got injured by the trappers. Her tears had weakened his walls, which made him say those words that he wished he could take back. Tu Omnia. The DMB had made his mind weak and it slipped out before he could stop himself. She hadn’t brought it up since and he thought she didn’t hear it, but he was surely mistaken.

He admired her tenacity. He would shoo her away and she would still find a way back to him like some lovesick puppy. Her fighting spirit reminded Adam of himself. He would sacrifice anything for his team – and for her. So the sight of her broken and beaten in his arms caused him to feel like a failure. He failed to protect her from danger – failed to protect her from himself.

I wish you could see how much you deserve someone better than me.

Adam laid a hand under the back of her head to hug her closer to him, hoping that it would offer her some peace in her battle to find the shadow of the man that had been lost to time. Her head instantly tucked into his chest, and so he did his best to shield her from the dangerous world that threatened to destroy who she was. He was glad that she wasn’t able to look at him because if she did, his walls would’ve instantly came crashing down.

Sliding one hand under her legs and the other under her back, he lifted her up bridal style in his strong arms. Her cries had turned into small whimpers now as she struggled to regain her composure. She felt lighter than he expected – smaller, more fragile. Her tendency to project strength, just like her mother, almost made him forget how delicate humans actually are.

As Adam was in the process of carrying her to her room, he passed by Nate, who instantly rushed towards him, expression worried as he took in Lucia bleeding and whimpering in his arms. Adam had hoped that no one would notice, but everyone must’ve heard her cries by now.

“What happened?” Nate asked, brows knitted in worry.

“Please, not now Nate.” Adam pleaded. He hoped that his old friend can understand the look in his eyes to back off.

Nate must’ve understood. “Okay. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Can you clean the broken glass in the training room?”

“Of course.” Nate replied softly. He quietly walked away, something that Adam found oddly strange, given his size.

With no more interruptions, Adam arrived at Lucia’s brightly decorated room. He was glad that the lights were off because the bright colors made his sensitive eyes hurt.

He slowly eased her down onto her bed, her hands stubbornly refused to let go. He had to peel them off of his waist, which wasn’t difficult since her lack of energy meant her resistance was weak.

He was no stranger to treating injuries. During his time as a human, he was an expert at stitching himself up, a skill he learned growing up as a knight. He grabbed a towel from the bathroom, running it under the tap. He also knew where the first aid kit was.

Under the sink cabinet and next to the shampoo bottles.

He memorized this detail when he helped Nate set up the room for her first stay at the Warehouse. With her being so clumsy, it was an extra precaution that had paid off.

He came back to Lucia, quiet and staring at the white ceiling, eyes swollen and glossy from crying. She slowly sat up when she saw him, black eyes still in a state of distress. He tried to ignore the way her sad eyes followed him as he began his work.

He gently grasped her ankle, glancing at her when it was time to pull the shard out. She understood his look and slowly nodded as she turned her gaze away from her foot. Adam firmly gripped the shard in his fingers and with one swift motion, yanked it out causing a whimper from Lucia. He quickly stopped the fresh flow of blood by cleaning it with the wet towel, her muscles tensing from the pain. After all the blood was cleaned, it was time for the most painful part. He poured the alcohol on a cotton ball and did his best to be quick and efficient. A few hisses signaled her pain. He was now wrapping her foot in gauze, careful not to make it too tight so the wound can breathe.

Once he finished, she still refused to look at him, her jaw clenched tightly.

It’s better for you to hate me. That makes it easier.

Thinking that there was nothing else he could do to ease her suffering, Adam stood up from the bed, but a small, weak hand gripped his arm, still fighting to keep him from walking away.

“Please, don’t leave.” It was mixture between a whisper and whimper that had Adam retreating back to the bed, Lucia’s hand still clutching his arm as though it was a life preserver in a stormy sea.

“I’m here, Luc.” He reassured her, eyes softening. “I won’t leave you.” He surprised himself at how naturally the words flowed from his mouth

“Can you lay next to me until I fall asleep?” She whispered, eyes pleading.

Even if Adam wanted to, no words would have come out of his mouth, so instead, he nodded and laid back on the bed, pulling the quilt over Lucia and tucking her small head in his chest. He could sense her heart slowing down as she drifted away from reality, but what he didn’t expect was his heartbeat to slow as well, synchronizing with hers. The familiar rhythm combined with her comforting scent of cherry blossoms lulled Adam to sleep, one where his nightmares wouldn’t dare touch him.    

[headless-killjoys]

Hyper Thrust Pride Week - All 7 Poems

All 7 poems in the collection sent in to Cherri Cola’s Poetry Corner, chronicling events in the lifetime of [NAME REDACTED] with each one titled a single letter - although it is unclear whether these were truly written by another killjoy or Cherri Cola under a pseudonym.

Because they make more sense when you read them all one after the other (and it’s easier to see what the titles spell out)

R

Black lines painted on black city roads White walls hiding white lies   Like pawns we follow the crown Black rules on white pages, the bars of our cages

Pale scars against a dark canvas Mother knows best Small acts of defiance Black ink on brown skin, roses around her wrists

Brown earth slipping through our fingers Bringing vibrant life to a ghost town The resistance in her eyes still lingers Mother knows best. Bring the walls down.

They write their rules in black ink She guides my hands to their signs They write their rules in black ink What if we smudged their lines?

U

Arms block the way; are they control or protection? White and clean, white and sterile Sick, sick, sick Blank masks and blank stares White and dead, White is death

Red roses bloom across her chest as we run Golden sands in sight past concrete tunnels A cry for help pierces the air but there is no one She falls as the red reaches my knuckles

A decade of life thrown away Mother knows best, Mother knows best No warmth to keep the fear at bay The desert witch whispers; “now she is at rest”

A mask, a mask, why does she give me a mask, why must she fall Keep Running she says; she tells me to be free One last breath, I hear the desert’s call

The red, the red, it stains my hands. Buried in the zones, they will not get her Roses around her wrists, cherries around mine Red mask fades to pink, the birth of a killjoy.

N

Flames across the sky; my new companion Chasing their warmth as I run Never knowing what will happen But a new family was found

Orange sunrise burning away cold nights A dozen years behind me, a dozen more to come Scorching fire that fuels our fights Hunted by white masks but the zones are home

Let them come for us We’ll tend to the cuts Every step is rebirth Keep living, keep running

I see the sunset and I remember

Orange light fills my sight My tears dry. I know killjoys never die

A.1

A twist of fate, a meeting by chance Life carries on, but time stops Again and again, ethereal radiance Our hearts tick ticking like hands on clocks  

Yellow eyes and a crooked grin You tell me I'm the most handsome boy you've seen What a beautiful lie you croon, a lie it must be The most handsome boy is right in front of me

And yet, in the sun's light, glass shatters Lips curled, I taste "he" on my tongue - old identity unravels like thread But this is right, it's perfect, it's me.

Holding each other beneath the burning rays The danger of the city feels so far away

Blond hair splayed in a golden halo Soul lost to a ghost town Yellow gaze on a sight unseen We lay together in a world that is just you and me

A twist of fate, a meeting by choice

"Peace looks good on you" I break our silence, you laugh Whispered prayer that they never steal your smile Trace the lines of normalcy, stay for a while

Holding each other beneath the burning rays The danger of the city stays far away

W

Green life beneath brown boots Untamed, uncontrolled Like fingers reaching down to the roots Untethered, unrestrained

We wander and wonder Until the green consumes the scene Exit stage left, curtains close Save a smile for those who need it most

Green life beneath brown boots Fly, little corvid, the Scarecrows are coming Amongst the grass, there will be no truce Fight or fall what will you choose

Gun smoke, don’t look Death lies against emerald life A cold body in the sun’s warm light You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive

This is no game we play So fight to live another day

A.2

A twist of fate, a meeting by change

Blue strokes against a gold canvas Ice spreads over bone and for a moment Play pretend that we control the elements Summon a fire, cry into the warmth

Sapphire sheen over everything Layer on blankets of denial Thin comfort in mourning, under the covers of frost over your limbs

Radiance replaced, light faded without a trace Halo broken, shattered, shards in my skin

Blue tears over blue lips. Beneath the bright blue sky of a new day I saved my smiles for now Enter stage right, curtains rise, take a bow

The most handsome boy I'd ever seen All the things left unspoken and the lines in between I sing them goodbye, for killjoys never die Haunt forever the streets of this ghost town

Live on in these words Indigo ink on yellowing pages Be free at rest, my bluebell For now your sun shines on me and everyone

Y

Death opens her arms But in the violet glow We love, we love, we love Death sings words of honey, but my lovers' voices are sweeter

Dear younger self, The world splits open, revealing shimmering ichor Lost love and lost life amidst a sea of more Violet fields of freedom to be fought for

Dear younger self, Deny not the heart that seeks the truth Burning stars and burning hearts will soothe Red roses sink thorns into broken youth

Dear younger self, Look up to the stars in violet space See the lines of history that you can trace It gets better. You’ll find your place.

Mother knows best and when you’re on your own You’ll figure out the rest Keep Running

They wrote their rules in black ink I dared to smudge their lines

[laurenshield]

Fragments of a dream never born

 Erwin doesn’t think it is love.

He’s already been in love and he knows what it feels like: the heart flying in the space between lungs, the breath short like after a long race, the mind stopping at night and chasing golden dreams that will become impossible again in the daylight.  He know what being in love is like, and it has nothing to do with this.

Nothing to do with the hardness of Lev’s fingers gripping his wrist after an expedition ended and they find themselves alive in spite of everything, standing in front of each other in the darkness of a room; nothing to do with lips crashing on him, devouring his face, his jaw, his mouth, seeking the beat of the jugular, running after a warmth that doesn’t belong to blood and death. Levi doesn’t speak, during these moments, and Erwin doesn’t ask him to; when your head is full of screams, silence can be a welcome gift.

Erwin doesn’t think it is love, but it is something; and, he tells himself sometimes, always something more than what he deserves.

Their first time was strange and angry and confused, like the start of their story, like Levi usally is; the first time was Levi throwing himself on Erwin’s mouth as he hoped to choke the breath in his troath, Erwin holding Levi tight enough to break him, knowing he wouldn’t. The first time was the one when they realized the ground had disappeared beneath their feet and the only way to slow the fall was holding on to each other, the time when Erwin thought he saw Levi’s wings quiver in the shadow and he wondered how it would have been like to be able to fly so high, without chains made of corpes to keep you on the ground.

(The first time was the one they could have forgotten, hadn’t there been a second and a third and a hundredth- the time when Erwin held out his hand and Levi took it and they both stopped asking if there was something right in all of this).

From the moment they met, Levi was an enigma. Erwin watched him soar above the floor in the the Underground’s poisonous air, grace and lightness and bones as sharp as blades, and decided he wanted him, like he had long resigned himself to want a life of blood and question, chasing after a truth that could exist only in his head. The things I could do, if I had him by my side, he thought. The things I could reach, if I had that strenght.

He won him, but not the way he had imagined: he brought him on his side with lies made of air, witha sword against his troath, with the corpes of two children who had counted on that strenght before he did. Erwin thinks back on that day, sometimes, and wonders: would it end another way, if Isabel and Farland didn’t die then? Would he and Levi ever forged the first ring of the chain that binds them, if not for the blood of that children?

(It’s a stupid question, he knows it. Everything he ever gained in his life came through someone else’s death. Why should Levi be the exception?)

They could die any moment: this is the one, bitter certainty that stained their evry meeting from the first, and maybe that’s why Erwin didn’t stop him when Levi clung to him like he was afraid to see him disappear the next second, when the whole world melted, for the space of an instant, in the soap’s scent and the unexpected sweetnes of a mouth used to insults and rebukes. And Erwin remembers thinking (before the first time, when there had been nothing between them but lingering gazes and orders followed by silent agreements): I cannot take even this from him. I already got his strenght, his loyalty, everything that’s left of his life. I cannot have this. I have nothing to give him in return.

But he’s a selfish man, always has been- so he takes what Levi offers, every time like it was the first because they could die any moment and he needs someone to stay, someone to understand, someone to know him: someone who looks at him and doesn’t see ghosts moaning under his feet and rivers of blood rusting in the feathers of his wings.

He never knew what Levi saw in him. Whatever it is, it had to be big enough, strong enough, to hold more weight than the rest- more than crazy planes, more than dead bodies forming a mountain higher than three circles of walls, more than the whispers that haunt them both and stick on their back, growling demons, monsters, madmen, murderers.

“If there’s someone who can defeat the Titans, it’s you” Levi told him once and Erwin felt something cold stab him, halfway between rage and shame, for what did he ever do to deserve such a total, undiying loyalty?

He swallows back the words burning on the tip of his tongue; he locks in a dark corner of his mind everything he should say and never will. And oh, there are so many things he could say.

“I don’t think I am so irreplaceable” it’s what he says, like it didn’t matter, as if every part of him wasn’t writhing thinking of everything Levi gave him, everything Erwin took without having the right to.

“You are” Levi replies in a matter-of-fact voice. Erwin swamps blood and bile behind a mask of marm, and thinks: Don’t hope I can save you all. I don’t think I can even save myself.

I’m not even half of the man you believe.

Sometimes, when the gaze in Levi’s eyes becomes too much to bear, he wants to tell him the truth. Take him by the shoulders, looking him in the eye, drop every mask and reveal to him that it’s not humanity he’s fighting for, that victory and peace are not the dreams moving his steps, that since he joined the Survey Corps he lied and lied and lied: so well that Levi believed him, so well that sometimes Erwin believed it too.

(Levi wouldn’t understand. Even if Erwin ever decided to explain, Levi wouldn’t understand- and how could he, when sometimes even Erwin doesn’t understand himself? Understand how you can live your life clinging to a vision, to a dream, to the only embrace that ever made you feel safe and loved; understand how you can give up everything for a path of blood and damned choices; and if he’s not capable of understanding, or forgiving, himself, how can he expect Levi to do it?)

Erwin watched Levi break into pieces more times than he can count. He watched him swallow Isabel and Farlan’s name among tears every night, write the shards and the laments of every dead soldier in his memory, spend silent hours trying to run faster than his squad’s ghosts- and failing.

None of this was enough to shatter him. Everytime Erwin feared he’d reach the breaking point, Levi stood up again: the world bit his flesh away from him but could never stop his heart. Year after year, death after death, Levi fought to keep his humanity with teeth and nails- it’s a kind of courage Erwin lost long ago, if he ever had it, and he knows he didn’t do anything to deserve such a heart in his hands.

He’s standing in front of the window in his room, his hands clasped behind his back, the world a wall of dark beyond the glass. If this was a normal night, Erwin’s mind would be a restless succession of planes, theories, dreams- but tonight all he can see are the broken remains of the soldiers butchered at Castel Utgard and when he finally opens his mouth to speak, he hears himself saying “I believe Mike is dead.”

The instant the words have left his lips, he wishes he could take them back, deny them, throw them away. I believe Mike is dead. Mike, who was the closest thing to a brother Erwin ever had, one of the few to have known him when there’s wasn’t any death to turn his gaze in stone, who now looks at him from under his feet, on the top of a tower of slaughtered corpse, and Erwin wants to look away and say I didn’t do this.

Behind him, Levi moves lightly, maybe to say something, but Erwin doesn’t let him too. There are days when Levi’s ability to lessen his burden is the only thing that keeps him standing. Tonight, it would be only salt on an open wound.

“If he was alive, he would have come back” he doesn’t now why he’s talking, he only knows he can’t stop. “If he was alive...”

But he’s not. Mike is dead, like Nanaba, like his men, like his father, like anyone who ever trusted and loved him- and if not even that can stop him, what will?

He doesn’t realize Levi’s presence until he puts his forehead between Erwin’s shoulder blades. Part of Erwin wants to push him away, but Levi’s hand grip his arm and keeps him there. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to; all the words he could say are in the silence surrounding them.

You at least, Erwin thinks. You at least, try and die after me.

For Levi, it’s all so simple. If you ask me, I will do it. If you say it, I will trust you. It’s the only thing about him that Erwin can never understand, the riddle he will never solve, but maybe this is a question he doesn’t want to answer: in an hidden, dark part of his mind, one Erwin never stares into, he remembers what it was to like tu trust, to believe, to lean on someone who could keep the universe in balance. He spent his life trying to wash his father’s blood on his hand, the one he loved more than anyone, the one he betrayed more than anyone,  and he swore to himself he would never need someone like that, ever again.

(But he does need Levi; a need that doesn’t have anything to do with desire, that sometimes turns to ice between his heart and lunghs until it chokes him, that makes him feel vulnerable and weak and selfish, oh so selfish. He needs Levi and the man Levi believes in, he needs the faith burning in his eyes like liquid silver, that faith he doesn’t deserve, that refuses to drown in lakes of shed blood. He needs Levi, and he stopped long ago to try and find a way back from this.)

Their last time is strange and confused and angry like the first; there’s the empty space of Erwin’s arm to remind them that they’re both made of flesh and blood, that a bite is enough to kill them, that there’s no way to be sure they’ll come out of it alive. It’s Levi’s eyer never straying far from his face like he was trying to memorize it, his hands moving on Erwin’s body with a desperate, unusal tenderness, a choked sparkle closing Erwin’s troath in a burning knot. It’s the words they said to each other in the office, Levi’s request and Erwin’s refusal, that Yes standing between them like a wall too tall to be climbed. After, they stay silent like they do everytime, the beating of their hearts a murmur of unspoken words in the darkness around them.

In the end, it’s Levi the first to break the silence, his hand holding Erwin’s wrist as if was trying to absorbe the heartbeat hidden in the veins. “Are you afraid?” he asks, and they both know what he really wants to hear, just as they know the question will never find the way of words.

In the shadow, Erwin shakes his head. “No” he replies calmly. It’ll become a lie only hours later, when he will ride towards his death with a smoke signal in his hand and the rest of his broken dreams behind his back. “One way or another, tomorrow it ends.”

Levi’s lips tighten, in his eyes a flicker he’s not quick enought to hide, his fingers sinking in Erwin’s flesh with a desperate urgence that screams more then any cry or plea- and the pain bursting in Erwin’s chest at that sight is stronger than the one he felt under the Military Police’s punchs, stronger than his bones crumbling under a Titan’s teeth. Not for the first time, he wishes he broke the chain binding them before it made them the same thing. He frees his hand from Levi’s hold and brushes his fingers in his hair. “I’m sorry” he says, and it’s all he can ever offer. I’m sorry I dragged you here with me, I’m sorry you have to risk grieving again after losing so much, I’m sorry I was never selfless enough to let you go, I’m sorry I never was the man you see. “I’m sorry, Levi.”

Levi doesn’t ask him what he means.

(He sees Levi, before the rock hits him; before everything collapses in pain and darkness, in the horror of soil dripping with blood, he sees Levi reaching the Beast Titan, as graceful and unstoppable as that first day in the Underground, and if he had ever learned to have faith in something, now he would pray for him.)

(You will live. It’s his last wish, his last request, his last vision; the last fragment of a dream never born. You at least will live, and you will do the right thing. You will for me.)

Original version in Italian here: https://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3869087

[echoise]

Evenfall is not Keith. Keith is weak. (m!sidestep (Keith!), character study thingy really.) 536 words

Evenfall’s hands don’t shake. The suit comes with stabilizers in the gloves: even without them, his hands are steady. When he pins things to the board, when he tweaks the suit, when he counts stolen money. Not like Keith, who spills his coffee on the regular if the cup is too full, who can’t work delicate circuitry without investing in a pair of expensive work gloves. Who can’t feel the difference between an ice cube and a boiling hot cup of coffee.

Evenfall’s vision doesn’t dim perching high up and surveying the world below. Doesn’t remember rushing wind and shards of glass. Thinks nothing of diving off the bridge and into the ocean below, braving a deadly fall and finishing it in a deep dive. Not like Keith, who gets light-headed when he walks up stairs that are too steep. Who hesitates going too close to windows, skin tingling, drowning in memories and cold sweat.

Evenfall doesn’t doubt his focus. Not when he pins Steel’s picture to the top of the board, jotting down a plan of attack against Mayor Alvarez. Not when he charts out a map of the Farm and their procedures from memory, hands steady but his mind on fire. Not like Keith, who takes one look at Ortega and feels like he’s falling four stories down again, the mustached smile the pavement waiting at the bottom. Who stares at Chen’s number in his phone and toys with the idea of calling him and telling him everything, consequences be damned.

Evenfall doesn’t hesitate. Not when he grabs Herald mid-air and hurls him into the car below, bending the frame and lighting up its alarms. Thinks nothing of going toe-to-toe with Argent’s silver claws, feeling alive in the heat of the fight. Not like Keith, who stares at his reflection after another sleepless night and hates the direction he’s headed. Who shines through the cracks when Ortega lies broken on the pavement, choosing to run rather than hurt him more.

Keith is weak. A weak man who doesn’t know what he wants, only what he needs; driven by impulses and emotions his mind desperately tries to rein in, but fails every time. A weak, stupid, desperate man who’s going to crash and burn and knows it, but he can’t stop.

Evenfall is not Keith. Evenfall is a mask, an idea, a conviction: an outlet for all the things that don’t fit into “Keith”. An attempt at putting right that which has gone wrong inside him, but twisting it further. The broken mirror distorting both the viewer and the wearer, showing plainly the warped mind hiding behind the helmet.

And when Evenfall soars, Keith retreats: shrinks back to the very far corner of his mind, to the place that used to be one of safety and strength before it was twisted by leaking tubes and a toothless smile. Into a reverse Pandora’s box, where all hope has fled and only nightmares remain. Boxing himself in to a prison of his own making, a slew of bad decisions all leading to dead ends.

Screaming for help inside his own head, but like the last time, like all the times after that, finding no one to listen.

[tragedyforged]

@bitterdeadguy

               Breakfast generally came with shattered cups these days.   Not too long ago he had gotten new ones, not too long ago he had suspected the wind but as the windows remained closed and eyes and ears remained attentive he noticed it anyways.   Taunting him, haunting him, whatever deity it was, it surely had its fun as he talked to the air.          ❝            Can’t ye do something bloody useful for once and rearrange me bookshelves ?   Just once until I get an alive cat and can blame your shite on the animal ?            ❞

[rosenpopov]

Who broke you?

Why all the sad songs 

and even sadder quotes? 

What made you only look down 

and miss out on the stars? 

Who took your magnificent smile 

and turned it upside down? 

Who made insanity a daily routine 

and death, first in your wish list? 

Let me take a good look at you, 

oh… that's a mask you wear, isn't it? 

What made you make it, 

craft it in the deepest of the dark, 

where nobody can see your tears 

or feel how they burn on your skin? 

Who made you put it on 

and wear it as your own face. 

It's flawless except for the eyes, 

these you can never hide, 

they will always show what's behind, 

That brokenness within.  

So ... who broke you ? 

Was it that girl that caught your heart and soul, 

gorgeous as fresh fallen snow. 

Eyes as bright as dying stars, 

and lips like the petals of a rose. 

But her heart held a shard of ice,

colder than the depths of space. 

Or was it that boy you met 

With locks as tangled as the lies said, 

words as sweet as flower nectar, 

and poisonous as cyanide. 

Then lodged an icy dagger, 

deep between your ribs, 

and watched as you fell and bled? 

Or wasn’t it from love at all? 

Did you lose a piece of your deeper self, 

your cornerstone, your centerpiece, 

chipped away from you crudely and most painfully, 

sacrificed to the beast of sadness, 

and destroyed into the pit of despair? 

Funny how Heaven  makes the angels fall,  

when they haven't even flown, 

seen the world as an eagle can, 

with the sun on their backs, 

and the zephyr in their wings. 

Whoever broke you, 

I pity them, for that is what they deserve. 

They trampled an unbloomed flower,  

of the beautiful and unknown kind. 

But rise, rise again, and grow,  

stronger and taller than before.  

Hide the sun as you open, 

and show us how bright you can shine,  

brighter than every star we know.

[myeongchokrp]

PROFILE LOADED • • • 《 IM TAEHYUN 》

“On the surface, IM TAEHYUN is a twenty-six-year-old AMBULANCE DRIVER. Dig a little deeper and you’ll discover that he’s also a DRIVER and CLEAN UP CREW MEMBER that goes by the alias WHEELS. His allegiance lies with COLUMBA.”

TW BLOOD, PARENTAL DEATH, PARENTAL SICKNESS/ILL HEALTH

《 WHO ARE YOU? 》

The question is startling. He does not like the attention, and he can feel a surge of nervousness and guilt despite the absolute legitimate reason for him being here. He can feel his mouth widen in a bright innocent smile, he motions his uniform. “I’m the first responder here… Madam” he adds after a seconds pause looking the policewoman straight in the eye. He knows he is grinning but he cannot help the smile that stretches his lips; it is a knee-jerk reaction to a stressful situation, a mask tightening his features, a “fake it till you make it” moment he relives again and again whenever people stress him. It’s funny, how hard it is to change old habits.

He has to look away. It takes him a moment to tone it down. He focuses on all the minute details of the scene, broken shards of windowpane glittering in the sun, darkened pools of blood that loses it crimson luster quickly. The smile fades.

It took him a while to get used to the harsh reality of the city torn by the gang war, as the first responder he sees the literal and metaphorical wounds it leaves, and dead. Yeah, dead… Used to is a relative term though. Perhaps not as much used to as gritting his teeth and soldier on, at some point though he decided that merely trailing the carnage is not enough. Trite, but the saying that one has to become monster to hunt one never rings truer than at times like this. One moment you ordering ice cream, the next stray bullet catches you mid-gesture, and you never finish handing the vanilla cone to your child. His throat tightens in anger and grief and he is grateful for the distraction as he hears radio sputter, they got another call.  “Gotta go” an apologetic twist of his lips. Their job here is finished.

《 HOW DID YOU GET HERE? 》

“How did you get here?!?”

He gives you a long look. His hand shifts the gears and the car speeds up, taking him and the passenger, namely you, away from whatever you are running from.  “You know, police scanner is a useful thing. You kinda made a big entrance there. And even bigger exit.” He is relatively new in Columba, so he holds his tongue and does not add his own opinion. Which is, basically, keeping a low profile is a way to go. There is a slight apprehension, but his movements are assured as the car easily glides and change lanes. He steps in on the gas and with a muted roar they enter the tunnel, leaving the chaos of police sirens behind. At the times like he has his doubts. Is Columba really the best answer to this? How does adding fuel to the fire helps? But every time he visits his mum in the facility, watches her thin, seamed face motionless, alive but beyond his reach, beyond anyone’s reach - doing anything is so much better than just letting things happen.

[tragedyforged]

@neverarhyme | SC.

                    Attention was drawn away from the dull nothingness of lost souls wandering old halls, it was but for the golden curls of a young woman that stolen eyes followed her around. Pretty like a picture, he had almost missed death shadowing her every move until finally, lips turned upwards with the knowledge that nothing innocent adorned her beauty. Seemingly born out of the shadows, when he appeared behind her no noise was made and instead before giving himself away another moment was taken to observe his newest plaything.  ❝  What  -  were  the  stories  around  this  place  not  enticing  enough  that  you  had  to  bring  your  own  ghost?   ❞

[tragedyforged]

@lcliita | SC.

                    Shadows merged with the stolen frame, lapping at the darkness inside         one blink later and he was nothing but a mortal in a supposedly haunted location. Boring and dull just like the rest of them. A mask was placed upon cold features, something resembling a trustworthy visage as he could already feel himself hunger for her innocent soul.  ❝  Bloody  hell,  aren’t  you  a  bit  young  for  Nopeming?  ❞