#“ ancient soul ” | playlist | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

riboism · 2 years ago

Text

man who can’t be moved

》 pairing: j.yh x f!reader

》 genre: angst, smut, some fluff

》 content: college student!reader, college student! yunho, no strings attached, hookups, reader is kind of a player, some mentions of reader’s ex (it didn’t end well), lots of denial, lots of emotions, big dick yunho, creampie, clit play, angry sex, am i missing anything?

》 wc: 6.4k

》 a/n: thank you to the person who requested this! this got me out of my writers block. I hope you like it :)

♫ playlist: flook- hector gachan, evergreen- omar apollo, frío- omar apollo, broken love- gemini, man who can’t be moved- the script

Yunho stood outside your apartment door, holding onto a box that contained your possessions. He could smell the rosy scent of the shampoo that you left in his shower. He had spent all morning collecting your belongings into this box, proud that he finally made an effort to be rid of you once and for all. But that rosy smell, that same scent that he’d wake up to after you spent the night was making him second guess himself. No, stop it, he said to himself. Just stick to the plan Yunho.

The plan was simple. Yunho would go to your apartment after work and knock on your door, fully aware that you probably weren’t home. You were most likely at San’s or Yeosang’s place right now, getting shit-faced drunk and having sweaty sex on their beat-up couches, head too fuzzy in bliss to even spare a single thought about him. But he thought he would knock anyway, just as a courtesy. He’d wait for ten seconds, and when you don’t answer, he’d shrug in a “welp, I tried” kind of way before placing the box on your doorstep. He’ll take a deep breath while looking at your door that he knew all too well one last time and then head towards the stairwell exit, with his head held high, showing no intention of turning back.

Yunho was partly to blame for the way things ended, and he knew that. You made yourself very clear in the beginning. “Listen Yunho, you’re really sweet,” You said after he confessed to you all those months ago at the campus library where you two first met, “But I’m not looking for anything serious. I don’t really do relationships. You get what I mean?”

He knew exactly what you meant. ‘Dating’ was an ancient term. Nobody ‘dated’ anymore. What replaced this archaic social practice were one-night stands, situation-ships, friends with benefits, hookups, etc. No one wanted a ‘serious’ relationship anymore because that meant having to give your mind, body, and soul to someone, and why bother with all that when you can just give them one of the three?

Even though most of his peers shared the same sentiment as you when it came to relationships, Yunho didn’t agree with it at all. Maybe he was old-fashioned for wanting something more than a quick fuck. Looking back on it now, he regretted not taking the hint. It was evident that you wanted a guy you could fool around with when you were bored, someone who’s emotionally unavailable so you don’t have to worry about attachments and sudden ‘L’ bombs when you’re just trying to get your fix. But Yunho, who was so pathetically infatuated with you at the time, so much so that it blocked away all rational thinking, decided that he’ll be whatever kind of guy you wanted him to be if it meant that he could be with you. The foolish romantic was now part of a no strings attached relationship.

He felt incredibly stupid for getting involved with you. What did he expect? That after all the mindless sex, you’d fall as hard for him as he did for you, and finally agree to be his girlfriend? He had so much to learn. No strings attached meant no strings attached. That meant less conversation and more action. Less getting to know each other and more getting to know about what was in between your legs. It meant no longing stares, although he was guilty of watching you sleep in his arms from time to time. It also meant being okay with the fact that he was not the only guy you were seeing. And that’s when the fights would ensue.

��Who was that guy?” Yunho demanded, making sure to use his quiet-yelling voice out of respect for the other patrons of the library. He was referring to the pale, blonde-haired guy from the dining hall earlier. He didn’t like how close he was standing next to you. He especially didn’t like it when he leaned in to whisper in your ear, or how you giggled when he placed his hands over your waist and how you rubbed your hands over his flexed muscles. You chewed on your gum, tracing your fingers over the etched golden text on the book spines on the historical fiction shelf. You almost didn’t hear him at first, too preoccupied with finding your next bedtime read.

“Hmm? Oh, that guy? Just someone I’ve been seeing. Why, you jealous?”

It was a joke. There was no such thing as ‘jealousy’ in a no strings attached relationship. You smiled up at him, expecting to see him roll his eyes from your playful jab, but instead, he looked away from you. Even with his side profile facing you, you could read the tinge of irritation on his face. You frowned.

“Oh come on Pookie,” You pouted, squeezing his cheeks and turning his head to face you. You chuckled after seeing his lips puckered up like a fish. “Don’t be like that. Come on, I can’t be the only girl you’re seeing, right?”

He placed his hand on your wrist and pulled you off him. “Whatever.” He moped. He watched as your eyes widened in sudden realization.

“No…” You gasped dramatically, bringing your hand up to cover your mouth. “I’m the only one you’ve been seeing?”

He stayed quiet, not understanding why you worded it that way. Was it really a bad thing that you were the only girl on his mind?

“Oh god, you’re so cute!” You tittered. “I thought with a dick like yours, you’d be very popular. It’s a shame you’re not sharing it. I know a lot of girls who would love to take you out for a spin.”

“Keep your voice down.” Yunho hissed, looking around to see if anyone heard your distasteful choice of words. Luckily, no one was around at your corner of the library. “And stop talking like that. I don’t like it when you talk about me like that.”

“It was a compliment!” You defended yourself. Yunho refused to meet your eyes, busying himself with pulling out random books and reading the blurbs on the backside, although he was too upset to even acknowledge what he was reading. You sighed again, feeling a little bad for making him so upset. You’d often forget that Yunho was more sensitive than your other partners and that he needed extra kindness and assurance. You wrapped your arms around his big body and rested your cheek against his back.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease you so much.” He stayed quiet, putting back the book and pulling out another. “Please don’t be mad.” You begged.

“I’m not mad,” He murmured. “I just thought…I don’t know, I thought I was the only guy you were seeing.”

“Does it bother you that you’re not?” You questioned, letting go of him. Yunho looked back at you, his chest tightening at your furrowed brows. He worried that he said the wrong thing again. He was new to the no strings attached community, and would often let his possessiveness and sensitivity peek through.

“No,” He lied. “I just…Forget it.”

You mulled over his response, trying hard to understand why he was so upset, to begin with. Your silence made Yunho nervous. Everything about you made him nervous.

Then, your eyes sparked when you finally understood. “Ohh…I get it.” You nodded.

His shoulders tensed up. “You do?”

“Yes, and you have nothing to worry about. Out of everyone, you’re my favorite.” You stood on your tippy toes and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, satisfied that you solved the puzzle and were able to calm his nerves.

Yunho gave you a shy smile. He didn’t want to smile, but he figured it was best to do so, so that you could believe that he was lashing out over the fear of being replaced, and not because he didn’t wish to share you with other guys.

You continued on. “You worried me for a second. I thought you were one of those guys that don’t like it when a girl has a mind of her own.”

“No,” he chuckled nervously, “No, I don’t mind that at all.”

“Good,” you chirped, going back to your search. “You wouldn’t believe some of the guys I’ve been with. They get so clingy, and it gets annoying after a while. I’m glad you’re not like that. Other guys…they don’t get it. We’re young. It’s better we have fun while we can, or else we’ll live to regret it when we’re old and wrinkly and can’t get any.”

Yunho hummed in agreement, although he didn’t agree with you at all. He thought about his grandparents. They lived in a small apartment just outside of the city. His parents would complain about how small their living space was, and offered to help them move into a more spacious apartment, but his grandparents always refused. “If we move into a bigger apartment, we won’t be able to see each other. This size is perfect,” His grandmother would say, “I turn around and he’s right behind me. It’s how it should be. Anything farther, and we’d miss each other too much.”

It always warmed his heart just how inseparable those two were, even in their old age. He wanted that for himself one day. How wonderful would it be to grow old with the person you love most?

Later that night, while you were showering, he remained in your bed, thinking about what you said earlier. Was he really your favorite? Did you really like him more than the other guys you were seeing? Or was his dick just bigger than theirs? He tried not to think about that too much and focused on going to sleep.

And when it wasn’t him being upset with you, it was you getting annoyed with him.

“Do you really have to go?” Yunho whined. He was sitting up on his bed, watching you as you shuffled around his room, bending down to pick up the discarded pieces of clothing.

“I already told San I’d meet up with him later.” You huffed as you shimmied into your jeans. Yunho didn’t like how quickly you were getting dressed. It was as if you were eager to get away from him.

“San?” He scoffed. “You mean that bartender that kept eye fucking you right in front of me?”

Yunho remembered San. A lot of the girls from your University frequented that bar on the corner of Main Street, hoping to get served by the handsome devil in all black. He’s seen a lot of the girls write their phone numbers on the twenty-dollar bills they tipped him with. It was ridiculous. Everything about him was ridiculous, from the cheap hair gel he used to slick back his hair, to his sleazy smile, along with his overly tight t-shirts and shiny black leather pants. But he didn’t mind him too much, not until that night when you two went in for a drink, and the so-called ‘handsome devil in all black’ ruthlessly flirted with you when he was clearly sitting right next to you with his hand on your thigh to mark that you were taken. Yunho didn’t know what angered him more. San’s shit-eating grin or the fact that you let him flirt with you in the first place.

You rolled your eyes. “Yeah, that guy.” You really didn’t like it when he got emotional, and Yunho could sense your discomfort. He immediately regretted what he said and grabbed you by your arm before you could leave, pleading to you with his eyes.

“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to upset you. But can’t you just stay a little longer? It’s already so late. I thought you could spend the night. We could rent a movie?” He offered.

You picked up your jacket and purse, not even bothering to put them on before you left. “Look, I’ll call you okay?” You pressed a quick kiss to his lips and then went out the door before he could protest again. Yunho slumped back against the headboard, the sound of the door slamming behind you echoing in his head. How do you keep letting this happen, Yunho? She comes and goes, that’s what she does. She’s not here to hold hands and watch a fucking movie. She wants to fuck and then move on to the next guy. Seriously, do you have any respect for yourself?

And that’s how the cycle would begin. Yunho would get tired of you and your bullshit, tired of being discarded right after helping you cum, tired of driving himself mad over who you were seeing and what you were doing with him, just tired of being an option. It wasn’t him. He wanted you and your full devotion, and when he finally realized that there was no way you would give that to him, he’d call it off.

The first few weeks of being free from you would go well. He’d be at peace like he got rid of a bad cold and could finally breathe again. But that small period of relief wouldn’t last very long. Truth was, Yunho wasn’t good at being alone. And soon, he’d miss your touch, your smell, and hearing your laugh. He’d miss the moments he spent with you in the library, like when you two would play footsies under the table during your late-night midterm study sessions, or the times you two would fight for the aux cord in his car, eager to show each other new songs you were obsessing over at the moment. He’d find himself listening to the songs you showed him, but they didn’t sound the same anymore.

He’d miss hearing you talk about your day or your thoughts about rent control and the current economic crisis. And then he’d miss the nights he spent with you, how your body reacted to his fingertips, the way you’d press your eyes shut when he entered you, and the pretty sounds you let out when you were close to your peak. And then he’d think about that one night you showed up at his apartment, unannounced. You were upset, it was telling from your reddened lips and tear-stained cheeks. You wouldn’t say why you were upset, and after asking a couple of times, Yunho decided to just let leave you be. He then invited you in and let you lead the way to his bed. It started the way any other night started, with you two hungrily ripping each other’s clothing off, but before he could spread your legs, you suddenly pressed your hand to his chest and asked him to stop. “No, not like this…Can we-” You looked away from his piercing gaze, a rush of frustration and confusion coursing through your stomach until you finally spit the words out. “Can we just lay here?”

Yunho looked down at you with sincerity in his eyes, and he wanted to ask you one more time what was wrong. But seeing you so hurt, so tired, so in need of someone to just hold you while you cried, he decided to hold his tongue. He pulled you into his arms without question, letting you wet his chest with your spilled tears. And when he felt goosebumps prickle up on your skin, he covered both your naked bodies with a blanket and held you tighter. You finally fell asleep, your worries being absorbed by Yunho and his warm embrace, and Yunho couldn’t help but feel a little enraptured watching you sleep so peacefully in his arms. He’s had you in every way, in every position, seen every crevice of your beautiful body, but this. This is what he wanted most in the world. This is how he wanted you. And he hoped that by the next morning, that’s how you’d want him too. But when morning came, Yunho woke up alone, with nothing but the faint smell of roses on his pillowcase. When he asked you about it later that day on campus, you suddenly went cold and demanded he never bring it up again.

He thought about that night, your body, those Omar Apollo songs you showed him, the library study sessions, just every single moment that he’s ever spent with you, driving himself mad to the point where the desire for you would be overwhelming and too strong to ignore and he’d ultimately give in and crawl back into bed with you, allowing you to use him as you wanted, feeling again like a dog on your leash. It would feel good for a bit, until those same old feelings resurfaced and he’d call it off once again, repeating the never-ending cycle of your no strings attached relationship.

But this time, things were going to be different. He wasn’t going to continue this cycle. You weren’t good for him, and it was time he let go and move on. That’s why he packed all your stuff and came to drop them off. It was official. There was no going back from this. All he had to do now was stick to the plan.

Yunho shifted the box to his side and used his free hand to knock on the door. He took a deep breath and counted in his head.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five-

The door swung open, interrupting his counting. You stood at the door frame in nothing but your bathrobe, your wet hair dripping puddles around your feet. Yunho was at a loss for words. This wasn’t part of the plan. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t prepare for this. He didn’t, sorry, couldn’t see you, because it would just make things harder. It was like flaunting a cigarette in front of someone who just quit smoking. He wasn’t strong enough to resist you. He was addicted to you and he worried that he would relapse again.

“Oh, Yunho.” You acknowledged, crossing your arms over your chest. He held onto the box tighter, feeling himself twitch from the sound of you calling his name. You peered into the box, recognizing the articles of clothing and personal hygiene products. “Is that my stuff?”

Yunho struggled at first, forgetting for a moment how to speak coherently. “Uh- yes, it is. I came to drop them off. Here.” He blubbered, pushing the box towards you. You took it from his hands, not expecting it to be so heavy. You didn’t realize you left so many things at his place.

“Oh. Thanks.”

A silence weighed in between you, both of you looking at each other awkwardly, unsure of what to say next. Right, Yunho thought to himself, there’s nothing left to say. You did your part, now walk right out.

“Well, I should head back. Goodnight, Y/N.”

Yunho turned on his heel and made his way out of the long corridor. Part of him didn’t want to reach the end of the hall, but he pushed himself anyway, reminding himself over and over to not look back. As painful as it was, it needed to happen. It was for the best.

“Wait,” You called after him.

And just like that, Yunho immediately stopped in his tracks, not hesitating this time to turn around. It almost brought him some relief, like he had been holding his breath for too long, and now you finally gave him permission to exhale. “Yes?” He beamed.

You stepped out from the door frame and into the hall so you were right across from where Yunho stood. “Do you want to come in?”

“What?” He asked, dumbfounded, almost believing that he must have heard you wrong.

“I mean, your stuff,” You clarified, “I still have some of your stuff in my apartment if you wanted to come in and grab them.” It was kind of pathetic, the way you tripped over your words, but you couldn’t bare saying goodbye just yet. No, you’re not catching feelings, you assured yourself. You just wanted him around you for a little bit longer. Maybe it was selfish of you to keep pulling on his leash like this, but for the moment, you didn’t care.

“Oh, right. That would be great, actually.”

Yunho knew he would hate himself for letting this happen. All that progress getting chucked out the window on account of his lack of self-control. But how could you blame him? With the way your damp strands curled around your flushed cheeks, the smell of your rosy shampoo that had been seared into his nostrils by now, and the fact that all he had to do was undue your robe to see your beautiful glistening body that was so ready for him to take. It was all so easy. You handed him the apple and all he had to do was take a bite.

“Fuck, Yunho!” You cried out, grasping his bare back for dear life as he frantically thrust into you. He was angry, angry at himself that he let this happen again, and angry at you for making him so weak. He only put just the tip in, but you could’ve sworn you were seeing stars from the stretch alone.

“Unbelievable,” He grunted. “Even after the hundred times we fucked, your little pussy still can’t take my cock?”

You’d never seen this side of Yunho. Usually, he was nice and gentle with you, always studying the arch of your brows to see if he was taking things too far or not. It was sweet at first, but sometimes you’d wish he’d just take you and fuck you like an animal. It seemed your wish was finally granted. “P-Please! All of it, I want all of it Yunho, please!” Was all you could muster out.

He pulled out of you in an instant, and before you could whine, he forcibly flipped you over and pulled you back by your hips until your ass smacked into his pelvis. Yunho kept you down with his hand pressed against the space between your shoulder blades as he lined himself up with your aching center.

Yunho rubbed himself against your slick folds, occasionally slapping his tip over your swollen clit, making your hips jolt with anticipation. “You want it all? ‘Guess those other guys don’t fill you up as much as you want, huh? Poor thing.” He continued dragging his cock over your folds, your soft whimpers only feeding into his ego.

Just when he thought you had enough, he guided his cock into your hole, the stretch forcing you to tear up once again. You grasped at your bed sheets and pressed your eyes shut, preparing yourself for the rest of him as your lips coated in salty tears.

He pushed the rest of him into you with a struggle, his hips stagnant as he waited for you to adjust to his size. “Fuck!” You gasped, your voice cracking as he started up again. Each thrust was deep, calculated, and they didn’t fail to rip a moan out of you.

His fingers, now coated with your essence, tweaked and twisted at your clit. It was all too much for you, really, the sheer length of him plowing into your walls, the brutal pace he set on account of his anger, along with the way he toyed at your clit. Yunho could sense you were close, having known your body long enough to know when you were about to be sent over the edge. He stopped teasing your bud and instead slipped his fingers past your lips and you readily let him in, swirling your tongue around his digits to clean yourself off him. He grinned to himself, pleased to see that you knew exactly what to do without any instruction.

Suddenly, he pulled his fingers out from you and cupped your jaw with his large hand, pulling you back until your head was against his chest, keeping your face there so you were forced to look up at him. He peered down at you with his full attention, completely engrossed by just how pretty and sinful you looked in this position. “Stay like that,” He breathed “‘wanna see you when you cum all over my cock.”

He came first, your orgasm approaching soon after. You babbled incoherently as his cum flooded your walls, forcing your eyes to roll to the back of your head. Yunho was completely enamored with you like this, your parted and swollen lips and your half-lidded eyelids almost making him shoot a second load into you. He disconnected from you and you fell forward onto the bed, catching your breath as you came down from your high. You felt dizzy and sweaty, and your head was so cloudy that you were unable to form a thought that wasn’t already so scrambled. As you relaxed, you felt Yunho’s breath over your hip right before he planted soft kisses on your lower back all the way up to your shoulder. His kisses were sweet and careful, almost like he was making up for being so rough with you. Soon enough, he retired from your shoulder and moved on to the side of your face, brushing his pillowy lips on your temple, to your wet eyes, to your cheek, until you craned your neck back and allowed him to meet your lips.

It was almost foreign to you, to have someone care this deeply for you even after the act. None of your other partners behaved this way, and you were lucky if they even remembered to toss you a towel. But Yunho, he was different. He treated you as something more, and maybe it made you feel bad that you didn’t do the same for him. It was overwhelming, his soft kisses, his careful touches, the way he’d beg you to stay over, and the way he almost looked hurt when you say you can’t. Poor Yunho. He was in love with you, and you knew it. You hated yourself for toying with a man with good intentions. But what was the alternative? You couldn’t be his, and he couldn’t be yours. You made a promise to yourself years ago that you’d never be foolish enough to fall in love ever again. This had to stop, you should’ve stopped it months ago, but you were selfish. And lonely. The guilt you’ve been bottling up inside of you was too much to handle, and you knew you had to do something before you exploded.

Feeling disgusted with yourself, you pulled away from his lips. Yunho raised a brow at the sudden gesture. “What’s wrong?” He asked, his slightly concerned tone making your heart shatter into pieces.

“You should get going. It’s late.” You got up, forcing Yunho to pull off of you. He watched you as you went over to your dresser to pull out a fresh pair of pajamas, completely dumbfounded by your sudden coldness.

“Are you fucking serious?” He scoffed.

You shook your head, picking up his t-shirt that lay on the floor and tossing it over to him. His eyes flickered in anger and he threw his shirt back on the ground. “I don’t understand, why do you always do this!?”

You stayed quiet, quickly covering yourself before turning around to face him, keeping your eyes low, feeling too ashamed to meet his. “I’m sorry, but I need you to go.”

Yunho clenched his jaw. How could you be so cold? How could you invite him in, only to toss him out so abruptly? He thought about how you melted right into his embrace, how you kissed him back with the same amount of passion that he kissed you with. Was any of it real? Or was he too infatuated to notice that you were playing him, again?

“Why? Is Yeosang coming over? Do you really think that guy cares about you?”

You balled your fists up at the mention of Yeosang. “Stop.” You warned.

“And San? He’d fuck anything with two legs and a heartbeat. Is that what you want?”

“Yes, Yunho, that’s exactly what I want!” You snapped. A silence weighed in before Yunho’s lips curled up in an unexpected smile.

“What?” You teethed.

He shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t know what you want. That’s why you keep coming back to me.”

“Me?” You pointed to yourself, a crooked smile now spread across your lips. “No, it’s you that keeps coming back to me.” You jeered.

“And you let me! Why do you let me!? Time after time, you take me back without question, why?”

You crossed your arms and looked away from his direction. You felt hot, like the blood in your veins was boiling. You didn’t want to deal with this. You felt stupid for letting him in. Yunho always had questions, so many questions, and you couldn’t give him any answers. Fed up with your silence, Yunho got up and walked towards you, almost closing the gap between you two. You still didn’t look at him.

“And that night. Why did you come to me? Why didn’t you go to your other boyfriends? You were so different. Why did you act like it never happened the next day?”

Your breath hitched in your throat. Your expression softened remembering that night. It was so cold and rainy that night, and Yunho felt so warm. He made you feel so loved, so cared for, and for once you felt like you deserved someone like him. But the morning sun gave you some clarity, and you were reminded once again of what happens when you fully give your heart to someone. Yunho didn’t see it now, but he’ll understand it one day. Love is a wasted emotion. It gives and gives, until one day it takes everything back from you, and more.

“I don’t know.” You sighed.

That wasn’t good enough for him. He took another step forward, the tips of your noses now just centimeters away from each other. “I’ll tell you why,” He said, his voice softer than earlier. “It’s because you like me. It’s because I’m the only one who really understands you, the only one who sees more to you than just your body. That’s why you keep taking me back. It’s why you came to me that night. You knew you could be vulnerable with me, and that I wouldn’t turn you away, because-” He paused for a moment to lick his lips. “Because I like you too, y/n.”

Tears welled up in your eyes, and you tried to ignore the sting so that you wouldn’t blink and force them to run down your cheeks. Your chest felt like it was engulfed in flames, making your breathing unsteady. You were too caught up in your emotions to realize that Yunho closed the gap and pressed his lips onto yours, his hands firmly placed at your waist.

He always kissed you like he wasn’t going to see you for a while. Maybe it was a force of habit considering all the times Yunho had ended things between you two. Or maybe, as he said, he liked you, and he wanted you to know from his touch if his words didn’t suffice. It felt right kissing him, real. Not like all the other times with your boy toys, who only kissed you because that’s just what came naturally when you're both rolling around naked in bed. Yunho never only kissed you on the lips, but everywhere else as well, your eyes, cheeks, forehead, and just every feature of you that made his heart swell and anywhere he could put his lips on if you let him.

It was so easy. All you had to do was wrap your arms around his neck and kiss him back, leave this no strings attached bullshit behind, and let him lead the way. But you were reminded, reminded of him again, the one who took your heart and snapped it into two, the one who lead you to keep people at a distance and hurt them before they hurt you. That’s what you needed to do now, you told yourself. You had to hurt him. It made your heart ache even thinking of hurting Yunho, but you would be doing him a favor, even if he didn’t realize it now. You were damaged goods, not fit for sale. He’d be better off.

You pushed your hands on his chest to get him off you. Yunho, looking at you with such hope and hurt in his eyes, holding onto your hands that you used to keep him at a distance. He didn’t say anything, instead waiting for you to explain.

Your eyes were down at your feet, too afraid to look him in the eye and say your next words. “I’m sorry Yunho, but I just don’t feel the same.”

Yunho didn’t speak for a while. You wanted to look up at him, but you knew that seeing his reaction would crush you. You told yourself not to look. It was easier this way.

“You don’t mean that.” Yunho kept his voice steady, even though he could feel a slight lump forming in his throat. “I know you feel the same, y/n.”

You shook your head and a few droplets of tears splashed onto the carpet and onto your toes. “I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

His hands let go of yours and he immediately brushed his fingers under your chin, forcing you to tilt your head up. “You really don’t feel what I feel? Then why don’t you look at me and say it?”

He gazed down at you, waiting for your eyes to meet his, getting impatient with you when they didn’t. “Look at me and say you don’t want me.”

Overwhelmed, you moved your head around and pushed him off of you, too consumed in your rage to realize that for once that night, you were finally meeting his eyes.

“I don’t want you. I never cared for you. You were just a distraction. Whatever you think was going on, it’s not true. You don’t know me, you don’t know what’s going on in my head, so don’t act as you do! For the love of god Yunho, just get the fuck out!”

You panted after letting your frustrations out, the room now silent again. Nothing could have prepared you for the look on Yunho’s face right now. His sweet face was painted in constraint, his once cheery and sparkling brown eyes now glossy and downcast. You could feel your heart being ripped out of your chest, and for a moment you wanted to rush over to him and tell him you didn’t mean it, that you’ll do whatever he wants, be whatever he wants, as long as he stops making that face, but your legs stayed immobile and the words tangled up in your throat.

Yunho looked at you for a while, waiting to see if you would take those words back, but you never did. Swallowing the painful lump in his throat, he picked up his shirt from the floor and got dressed. You leaned back on your dresser, watching him as he put on his coat and slipped on his shoes. There was so much time to say something, anything, but neither of you uttered a word, and Yunho understood now that he said all that he needed to say, and that he couldn’t change your mind, even if he tried.

He was now at your entry door, and you followed behind him, staying back a couple of feet as you prepared to watch him leave your life once and for all. As he held onto the knob, he turned his head slightly, as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it, and went on with turning the knob, his tall frame disappearing behind the closing door.

You wanted to crawl into a ball and cry right there on the floor, but you stayed strong. You’re not crying over a guy again, you promised yourself. Even if it hurts…It’s for the best.

Finals were almost over, and the Library was seeing a reduction in visitors. The staff was partly relieved, enjoying the empty space and not having to be bothered to tell students to be quiet, confiscate their Cheeto bags (even though there’s a bold NO EATING sign at almost every table), and wake up tired students from their naps to tell them the library was closing. But there was one visitor who came almost daily and sat at the same exact spot in the same exact section. The Historical Fiction section.

The librarians didn’t know what his deal was. He’d come in with absolutely nothing, no backpack, no laptop, no textbook. They even doubted he brought his phone. Sometimes, he’d take a book off the historical fiction shelf and crack it open, although, unbeknownst to the library staff, he wasn’t actually reading anything. He tried to, but then his head would get fuzzy and he’d get lost in thought, his eyes darting around every time he heard the Library door open or footsteps approach his section, only for it to be another student or a staff member, and when he’d sigh and look back down at his book, he’d forget where he left off and start from the beginning again.

They didn’t know he was waiting on a girl. If they did, they would probably feel bad for him, and maybe even find his efforts to be a little pathetic. But to Yunho, it didn’t matter to him what they thought. Being the tortured romantic that he was, he still had hope that you two would be together again. He wasn’t going to crawl back to you like all the other times. Instead, he was going to wait. He believed the day would come where you’d grow sick from your passing relationships and realize your true feelings for him. And when you realize that, you’ll come running to the Library where you two first met, and you would find him there, sitting at your table in your special little corner of the Library. He’d greet you with a friendly smile, and pull out a chair for you, and you two would just pick up where you left off as if nothing else ever happened. Maybe then he’d take you out on a real date, maybe to a fancy restaurant which neither of you could pronounce the name of, and afterward, you’d crash at his place and you’d lay in his arms just as you did that night, and he’d whisper corny jokes into your hair, both of you laughing softly until you finally fell asleep. Maybe, after a while of sleeping over, you’d take a liking to his idea of moving into a small and cramped apartment on the outskirts of the city, where there’s no one around to bother you except each other. Maybe. Who knows.

They didn’t know he was waiting on a girl. If they did, they would probably feel bad for him, and maybe even find his efforts to be a little pathetic. But to Yunho, it didn’t matter what they thought. Being the tortured romantic that he was, he still had hope that you two would be together again. He wasn’t going to crawl back to you like all the other times. Instead, he was going to wait. He believed the day would come where you’d grow sick from your passing relationships and realize your true feelings for him. And when you realize that, you’ll come running to the place where you two first met, and you would find him there, sitting at your table in your special little corner of the Library. He’d greet you with a friendly smile, and pull out a chair for you, and you two would just pick up where you left off as if nothing else ever happened. Maybe then he’d take you out on a real date, maybe to a fancy restaurant which neither of you could pronounce the name of, and afterward, you’d crash at his place and you’d lay in his arms just as you did that night, and he’d whisper corny jokes into your hair, both of you laughing softly until you finally fell asleep. Maybe, after a while of sleeping over, you’d take a liking to his idea of moving into a small and cramped apartment on the outskirts of the city, where there’s no one around to bother you except each other. Maybe. Who knows.

Finals were almost over, and the Library was seeing a reduction in visitors. The staff was partly relieved, enjoying the empty space and not having to be bothered to tell students to be quiet, confiscate their Cheeto bags (even though there’s a bold NO EATING sign at almost every table), and wake up tired students from their naps to tell them they were closing. But there was one visitor who came almost daily and sat at the same exact spot in the same exact section like clockwork. The Historical Fiction section.

The librarians didn’t know what his deal was. He’d come in with absolutely nothing, no backpack, no laptop, and no textbook to indicate if he was taking a summer class at least. Sometimes, he’d take a book off the historical fiction shelf and crack it open, although, unbeknownst to the library staff, he wasn’t actually reading anything. He tried to, but then his head would get fuzzy and he’d get lost in thought, his eyes darting around every time he heard the Library door open or footsteps approach his section, only for it to be another student or a staff member, and when he’d sigh and look back down at his book, he’d forget where he left off and start from the beginning again.

They didn’t know he was waiting on a girl. If they did, they would probably feel bad for him, and maybe even find his efforts to be a little pathetic. But to Yunho, it didn’t matter what they thought. Being the tortured romantic that he was, he still had hope that you two would be together again. He wasn’t going to crawl back to you like all the other times. Instead, he was going to wait. He believed the day would come where you’d grow sick from your passing relationships and realize your true feelings for him. And when you realize that, you’ll come running to the Library where you two first met, and you would find him there, sitting at your table in your special little corner of the Library. He’d greet you with a friendly smile, and pull out a chair for you, and you two would pick up where you left off as if nothing else ever happened. Maybe then he’d take you out on a real date, maybe to a fancy restaurant which neither of you could pronounce the name of, and afterward, you’d crash at his place and lay in his arms just as you did that night, and he’d whisper corny jokes into your hair, both of you laughing softly until you finally fell asleep. Maybe, after a while of sleeping over, you’d take a liking to his idea of moving into a small and cramped apartment on the outskirts of the city, where there’s no one around to bother you except each other. Maybe. Who knows.

#yunho x reader #yunho angst #yunho smut #yunho fanfic #yunho scenarios #ateez smut #ateez fanfiction #ateez angst #ateez fluff #yunho fluff

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hunnylagoon · 9 months ago

Text

The Killing Moon

PT1: Camp Spirit

Ellie Williams x Reader

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

Premise: You are a camp counsellor who comes back year after year to be at peace in the one place you love the most. Though there is something different in the air, could it be love or maybe an ancient evil you’ve mistakenly awakened?

Warnings: slight mentions of violence / mentions of monsters and cryptids / raunchy humour / spooky?

The Killing Moon Playlist

PART TWO: The Colour Wars

Week One of Summer Camp

Camp Honey Hills is what you could call 'off the radar'. It sat way up past the hills and forests of Oregon, relatively untouched by the urban nightmare of the city. It stayed peaceful and undisturbed as leaves shed from trees and snow covered every inch of ground, but the camp was alive for one season of the year. Even in the quietness of preparing for the campers to arrive you could still hear counsellors laughing with one another and that's how you could tell the camp was waking up from its ten-month slumber.

"Anyone in the White Tail Deer Cabin, over here!" I held my hand up and waved to the kids piling out of the buses, carrying duffle bags bigger than themselves. The first day of camp was always the most stressful, the only thing to get you through was the idea that it would be over soon and we could get to the fun part of summer.

I already had a handful of girls crowding around me, all of them were either ten or eleven; depending on how you look at it, I either got blessed or cursed that I was assigned to a cabin of older girls. While the younger ones were wild and untamable, the older ones tended to be snarky and standoffish, these girls we’re leaning toward wild.

"Hi," I look up from my clipboard to see a scrawny girl, she has long black hair in two French braids, a summer camp staple. "My thing says that Ellie is my counsellor and I don't know who that is."

"All good," I bend down to her height, "It's that pretty girl over there," I point at Ellie, she's talking to one of the girls in her cabin, and her dark eyebrows are furrowed at what I can only assume to be an absurd question. "You're in the Grizzly Cabin, looks like I'll be seeing a lot of you."

The girl doesn't answer me with words, from the way she's looking at me you'd think I just told her that I sat on her hamster. She gives me one last side glance before she struts off and lugs her duffle bag behind her. "That weird girl said I was in your cabin," I hear ever so faintly in the distance, Ellie bites back a laugh.

I shake off the not-so-subtle cruelty of a pre-teen and go back to yelling for all of the girls in my cabin. So far I had seven of the eight campers I was supposed to have, I was in the lead and if I collected all of the girls in my cabin first, that would be more points towards the camp cup. You should know that I take the camp cup very seriously, it really isn't anything more than a trophy that Tommy and Joel give to a cabin but I haven't lost it in the past five years that I've worked here.

"Is your name Tamar?" I point at a stubby ginger girl, "You look like your name is Tamar," I was on the hunt for the eighth girl in my cabin so I could win the arrival day points.

"Uh, no," She said, looking as muddled as scrambled eggs "My name is Marcy."

"Then get out of here, Marcy," I look past her and nod at a girl with skin the colour of ebony wood "Are you Tamar?" This girl looks around to double-check that I'm talking to her before she shakes her head no.

"Who's my counsellor then?" Marcy who stands at a maximum of what looks to be a mighty 4'3 is peering into my soul with her icy blue eyes and I almost shudder, all I could think is that someone needed to get this four-foot-nothing girl some contact lenses.

"Your counsellor and cabin should be on the slip of paper that administration gave you."

"I lost my paper."

"Um," I glance around at the other counsellors, collecting their campers. My eyes settle on Abby, she's wearing a Camp Honey Hills T-shirt. She looks like she's got everything more put together and organized than any other counsellor so I decided to dump this kid on her. "It's that blonde girl with the big muscles, you better hurry because she'll crush you if you aren't there in time."

Marcy looks at Abby and then back to me with wide eyes at my words before she scurries away. As I watch her roll up to Abby's group, I quickly realize that there is no way she is in that cabin. Abby got the oldest group, consisting of fourteen and fifteen-year-olds and I was sure that Marcy, with all of her missing teeth, was no older than nine. I avert my eyes to avoid any wrath.

I spot Jesse who is trying to wrangle up his boys who are already rough housing and throwing each other in the dirt. Somehow he always ends up with the returning campers or the savage ones who would surely put my head on a stick before taking a shower.

"Is this the White Tail Deer Cabin?" A girl with pale skin and brown hair stares me down, she's tall for her age and lanky.

"Are you Tamar?"

"Yeah," She says it like she's annoyed.

"Perfect," I smile, turning to my group "Alright girls, that's everyone," I turn to look in Tommy's direction "I said that's everyone," I enunciate louder to be sure he can hear me, each of my campers gives one another a snide glance.

Tommy presses his lips together in a thin line and answers me with a thumbs-up. He already knew I would be the first to get my group together, I always was. He and Joel are the camp directors, they were talking about something before I called their attention.

Marcy points at me and Abby looks in my direction, her eyebrows knit together. Great, now I was being snitched on my nine-year-old. Abby calls out my name but I'm already ushering my girls towards the cabins "Who wants to see the cabin?"

In just moments, I'm long gone and walking the trail to the girl's cabins. Breathing one last moment of peace, the earthy bitterness in the air, droplets of last night's rain slipping off leaves. It made me want to savour every moment in the forest I had before summer ended and I had to go back to stuffy dorms and lectures along with people as boring as the city itself. I've never been able to fathom why anyone would dream of the city, of the drug users and creepy men roaming the streets. Concrete everything and headaches from blue light, every day that I was away at college I dreamed of coming back here, I counted down the days I could turn my phone off and disappear from the world for a while.

The boys may have had a shorter walk to their bunkhouse but the girls definitely got the better view. It also didn't hurt that the circle of cabins was right beside the pasture so we woke up to watch horse grazing, unless you don't like horses, then you can just ignore them I guess.

"Okay, ladies," I open the door to our cabin, a little carving of a doe above the doorframe. "This is our cabin, go ahead and claim your bunks, I don't care who goes where, just don't fight about it and no one set up on my bed."

"How do we know which one is yours?" One of the girls, Leslie, asks.

"Because it's the only one that's set up," I say, bluntly and I see the realization hit her like it was a math equation that finally clicked in her head "You guys can unpack and I'll go over the cabin constitution in a minute."

As my campers piled into the cabin, ravenously fighting over who got which bed, I saw Ellie walking up with her girls. Our cabins were right next to each other, we shared a little porch that Maria decorates with plants while Ellie and I neglect them until they're wilted and we try to save them so we don't get yelled at. Alternatively, dump the responsibility of nurturing plants on one of your campers, kids love to water stuff and feel important.

Ellie's campers begin to walk up the porch and into the cabin, one of her girls runs up to me "I wanna be in your cabin again," Lana pouts, I had her last year and I can't say that I have a least favourite camper but if I could, it would definitely be Lana. "Ellen is so mean."

"Well, maybe she would be nicer if you said her name right." I look up to see Ellie who mouths a 'Thank you' "Call her Ellie and maybe you two can be nice to each other."

Lana looks between the two of us before wordlessly walking into the cabin in trail of the other girls. "It's shaping up to be an interesting summer."

"We've survived worse," I cross my arms "Do you remember Tucker? That kid Jesse had who managed to tie a piece of dental floss around a wasp and carry it around with him all day like a balloon."

"He was a little weird but he was chill," Ellie jokes, like every other counsellor, she's wearing the Honey Hills T-Shirt and Demin shorts, her auburn hair pulled back into a half up half down style "How about that girl in Dina's cabin who wrote Reid letters pretending to be Priya?"

I laugh "I can't believe it went on so long."

"I can, Reid's a fucking idiot." She says "He pronounces chutney like chut-uh-ney."

"Oh my god, I hate that so much," I was obviously dragging on this conversation, hunting for reasons to talk to her "And the way he says Ibiza and Cuba and like everything."

"Do you remember when he joined the women supporting women club in high school?"

"Please don't remind me, that was awful," I chuckle "The worst part is that he ran that shit like the navy."

"Are you coming inside?" Chloe pokes her head out the door.

"I guess so," I answer "Uh, I'll see you at the campfire," I tell Ellie before stepping into my cabin and seeing pure chaos. The four bunkbeds that were pristinely set up just hours ago were now clad in each girl's personal bedding, ranging from Chloe's neat colour scheme of light blue and white to Kim's mismatched quilts, fuzzy pillows, and bright orange sleeping bag. They were still working on getting everything set up, specifically getting the fitted sheets onto the twin-sized waterproof mattress. Some of the girls were even beginning to tape up photos of their friends and family from back home. "Wow, looks great girls."

"Can we go to dinner yet?" Leslie asked, her twin braids hanging over her pink hoodie.

"No, it is three o'clock but we will go over the cabin constitution." A couple of the girls let out groans of disapproval "First you always listen to me, do as I say not as I do. Respect others and their belongings, please don't hurt anyone or yourself. Maintain personal hygiene and do not go anywhere without telling someone where. Also, we have shower schedules, showers are absolutely mandatory, and no one will talk their way out of it. On Friday's we have tuck shop, and everyone gets a twenty dollar allowance for that, no you do not actually touch the money it's part of the camp package, I take your orders and come back with candy. We have campfires every night, breakfast, lunch, and dinner are mandatory to attend even if you don't eat which I strongly encourage you do."

"Do we have to go if we're sick?" Tamar asked me.

"No."

"But you just said it was mandatory."

"It's mandatory if you aren't sick."

"But you said-

"Stop," I clasp my hands together "I know I'm older than you guys but I promise you can tell me and ask me anything." I smile, looking around "Any other questions?"

"Can we swear?" Valentina asks, she's kicking her feet off her bed on the top bunk. Her skin is the colour of copper and she has a little dusting of freckles over her button nose.

"I don't really care just don't do it around other adults and don't tell them that I told you that."

"What's the wifi?" Morgan was typing something on her phone which was by far more expensive than the model I owned. Dina had Morgan in previous years and I wasn't too thrilled to be in charge of the (as she claimed) disrespectful blonde monster sent from hell to ruin her life.

"We don't have wifi, we hardly have service," I tell her "And you aren't even supposed to have your phone here but you can't do anything on it anyways so it doesn't matter."

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Leah chimes in, she's sitting on the ground with Oliver and slowly but surely braiding her friend's hair.

"Not at the moment, no."

"So are you a lesbian?" Olive follows up for her friend.

"Um," I press my lips together, my mind failing me, "I think we're good on questions, who wants a camp tour?" No one says or does anything, they just kind of look around awkwardly "That's too bad, you're getting one."

Everyone gathered around the crackling fire pit on splintered wooden benches. The warm glow of the campfire flickered in the midst of a cool summer night, casting dancing shadows on the faces of worn-out campers who were ready for bed.

Tommy had given his speech to sike up the kids for the rest of the summer, he made sleeping in the woods sound like a lot of fun. "We're giving you tonight to settle in but I promise that starting tomorrow we are hitting the ground running, activities from morning until dark, this will be a summer to remember," He smiles brightly "I don't wanna babble too long so I'm gonna give the attention to Miles who is going to kick off our campfire by playing the guitar for us."

Miles sat directly across from me in the first row of benches so I could only see him through the orange flames of the fire. "This is an original song I wrote, so far it's untitled but I'm open to ideas," He made himself comfortable with the guitar, readjusting it to sit in his lap properly.

"What do you wanna bet it's about?" Ellie whispers into my ear from beside me. Since the day cooled into the night, she's thrown on a gray hoodie to keep herself warm. You would be an idiot to ignore how pretty she looks illuminated by nothing more than stray stars in the sky and a campfire.

"I'll put five bucks on sex,"

"Sex?" She raises her eyebrows "I don't think he's stupid enough to sing a song about sex in front of kids, I'm gonna say it's about being a tortured artist."

"It could easily be both," I look down and see Ellie's muddied converse "We break even if he does both." The fire roared before us like our own miniature hell.

Miles clears his throat and lets his curly blonde locks fall over his forehead. Beginning to strum, he made that weird face he makes every time he plays guitar, where he scrunched his eyebrows together "Baby, maybe, I just wanna do you, do you, do you wanna do me? do me underneath the moonlight," He's too lost in his song to see the horror on every counsellor's face "Baby, baby, maybe I will steal you, steal you, just so I can feel you, feel you, maybe that would heal you."

I cover my mouth with my hand to stop me from cackling. The older kids were on the verge of laughing themselves while the younger kids seemed utterly confused. "Holy shit," I mutter so quietly that my words got blown away with the wind.

Ellie didn't try to stop her laughter, just hide it, she buried her head into the crook of my neck so no one could see how red her face was. She was far better off than Dina who was laughing so hard that she was clutching her stomach and nearly falling over, Miles seemed to be oblivious to all of this. In Dina’s defence, it was difficult not to laugh at a song so wildly inappropriate and bad in general.

Miles had far from the best voice, he just sounded like every other white guy who sang Wonderwall at a girl, not to her but at her "Sticky thighs are you wild now or just a memory? I heard your broken cries and looked into your eyes under the moonlight, so do you wanna do me, do me, so I can heal you, heal you, from the inside-

He stops abruptly when Joel takes the guitar away from him "How about Sawyer tells us the camp legend instead."

Those who knew who Sawyer was looked towards him, Miles was trying helplessly to get his guitar back from Joel who was holding it just slightly out of reach. "It's been a while since I've told this so forgive me if-

"No one cares, just tell it," Ashlynn said. She was one of the counsellors who clearly didn't want to be there, which meant all of the campers thought her to be the coolest; in all fairness, she was cool. Ashlynn had bleach blonde shaggy hair, so light that it almost looked white. Her eyeliner was always a little smudged and she was only there to keep the kids alive, she tended to be the first to opt out of group activities and go to bed early.

"Okay well, it starts way back in the sixteen-hundreds, on these very grounds there was a small village," Sawyer put on his best storytelling voice which was just him lowering his voice an octave. "They lived in peace for decades, and throughout all of those decades there was a woman named Abigail who never seemed to age, while all of her friends and family developed wrinkles, their hair turned gray, and their bodies sagged, Abigail still looked nineteen even at her alleged age of sixty-seven."

The new campers seemed enraptured but returning kids and counsellors seemed bored out of their minds, I even spotted one boy who's been attending this camp longer than I have, mouthing the words of Sawyers tale.

"They accused her of witchcraft and she was shortly exiled far up the hill into what we now call the Honey House. They left her with nothing more than a hunting knife, a canteen of water, the clothes on her back, and a small portion of seeds. The villages burned down her home in town along with everything inside it. If you think that is the end-

"Think again!" Dina cut in, getting up from her spot and squeezing herself beside Sawyer. "With Abigail gone the villagers thought they would be safe but just days after Abigail was exiled, anomalies began to appear-

Sawyer chimed back in "At first they were harmless, pixies, gnomes, jackalopes, nyiads by the rivers and dryads in the trees. The creatures appearing slowly began to appear more and more dangerous and at last, the snatchers arrived-

"Like a muscular and tall emaciated human. The most terrifying creatures to ever be seen, they roamed just outside of the village and lured children in, they slurped the flesh right off of the children's bodies like prey and wore the clothes of their last victim. They have no lips just a bloody gash and when they don't eat, the gash begins to reseal, leaving nothing on their gray faces but large and pale sunken eyes the size of my fist!" Dina clenched her hand into a fist and held it up for everyone to see.

"Their fingers are long and rotted, long curls of claws on each of their ten spindly fingers. The males are devoid of all hair and the females hardly have hair at all, just small plugs of greasy and matted strands. Their teeth are sharper than fangs and are rotten black and yellow, a foul odour escaping each time they open their disgusting gashes of a mouth. Though the snatchers were the most feared among villagers, they were also being terrorized by other creatures, such as pine devils who slithered from the forests at night and attacked families. There was ghouls who would take on the form of the last corpse they devoured and of course, the wampus which was half-man and half-cat, would stalk villagers.”

"Like a furry?" One of the boys from Jesse's cabin peeped.

"No," Sawyer exasperated "Like a scary and intimidating cat-man."

"So does it look more like the Cat in the Hat or like Cats the Musical?"

"It doesn't look like either, it's a terrifying man that is covered in fur and looks like a cat but is also a man."

"So Cats the Musical?"

Dina ignored the comment and continued with the story "After a year the village population had been cut in half and everyone thought it to be the witch, they figured that Abigail had cursed them for exiling her so they lit up their torches at sunset and marched up the hill to the Honey House. Abigail pleaded with them and explained that she hadn't cursed them but during her residency in the village she had warded off each evil spirit and creature with her witchcraft but she no longer could protect the village after they burned her home down and all her supplies inside of it."

After muttering to Jesse to get his cabin in order, Sawyer picked up when Dina left off "The villagers begged for her forgiveness and apologised for their cruel acts in the hope that Abigail would rid them of the monsters, Abigail said she would but in return they grant her return to the village, so the townfolk agree-

"With all her supplies to ward off the creatures gone, Abigail resorts to a blood ritual. She tells the townfolk that they must complete the ritual before sundown. She creates five pentagrams made of sticks and twine. Abigail races around the village to place the pentagrams and avoid the creatures while she does so, the villagers ward the monsters away from her with their torches. At each pentagram, Abigail slices her palm open and squeezes her fist to drip blood onto each one, then she ignites the pentagram with a torch and utters an incantation. She slashes her thighs and calves to get enough blood and in a last-ditch effort, she cuts her wrists open to finalize the ritual," Only the younger kids had been paying any attention to the story, they seemed downright terrified, clinging to one another but trying to play it cool.

"I fail to see how this is any less inappropriate than Miles's song," Cat mutters with one girl huddled into her, her arm slung over the little girl and rubbing her back to soothe her.

"Once she had completed the ritual, Abigail said that no creatures should return to the village. She is bleeding out in the middle of the town square but the town doctor only watches her, and refuses to help so she begs the appointed mayor to bury her beside her mother, he answers by saying 'The graveyard is sacred and we will not let it be tainted by filthy witch blood' in her final breath she plunged for the mayor and drags her bloody palms down his face, cursing him. Once she is no longer breathing her body begins to rapidly age into the appearance of the sixty-eight-year-old woman she was supposed to be. The townsfolk cut Abigail's body into five parts, two legs, two arms, and the torso with the head still attached and buried her on the border of the village."

Everyone sat in silence "Is that the end?" someone asked, though they were in the back row of benches and I couldn't see who it was.

"Yup," I answer "Abigail gets renamed as 'the girl that time forgot' in folklore and she never gets revenge on the townsfolk for betraying her after she laid down her life for them." I had never liked the legend. Young boys thought it was cool and gory and fifteen-year-old girls thought it was poetic and tragic but I hated it to death. Other camps have fun light-hearted legends about playful forest spirits or secret villages of fairies deep in the woods but we got an edgy story about a woman who just wanted to be loved.

"I wish she let the snatchers eat them all," Ellie said the same thing that she says every year, she wasn't wrong, that's how I wished it ended too.

"Just wait until one eats you," I joke.

"Nah, I'd kick it's ass."

"I'm sure you would but right now you owe be five bucks.”

"No, we didn't pick this legend, it's true," I heard Jesse's voice cutting through the conversations of the crowd.

"Bullshit," Mordecai said, he was one of those kids who thought it was cool and edgy to be an asshole and act older than he was. He despised summer camp but every summer his parents forced him back much to our dismay.

"It's not," Bowie jumped in "The snatchers come back to visit us sometimes."

"Yeah? I thought Abigail banished them with blood magic."

"The spell is growing weaker with time, it's slowly wearing out and there hasn't been a witch to revive it," Jesse was a good storyteller, he should've been the one to deliver the camp legend. He found a way to enrapture people with his words.

That's when I decided to call it a night for my girls, the longer you stayed at the campfire, the more outlandish stories the guys would tell and I learned my lesson last year that it is very easy to give ten-year-olds nightmares. "Whitetail deer, we're heading out," I stand up.

A few of the girls had groans and complaints while others seemed happy to leave. Ellie looked up at me from where I stood and did the same "Grizzlies, we're leaving too,"

"You're just saying that because you wanna hit it, Williams," Dean said between obviously fake coughs into his fist, causing Ashlynn to bite back a smile and Miles to playfully punch him on the arm.

"Dean," Tommy gave him a stern look and said nothing else, Dean took the hint and ceased his laughter.

"Headcount," I say looking at the girls in front of me "Chloe, Leslie, Kim, Leah, Tamar, Morgan, Valentina, and Olive." Each of them stands in a close-huddled bundle "Alright, don't go off trail."

The walk back from the campfire was gorgeous during the day and borderline mortifying at night. Since the foliage was so thick you could hardly see the sky if you looked up and at night the little piece of clearing that was the trail was pitch black, we were guided by nothing more than mine and Ellie's flashlights.

The two of us had been trailing behind the girls in silence to keep an eye on everyone until Ellie felt the urge to speak up "Uh, by the way, that thing that Dean said about-

"I don't care."

"You don't?"

"Yeah he's a dick and his cabin looks like a wooden prison cell."

"It does," She furrows her eyebrows in thought "It’s like he's conditioning his campers for war."

I didn't notice when I did this, it must've been a subconscious thing but I mindlessly reached for Ellie's hand to hold. I used my free hand to keep the flashlight focused on the trail and campers ahead of us. "Sawyer has to walk back to the bunkhouses across the camp with those little monsters."

"Payback for all of the pranks he's pulled with Bowie," Ellie mutters. Sawyer took pride in initiating the prank wars every single summer the same way I strove to win the camp cup. His pranks weren't also lighthearted and fun, he and Bowie organized this prank where Sawyer put a bag over Tyson's head and dragged him to the administration office in the middle of the night and then pretended to shoot Bowie dead in front of him. Tyson quit the next morning and Sawyer got a hefty write-up.

"So are you still talking to Cat?" I ask.

"Nah, that was never gonna work out."

"Because she's too hot for you?” I joke.

"What? No," She whipped her head to look at me "Why? You wanna get with her or something, you have my blessing."

"I'm good, I'm a little preoccupied at the moment."

"Who with?" Her voice dripped with accusation. Ellie's hand clenching just the slightest bit tighter on mine.

"Work? You should know that I don't date at camp, to think that I thought you knew me," I tease her.

"What about that summer with Chandler?"

"That doesn't count," My smile drops and I fight the urge to shiver at the memories. Before I was a counsellor at Honey Hills, I was a camper and I happened to have my first kiss at age thirteen with a boy named Chandler, our braces got stuck together.

"Everyone saw, so it counts," I can't quite make out Ellie's face in the dark but I can hear the smile in her voice "Remember how Joel had to pull out the pliers."

"You need to stop before I sacrifice you to the Honey Hills Snatchers," I look ahead on the trail and I could've sworn my heart stopped "Stop!" I yell and all of the girls look back at me, I drop Ellie's hand "Where is Olive?"

All of the campers look at each other for answers, and then Leah opens her mouth "She saw a rock that was shaped like a heart and when off trail to get it."

"Well I'm not seeing a heart-shaped rock or Olive but it's super safe in these woods so no need to panic."

"No one's panicking," One of the girls in Ellie's cabin says, she was the same one who called me weird during arrival.

I run one hand down my face in exasperation, using the other to keep the flashlight trained on the girls "Everyone, stay here with Ellie, I'm going to be right back," I look at Leah "How far back did she go off trail?"

She shrugs "How am I supposed to know? I don't have a tape measure."

"Sweet," I answer before marching straight into the pitch-black woods. It was almost scarier to be in the dark with a flashlight instead of no light source, it felt like I had been in a video game or horror movie and I was about to get my throat slashed by a maniac in a mask.

Every rustle of leaves or snap of twigs made me feel uneasy. I knew the woods were safe like I had told the girls but that didn't stop irrational fear from bringing up stories of cryptids and cuts from murder podcasts. If you ever played that shitty Slenderman game, you'd know exactly what I'm looking at; not Slenderman himself, just an eery forest.

I called out for Olive, my imagination running wild with thoughts of unseen dangers lurking in the shadows. The forest seemed to come alive around me, its inhabitants whispering secrets that only the night could hear.

"Olive?" My voice echoes into the night, I did what I could to ignore whatever fear I was feeling. I had walked through these woods a million times, I knew every pathway better than I knew the city. This forest was like home to me, it didn't feel right to be so on edge.

I couldn't help but jump when something loud snapped beneath my sneaker, instinctively I brought my flashlight down to look at it, moving my foot out of the way. It had been a pentagram made out of sticks, wow really funny, it might've scared me if Ashlynn and Bowie hadn't made dozens of them and laid them around camp last summer to scare the shit out of kids. It had broken in half beneath my weight.

There was a possibility that I was going crazy in the five minutes I was alone in the woods because I thought I heard a rustle but the beam of my flashlight revealed nothing but the dense thicket of trees and the inky blackness beyond.

Something charged behind me, wrapping its skinny arms around my torse and I couldn't help but flinch. "Olive," I turned my head and brought the flashlight to shine down on her "Don't run off in the dark ever again, you scared the shit out of me."

"I'm really sorry, I won't do it again," She said. I tried to pry her off me but she was hanging on like a Koala, eventually, I got her to settle for just holding my hand. "It was stupid."

"Don't beat yourself up too much, you're ginger and that's punishment enough," I was hastily yanking her along so we could get back on the trail and shortly back into the comfort of the cabin "Did you get your rock at least?"

"Yeah," She held her palm out, the rock was an oval with the littlest indent in the middle, but I let her act like it was shaped like a heart.

"How'd you get so far out?"

"I grabbed the rock and then I saw a cat and I followed it."

Cat? "You must've seen Buckley, he's friendly," I tell her. Buckley was the resident dog at camp, he was probably older than me and wandered around before settling at Tommy and Maria's cabin for the night.

A moment after I dragged the little girl along we broke past the tree line and into the clearing of the trail. I looked around and spotted Ellie and the girls a good 40 yards or so behind. Clutching Olive's tiny hand in mine I walked towards them, flicking my flashlight on and off to catch their attention.

"Finally wrangled her," I let out an almost nervous laugh.

"You said not to go off trail," Tamar wrinkled her nose.

"Yes, Tamar, I know."

I don't know how late into the night it was when I was awoken by every girl in my cabin squabbling with one another. I got up and turned on the flashlight that I kept on my dingy bedside table "What's going on girls?"

"The snatcher is coming to get us!" Leslie cried, and I mean cried. Her face was red and puffy, her eyes were so glassy that they reflected any and all light, hot tears streaming down her round face.

That's when my annoyance turned to concern. Oh god, I was going to kick Sawyer and Dina's asses tomorrow morning and Joel for even suggesting the camp legend even though it made my campers too afraid to sleep year after year. "No, snatchers aren't real, they were made up in the sixteen hundreds to keep kids away from the forest."

"We heard it!" Morgan chimed in.

"Guys it's just the placebo effect, you've convinced yourself that it's real-

I froze when I heard a long scratch down the door and a wet guttural growl. It was low and deep, shaking me to my very core. Whoever was on the other side began to scratch harshly on the door, jiggling the locked door handle. When the handle didn't budge it began to slam itself on the door, each thump louder than the last. It was still groaning and grumbling in a harsh, awful voice.

The girls screamed, Olive and Leah, were hugging each other tightly, clenching their eyes shut. Valentina had a bottom bunk and slipped beneath the bed, covering her eyes with her hands. Leslie (like I had mentioned) was a blubbering mess, crying and hyperventilating too hard to get any words out. It looked like Morgan was trying to call someone on her phone and Tamar had her knees tucked to her chest, hugging herself. Both Kim and Chloe threw their blankets over top of them, pretending to disappear.

The voice sounded again except this time I realized it wasn't just a growl, it was a word "Girrrrllllls." Then it began to scratch the door all over again. When I tell you this voice was the most unsettling thing I've ever heard, I mean it. It was wet and phlegmy whilst being course and grumbly. From the very beginning, I had known it was a prank.

I marched towards the door flicking on the light in the cabin on and dropping my flashlight, before hammering my fists on the door "Fuck off!" I kicked the door, the sound stopped for just a moment before it slammed itself against the door.

Each thud against the sturdy wooden door reverberated through the night like a thunderclap. Whoever was sent to scare us was sure doing a good job. Their breathing was low and heavy almost as loud as the banging of the door itself. "Don't open the door," Leslie heaved out between sobs.

The girls huddled together in terror, their breaths hitching in fear as they strained to discern the source of the horrifying sounds "Girrllllllssss," It grumbled again "GIRRRLLSSSSCOMMOUT," I could see the door moving with the force of whoever was deeply committed to this role. The growling slowly morphed into a screech or maybe it was something more like a hiss.

I was almost at my breaking point, the first day of camp and I already had to deal with these bullshit pranks. I decided to slam my body against the door, matching whoever was on the other side "Go back to your cabin, you piece of shit!" I kept banging my fist and slamming my palms against the door until I heard them scuttle away.

Reaching for a baseball out of Valentina's open duffle bag, I swung the door open and saw the slender figure of what I assumed to be a teenage boy running to the pasture "Tell Sawyer to eat shit!" I yelled before throwing the ball at the figure, it hit them but it didn't do much, they just stumbled for a split second before disappearing into darkness.

"What the fuck is that noise?" Dina shouted from her cabin, I could tell I had woken her up from a nice sleep from the way her puffy eyes were squinting in my direction. A few girls poked their heads outside from the doorframe behind Dina.

"What happened?" Now Priya was walking towards my porch. Her long black hair was braided perfectly and she had her silk sleepmask pulled onto her forehead. She still looked put together in a hoodie and bunny pyjama pants.

"Can you guys shut the fuck up?" Ellie opened her door and looked me up and down.

"Be quiet!" Abby shouted from an open window in her cabin. By this point, I was sure everyone in the girl's bunk houses was wide awake and I would be getting a stern talking to by either, Tommy, Joel, or Maria, honestly, I didn't know which was worse.

Confusion quickly grew on Ellie's face, she lowered her voice "What's going on?"

All eyes were on me for answers but I didn't have any. Despite convincing myself it was a prank, that didn't stop my hands from shaking. "It was one of the boys playing a prank, don't worry about it, he's long gone by now."

"Fucking Sawyer," Dina murmured walking back into her cabin and slamming the door behind her.

"Are you girls okay in there?" Priya asked, looking at the mortified girls in my cabin, concern etched across her bronze face. "It was a dumb joke, you're all okay now."

Priya had invited herself into my cabin to offer her solace to the probably traumatized little girls, while she was doing so, I pressed myself flat against the front of the cabin, between mine and Ellie's doors, trying to process how I was going to find a way to make these girls unafraid.

"They do that prank every year and it's almost crazy how it's literally never been funny," I tell Ellie while I stare straight ahead at the pasture they faded away into.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Ellie stands next to me, leaning against the wall "We'll get them back tenfold."

"Those girls are all gonna wanna call their parents and I'm so fucked," I drag my hands down my face. I didn't want to see the look on Joel's face when I tell him about this. There's gonna be sixteen parents who will spam call the camp and verbally harass me over the phone, this wasn't my first rodeo. Sure the prank was shitty but I guarantee no one is leaving this summer with newfound trauma to tell their therapist in a decade.

"Relax, he's just gonna chew out the boys for pulling this shit again."

I looked at her for a moment, the silence hung between us like birds on a wire before I lunged in for a hug. She was a little taken aback but didn't seem to mind "I just need a hug, don't make it weird."

"Okay, wasn't planning on it," She teased. I took a deep breath in and caught the scent of firewood, petrichor, and axe body spray, an Ellie classic.

“I'm really glad I have you as a friend," I mutter into her shoulder, so quietly that I wasn't even sure she heard me. I let us stay like that for longer than I probably should've before breaking away "Okay, I gotta be a grown-up and deal with this instead of letting Priya do recon."

She nodded pressing her lips together in the same awkward way the socially inept guys from high school did "See you for breakfast?"

"For sure," I smile and walk back into my cabin to see Priya sitting next to Chloe with one soothing hand rubbing her back. "Thanks, Priya, I'll take it from here, you outta get back to your girls."

Priya had this maternal way about her, I wasn't sure what it was but she sure had the ability to nurture. She started at camp last year and I was happy to see her return. She gave her farewells to all of the girls who had only met her minutes ago and were already attached.

"Can I be in her cabin?" Kim asked, she had finally calmed down.

"No, you're in my cabin where we have fun like this every night!" I forced a smile on my face trying to get the girls back into a good mood.

"This isn't fun at all," Tamar, said, bluntly may I add.

"Yeah, this sucks," Morgan added on.

"Guys, listen," I began "I'm super sorry this happened, I need all of you to know that it's just a really bad prank, it happens every year to different cabins. Boy being boys- sorry I shouldn't say that because you guys are young and I know their gender shouldn't excuse their bad behaviour but what I'm trying to say is guys are assholes."

"Yeah, they're assholes!" Olive repeated.

"Maybe don't shout that," I pointed at her "But they are and if you want I will storm down to their cabins right now and yell at them until they cry."

The cabin began to erupt in shouts of no, little girls with wide eyes, frantically shaking their heads. "Please don't leave us alone," Leah pleaded.

"Okay, I won't, I'll yell at them in the morning. Do you guys want me to leave the lights on?" Everyone answered with a 'yes' to my question.

"Where are you going?" Valentina asked me, peeking out from beneath her thick layers of blankets.

"To my bed?”

"That's too far away from us."

I let out a deep breath "Alright, I'll just bring my sleeping bag onto the floor and I will sleep in the middle, okay?" Nothing better than sleeping on the hardwood floor in the middle of four bunkbeds and eight ten-year-old girls.

Surrounded by the shallow breathing of girls far too startled to sleep, I decided that tomorrow I would wake up dressed in adventure, straddling a star. Every day that follows I will guide these girls to the moon and back.

A/N: Hi y’all, I’ve been gone a hot minute because of medical issues and whenever I have time to write, I’m too tired to. Anyways, we’re back and better. I know I should probably finish my other series but I’ve had this one drafted for a while and since I’m super sick and basically confined to my house for the next week I’m hoping to get this series done. Thanks for reading!

@readbydayana

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hellinistical · 2 months ago

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fem! reader x rafayel. royal! au. sea horror! au. heavy angst. minor and major character death. slow burn. romance. fluff. explicit smut. trauma. religious themes. gore; hinted torture, cannibalism, decapitation, self-cannibalism. violence. wc: 10542 | status: on-going

playlist

taglist

"He watched her from the ocean’s veil,

A creature wrought from myth and sea,

His love, a secret, soft and frail,

Yet in her gaze, he longed to be.

She knew him not, as days went by,

That eyes so wild could turn so tender,

She danced beneath the starlit sky,

While he, unseen, became her mender.

He shaped his voice to earthly sound,

His form to walk where mortals tread,

Yet in his soul, the sea was bound,

Its ancient call filled him with dread.

Alone she stands, with heart undone,

A lonely maid upon the sand,

shells do lay broken in hand,

The sea sings low of what’s begun,

A war of hearts, flesh, and blood."

I: LEGENDS OF OLD

II: GOLD-STRUCK

III: COLLECTION

IV: RICH RED SOIL

V: LOOSE BARREL

VI: THAR SHE BLOWS

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brokenwinebox · 3 months ago

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What’s Your Character’s Theme Song?

A song breakdown for the characters of Jeremy Allen White, Lionel Boyce, Matty Matheson, and Ricky Staffieri. It will discuss the connections other people and I made for the characters Carmy, Marcus, Neil Fak, and Ted Fak.

↓ long text below

Jeremy Allen White

Jeremy Allen White, who ironically, is about to play Bruce Springsteen in the upcoming Bruce Springsteen film, said that Carmy’s theme song would be “The Ties That Bind.”

The expression 'the tie that binds' is used to describe a common idea or belief that links people together. It can also be used plurally as 'the ties that bind'. For example, you may say: ''We are family, held together by the ties that bind. Nothing will tear us apart. (x)

This is when it gets interesting. The Ties That Bind is an opening song for his fifth album called The River.

The songs on The River reveal a tension between the need for community and the need to be alone. "The Ties That Bind", along with "Two Hearts" and "Out in the Street", is one of the key songs on the album about the need for community. (x)

This feels so incredibly reminiscent on the struggles of Carmy. His driving force to fully isolate himself to those he cares about while probably also feeling like he needs the people he’s pushed away.

This also reminded me of @espumado’s post The Night Of The Hunter & The River which was then talked about by @currymanganese’s post on the potential parallels between two romantic relationships in the The Night Of The Hunter and The Bear.

There’s so many weird horror elements in the show. Which is interesting because in this picture we see a revised 2nd edition of The Exorcist! So how farfetched is it to see those elements on the show. Especially this season!

I mentioned before in my post, “Fourth Wall (being broken)” that the Save It For Later song could be about Carmy being lost and it became a reflection to the season. I can’t help but wonder if Save It For Later could have multiple meanings for each character.

@happylikeasadsong broke down some lyrics of the song and explains what it could do with Sydney’s decision.

Lionel Boyce

Lionel Boyce said Sèrgio Mendes, “Ides Of March.” for his character Marcus’ before realizing that’s probably not the name of the song. It was actually “Waters of March”

Sèrgio Mendes is most known for his song, Mas Que Nada, which translates to whatever and anyway. In this article I read, they call him a bossa nova king and Mendes explains how life is about magical encounters.

This is probably a funny coincidence but I actually know a song named Soul Bossa Nova by Quincy Jones. It was playing on a playlist that’s about songs you’d hear during magic shows. (x) (x) (x)

Although, Ides of March wasn’t the name of the song and I write metas for The Bear (AKA I’m insane), I did research on both to see what I can find!

Ides of March, day in the ancient Roman calendar that falls on March 15 and is associated with misfortune and doom. It became renowned as the date on which Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 bce and was further immortalized in the tragedy Julius Caesar by English dramatist William Shakespeare.

On the topic of William Shakespeare, @currymanganese has a post on The Bear being a super deconstructed Shakespearean pastoral comedy.

It was then corrected to Waters of March. I tried to find the meaning for that particular song by Sérgio Mendes but it all lead to “Water Of March” by Antônio Carlos Jobim.

The inspiration for "Águas de março" came from Rio de Janeiro's rainiest month. March is typically marked by sudden storms with heavy rains and strong winds that cause flooding in many places around the city. The lyrics and the music have a constant downward progression much like the water torrent from those rains flowing in the gutters, which typically would carry sticks, stones, bits of glass, and almost everything and anything. Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote the song during a visit to his family rancho, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state amid a steady rainstorm which had turned the roads and landscape to mud.

sticks and stones may break my bones, (but words can never hurt me) - said in order to show that people cannot be hurt by unpleasant things that are said to them (x)

When it comes to mud, I was immediately reminded of @whenmemorydies’s post on Claire being clear [as] mud. (Which I’ll go a bit more into depth in another post). I’m also fairly certain @ago0112 talked about it as well!

I talked about the topic of glass in my previous meta, The Glass Table & The Glass Fish Tank, where I found parallels to Claire and Donna. Those comparisons got a little confirmed in the script of (2.02).

I did some research on the scripts about Claire on (2.02) as well.

In the post, there was a bit of a deep dive on the potential meaning of glass/shattered glass and here’s one of them I found a connection to.

Connection between the fragility of glass and the human condition: Glass can be tough, but it becomes fragile when it faces too much pressure. Similarly, people can be strong, but life's challenges can make us feel a bit delicate. The broken glass helps us see that we all have both strength and vulnerability inside us, teaching us about the balance between being tough and sensitive in our own lives.

When it talked about how broken glass helps us see that we all have both strength and vulnerability inside us, teaching us about the balance between being tough and sensitive in our own lives, I was reminded of this particular thebearfx’s post:

After that, I recalled dialogue that I wrote about in my post on Richie being a fox and a caterpillar. In this scene, Natalie and Richie talk about the soul of the dining room in (3x07).

Richie: [scoffs] “Dining room sounds like shit.” Natalie: “Like, the acoustics?” Richie: “No. It’s like, the soul, you know? It’s like--Service sounds like total chaos.” Natalie: “Every day can’t be perfect.” Richie: “Every day is like the Super Bowl. I could use a lightning bolt.” Natalie: “Can’t control the weather.”

In Waters of March, there’s a reference to a fox in a brush.

The oak when it blooms A fox in the brush A knot in the wood The song of a thrush (x)

What’s so fascinating about this particular rabbit hole is about what it all potentially means for Marcus as a character.

The song is about spring in Brazil as an allegory for life: how it continues on despite our best efforts to control it. It reminds us how with the ugly, comes the beautiful. (x)

The ugliness could be about death while the beauty of it is what the love he has for his mother could inspire for Marcus.

The plan of the house, the body in bed, the car that got stuck, it’s the mud, it’s the mud. a float, a drift, a flight, a wing, a hawk, a quail, the promise of spring.

He had become frustrated with the difficulties the rain was causing for the construction of a new boundary wall along his property line. The skies rained from above while chaos reigned below, as plainly stated in the lyrics: “It’s the mud, it’s the mud…” With plenty of time to contemplate the situation, Jobim created a modern parable for daily life. (x)

I’ll certainly talk about all of this in a separate post (whenever that will be) but there’s so many small details that evolve into a beautiful narrative.

The Coca-Cola Jingle

youtube

Coca-Cola tapped Antonio Carlos Jobim for the rights to his ‘Águas de Março’, giving new lyrics to ‘The Waters of March’ to make the jingle a worldwide sensation. Jobim even became a celebrity spokesman for Coke in a relationship that lasted for several years. (x)

Coca Cola is one of the most popular soft drinks in the world. In doing my research, I found an article talking about how design elements of the soft drink’s logo clearly portray the idea of energy, fun, and good times.

The recent 2021 hug version logo of the brand was termed as “magical” and “genius” by designers. It ended up being introduced with a new tagline as “real magic.” Apparently, it’s considered magical because you can imagine the bottle even when it is not there.

There’s even a well-known story about the white and red logo being inspired by the brand’s first advertisement that featured Santa Claus wearing his red and white suit with a bottle in his hands. (x)

@vacationship made an analysis on the green and red sauce and the potential importance of its symbolism.

Sydney and Claire have an interesting parallel with coke. I actually found that little connection earlier but didn’t know it had any relevance to this until now.

(Sydney pouring/drinking coke after the scene of the group being at Marcus’ mother’s funeral isn’t a coincidence.)

Matty Matheson

Matty Matheson chose Hakuna Matata for his character Neil Fak. The Bear’s instagram account also talked about how he is a master mocktail maker.

Hakuna matata roughly translates to “there are no troubles” in Swahili. The phrase was popularized in English by the 1994 Disney movie The Lion King, where it's translated as “no worries.” It has a connotation of not worrying about things outside a person's control. The movie popularized the phrase internationally, making it a cultural staple and synonymous with Disney's family-friendly brand.

'Hakuna matata' is Swahili for 'no worries'. As such, it is the perfect catchphrase for Timon and Pumbaa, as it perfectly reflects their relaxed, devil-may-care attitude to life. (x)

@outmakingmoonshine has discussed the possibility that the Faks are the inner voice/imaginary friends for the protagonist (Carmy).

Are they suggesting Pumbaa, Timon, and Simba are Neil Fak, Ted Fak, and Carmy?

The Lion King was released on June 15, 1994, receiving critical acclaim for its music, story, themes, and animation. With an initial worldwide gross of $763 million, it finished its theatrical run as the highest-grossing film of 1994 and the second-highest-grossing film of all time, behind Jurassic Park (1993).

Timon: Hey, where you going? Simba: Nowhere. Timon: Gee. He looks blue. Pumbaa: I'd say brownish-gold. Timon: No, no, no, no. I mean he's depressed. Pumbaa: Oh. Pumbaa: Kid, what's eatin' ya? Simba: Who cares? I can't go back. Timon: Ahh. You're an outcast! That's great; so are we! Pumbaa: What cha do, kid? Simba: Something terrible. But I don't wanna talk about it. Timon: Good. We don't wanna hear about it. Pumbaa: Come on Timon. Anything we can do? Simba: Not unless you can change the past.

Simba: Hakuna matata? Pumbaa: Yeah. It’s our motto! Simba: What’s a motto? Timon: Nothin’ what’s a motto with you?! (laughs) Pumbaa: Hakuna matata: These two words will solve all your problems. (x) (x) (x)

Carmy could have a side of him that feels outcasted by the rest of the group (there was also a group chat he had no idea about) so he conjured up another set of outcasts that promote a motto and philosophy to solve all of his problems.

Neil Fak is the naive/childlike aspects of himself that I suspect Carmy got from his childhood with his mother. I can’t help but wonder if the Faks representing Carmy’s inner voice was only applied to the dumpster scene when I found dialogue about how nice it is in the office before Carmy called Sydney nice after checking her out. Does it only apply when they’re all alone together?

As with many characters in The Lion King, Pumbaa's name derives from the East African language Swahili. In Swahili, pumbaa (v.) means "to be foolish, silly, weakminded, careless, negligent."

Richie and Carmy calls Neil Fak a bitch in (3x02)

Neil Fak: “Nat, the vibe’s weird.”

Carmy: “You’re such a fucking bitch.”

Richie: “You’re such a bitch.”

Natalie: “I know, sweetheart. Don’t be scared.”

Most of these could probably best describe Neil Fak (and even Carmy perhaps) but I wonder about the negligence of his character. Is this about the lack of real tools of his? Another detail that I’m not sure connects here is that Neil Fak mentioned being afraid of boxes to Ted Fak.

Warthogs regularly come into contact with villages and people. When this happens, they usually cause havoc, scampering through a garden or village and making a mess of everything. There is one Pumbaa adjective that is correct. They can be lazy. Rather than digging their own burrows, they will often just use the burrowed home of other animals. (x)

I remember this dialogue vividly, but there was a scene where the Faks asked Donna if they could stay over her house during Christmas.

Neil Fak: “Do you think that we can sleepover—” Donna: “There’s no sleepovers at Christmas. What the fuck?” Neil Fak: “No, we can sleepover.” Donna: “No, you can’t sleepover on Christmas. No. Mm-mmm.” Neil Fak: “No? No. Big Neil got us skateboards.” Donna: “You know what? Shut up. Michael!” Neil Fak: “Michael hid ‘em.” Donna: “Hey, Michael. Get in here. Mike? The Faks are asking me stupid things—”

(The fact that there’s a Hakuna Matata reference after Hulu is bought by Disney is also not lost on me.)

Timon is a historical Greek name, taken to mean "he who respects." Timon's name may derive from Shakespeare's tragedy Timon of Athens, another Shakespeare reference in a film which derives its plot from Hamlet. The tragedy is based in the history of the real Timon of Athens, a famous misanthrope during the era of the Peloponnesian War, who refused life in Athens to live isolated. Another explanation is that he is named after the Greek philosopher Timon, a disciple of Pyrrho, the founder of the school of skepticism. (x) (x) (x)

I happened to stumble upon another Shakespeare reference. If Timon is meant to be Ted Fak then this is going to be a bit ironic because of what Ted Fak’s theme song is!

Ricky Staffieri

Ricky Staffieri chose Back Then by Mike Jones for the theme song of his character, Ted Fak. Ironically, this song is vulgar in nature with calling woman “hoes” and all.

In the same meta I mentioned earlier, @outmakingmoonshine talked about Ted being sex driven and maybe representative of Carmy’s primal mind.

We also have @thoughtfulchaos773 having a post on the inappropriate double entendre jokes on the show.

I never really listened to the lyrics until about two months ago, but now that I have, they’re pretty amazing. On the surface, it’s a vulgar song about “hoes,” but on a deeper, more philosophical level, it’s an anthem about self-confidence. The overall message in Jones’ song is that the ladies in his life were never really gave him the time of day until he started to make it big. When you really listen to the message of the words – and not necessarily the words themselves – a lot of it is just him spewing the harsh truth. I think it speaks to all of the ugly ducklings out there, or the really shy people who never put themselves out there until they found themselves later on in life. That cute girl in middle school or high school who is now a bombshell? Yeah, she remembers how you treated her. (x)

Claire always told Carmy about their past history when they were young but Carmy seemed to have no recollection of it.

After reading this analysis on its philosophical meaning, I couldn’t help but wonder what it all meant pertaining to Ted Fak. Do we really know anything about Ted Fak’s history in high school besides Carmy? I just got a sudden wave of theories that this is referring to Carmy.

For Ted Fak, maybe this is about being treated poorly in high school. Now, he ended up working for a popular food establishment with very sudden attention from woman which had never happened before.

For Carmy, Ted Fak could be the more anxiety/primitive ridden version of him.

The reason I talk about the anxiety aspect is because some people have the personal experience of saying things they don’t mean when they have anxiety. Ted Fak could be representing the brutal ‘truths’ that Carmy could or don’t really mean.

Anxiety activates people’s fight or flight instinct When someone has an anxiety disorder, they'll often feel intense fear towards possible threats and dangers. For someone with a social anxiety disorder, this could be crowds or social events, whereas for someone with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), their fear could be focused on a broad range of potential scenarios, such as losing their job, damaging their friendships or getting into accidents. These thoughts cause people to experience symptoms of anxiety such as an increased heartbeat, shortness of breath and nausea. This is because thinking about the possible dangers activates their fight or flight instinct. Irritability is a symptom of anxiety When a person is experiencing anxiety, they'll often be more irritable than usual. This is a common symptom of many types of anxiety disorder. (x)

The increased heartbeat caught my attention because Claire noticed his heart was beating fast in a scene before it cuts to Carmy looking at a clock in (3x04).

The other part of the song I absolutely love is: “I ain’t got no time to call her. I’ma stall her like she stalled me, now she trying to call me; (girl) I’ma dog your whole ass like you dogged me.”

I can’t lie. I laughed so hard when I saw this lyric. Like damn, I wonder who exactly this could refer to here? It could be about Kelly but I’ll have to do more digging to figure that out.

I can’t speak for everyone in the world, but I know that I have an elephant-like memory when it comes to people how people treat me – whether it was in middle school, high school, college, or recently. I’m a firm believer in that unless someone gives you a reason to treat them like dirt, you shouldn’t. I know that I don’t pay any mind to people – not just girls – who treated me like crap and are now trying to make like everything is OK. Respect is earned, not given with me; I believe people can change (to a degree), but it will take time for someone to earn my trust and respect, if violated.

This is when we get the depiction of respect and how it’s earned, not given. Does Carmy respect Claire and vise versa?

I didn’t really get the vibe that Claire was a mean person or a bully with the way she spoke about her and Carmy’s history. But what if she scrubbed the ugly parts of it?

It’s making me ponder whether Carmy felt bitter that Claire suddenly had this interest in him because he’s well known as a chef now. It’s even more bizarre because they were both in New York. Mikey told her about Carmy’s chef adventures by the time of Christmas. Why didn’t Claire reach out to him then? Did it really take Mikey passing away for her to make a move?

There was discussion between @devisrina, @thoughtfulchaos773, and I about this. This is when I had the thought that Claire might’ve started talking to Carmy to humor herself and her friends because Carmy was the loner in high school. It was after the scripts came out and we discovered Claire was originally supposed to be blonde like Carmy’s mother. There’s so many questions on whether Claire and Carmy really had a crush on each other.

The Phone Number

I’m at the early stages of what I hope will be a very successful sports reporting career, so some people have reached out for various reasons (advice, recommendation, etc.). I’m happy to try and help the people who treated me well, but I almost want to laugh at the people who treated me like dirt and are now asking for a favor, however small. Mike Jones may use more colorful language than I would have had I wrote this song, but its underlying message is essentially the Golden Rule laced with profanity: Treat others the way you would want to be treated.

Something that I thought was interesting, was that Mike Jones rapped his phone number into the song. The most obvious parallel to this is that Carmy (purposely?) gave her the wrong number when they reunited by the grocery store fridges.

They see that I'm a star, now they wanna sit in my car Now they wanna count my cheese, smoke my weed and sip my barre now They used to love to me diss me, now they rush to hug and kiss me now They tellin' all they friends when I leave how they miss me now (281) 000-000 Hit Mike Jones up on the low cause Mike Jones about to blow Befo' the ice was in my grill, before I got my major deal These hoes wouldn't give a damn if I was ill, geah (x)

Apparently, ice on grills is a thing in the cooking industry. Graham Elliott revealed in an interview that his trick for making better burgers is pressing an ice cube into the middle of the patty before grilling.

“And if you're worried about the ice cubes making your burgers cold or wet — don't! The ice melts pretty quickly so no one will even know they were there.” <- This just felt reminiscent to my theory on Claire being an illusion. (x) (x)

Chef Graham Elliot Remembers Charlie Trotter “Famed Chicago chef Charlie Trotter died on Tuesday at age 54. Graham Elliot joined Charlie Trotter’s at age 21, and worked in his kitchens for three years.”

It seems important to note that Graham Elliot had three years of experience with Charlie Trotter.

Chef, mentor, trailblazer, philosopher, artist, teacher, leader. These are the words that immediately come to mind when I think of Charlie Trotter, or CHT, as he was referred to by the team. Rarely does one encounter an individual that can both inspire and frighten you with his (almost perverse) dedication to excellence and perfection. I learned his philosophic approach to cooking, and that everything was of equal importance. That you had to be your own toughest critic. That we weren’t in the “food industry” but in the “make it happen” business. To this very day, I try to foster the same ideals in my team: That the food you put on the plate, the way you keep your knives sharp, the way you wipe down your station—all of those represent who you are as a person. (x)

@moodyeucalyptus recently tagged me in their post discussing the documentary about Charlie Trotter and the similarities with Carmy’s asshole boss. I don’t think it’s a coincidence I found this connection.

We know that Carmy was buying very expensive food ingredients/supplies and helped Claire’s mother with moving boxes. (Not to mention, he was literally moving boxes with Claire like he was doing with the Faks.)

As @outmakingmoonshine pointed out, Carmy had a problem with Richie calling Sydney sweetheart in the very first episode but didn’t really seem to care about Claire being called a piece of ass by Ted Fak. The only thing he did was clarify what he meant and that was it.

Is it possible he didn’t really flinch because these were his thoughts about her for a while and has been trying to navigate through his true feelings for her?

What really caught my eye was the smoke my weed part. Funnily enough, in season three, we see Claire and Carmy share a cigarette.

Claire: “Can you just not make this weird? Like, I need a favor. My cousin bailed on me.”

Did he feel a certain way after doing that favor for her? Which would explain why he asked her for a favor too and struggled to explain why he gave her a fake number. Carmy mentioned how he liked her alot at the party. Did he think it wasn’t anything more than what it was, exchanging favors?

Claire: “You know he, uh he told me you guys are really close and he’s your best friend.” Carmy: “Fak said that?” Claire: “Mhm.” Carmy: “No no no. Fak’s not my best friend.” Claire: “Really?” Carmy: “No no he is. He’s probably my best friend.” Claire: “That’s interesting. To sit with. For you.”

I thought Claire saying this was very strange because I couldn’t grasp whether she was saying a lighthearted joke or making fun of him.

Considering the new information thebearfx had given, did Carmy sense that? Especially when Jones talked about how they wouldn’t care if he was ill. It felt so reminiscent to Claire leaving Carmy in the fridge after he said things that were more concerning rather than hurtful.

Maybe Carmy didn’t realize the type of relationship it was until it was too late.

Thank you so much for reading!! This seems so convoluted. I made a good majority of this on August 7th. Feel free to call me insane for this rabbit hole (I’m well aware of how insane I look). There’s alot of information that I just discovered recently besides this meta but I don’t even know how to put it in the proper words. So, bear with me for a bit lmao. Fair warning, the topic of animals, gardens, plants, water, glass, and cigarettes might come back in a good majority of my metas for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to properly explain why later lol.

#the magic trick #the bear is a magic show #i have alot to unpack for this one #feel free to give me your interpretations of it!#i’ll probably go more in depth with most of this in separate posts soon hopefully #jeremy allen white #lionel boyce #matty matheson #ricky staffieri #sydcarmy meta #the bear meta #carmy berzatto #anti claire bear #anti claire dunlap #marcus brooks #neil fak #ted fak #the bear fx #the bear

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yuujispinkhair · 6 months ago

Text

Separation Anxiety (Chapter 13)

Put your lips on my scars and teach me to love

When a ritual separates Sukuna from Yuuji, Sukuna is delighted to find that besides having his own body, there is also another gift handed to him: The brat has lost all his memories and is now the perfect little plaything to take home and manipulate. At least, that's the plan. But the King of Curses isn't prepared for the feelings that come along with being human again. And another complication is how cute the brat is when he has no idea who Sukuna is and, instead of hating him, treats him with genuine love and affection. So, without realizing it, Sukuna suddenly finds himself on a journey of learning how to be loved and how to love.

++ Masterpost ++

Pairing: Sukuna x Yuuji Genre: Memory Loss AU, fluff, smut, light angst Word Count: 5k Playlist: Separation Anxiety Warnings: 18+, smut, mentions of violence, dub-con (Yuuji has lost his memories, and Sukuna lies to him about being boyfriends). All characters are of age. This story is 18+. Minors don't interact.

A little reminder for this chapter: In this AU, Shibuya and the Culling Game never happened.

Chapter 13

You've been my God, and when you're gone, I'm godless. But with my eyes closed, I'm still dancing in your love (Godless by BANKS)

Yuuji's POV:

Yuuji feels like he is trapped in a nightmare. It's similar to the feeling he initially had when, all those months ago, he woke up in a room he didn't know, with all his memories gone. But the difference is that back then, the nightmare soon dissolved, and while things were still weird for the first few days, Yuuji soon felt comfortable and was able to adjust to the life that Sukuna showed him. The life that Yuuji believed was his.

But now, all that comfort and warmth is gone, ripped out of his hands and soul so cruelly. This is a nightmare Yuuji cannot wake up from.

He cannot bring himself to feel at home in this weird private school outside of Tokyo, surrounded by people he doesn't remember who keep telling him nightmarish things about curses and sorcerers and a fight between good and evil, which apparently Yuuji is part of.

A world in which Yuuji is the hero and Sukuna is the villain.

The first time they told him who Sukuna really is, Yuuji laughed hysterically. It seemed utterly insane. And yet, it matched the things Sukuna had said to him before he kicked Yuuji out.

The sorcerers showed Yuuji ancient records dating back over a thousand years, which talked about the strongest sorcerer of the Heian era. A King, a monster so terrifying and powerful that he was compared to a natural disaster.

The King of Curses. Ryomen Sukuna.

A name that is still feared today, a name that stands for bloodshed and cruelty, an ancient evil that everyone wishes had never been awakened again.

But Sukuna came back. He came back through Yuuji. He lived inside Yuuji for years, shared a body with him, and entwined their souls.

And Yuuji can still feel it.

His hand automatically comes up to his chest, pressing it against the spot that always feels so hollow now, like something is missing there, like there is a wound inside him that aches and bleeds and yearns for that missing piece. He wonders if Sukuna can feel it, too.

Everything feels strange.

Yuuji knows he should be appalled. And he is. He feels sick when he hears the stories about Sukuna. But at the same time, he cannot let go of the doubts running through his mind. Because the man Yuuji lived with, isn't the same person those records talk about. This monster everyone warns him about isn't at all like the man waiting in that fancy penthouse apartment. That caring, funny, and loving man who made Yuuji so happy.

Of course, looking back, Yuuji has to admit that there were several things that seemed off. Things that seemed utterly ludicrous or made no sense if Yuuji tried to dig a bit deeper. He had been aware of those, but had decided to ignore them.

He can recall feeling uneasy around Sukuna at first. This weird feeling of being prey that got cornered by its predator, like an insect caught in a spider's web. It had made the hairs on Yuuji's arms stand up. But Yuuji had swallowed that uneasiness down, refused to show it, and bravely fought it with all his power. He didn't want to make the man who took him in and looked after him feel like Yuuji was scared of him. Yuuji didn't want to seem ungrateful. He didn't want to hurt the person who said he was Yuuji's boyfriend.

And after all, it simply never occurred to Yuuji that someone would make up a story like that just to keep him with them. So he ignored that weird feeling and told himself he was stupid for being wary. Because why should he be scared of his own boyfriend?

And soon, things felt different. Soon Yuuji felt drawn to Sukuna. Soon, he felt at ease around him. Soon, he really liked Sukuna. And he chided himself for thinking something seemed off in the beginning. Sukuna was sweet to him! He was caring and understanding and so patient with Yuuji and his recovery. He was the perfect boyfriend.

Looking back at it now, Yuuji knows that it was just part of the plan that was supposed to lead to his downfall. But was it really just that?

In the beginning, it probably was. But after that? After several months of living together? Didn't Sukuna seem really distraught and sick with worry when Yuuji got injured? Hadn't it been real love looking back at Yuuji out of those beautiful sapphire eyes when they made love during that thunderstorm?

When Yuuji thinks of Sukuna, he doesn't see red eyes and bloodshed. He doesn't see a cruel smirk, and violence. When Yuuji thinks of Sukuna, he sees a genuine smile and light blue eyes that were always so warm when they looked at Yuuji. He sees a warm, loving hand reaching out to him to hold him, to guide him, to take care of him.

The memories make Yuuji choke. Make him hug himself tightly as a deep longing fills him, so strong that it manifests in physical pain.

The people at the Jujutsu Academy try to tell him it is all just a lie, that the love he and Sukuna shared has never been real. But that's not how it feels to Yuuji.

Am I too naive? Was it really all just a game to Sukuna?

Yuuji cannot believe it, even after everything they told him. He is still haunted by the tenderness of the last kiss Sukuna breathed onto his cheek and the sadness written all over Sukuna's face when he pushed Yuuji away. That wasn't the face of a man who was just playing a cruel game. That was the face of someone who had his heart ripped out of his chest.

Yuuji wants to leave. He wants to go home.

It's not that the people here at the academy are mean to him. They aren't at all. Everyone is very nice to him. They look at him with eyes that hold empathy and sadness. Yuuji can easily believe that those people used to be his friends in a life he can't remember. Megumi and Nobara seem nice and truly worried about him. Yuuji is sure that in his former life, the three of them got along really well.

But even though he is convinced they mean well, he can't bring himself to accept any of it. Everything feels wrong now that everything he believed was true is suddenly revealed as a big lie.

His former teachers, now coworkers, try to re-introduce Yuuji to his life as a jujutsu sorcerer. They show him documents, pictures, and all kinds of twisted things that shouldn't even exist. And Yuuji asks a thousand questions. Sometimes, he receives sad smiles in return and no real answer. Other times, he gets the cold, hard truth that sends him spiraling even further and yet makes him feel strangely better because at least he knows they aren't holding things back from him.

He finds that the white-haired, tall guy, Gojo, is the most open about things. At times, what he tells Yuuji seems tactless and cruel, but Yuuji appreciates that someone tells him everything instead of treating him with kid gloves.

Gojo is also the one who answers Yuuji's most pressing question.

They are sitting at Gojo's desk. Various files are spread out on the table, reports about former missions. Yuuji's skin tingles unpleasantly anytime Gojo casually mentions how many victims there had been in each case.

The life of a jujutsu sorcerer seems to be filled with blood and death. Sorcerers have to kill, and it makes a feeling of dread wash over Yuuji, which gradually grows stronger and stronger until he can't take it anymore and he asks what has been plaguing him ever since they opened that first file,

"Did... did I kill someone, too?"

"Yes."

That single word makes black spots dance in front of Yuuji's eyes as he clenches his fists so tightly that his nails draw blood.

"You had to do it, Yuuji. Don't blame yourself for it. Those were people who got transfigured into something else completely. You gave them peace by doing it. You are a good person."

Yuuji can only huff at that. Just yesterday, he read about several clan heads getting murdered by Sukuna a thousand years ago, and the reports painted Sukuna as a ruthless monster. And now Yuuji listens to the deaths that were caused by his own hands, but the reports file it under a job well done, a success for humanity.

Blood is rushing in his ears.

Everyone here tells him that the sorcerers are on the good side and that they protect people. And, of course, Yuuji likes the thought of being a hero. He likes the thought of fighting evil. But the problem is that he is painfully becoming aware that things rarely are just as black and white as a lot of people seem to believe.

Yuuji's face twists in a pained grimace as he thinks of those horror movies he recently watched with Sukuna, The Human Earthworm series, and how Yuuji felt a strange sympathy for the monster. The series had touched him in a way that he wasn't able to explain, but maybe he is beginning to understand it now.

Is there 100% evil and 100% good? Who decides who is a monster?

Yuuji gulps hard as he thinks again about that one special file with his name on the front. The red one. The one that contains information about how he became part of the jujutsu society. The circumstances of his birth. How he was made to be the perfect vessel or, rather, the perfect cage for Sukuna. And the document that states that Yuuji was sentenced to death. He found out that it was only thanks to Megumi and Gojo that his execution had been suspended. But most members of the jujutsu society still refuse to see him as a human being. In their eyes, Yuuji is a monster, too.

Gojo's large hand reaches out and ruffles Yuuji's hair in what is supposed to be a soothing gesture. But Yuuji flinches away from it. The gentle touch reminds him too painfully of Sukuna.

He excuses himself and flees to his room, hiding in the bed that feels too small and too cold and too empty.

He switches on the TV in a desperate attempt to distract himself and drown out all the thoughts that keep torturing him. But unbidden, his mind wanders to memories of pink hair on black silk sheets, beautiful sapphire-colored eyes that look deeply into his, and strong, tattooed arms reaching out to hold him gently. Yuuji imagines he can still feel the warmth of those arms around him, and before he even realizes what he is doing, he hugs himself in an attempt to soothe the longing those memories cause.

No matter how fake things might have been in the beginning, the last few months with Sukuna had been wonderful.

They lived in their own little world. They only had each other and Uraume. But it was enough. It was perfect. Sukuna and Yuuji watched movies every night, they laughed together, they went on dates, they made love, they kissed for hours and drowned in each other's eyes, and Yuuji felt as close to Sukuna as he thinks one can possibly feel to another person. They were happy. They were in love. And Yuuji wants that back!

A strangled sob escapes his lips, and he pushes himself up into a kneeling position. His fist connects with his pillow, punching it desperately as more sobs shake his body and angry tears run down his face.

Why can't I let go?

Why does that place in his chest still ache so much, as if his soul is bleeding? As if it yearns and screams for its other half. The other half that is supposedly evil incarnate and yet feels like the only thing that can make Yuuji feel okay again.

Yuuji is sitting in the dining area with Megumi and Nobara, listening half-heartedly to their bickering. Nobara is talking about a shopping spree she wants to do, and Megumi chides her for spending too much money on useless things. But Yuuji's mind is filled with memories of walking through the city with Sukuna only a few weeks ago. The feeling of Sukuna's thumb caressing his wrist when Yuuji took his hand. The smile on Sukuna's face when Yuuji came out of the changing room in a fine black suit he tried on in one of the designer stores.

Before he can stop himself, Yuuji blurts out,

"I want to go home."

Silence settles over the table. Nobara and Megumi have both stopped talking mid-sentence and stare at him before they both ask at the same moment,

"Why would you want to go back?"

It's almost comical how they stare at him with such incredulous expressions on their faces. But Yuuji can't find the situation funny. He feels a whole array of contradicting emotions curse through him. Guilt, because these are his friends, and they are worried about him and want to protect him, and he is so stubborn and refuses to let them save him. Sadness because despite everything, he misses Sukuna. And a steadily growing irritation that everyone here claims they know what's best for Yuuji without actually listening to what he wants. And that's what makes him stare back at his friends challengingly,

"Because I miss my home, of course. And I miss Sukuna."

His friends stare at him as if he has lost his mind. Nobara is the first to react. Her small fists land loudly on the wooden table, and she practically yells at him,

"Are you fucking dumb? He is the King of Curses! You cannot go back to him!"

And then Megumi's low voice joins in, calmer than Nobara but still obviously furious.

"We told you who he is and what he did. How can you still want to go back? Snap out of it, Itadori! This is your home! Here at the academy, with us. You wouldn't be safe with Sukuna. Don't be stupid."

"But the person you told me about, this King of Curses. That isn't the Sukuna I know! The Sukuna I know isn't evil!"

Yuuji knows how stupid he sounds, trying to argue and ignore the truth. Acting like a stubborn and naive child. But he can't help it. Nothing makes sense anymore. The person they tell him about sounds like a stranger to Yuuji. Nothing they tell him about Sukuna sounds like the man Yuuji lived with. The man he shared his bed with. The man he watched movies with every night. The man who carried him to bed when Yuuji fell asleep. The man he laughed with, the man he cuddled with, and went on morning runs in the park with. Nothing they say sounds like the man Yuuji was in love with, and who, as Yuuji still firmly believes, loved him too.

Megumi looks at him with his blue eyes, which are a darker shade of blue than Sukuna's. His usually so calm voice is trembling lightly,

"He is a bad person. He killed people."

A hysterical laugh escapes Yuuji's lips at that.

"So did I, apparently, and you too. Everyone here is a murderer, Megumi."

"That's different!"

"Maybe I had good reasons for it, maybe I didn't. All I know is that there is blood on my hands, too! So, who am I to judge? Maybe Sukuna thought he was in the right, too. We don't know it! Were you there a thousand years ago? Did you see it happen? Do you know Sukuna? Because I do! And he isn't the evil monster you are trying to tell me he is!"

Yuuji knows he sounds delusional, but he cannot stop. He adds stubbornly,

"Think what you want, but he isn't the way you say. And I want to go home and see him again because I love him."

Megumi looks like Yuuji hit him. He shakes his head, eyes pleading helplessly with Yuuji now, his face twisted with worry.

"It's not love, Itadori..."

Yuuji knows Megumi means good, but he cannot stop himself from feeling anger rise in his chest. Anger that everyone treats him like a stupid child or some lunatic who has lost his mind. Anger that no one allows him to have his own opinion on the matter. Anger that no one actually listens to what he says. He glares at Megumi, his hands balled into fists under the table, but his voice is deadly calm, a low, dangerous growl,

"Don't tell me what my relationship is and what it's not."

Yuuji gets up so fast that his chair gets knocked over, but he doesn't care. He has to get away! He cannot bear looking into the pleading eyes of his former friends and hear their accusations and judgment. He cannot stand to see the worry in their eyes or hear the desperation in their voices as they try to save him from the monster that Yuuji refuses to see as a monster.

Or maybe he believes them. Maybe Sukuna is a monster. But after everything that Yuuji has learned about himself, he is pretty sure that he is a monster, too. Maybe that's why his and Sukuna's souls match so well.

Maybe we are two monsters who belong together. Maybe it takes a monster to love a monster.

Yuuji storms outside, breathing heavily as he runs towards the large gates, even though he already knows what will happen once he is close enough.

As expected, only a few seconds later, Yuuji runs into an invisible wall. It makes him stumble back, but instead of trying to regain his balance, Yuuji lets himself fall to the ground defeatedly, landing on his ass with a loud thud.

He tilts his head back to look at the slight glimmer in the air before him, which indicates where the powerful barrier starts. There is no use fighting it. Yuuji is effectively locked in here.

He laughs grimly at the irony that the sorcerers installed a barrier around the academy that keeps Yuuji locked inside while at the same time they try to tell him that Sukuna was the one who held him hostage.

At least Sukuna let me leave the house anytime I wanted.

Yuuji lets out a shaky breath. He knows no one believes him when he says that he and Sukuna were in love. He knows they are convinced it was just one-sided, that Yuuji got tricked into having feelings for Sukuna, while Sukuna only saw it as a cruel little game.

But Yuuji refuses to believe them. He knows that his and Sukuna's relationship wasn't just a lie.

He cannot forget the way Sukuna looked at him. And he can't help but think that he is the only one who truly knows Sukuna. The real Sukuna. Not the King of Curses. But the man behind that title. The man who thinks cherry blossoms look pretty, especially when they land on Yuuji's hair. The man who always has that happy expression in his eyes when he eats a good meal. The man who reads poetry and laughed even louder than Yuuji at certain movie scenes. The man who almost purred when Yuuji petted his hair and who was clinging tightly to his boyfriend in his sleep.

The thought makes Yuuji smile sadly. He can still remember how it felt to be wrapped in Sukuna's arms and in his love. And it still feels like the only thing that makes sense in this world.

How is Yuuji supposed to move on from something that felt so right? How is he supposed to believe that this is wrong?

Yuuji sighs. Tears slowly run down his cheeks, but he doesn't bother wiping them away.

It hurts. Everything hurts. There is this emptiness in Yuuji's chest again, as if something that is supposed to be there has been ripped out of him forcefully. And in moments like these, it grows stronger and turns from a dull ache to a stabbing pain.

He pulls his knees to his chest, hugging himself as he cries softly while sitting on the cold, stony path, probably looking like misery incarnated. But Yuuji cannot feel embarrassed even when Gojo finds him like this.

Gojo doesn't say anything but just sits down next to Yuuji, not close enough that they touch, but close enough so Yuuji can feel the warmth radiating from Gojo's body. They sit in silence for a moment until the words spill from Yuuji's lips.

"I want to see him again. I want my life back! Even if it isn't really my life, I want it back! But everyone tells me I am wrong for wanting it. Everyone tells me Sukuna is evil. All the reports say he is a monster. But I have all those other memories of him. Sukuna was so... He was sweet to me! Everyone tells me I am crazy and that I only got manipulated into thinking I love Sukuna, but that's not how it feels to me! It was real! And it hurts that I am not with him! I don't know what to do. I feel like a part of me is missing and that I will never be whole again if I cannot be with Sukuna."

Those otherworldly blue eyes look thoughtfully at him. There is no anger or judgment, only a deep, knowing sadness as if Gojo understands what Yuuji is talking about.

When Gojo answers, his voice is very different from the one he usually uses. There is no teasing undertone to it, no amused smirk on his face, no mockery. Instead, he sounds wary, as if the words he says to Yuuji have been haunting him for a long time.

"Love is the cruelest curse of all, Yuuji. We cannot control who we love, and even when we know a thousand reasons why we shouldn't love them, we still cannot change it."

Another sob escapes Yuuji's lips, and he nods wildly. Gojo smiles, but it's a sad smile, one of regret.

"I, too, thought Sukuna wasn't capable of love. But maybe I was wrong. I thought about it a lot after you came here and told your story. The thing is, If you ask anyone, they will tell you I am not capable of love either. But that's not true. I have loved in the past. I have loved so much that it became my biggest weakness."

Yuuji blinks at his former teacher, surprised that Gojo is talking about personal things. And that he doesn't seem to outright say Sukuna just played with Yuuji. Gojo smirks at Yuuji, but it isn't his usual aloof smirk. It looks forced and isn't able to hide the raw emotions underneath it. When Gojo continues, his voice is soft, carrying a vulnerability Yuuji hasn't seen in Gojo yet.

"The one I loved did terrible things, too. But that wasn't able to make me stop loving him. In the end, I killed him, and it still haunts me and I still ask myself every day if I could have done something differently. If I could have brought him back on our side. If I could have saved him if I just tried harder. That's my curse, and I carry it with me at all times."

And Yuuji understands. Gojo can relate to him. Yuuji smiles softly and offers a sincere, "I am sorry."

But Gojo isn't finished.

"Before your memory loss, the connection between you and Sukuna was a breeding ground for hate. Sukuna treated you and the ones you cared about with cruelty, and so you reacted fittingly and treated him with hate, too. But everything changed when you lost your memories. Because it meant that Sukuna was a blank page for you. And for whatever reason, he wanted you to believe he was your boyfriend, so he was nice to you. He didn't give you any reason to hate him. And so you treated him differently, too. You treated him with affection instead of hatred. Maybe that is what changed everything."

Yuuji gulps hard and looks at his former teacher with a racing pulse and a flicker of something in the back of his mind. A thought, an understanding, that sits deep inside him, but he cannot quite catch yet.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that maybe there is more to that whole fake-boyfriend thing. What if Sukuna himself wasn't aware of the real reason why he did it? What if this whole idea was born out of a deep-buried wish, maybe? Something Sukuna didn't even know he craved: To get a taste of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that genuine love that you have in you? He watched you give that love to everyone around you all those years he spent inside your body. He saw it when you were kind to strangers and ran to everyone's rescue. He saw it in the way you treated your friends. So, what if, deep down, Sukuna wanted to be on the receiving end of that love, too, for once?

And he got that from you after you lost your memories, didn't he? You gave him love, Yuuji. Because that's just what you do. That's who you are.

You are so genuine, so sweet, and full of love. You come to others with open arms and affection, ready to save everyone and give your life for them. There is no one else who is better at making people's hearts melt. You are the embodiment of love.

And maybe that is what Sukuna needed. Maybe this was the only way he could learn about love. Maybe he needed you to show him. If anyone is able to teach Sukuna how to love, I am sure it is you."

Yuuji stares at Gojo, utterly touched by his words, his mind whirling. He lets out a shaky breath and wipes his eyes with his palms.

"So... does that mean you believe me that what Sukuna and I had was real? You believe me that Sukuna loves me too and is no danger to me?"

Gojo laughs softly, but Yuuji can see the seriousness of the situation in those otherworldly blue eyes.

"What I believe is that if Sukuna wanted, he would have already attacked us. He would have already burned down this whole city months ago and killed everyone who didn't fall on their knees in front of him. But did he do any of that?

He didn't. And there is no logical explanation for it. The only thing I can think of is that you are the reason. Sukuna changed his agenda because of you. Maybe he isn't interested in those things anymore because he found something else, something more powerful. Maybe he chose you and your love instead of the destruction and solitude he was used to."

Gojo's gaze burns into Yuuji's as the seconds tick by, and his words sink in. Yuuji feels like he will choke on the fresh tears that threaten to spill over. He wipes furiously at his eyes, gulping hard. And Gojo smiles that sad smile again before he adds,

"If you want to leave, you are free to do so. I won't let them keep you a prisoner, especially not since I think they got it all wrong. You are far more powerful than they think or than you think. You were created to be the perfect cage for Sukuna, the only one strong enough to control him. And I think that's what you still do. You still have control over Sukuna, even now that you are two separate people. Maybe that is the fate Sukuna can't escape from.

It's quite ironic, isn't it? Sukuna isn't trapped inside your body anymore, but you still have control over him because he cares about you now. That's why I think you are still everyone's life insurance, and it would be pretty counterproductive to keep you and Sukuna apart. You still serve as a cage for the King of Curses because you made him fall in love with you."

And with that, Gojo makes a gesture with his hands. Yuuji feels a slight tingling sensation on his skin. The subtle glimmer in the air in front of him vanishes, and Gojo gets up and grins down at him, extending one hand to Yuuji.

Yuuji takes it and lets his former teacher pull him to his feet, his gaze fixed on the now barrier-free path before him.

Yuuji has barely reached the broad road leading into the city when a loud bark to his left fills the air. A moment later, a large dog is standing in front of him in the middle of the road. Yuuji skitters to a halt just when a familiar low voice speaks up behind him.

"Don't do it. Please, don't go back. I know what Gojo is doing. He is sending you back because he thinks you can serve as another cage for Sukuna. Don't you see it? This isn't about helping you. He is using you, just like they all do. Don't go, Yuuji. You finally have a chance to escape all of this. You have a chance to live your own life. You aren't Sukuna's vessel or cage anymore. You are free. Don't throw that away."

Megumi steps up to Yuuji, looking at him with those sad blue eyes filled with worry and longing, and Yuuji knows at that moment. He knows that Megumi truly cares about him. That Megumi wants to protect him. That Megumi loves him. It makes Yuuji's heart clench. His face softens, and he reaches out to pat Megumi's shoulder and smiles the broadest smile at him that he can,

"Thank you, Megumi. But you see, I want to go back. I am not doing this to sacrifice myself. I am doing it because I want it. I am doing it for me. Because I want that life back that made me happy. And I want to be with Sukuna. Or at least I want to talk to him and try to find a way to make this work."

"I don't think it is safe for you."

"I know you are worried about me, Megumi. Thank you for that, but I have to figure things out for myself. Because everything I learned here is very different from how I experienced things when I was still living with Sukuna. And you said it yourself. I am free. I want to use this freedom to find out the whole truth. Please understand that. That's all I'm asking."

Megumi sighs, his hands repeatedly balling into fists and unclenching again. He looks deeply into Yuuji's eyes as if he is searching for something.

"Can you promise me that you are really doing this for yourself?"

Yuuji nods wildly, his smile growing even bigger,

"I promise you. Trust me. It's going to be okay."

He feels a strange familiarity as if this has happened before. As if he has spoken those words to Megumi before. He sees Megumi's eyes widen, maybe remembering it, too. His lips tremble slightly as he stares at Yuuji for a long moment, but then Megumi nods slowly and takes a step back.

"Okay, I trust you. But be careful... and remember, if you die again, I'll kill you myself."

Yuuji stares at his friend's stern gaze for a moment, feeling that same sense of deja vu again. As if Megumi has said those exact words to him before, too. In his life before the memory loss, before the separation from Sukuna. As if this is some inside joke Megumi and Yuuji have, and it makes Yuuji laugh heartily, feeling lighter now that his friend seems to have his back.

Yuuji turns around and lets out a long breath. He will return to the city and to Sukuna. He doesn't know how things will be when he faces Sukuna again now that Yuuji knows the truth. He doesn't know how he will feel when he looks into Sukuna's eyes again. He doesn't even know if Sukuna will talk to him. But Yuuji knows that he wants to try. He knows that he needs to see the man again who impacted his life so profoundly, before and after the memory loss.

I know what I want, and I can be pretty stubborn. I won't give up that easily!

Thank you so much for reading! I struggled a lot with this chapter, but I worked so long on it and re-wrote and edited it many times, so I hope it is ok now!! I gave my best!

I needed to add a scene with Yuuji and Megumi because my heart was bleeding at the thought of what they lost. So I hope this little scene was able to make things better and show that they still have a deep connection based on genuine love.

And I cried so much at the whole "Sukuna unintentionally wanted to be on the receiving end of Yuuji's love" thing and that he changed because Yuuji finally treated him with love instead of hate. I personally really think that if anyone can teach Sukuna love, it is Yuuji.

Also, it makes me happy that our King of Selflessness, Itadori Yuuji, stands up for what HE wants ;)

Thank you so much if you are still reading this AU!! It means a lot to me!!

Comments and reblogs would be very sweet 💗

#sukuita #sukuna x yuuji #sukuna x itadori #sukuna #ryomen sukuna

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seafoamreadings · 4 months ago

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week of july 28th, 2024

these are written predominantly for the *rising* signs but they are also intuitively "channeled" enough that they should work for any dominant energy you have! (try your sun if you don't know rising, or more advanced readers can try moon, anywhere you have a stellium, etc and see what works best for you!)

aries: there's a lot of potential for this week to take on quite a romantic tone this week, and if that's not something on your radar or relevant to your interests, go out of your way to at least make it a bit glamorous! have fun with that.

taurus: your ruling planet squares uranus who has been long in your sign. it's a weird time to be a taurean. but mostly in good ways! you are finding all the unconventional, eccentric things that make you so interesting and fun. lean into it without alienating anyone.

gemini: this week does not feature many undertones pertinent to your sign and yet, there are many aspects that will bring omens to those geminis who can get quiet and still enough to listen.

cancerians: the moon, your ruling planet, is really in many ways at center stage all week. it culminates in a new moon in leo at the end of the week. set money intentions; your financial skills and resourcefulness are underrated but when put to good use rival the stereotypical boss vibes of any capricorn.

leo: key to this week is the new moon in your sign on the weekend. the new moon always involves the strength of your ruling luminary, the sun. so new moons are always powerful times for you to manifest or set goals. that goes double when it's in your own sign! focus a bit on yourself and who you are becoming, who you mean to become.

virgo: your work at this time is soul stuff, like it or not. it may place you in a sort of hermit mode, even if you aren't truly isolated; you may need time apart to heal or feel that you must repent in some way. do what it takes to emerge out the other side, into next week and the period afterward, at your best, optimized. sometimes that means work, and sometimes it means rest.

libra: friend groups may be shifting, like repositioning oneself to regain balance. go with it. don't cling or grasp, as hard as it may be. esoteric studies get a nice boost especially if you can pair them with a nice playlist or ancient library scene. sharing resources or lending money are not advised.

scorpio: while you're not typically one for being the center of all attention, the spotlight is about to end up on you one way or another. you don't have to enjoy it but it's best to make good use of it while you have this platform.

sagittarius: mercury IS about to go retrograde but if you're not particularly mercurial yourself, starting this week can be an excellent time for long distance travel. this is especially the case if you're willing to romanticize it all a bit. and if you can't literally travel, at least be expanding your mind and horizons!

capricorn: for you this might be a period of inheritance or sharing resources with a new (?) partner. but it's also auspicious for going into business with someone, for taking out a loan if you're needing it, or for lending if you are in a position to do so.

aquarius: this is in many ways a challenging week for you. avoid confrontations with enemies (or frenemies.) i would also advise against moving in with a romantic partner at this time, even if it seems like a great thing to do. maybe let it wait. but to make plans about relationships is auspicious! just don't act on much yet. especially where your home is involved.

pisces: if you've been waiting for a chance to boost your health in any way or change up your routines, this week is a great time to do it. you don't even have to let it be mundane, it's actually more auspicious to live every day in sacred ritual.

#horoscopes #horoscope #weekly horoscopes #weekly horoscope #signs #zodiac #aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces

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universestreasures · 5 months ago

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Ruka, from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has been added as a somewhat active muse (Ty to @puzzledmemories for enabling me LOL)

She is a canon compliment and headcanon expansion, anime based! Also, her orientation is pan!

#💎 Fairy Treasure (Ruka)#💎 NPC: Fairy's Ribbon Companion (Kuribon)#💎 NPC: Fairy's Guardian Beast (Regulus)#💎 NPC: Fairy's Guardian Dragon (Ancient Fairy Dragon)#💎 Fairy Answers (Ruka Asks)#💎 Fairy Protector Of The Spirit World (Ruka Visage)#💎 Fairy's Treasured Homeland (Ruka Main Verse)#💎 Fairy's Monster Spirit Soul (Ruka Duel Monster AU)#💎 Fairy's Tunes (Ruka Playlist)#💎 Fairy's Glimmers And Glitz (Ruka Headcanons)#💎 Fairy's Radiant Brilliance (Ruka Asethetic)#💎 Fairy Plays Along (Ruka Dash Games)#💎 Fairyisms (Ruka Musings)#💎 The Fairy & Her Dorky Twin Brother (Ruka & Rua)#💎 The Fairy & The Satellite (Ruka & Yusei)#💎 The Fairy & The King Of Riding Duels (Ruka & Jack)#💎 The Fairy & The Black Rose (Ruka & Aki)#💎 The Fairy & Her Team Connected By Bonds (Ruka & Team 5D's)

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wastelandmoony · 2 years ago

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Things We Lost in the Fire

Characters: Sebastian Sallow x Reader/f!MC

Summary: Sebastian Sallow was many things: your dueling partner, former friend, object of your secret desire. But most of all, he was a pain in your ass.

Going practically M.I.A. since the Battle of the Repository, you hadn't spoken or seen him since the end of your fifth year. As a new school year begins, you'll need to come to terms with his overbearing presence around the castle...and his new relationship.

Warnings: language, allusions to smut, mild violence?

Word Count: 6K+ (oopsie)

A/N: This idiot has been living rent free in my brain for over a month. After finishing the game and being less than enthused by the culmination of his storyline, here we are.

Sebastian Sallow Playlist

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The Great Hall was buzzing with excitement; the electricity crackling through the air was palpable. September 1st was always an exhilarating day, but this year even more so. The promise of a new school year, a new start; the feeling was invigorating. After the events of last year everyone was in an elevated state of elation to be back amongst friends, nestled within the fortified stone walls of the castle that had become home to them all.

As you strode through the large oak doors, the empty seat amongst the faculty table shot a dagger straight through your heart. From the dais, Professor Hecat wore a small sympathetic smile, one reserved specifically for you. Swallowing the lump in your throat, you shook off the visions of Professor Fig, of the faces currently staring back at you fighting alongside underneath the castle. You weren’t unsure what sort of unseen force was propelling you forward, subconsciously managing to make it to the Hufflepuff table.

For being as tiny as she was, Poppy practically body slammed you onto the floor with the velocity of her hug. Though the two of you had kept in touch over the summer, you hadn’t seen her in person since last year.

You hadn’t seen anyone since leaving Hogwarts in June.

Last Spring had been a bit of a blur. After defeating Ranrok in the bowels of the castle, your body had shut down, completely going into autopilot as you navigated the remainder of 5th year. Classes had resumed like nothing had happened, but the whispers around the school eventually changed to shouts, and everyone became fully aware of how close they (and the rest of the Wizarding world) had come to complete destruction. Word quickly spread of your unique abilities, and how you were able to defeat one of the strongest uses of ancient magic known to history. The notoriety was overwhelming, and frankly uncomfortable. So much had been lost, and you didn’t have the strength to put on a happy face for all of the well-wishers and nosy students that pestered with questions in the halls.

Once the snow melted and the Scottish Highlands were beginning to bloom with color, a ceremony was held in the Great Hall, including a memorial for those lost. Headmaster Black requested you speak in honor of Professor Fig, but the thought made you violently ill. How do you sum up the life of a man that took you in when no one else would? Who taught you about the special powers that laid dormant inside your soul? The man who fought beside you until the very end?

Professor Weasley took over the task, understanding the desperate look in your eyes when you had asked. She had taken to watching over you in Fig’s absence, scheduling weekly tea times to check in on your wellbeing. She was the lifeline you needed, but frankly not the one you wanted.

Poppy stuck by your side for the remainder of the year, trying her best to keep your mind off the trauma of everything. But she wasn’t there when you were asleep; she couldn’t keep the nightmares away. The screams were the worst, echoing in your subconscious with no escape until you woke up violently thrashing. You heard Ranrok’s cold laughter; the crack of dark magic; the screams of your friends.

You heard Sebastian.

You heard Anne’s scream.

When you woke, a flash of blinding green light shot across your vision each time, one single phrase playing over and over: “I had to do it—“

The greed in Sebastian’s voice plagued you, long gone was your cheeky dueling partner from Crossed Wands, the one that confided his darkest secrets while exploring hidden rooms throughout the school. The two of you hadn’t spoken since the memorial ceremony, he had all but become a ghost. Occasionally you’d see him in the halls, walking with a dead-eyed stare that never seemed to land on you. Ominis kept you informed about Anne; she wasn’t speaking to Sebastian, going as far as to banish him from attending their uncles funeral altogether. According to his best friend, the news didn’t surprise him in the slightest, but the lack of communication with Anne was eating Sebastian alive.

You tried to forget about your former friend, the one that you had lost to the lure and power of dark magic. Regardless of his original intentions, Sebastian had strayed too far from the help he had set out to find. You weren’t innocent in this either, utilizing dark magic throughout the struggle to defeat Ranrok. The difference was, that you knew when and where to use it, Sebastian was drunk on the power.

Ominis kept in touch over the summer, writing occasionally to check-in and talk about your respective breaks and desire to be back at school. He never mentioned Sebastian in his letters, a deliberate choice and something that you were grateful for.

You hadn’t been excited to leave Hogwarts, with nothing and no one to go home to. Professor Fig was the only guardian figure you’d ever known, having been the one that retrieved you from the group home in London over a year ago. You refused to go back there, to the never-ending list of asinine rules and an overbearing matron hell-bent on keeping an oppressive eye on your every move, so in exchange for working at the Three Broomsticks you were able to rent a room for free from Sirona until September. She understood better than most what you had been through, and also knew that no one else would possibly rent to an underage witch with little to no means of supporting herself. When you weren’t picking up shifts in the pub, the massive amount of books you’d amassed kept your mind occupied. Even after cramming all year and having multiple professors offer extra assignments, you still felt behind. Any free time was spent pouring over ancient spell texts and potion recipes, eager to come back to school feeling confident in your abilities as a 6th year witch (and not as the hero you had been portrayed as by everyone else).

———

As you sat down with Poppy at the Hufflepuff table, you were greeted loudly by a few other housemates, their welcoming nature warming your heart. After the opening remarks from Headmaster Black and the sorting ceremony, the feast commenced with the entire hall erupting into the boisterous sounds of students laughing and reacquainting.

Taking a sip of pumpkin juice, you were suddenly startled by two cold hands covering your eyes.

“Guess who—“ a low voice sounded in your ear.

“Ominis!” You whipped your head around to see his sly grin as he sat beside you on the bench. Without hesitation, you embraced him, wrapping both arms around his thin shoulders, “I’ve missed you.”

You felt him smile against your shoulder, “Likewise—how was the rest of your summer?”

“Uneventful…thankfully,” you laughed, pulling back from him, “How about yours?”

Ominis shrugged, “Nothing grand, I did visit Anne a few weeks ago though.”

Your eyes widened, “Oh! How is she?”

“She’s doing well…at least, as well as can be expected…” he trailed off, and she knew it was because there was more to the story. His milky eyes traveled over in the direction of the Slytherin table briefly, hers following on instinct.

He came into sight almost immediately, you’d recognize those freckles anywhere. He was laughing at something, a true, jovial laugh that you hadn’t heard since Crossed Wands. Even from three tables over, you could pick it out of the crowd; the sound igniting the very blood in your veins. Sebastian’s eyes creased as the laughter died into a genuine smile; he looked good, he looked—happy. You watch as he leans over and places a kiss on the cheek of—wait.

“Imelda?!” You choked, forcing your mouth closed to avoid looking like a heartbroken sod. The fire that his laugh had set was now turning into a thick sludge in your gut, bubbling and seeping into the very essence of your being.

Ominis cringed, turning towards you with visible sympathy written on his pale face, “Yes, they began seeing each other over the summer. It’s been…rather insufferable if I’m honest.”

You shook your head, unwilling to believe the sight in front of you. Out of everyone at Hogwarts, he had to choose her? Imelda was insufferable on the best of days; brash, loud, and incredibly boastful, she was the antithesis of yourself—maybe that’s why Sebastian liked her.

“How…?” Your attention was pulled back to Ominis, brows furrowed as your lungs constricted.

He shrugged again and shook his head in disbelief, “After everything that happened, he became distant as you well know, he barely spoke to me even. Imelda, being a fellow Slytherin, is incredibly ambitious and when she sets her mind on something, there’s nothing that will stop her. She saw a lonely, lost boy in need of guidance and support, and she struck.”

The room was beginning to spin.

You’d be lying if you said the feelings you harbored for Sebastian didn’t exist. The two of you had been through unspeakable things together, leaning on each other through it all, until he decided to take a path you couldn’t follow. Even after everything, he was still your Sebastian, and the hope that one day he would come around stuck firmly in your heart. You loved him, more than just as a friend and dueling partner.

You were in love with Sebastian Sallow, you had been for a while.

Eventually, Ominis returned to his house table, promising to meet again the following morning for breakfast to compare timetables. You glanced over as he sat back down amongst his fellow Snakes, and were caught in the unwavering stare that Sebastian had set directly on you. Averting your eyes as a deep blush creeped up your cheeks, the thought of sinking through the flagstone floor seemed very appealing. That wasn’t an accidental glance, he was fixated on you; eyes boring into yours while he sat beside his girlfriend. The expression on his face was unreadable, something you’d ruminate on later.

The moment Professor Black dismissed the houses, you sprinted to your dorm, eager to be as far away from Sebastian Sallow as physically possible.

———

The timetable for this term wasn’t awful; you had been able to choose which classes to pursue in accordance with which career path you planned on taking after Hogwarts, swapping the least attractive (a.k.a. impossibly boring and rather useless) courses for more riveting subject matter. After witnessing the corruption and insolence displayed by Officer Singer and her colleagues last year, becoming a member of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was the only logical path for you. The overarching desire to create fundamental change department-wide, and actually be able to help citizens and prevent unspeakable tragedies, consumed you. Poppy had tried to convince you to pursue a career in the Department of Magical Creatures like her; something that did in fact greatly interest you, ultimately pacifying her by taking another year of Beasts classes. The one course you were looking forward to, Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts, was going to be a struggle.

It was the one class you shared with Sebastian.

Professor Hecat was a welcome sight, smiling at you as she walked towards the front of the classroom.

“Good morning everyone, and welcome to another year of Defense Against the Dark Arts! At this point in your academic journey, you should be well versed in most defensive spellwork, including protective shields and disarming maneuvers. Let’s do a little ‘welcome back’ warm-up, shall we?” Her eyes swept over the room, the majority of students returning eager expressions.

“I’ll split you all into pairs, line up on either side of the classroom and begin trying to disarm your partner,” Professor Hecat began to rattle off names, and the further she ran through the roster, the lower your stomach sank. Gaze falling to the floor as she called your last name, you knew exactly what was about to follow.

“—and Sallow. Have at it!” She motioned for the start of the duels.

You slowly pushed the chair back, refusing to even look in his general direction as you lined up against the wall.

It’s just a duel, you’ve done it a million times.

Picture him as just another foe.

Taking to the proper stance, you exhale slowly, trying to welcome in any semblance of calm. Finally looking up at your partner, his gaze was already glued to you. The vacant eyes that you saw last year were gone, replaced by the original brown, cozy warmth you had fallen in love with. It should’ve made you happy, the fact that he seemed to be doing better (at least on the outside), but all you felt was your heart sinking into your stomach. Sebastian raised his wand and narrowed his eyes, a look you knew all too well from fighting alongside him last year. He knew your exact style of dueling, he was your partner from the beginning, your right hand man; a fact that would only work to your detriment.

“Expelliarmus!” You flicked your wand towards him, a spark of exhilaration shooting up your arm.

“Protego,“ he growled, casting an immediate shield and blocking your test shot. The timber of his voice gave you goosebumps, it had been so long since you’d heard it. The two of you watched each other intensely, the air around you thick with everything unsaid.

“Stupefy—“ he shot back. You expertly dodged the stun and instantly cast another disarming spell. It hit Sebastian in the arm, wand leaping out of his hand, only to be quickly grabbed mid-air before it could be lost entirely.

“Shit…” you whispered under your breath, trying to think of another game plan.

He smirked as you repositioned yourself, “You’re rusty.”

You shot an angry look in his direction, shooting an even quicker levitation spell that he avoided with a shrug of his shoulder.

“Oh come on, I know you can do better than that,” he sent a stinging hex your way, something you both knew wasn’t allowed in Professor Hecat’s classroom.

“What’re you playing at?” You threw both hands out in disbelief, while Sebastian grinned. He was doing this on purpose, he wanted to get a rise out of you.

Sticking to Hecat’s dueling rules, you sent a quick succession of spells forward, mixing both disarming and stunning, knowing that Sebastian lacked the speed to block each one. To your surprise, he managed to avoid them (you briefly wondered who he’d been practicing with), casting a perfect protego shield and firing another fierce stupefy in your direction followed by one single bolt of confringo.

The heat of the blast burned as it shot past your head, making you gasp at the aggression. Snapping your head around, he had a shit eating grin on his smug face.

“What’s wrong? Hogwarts’ Golden Girl doesn’t want to fight back?”

“Fuck you, Sallow!” You spit, casting depulso and throwing him backwards into the wall.

As his body slammed into the stone, Professor Hecate yelling your name out.

“—DETENTION. MR. SALLOW, YOU AS WELL!”

As Sebastian sat against the wall, rubbing the back of his (now bruised) head, you quickly snatched your bag off the floor and stalked out of class early before saying something regretful.

———

Ominis had found out about the incident in Defense class later that same day, the entire school was talking about the former friends turned bitter enemies. He was less than amused by the outburst on both of your parts, chastising you for losing your ‘sense of decorum and grace at Sebastian’s childish antics’.

“You can’t let him get to you,” Ominis shook his head as he sat down with you and Poppy in the Great Hall for lunch.

Letting out an exasperating groan, you buried your head in your hands, “I know, I know. I’m not sure what came over me…”

Poppy and Ominis began to chat about their shared Charms class while you ate in silence, trying to keep your thoughts from reverting back to the tiny spark of mischief you saw in Sebastian’s eyes earlier, or how you wanted to trace every single freckle on his face—no. Stop it.

“—want to check out the newborn Kneazles that Professor Howin told me about after lunch?” Poppy chimed, looking at you eagerly over her sandwich.

It snapped you out of the daze, “Oh? Oh! Sorry, I can’t—quidditch try-outs are this afternoon.”

“You’re trying out for the team?” Poppy sat up straighter in excitement.

You nodded, taking another bite of food.

“Good for you,” Ominis nudged your arm gently, “from what I’ve heard, you’re a pretty exceptional flyer.”

Blushing, you pushed him back playfully with your elbow, “Thanks, I guess we’ll see how I fare on the quidditch pitch though.”

———

Later that day, you sat mid-air on your broom in the warm September breeze, inhaling the early scents of oncoming autumn. The trees of the Forbidden Forrest rustled just off the side of the pitch, a grouping of Jobberknolls cresting over the tops. All four houses were holding try-outs simultaneously, organizing short scrimmages of inter-house players both prospective and permanent. So far, you were one of the strongest contenders from any of them.

Except for one.

Imelda turned the pitch into her own personal showcase, making an extra effort to show off for anyone watching; anyone, including a specific Slytherin 6th year in the stands below. You had flown low over the spectators earlier in order to avoid an incoming bludger, noticing Ominis seated next to your former partner-in-crime. As you looped around, you caught Sebastian’s brown eyes fixed on you, muttering something to your mutual friend beside him.

Another Hufflepuff hopeful named Charlie thew the quaffle to you, signaling a turn to traverse through the other players and attempt to score. Weaving, diving, and dodging through the multitude of brooms, the bronze goalposts were within range; that’s when you saw a flash of green descend rapidly in front of you, blocking the path to victory. Imelda smirked, swaying as you attempted to maneuver around. She was fast and knew this game like the back of her hand, something you were already keenly aware of.

Suddenly she shot forward, kicking roughly with her boot to try and knock the quaffle out from under your arm. Making contact with your elbow, you wince at the pain, narrowing your eyes at her sinister grin. The sight of her kissing Sebastian in the Great Hall flashed before your eyes, mocking you.

Imelda pulled back and lined up to charge again. To the right, you saw a Hufflepuff beater square up with an incoming bludger. You whistled to get their attention, signaling with your eyes to help out. They smacked the bludger in your direction, and you quickly spun to hit it with the tail of your broom, redirecting it straight at Imelda. It made contact with her ribs, knocking her off the broom and sending her careening towards the ground.

Madam Kogawa shouted from the field below, “ARRESTO MOMENTUM!”

Upon seeing the interference, you rocketed towards the goal posts, tossing the quaffle through the ring effortlessly. As the Hufflepuff captain flew over to congratulate you, your eyes focused on Imelda being carted off to the hospital wing below, Sebastian following close behind.

———

On Friday night, you trudged to the Defense Against the Darks tower for detention. The thought of spending an entire night doing mindless tasks beside Sebastian made you want to vomit. All of this was his fault: the detention, the animosity, the…feelings. Everything could have been avoided if he wasn’t such an insufferable little twat.

Turning the corner, you saw him leaning outside of Professor Hecat’s door, arms crossed over his chest. Even alone he looks utterly smug and pretentious, though the words crossed your mind, your stomach (which had now suddenly taken on the form of a dozen angry billywigs) had a differing opinion. Upon hearing your footsteps, his eyes snap up, features softening slightly as you drew closer. Completely ignoring his presence (and absolutely stupid looking smirk), you breezed past through the open door. You heard him follow behind, shutting the heavy wooden door as Professor Hecat looked up from her desk.

“Good evening,” she said calmly, “as your punishment for using aggressive spells during a non-offensive lesson, you will each be writing an essay on how to best defend yourself against three types of beasts, each one without using a single attack spell.”

Sebastian groaned from the back of the room, and you fought the urge to roll your eyes at his typical dramatics.

Taking a seat close to Professor Hecat’s desk, you got to work outlining your main points. Dugbogs, Acromantulas, and Mongrels; three beasts you were (unfortunately) very familiar with. Luckily, your combat experience with numerous different magical creatures enabled the essay to practically write itself. Across the room, the sound of Sebastian tapping his quill against the desk was driving you insane. You shot him an angry look as he put his hands up, mouthing a snarky “what?” back at you.

Just ignore him, you thought, like Ominis said, he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.

Surprising absolutely no one, you finished your essay before Sebastian, rising gracefully from your desk and handing the roll of parchment to Professor Hecat with an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry again, Professor. I promise I won’t lose my head again.”

She returned the smile, “You’re a brilliant witch, my dear, I expect great things from you. Don’t disappoint me.”

The hallways were deserted as you emerged from the classroom, curfew had passed a few hours ago so you would be in for a quiet walk back down to the dormitory. As you descended the main stairs, an insufferable voice came from behind, echoing through the vacant corridor.

“I expect great things from you, don’t disappoint me!”

Sebastian was sauntering down the staircase, a mocking grin on his face. You rolled your eyes and continued on, ignoring him just like you did Peeves.

The twin footsteps followed the corridor leading towards the bottom floor of the castle, Sebastian making an annoying point to whistle a jaunty tune the entire time that was grating on your nerves. The realization finally dawned on you that he had completely bypassed the staircase that led down to the Slytherin dungeons. Whipping around, he stopped short as to not walk directly into your body.

“Why are you following me?” You demanded, keeping your voice steady. The low lights of the torches lining the hallway flickered in his dark eyes, reminding you of the countless nights dueling down in the Undercroft together. The hanging braziers would always cast a halo effect onto his hair, looking almost angelic as he would reach out a hand to help you up after a particular strong blast. “Not bad—for a Hufflepuff,” he would chuckle, brushing the dirt from your hair. In those moments, it didn’t matter that Ominis was across the room listening, it didn’t matter that you weren’t any closer to curing Anne, it didn’t matter that the fate of the Wizarding world was weighing on your shoulders; it was just you, and him, two sides of the same Galleon, the rest just melted away.

He pushed past, cocking his head to the side as he approached the portrait leading to the kitchens.

“Promised Imelda I’d grab her something from the kitchens on my way back—they don’t serve dessert in the hospital wing, apparently…”

Mouth pressed into a tight line, you nod. The upwards inflection at the end of his statement gave you pause, it almost sounded…amused? The sight of the large barrels at the end of the hallway was a welcome sight, and you picked up the pace towards the common room entrance, desperate to get away from Sebastian and the aggressively thick tension. Tapping the second to last barrel, you stared at the wooden entrance as it slid open, allowing passage through. Before stepping over the threshold, you could’ve sworn the sound of your name was whispered quietly from down the hall; when you glanced back, the kitchen portrait was just snapping shut.

———

Avoiding Sebastian was becoming almost impossible; for as large as the castle was, it seemed like the two of you kept running into each other at every turn. Defense class was honestly the easiest place to avoid him, surprisingly; after the incident at the beginning of the year, Professor Hecat knew better than to pair you together. He sat close to the back every week, an opposing position to your front row seat. Outside of the classroom was an entirely different story. In the Great Hall, you would always be within eyeshot of him, and whenever Ominis would stop by your table to chat, you could feel his gaze on you from across the room.

“—I just don’t know how I’ll manage to keep up with it. I still have three essays for Magical Theory, Charms, and Arithmancy, how can I possibly find time to write another for History of Magic?” Ominis ran a hand down his pale face. Sixth year was giving everyone a run for their money; you had never seen Ominis this frazzled about school before. As he continued to whine, you glanced up from your lunch to see Sebastian sitting at the far table, staring directly at you with an expression that could only be describe as longing. Holding his eyes for the briefest of moments, his attention was quickly torn away by the arrival of Imelda, who flopped down on the bench rather dramatically. Her scowl was prominent, and you silently thought about what trivial occurrence had set her off this time. The contents of your lunch threatened to expel themselves as you watched Sebastian throw a protective arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to begin a vicious assault on her mouth. The call of your name snapped your attention from the gruesome display of affection.

“—are you even listening to me?” Ominis whined, face contorted with mild annoyance.

You hummed, the display you just witnessed seemingly burned into your eyes, “Yes, sorry, Ominis. I’m just…”

“Distracted?” His voice was laden with accusation as his eyes drifted over towards the Slytherin table. Your eyes refused to follow, knowing exactly what scene they’d be met with.

“Yes…there’s a lot on my mind between school, and quidditch, and—”

“—and our old friend, Mr. Sallow?” Ominis remained fixated on his house table, voice monotonous as if he were stating a well-known fact.

You choked audibly, eyes about to leave your skull as Ominis’ face remained stoic.

“He asked about you the other day, you know.”

The sentence knocked the wind out of you.

“…o-oh?” Your stumbling voice was a traitor, “and what did he want, exactly?”

“To know how you were.”

A volatile swirl of emotions happened simultaneously. As your heart did somersaults in your chest cavity at the thought of Sebastian giving even one iota of a damn about your wellbeing, the deep rooted hurt and anger from his actions began to courses through your veins like poison; threatening to consume the delicate fluttering between your ribs.

“…and what did you tell him?” The question came out as a barely audible whisper, the hurricane still raging inside of your body, each emotion vying for control.

Ominis slowly panned back to your pained expression, “I told him to ask you himself.”

———

Last winter was brutal, but this years was shaping up to be even worse. The castle grounds had been perpetually blanketed in heavy snow for almost two months straight, so much that you had frankly forgotten what grass looked like. On top of that, the wind whipped violently across the lawns and swirled around the courtyards, making it almost impossible to be outside between classes. The majority of the time you were comfortably resigned to lounging in the Hufflepuff Common Room, the warmth and coziness of the underground burrow breathing some much needed life back into your bones. You and Ominis had begun swapping books as entertainment; once the two of you had completed your respective novels, you’d switch them in-between classes or drop them off at breakfast. Sometimes Ominis would write little notes and stick them in the pages of chapters he found very interesting, so you began to copy the sentiment, making notes in the margins on lines that particularly moved you. Afterwards, deep discussions would be had in the Undercroft about each story, coming up with theories and breaking down each plot point. It had become a hobby you truly enjoyed, and it brought the both of you even closer together.

Ominis had been on a big muggle literature kick lately, opting for recommending ancient greek texts for this cycle of book-swapping. He dropped off a small, leather-bound copy of The Odyssey one morning at breakfast, raving on and on about how much he enjoyed it and being extremely anxious upon hearing your thoughts once finished. His excitement had you beaming, genuinely for once, a smile that made your cheeks hurt slightly. You hadn’t felt that since…well, since last year.

The anniversary of the Battle of the Repository was approaching, something that refused to leave the forefront of your mind. The book-swap with Ominis had been helping slightly, giving you at least a slight reprieve while reading about far away places and fantastic adventures, but you couldn’t stay stuck in the pages forever, and the reminders would always creep back quickly.

Double Potions that morning led into a free afternoon (thank Merlin, you could only take so much of Garreth Weasley in one day), meaning that the rest of the day could be spent curled up by the fire in your common room reading without distractions. The thought of the gentle heat warming your frozen body is what got you through the dreary hours-long dungeon class (the lack of feeling in your toes stealing most of your attention, allowing you to completely shut Garreth’s incessant talking out). At Professor Sharp’s grunt of dismissal, you practically flew from the dungeon, taking the steps two at a time back up to your warm, golden oasis.

The best couch was unoccupied as you walked through the wooden tunnel, tossing your bag onto the rug and flopping down amongst the floral embroidered cushions. You stretch your feet out towards the fire, feeling the blood begin to flow back to your soles and wiggling each toe inside your boots.

The spine of The Odyssey cracked as you pried it open, relishing in the feeling of the parchment on your fingertips. As you worked your way through, a small piece of parchment slid out from the back of the book, landing directly into your lap. A small note was scrawled onto the torn paper, and you instantly recognized Ominis’ posh handwriting (the way he flourished the last letter of each word was a dead giveaway).

Meet me in the Undercroft after curfew tonight.

Tonight? There’s no way you’d be able to finish this book by tonight, it was already almost—shit, it was almost dinner. Sighing, you began to tear through the pages, deciding to skip dinner entirely in lieu of attempting to finish by this evening. You’d just pop by the kitchens on the way to the Undercroft, Ominis was always welcoming of midnight snacks anyway.

The clock in the common room chimed at 10pm, signaling that curfew had officially begun. After a quick pit-stop in the kitchens (you grabbed Ominis and extra dessert hoping it would make him less annoyed that you hadn’t been able to finish his book that day), you snuck silently towards the Defense Tower.

The gate to the Undercroft groaned as you lifted it, stepping through and looking around the dim area for any signs of life.

“Ominis?” You call into the room, “I’m sorry—I really tried to finish but I ran out of—“

A shuffling in the corner caught your attention. Ominis never remembered to light the torches if he got there first, something you really needed to remind him of.

“Incendio,” you ignited one of the braziers by a nearby pillar, illuminating Sebastian’s face.

“What’re you doing here?” Your voice was accusatory as you gripped onto your book.

“Me?” His brows raised incredulously, “Need I remind you, this was my secret first. If anything, I should be asking why you’re here.”

Prick.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m supposed to be meeting Ominis.”

Sebastian hummed in acknowledgement, “I don’t think he’ll be making it.”

A pit of fear began to form in your gut, an unintentional mechanism put in place after everything that happened last year.

“What’re you talking about? Is he okay?!” Your voice began to raise as panic shot through every cell in your being.

He raised his hands in a calming manner, “He’s fine, last I saw he was heading up to bed.”

…What? Ominis knew you had a meeting tonight, he’s the one that bloody sent the invitation! You pulled out the torn piece of parchment from the pages of the book, examining the words again to see if maybe you had misread it.

Sebastian chuckled darkly from across the room, “Impressive, isn’t it? I think I’m getting rather good at imitation charms.”

Your eyes slowly raised to his smug face, “…you? You wrote this? Why—“

“I—wanted to talk to you,” his voice faltered slightly.

Your eyes widened, “Now you want to talk? It’s been months, Sebastian…”

The blood in your veins was beginning to heat up, all of the anger that had been building since last winter coming back to the surface.

He sighed, “How are you?”

The cackle that left your mouth was accidental, “How am I? Is that a joke? You’re joking, right?”

He sat stone-faced as you raised both eyebrows at him incredulously.

“You’re unbelievable…” you grumbled, turning towards the gate to leave.

“Wait!” He rushed forward grabbed your wrist. The touch sent electric shocks through your arm.

“Please—I—I’m sorry,” His voice was low, eyes pleading with you to stay, “I just, don’t know what to say.”

“An apology would be a fantastic place to start,” you retorted rather rudely, earning a sideways glance from him.

“I’m trying—”

“—No you’re not.”

“Well, maybe if you let me get a word in—“

“—go ahead then, tell me what you’re ‘trying’ to apologize for,” you crossed your arms over your chest.

Sebastian backed up slightly, “…Everything. I’m sorry for dragging you into this, I’m sorry you had to see me at my worst—“

“—at your worst? Sebastian, I lied for you, shit—I cast unforgivables for you. I convinced Ominis to keep everything a secret so you wouldn’t be sent to Azkaban. And what did you do? You disappeared—“

“—I know, I’m sorr—“

“No!” Your voice was growing louder as you felt the tears start forming again, “You don’t get it! We went through hell together, I fought beside you while you took advantage of me and my powers. You used me, Sebastian…you used me and threw me away when you saw nothing left to gain…”

“Is…is that really what you think?” He whispered, eyes full of a sad desperation that you couldn’t place.

You sniffle, avoiding his gaze altogether, “I needed you. After Ranrok…after losing Professor Fig…I was so alone. All I wanted was to see you, to talk to the one person I loved the most.”

You watched as Sebastian’s eyes glassed over.

“I couldn’t face you, not after everything you saw, everything that I put you through. That day in the Scriptorium, when I—“ His voice cracked, wet eyes glancing up at the ceiling,”—when I cast crucio on you, I thought I’d lost you. I had promised myself to never hurt you again after that night, and I…I failed. I failed myself, and most importantly, I failed you. I didn’t use you for your powers…I needed you beside me because you’re—you’re the only person besides Anne that I can’t live without.”

He drew closer, his soft freckles becoming more defined as he inched forward. Your breath hitched as he grabbed your wrist again softy, tracing down until his calloused fingers intertwined with yours. It was intoxicating.

“…I’ve missed you,” he whispered.

As you met his eyes, he closed the remaining space, crashing his lips to yours. All of the tension and emotions from the past year surged through your body, pushing against him as he wrapped an arm around your waist. Mouths moving in perfect tandem, he kissed you with a soft, longing passion that stole the breath from your lungs. He began to trail down your jawline, pressing delicate marks into your skin that threatened to burn you alive.

“What about Imelda?” You exhaled, his deft fingers gripping onto your backside as he wedged a knee between your legs.

You felt him smirk into your neck.

“…who?” He whispered into your ear before pushing you against the cold stone of the Undercroft, the devilish grin still evident as his lips found their home against yours.

#sebastian sallow x you #sebastian sallow fic #sebastian sallow imagine #sebastian sallow x mc #ominis gaunt #hogwarts legacy fanfic #hogwarts legacy fic #Sebastian Sallow angst #Sebastian Sallow fluff #Sebastian Sallow smut #sebastian sallow x reader #sebastian sallow fanfiction

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osunism · 6 days ago

Text

Daughter of Disgrace

"Is there any place where Heaven's bastard daughters are welcome?"

🔞 Rating: Explicit [MDNI] ❤️‍🔥 Pairing[s]: Satoru + Sundari || Nadja + Sukuna ⚠️ Warning[s]: Explicit sexual situations, graphic depictions of violence, major character death[s], as well as some toxic relationship elements. Spoilers for the manga. Sukuna is his own warning but there is cannibalism, abuse, body horror, and mild torture in this fic. So canon-typical violence. 🪧 Summary: In the aftermath of Satoru Gojo's sealing, Sundari must choose rebellion in order to free him. Lucky for them both, rebellion has always been her preferred modus operandi. 🎧 [ godslayer principle ] -- Sundari's Playlist

⚠️ Be Advised: This is the sequel to Beast of No Nation. It's recommended that you read that fic first to get the context of this one.

⛩️ AO3 𑁍 FFN 𑁍 Fic Masterlist 𑁍 Parallax OCs 𑁍 Sonder OCs 𑁍 HCs & Meta ⛩️

𓃰 Chapter 12: In Every Lifetime

"An ending, a beginning, an ending, and a beginning. And so it goes; round and round; the great Wheel ever-spinning. The harmony of death and rebirth; sin and salvation; sacred and profane; poison and cure; disgrace and redemption; curse and blessing.The universe is a series of cycles; the most perfect math there is.

Who says our story must end here, my love?"

We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. —Albert Camus

Yuji cups Sukuna’s remnants in his palm. A miasma of crimson smoke swirls above them. Two crimson eyes glare back at him, and half the remains of a mouth sneer in hatred. Yuji seems unbothered by even this last vestige of vitriol his uncle bears for him. In Sundari’s inverted domain, what they have come to understand is not divine mandate, but a Heavenly Summons, their souls are briefly connected, their memories bleeding into one another’s. For a brief instant, they are alive and dead all at once, and Sukuna sees the simplicity of Yuji’s life unfold before his mind’s eye, painful and warm and filled with all the things his own life lacked.

He sees his daughter’s ancient origins, from her birth amidst a clan of strong warrior women, to her ascension as a deified sorceress, protector of women and children, to her sealing after the terrible curse—his curse—finally found its fangs at the throats of the innocent; the painful fracturing of everything she was, the loss of all she knew. He sees too, the life she created for herself, a new version of her, still capable of strong, and ignorant of the cursed markings that give everyone pause. He sees memories of her dying her pink hair to jet black, a cloud of curls just like her damnable, beautiful, self-sacrificing mother. But, Sukuna notes with pride, Sundari’s face is all his: pride, insolence, and confidence in unfathomable spades.

Sundari and Yuji see Sukuna’s soul, fractured and made whole repeatedly over centuries, and the whole cursed story of him unravels itself in their minds, including Kenjaku’s scheme that led to Yuji’s conception. They see all his deeds laid bare, and they see his story with Nadja unravel: love and loss, over and over again, and his determination to find her across the centuries. They feel the terrible emptiness of his unanswered question: why did you leave me? Worst of all, they see Sukuna before he became the force of reckoning he is now. They see the coiled, frightened child with too many arms, eyes, and mouths, and too much power to be controlled. For all of his life, others have sought to control him, and Sukuna has never accepted anyone’s yoke.

At the core, they understand the hunger in him. Ravenous and all-consuming. Insatiable.

This is what happens when two domains do not clash…but overlap, two souls vying not for dominance, but harmony.

Yuji and Sundari’s souls hum on a similar frequency, a sustained note across time and space, heard and felt throughout Heaven and Earth.

“Sukuna,” Yuji’s voice sounds the way a gentle summer breeze feels, and two crimson eyes glare up at him, glittering with malice…and fear. Mortality has never pressed so closely to the King of Curses in all his days.

“Let’s try this again,” Yuji says, and there is a compassion in his tone that cuts deeper than any slash Sukuna has thrown.

“Let’s try living with each other, not to curse one another…”

Sukuna feels the curse in his guts, squirming and wriggling and burning.

“Even if no one accepts you…”

Stop it, brat. Stop it.

“I can live with you.”

Sundari is poised for the kill, but Yuji’s words give her pause and she regards him curiously. Even after all her father has done, all he has sought to do, Yuji still seeks to offer him the benediction of mercy? Sundari knows she should be angry—at the very least, offended—but she cannot find it in her heart to care. She feels scraped and raw and exhausted. She wants to end this cycle, to strip away her father’s curse and free the world of the burden that is him.

But she’s seen his memories, she’s seen what he was, and what he was forced to become.

“Don’t you dare try and play the compassionate card now, brat,” Sukuna sneers. “I am a curse, and you’d do well not to underestimate me.”

“You aren’t a curse, dad,” Sundari says, weariness coloring her voice, blood dripping from her nose. She doesn’t know how much longer she and Yuji can sustain this connection. “Just…you can literally try again. Maybe Yuji’s right: maybe there’s another way. Another path. Anything but more of…this.”

Sukuna’s gaze roils towards his daughter, taking in her appearance. The markings that once limned black into her brown skin are faded, almost more like birthmarks than tattoos. No matter what boon she has won from Heaven, she will bear his markings for all her days. That is how powerful his curse is.

You aren’t a curse.

I’m not a curse. I am cursed.

The realization reverberates through their shared connection, and all at once he gasps.

Sundari and Yuji are suddenly gone, as is the divine presence that had united them. He stands alone in the darkness, but the presence in the void is familiar. He’s been here before.

“Well, well, well,” a voice drawls, drawing his gaze downward. “Didn’t expect to ever see you here, of all people.”

Gojo Estate, Kyoto, December 30, 2018

In the aftermath, Sundari dreams. For once, she is uncertain if what she sees is memory or fabrication, but she pays attention. The visions are disjointed, always in media res as dreams are prone to being, but the recurring symbols and themes are there, and she does recognize some bits of her own memories in the patchwork film reel.

Sundari dreams, and Megumi stands in the darkness Sukuna has left behind, overcome by the sudden silence. He is once again alone with his own thoughts.

But everything is so fuzzy around the edges. His thoughts move with the ponderous, amorphous pace of a lava lamp’s contents, and somehow always just out of his reach. It takes him hours to figure out how to formulate his thoughts into the obvious conclusion: Unlimited Void. This is the ill effect of surviving five waves of Unlimited Void. His thoughts are disjointed and fractured, out of sync and hard to catch.

Ironically, he understands Gojo now more than ever.

His eyes open, and he hears himself gasp, fills his lungs with air, breathes of his own volition for the first time in weeks.

Sukuna is really gone, but Megumi can feel something knotted in his soul; furrows, like a claw marks. The separation should have killed him, but Sundari had a barrier active to protect him from sharing Sukuna’s fate.

Megumi hears himself panting as his thoughts come in a sudden rush, then stretch out again at that damnable pace.

“Fushiguro!” Yuji’s voice shatters the silence, and he sits up suddenly, startled all the way back into his body. His eyes take in the sight of Yuji, clad in his uniform, posing with a box.

Out of the box springs Nobara Kugisaki. Megumi’s eyes go wide. His mouth works but no words come. Kugisaki, sporting a black eyepatch embroidered with a hammer, nails, and rose crest, grins in triumph.

“Sorry I missed the party!” She boasts. “I was getting some much-needed beauty sleep! I heard it was a woman who saved the day!”

Yuji rolls his eyes. “Well, she’s my cousin…technically. Kind of.”

“Okay…are you ever…gonna explain that?” Megumi asks, frustrated with how slow his thought-to-speech reflexes have become. He imagines Gojo is having a good laugh at his expense about this. Megumi gets annoyed at the very thought.

“Look who finally decided to join the land of the living!” Gojo’s voice shatters the quiet, and Megumi becomes annoyed for real. But he’s also relieved to see his sensei alive and well. Gojo is grinning, sporting new scars to match Yuji’s own. Megumi touches his face, is relieved to not feel Sukuna’s features swimming under his skin like a parasite. He can feel the rugged scar tissue where Sukuna’s face had overlain his own. It will be some time before he can look in a mirror comfortably again. He catches Yuji’s gaze, and the boy’s brown eyes are soft with sympathy. If no one else understands, Yuji understands what it is like to be ridden by the curse that is—was—Sukuna.

Over the next few hours, Gojo and Yuji piece together the entire tale of mounting his rescue, from the moment he was taken, to when Sundari freed Gojo, to the final battle. Megumi remembers Nadja’s unexpected sacrifice in more ways than the others, and he looks away at the mention of her name. He had been present for Sukuna’s reunion with her, had born witness to their…relationship. He isn’t sure if Sukuna knew he was aware or if he simply did not care. He isn’t sure how he feels about it, only that he cannot find it in himself to hate Nadja for it. Whatever else there was, love had existed between those two, twisted as it was. And in the end, she’d chosen to save the person who could stop him.

Megumi wonders if Gojo was right about love being the most twisted curse. In the end, it had claimed Nadja and Sukuna both. He looks at Yuji again, wonders if…

“Where is Hikmat-san?” He asks. At the mention of Sundari, Yuji and Gojo exchange glances.

“She’s not awake yet,” Yuji says sadly. “After she dismissed her domain, she collapsed. Gojo-sensei brought her back here with you.”

Megumi looks down at his hands. He remembers being present when Sundari came back for Nadja’s remains. He remembers feeling Sukuna’s uncertainty. His fear. He was afraid of losing everything, including his life. But seeing his own daughter vowing to kill him had broken something in him. Megumi owes her a debt he can never hope to repay, but Sukuna has taken someone he loves as well.

“She’s going to be in recovery a while,” Gojo says in that easy way of his, as if he doesn’t doubt Sundari will be up and about in no time. “But she’ll bounce back. I know my girl.”

“Your girl, sensei?” Nobara asks, waggling her eyebrows. Gojo spreads his hands and sticks out his tongue.

“Yeah, and if I can convince her, she’ll be your sensei too when you bunch officially become third years.”

Yuji and Nobara look excited, their eyes sparkling. Megumi looks somewhat suspicious. He has a feeling there’s more to it than Gojo lets on, but he withholds his suspicions if only because his mind is still fuzzy, like moss has grown over the parts of his brain that are normally so quick to connect the dots. How long will this go on for, he wonders. He supposes he should count himself lucky this is the worst of the side effects.

He should be dead, after all.

Megumi is strong enough to walk on his own, and he dresses while Yuji and Nobara fill the emptiness with mindless chatter and Gojo looks on with a secretive smile, his eyes blindfolded once more. For a moment, it feels like old times. Megumi looks around for a calendar or clock. His phone’s been lost since Sukuna stole his body.

“How long has it been? Since everything happened?” Megumi asks. Gojo grins in a way that makes Megumi regret asking the question just as Nobara answers: “You missed Christmas!”

Yuji frowns and glares at Nobara. “So did you!”

Immediately, she and Yuji break into an argument about whether or not missing Christmas was more important than saving the world. Gojo’s grin softens into a fond smile, and whatever mischief he had planned for his own response is withheld for now.

Megumi does not get an answer to his question either way, and sighs.

By now, he has deduced that they are on the ancestral Gojo Estate, a place he hasn’t been to since he was a small boy still learning to harness his technique. Being trained by Gojo Satoru’s own tutors before matriculating to Jujutsu Tech had made him intimately familiar with the grounds.

He knows where to go, following Sundari’s cursed energy to another room. His classmates trail after him, still bickering, and Gojo walks behind them at a leisurely, long-legged pace.

It’s just like old times, it’s nothing like old times.

Megumi resists the urge to roll his eyes because of course Gojo put Sundari up in his old bedroom. She looked so exhausted, even in her comatose state. Megumi can’t help the stab of guilt that twists in his guts. Yuji places a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, understanding as always. Megumi’s jaw tenses but he can’t ignore how comforting it is to have Yuji touch him again after having Sukuna put them at odds. “She’s gonna wake up soon.”

“Yeah,” Nobara says. “She can’t miss New Year’s!”

“What is it with you and holidays?” Yuji asks irritably. Nobara places her hands on her hips, fixing him with a stare.

“These are important milestones, and it makes sense that the woman who saved your sorry asses would be there to celebrate with us.”

Yuji wants to retort that none of that makes any sense and that it was a team effort that took down Sukuna, but Gojo is brushing past them because Sundari is waking up. They hear her groan tiredly—irritably—before she’s moving.

“Fuck me,” are the first words of the woman who saved the day. Nobara suppresses a snort of laughter, Megumi’s brows go up, and Yuji’s eyes go wide. Only Gojo seems unphased by Sundari’s choice of words.

“Morning, beautiful,” he says to her, and she squints up at him with all four of her eyes. Her pink curls are disheveled, sticking up in all directions, her skin is dry and a little sallow, and there are shadows under her eyes Megumi’s shikigami could hide in.

Satoru has never found her more beautiful because she’s still here. Alive.

“What fuckin’ year is it?” Sundari asks, rubbing her face with both hands and yawning. It’s only when she uncovers her face that she notices the trio of students crowding the doorway.

“Oh,” she says. “Sorry. Uh…come on in, kids!” She glares at Satoru, who is grinning. “What the fuck, man?” She mouths and he blows a kiss in response. Sundari does her best to fix her face as Yuji and Megumi join her. She takes a look at Megumi’s face, notes the scars in the places where her father’s face once was. He’ll bear those scars for all his days. She looks down at her hands, notes the scars of innumerable slash marks, like macabre tiger stripes. Also a mark from her father.

The tattoos are still there, black again, no longer faded. Whatever else she got from the boon she demanded, Heaven still sees fit to remind her of her origins. No matter, she will carry the scars and the ink with pride. Let the world see how Sukuna’s daughter treats with sorcerers.

You can prove them wrong.

Sundari looks at Yuji, who smiles at her, but there’s a blush in his cheeks that wasn’t there before.

Cousins. She wants to laugh. What the fuck was Kenjaku’s problem? Ah well, at least she can say she’s got some semblance of family left to her. Yuji isn’t so bad, after all.

“So,” she says. “I’d like to formally apologize for my dad being such a dick. Uh…Yuji, you’re still gross for just eating his Finger like that, but sorry for everything that came after. On the plus side, I got my memories and powers back. On the other plus side, my dad’s dead! Satoru, I’m starving…is there pizza?”

Satoru laughs despite himself. “Whatever you want, babe. I think Shoko’s going to be by later for a physical.”

Sundari swings her legs out of the bed and stands. She feels a slight rush that makes her momentarily lightheaded, and feels Satoru’s strong grip on her arm, steadying her. She meets his gaze, and they share a smile.

Nobara gags.

“I cannot believe Gojo-sensei got a girlfriend before I got a boyfriend,” she grouses. Yuji glares at her.

“How is that hard to believe? I had to watch you get your literal brains blown out!”

Nobara grins, her remaining eye glimmering. “I know. Wasn’t it fucking cool?”

Yuji makes a face. “It was horrifying! I thought you were dead!”

“As if some punk ass cursed spirit could drop me! I’m the Girl of Steel!”

The bickering begins anew, and Megumi lets out a long-suffering sigh. Sundari decides she likes Nobara immediately. Maybe she’ll consider Satoru’s not-so-subtle requests that she look into teaching.

“Gojo-sensei,” Megumi says. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?”

Satoru presses a kiss to Sundari’s temple, giving her a gentle squeeze before excusing himself to the hall with Megumi. Satoru knows there’s a few things he owes to Megumi, but he’s surprised when the door shuts and Megumi immediately throws his arms around Satoru.

It startles both of them.

Satoru’s arms come up and he places them around Megumi with a gentle smile. Neither one of them question the moisture soaking his jacket as Megumi simply clings to him.

“I’m sorry, Megumi,” Satoru says, and means it. “When I took you in all those years ago, this wasn’t what I envisioned for you. I should have prepared you better, but none of us could have—”

“It’s fine,” Megumi mumbles, taking a deep, shuddering breath. It’s not fine. Not right now. It probably won’t be for some time. “I just…I thought I was going to lose everything I ever cared about. When he…”

There’s a lot.

Satoru pulls Megumi back to look at him.

“Do you want to talk about it right now? Are you ready to?” He asks, none of the usual playfulness in his voice. Megumi swallows, wipes his face hastily.

“No,” he says softly. “Not right now. It’s too…fresh. My thoughts are still jumbled. I just needed to see that you’re real is all. I thought…when Sukuna figured out how to bypass infinity…”

Satoru’s brows go up in surprise, a piece of the puzzle clicking into place. So that was why Nadja had intervened. She knew what Sukuna was using the Ten Shadows for. Satoru frowns. Why hadn’t she warned him ahead of time? Likely she counted on Sukuna wanting to counter her in the event of her betrayal. She had been playing against him, and Satoru had just been another piece on the board. No one had counted on her sacrificing her life to save Satoru. He remembers Sukuna’s shocked expression as Nadja countered his World Cutting Slash with her Executioner Blade. He remembers it shattering in her hands and seeing Sukuna’s technique broken in two. He’ll never forget that as long as he lives.

He wishes he could commend her. He decided he will tell Sundari where Sukuna’s half of Nadja’s ashes are kept, since her own urn was destroyed in the final battle.

“I’m the Strongest, remember?” He assures Megumi with a grin. Megumi doesn’t look convinced, and Satoru is worried about the state of his ward’s mind. He makes a note to hold Megumi back from missions until he’s been fully evaluated. And to ask if he still wants to be a sorcerer at all given all that has happened to him.

“Why did you take me in…all those years ago?” Megumi asks. “Was it because of my technique?”

Satoru hesitates. He’s been bracing himself for this conversation for a long time, but he hadn’t expected to survive his encounter with Sukuna. He’d had a letter prepared in case anything happened to him! Now he has to actually tell the whole gory story.

Damnit, Nadja.

“Well,” Satoru says. “It was your father’s dying wish, actually.”

Megumi’s eyes go wide. “What?”

Satoru chuckles, rubbing the back of his head. “It’s a funny story, in retrospect. A little ironic, really. Like I didn’t even know he had a kid, and then when I saw you it was like—well of course his kid would have fucking Ten Shadows, right?”

“Gojo! You’re rambling. What do you mean it was my father’s dying wish? You knew him?”

Satoru sighs. “Briefly, and it wasn’t a happy acquaintance. He tried to kill me, actually. Almost succeeded too. Look, one of these days I’m gonna sit you down and tell you the whole ugly story, and then you can summon Mahoraga or something and we can have it out, if you want.”

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

The words are like a guillotine blade, cutting all the life out of the small space between them. Satoru blinks, takes a deep breath, and slowly reanimates on his next exhale.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I did. His final words were for me to keep you from being sold to the Zenins. From my understanding your dad was a gambling man, and his final bet was on you, Megumi.”

Megumi stares at Satoru, his expression caught in a crossroads of too many things to name. For much of his life, he assumed his father had simply sold him off and had been living a charmed life off the money these last few years. For much of his life, Gojo Satoru allowed him to believe this.

“I tried to tell you when we met,” Satoru says, as if reading his thoughts. “But you said you didn’t care to know what your dad was up to; I can respect that, and you’ve always known your own mind. I figured if you ever changed your mind, you’d ask. I admit my delivery of the news wasn’t the best. This isn’t much better. But the bottom line is he believed in you, Megumi. It’s the one thing he and I have in common.”

Megumi’s throat bobs in a heavy swallow, and he looks away.

“And then I got my entire body hijacked by Sukuna, killed my sister—”

“You didn’t kill her,” Satoru says sternly, eyes flashing like blue fire. “Sukuna killed her, and he did it deliberately to hurt you. That death is not on you.”

“You don’t know that!” Megumi says. “How could anyone know that?”

Satoru snorts. “Actually, there’s one guy I can say who does know that. His whole technique revolves around shit like this, actually.”

Megumi’s brow furrows and he makes the connection in his mind.

“Higuruma-sama? Yeah…he trapped Yuji in his domain once. Put him on trial.”

Satoru grins. “That’s him! He agreed to work as a sorcerer without question. He’s absolutely batshit, perfect for the job. Anyway, if you ever wanna know what you’re actually guilty of, just ask him to pull you into his domain. But be careful, if you’re guilty of something really bad, he’ll be obligated to kill you.”

“What? Why would you tell me that?”

Satoru rolls his eyes. “Because you’re blaming yourself for shit that wasn’t your fault, Megumi. And since you won’t believe me—your gorgeous, twice-blessed sensei—when I tell you you’re good, then I guess we can see if Higuruma has to, you know…” Satoru makes a quick slicing motion across his neck. Megumi stares at him impassively.

“Never mind,” Satoru says. “You aren’t…you’re taking this remarkably well.”

Megumi’s gaze is distant, as if he’s looking into the past and a soft smile crosses his face.

Hey kid…what’s your name?

Fushiguro.

Not Zenin? I’m so glad.

“What?” Satoru asks. “Don’t keep me in suspense, kid.”

Megumi blinks like a waking dreamer and meets Satoru’s gaze.

“Nothing, just remembering something from Shibuya, is all.” he says with a secretive smile. Satoru smiles back. He knows all about nothing. Satoru’s smile fades in the next instant, however.

“Wait, why Shibuya? Megumi, I can’t even mention Shibuya without three sorcerers cowering in a corner in tears over it. Why are you smiling about that?”

Over the next several weeks, they piece together the massive puzzle of chaos left in the wake of Sukuna’s devastation, and Kenjaku’s schemes. Sundari learns from the memories she and Yuji shared with Sukuna that Sukuna devoured Tengen whole and absorbed her into himself. As a result, his remains must be preserved in order to maintain the barriers Tengen has been strengthening and maintaining for countless centuries.

Sundari also knows that Tengen is partially responsible for what Sukuna became. She and Yuji discuss it in private, agreeing to only share the knowledge they’ve gleaned from Sukuna’s memories with Satoru. It means a major power imbalance in favor of the Gojo Clan, but better them than Kamo. There’s also the dilemma of Choso, who bears the Kamo clan’s hereditary technique, but being what he is, will never ever be formally recognized by the clan. Yuji and Sundari take Choso in without question. The Kamo Clan raises no fuss about it, so long as the abomination of their clan’s shame makes no claims for power. Choso himself has no interest in clan politics, preferring to remain with his younger brother, Yuji, who continues his training in the art of Blood Manipulation in earnest.

Sundari decides she will unpack the strangeness of their family tree at a later date. That Yuji hasn’t freaked out about a single reveal is a testament to his steely nerves, but Sundari thinks it’s because Yuji prefers a more simplistic view on his life and doesn’t overthink the minutiae. Sundari, however, has a millennium of experience under her belt and still nothing has floored her quite like the revelation of her father’s side of the family. Yeah, Sundari tucks that away for later…maybe they’ll recruit a jujutsu therapist they can all talk to one day.

Aside, there is still the matter of the higher ups being decimated. No one knows who is responsible, and yet there can be no other answer. But who will dare come forward to accuse the Honored One, who is responsible for Sukuna’s defeat and helping return balance back to jujutsu society?

Sundari has to commend Satoru for his political cunning. He’s consolidated enough power to execute his dream bloodlessly, but that still leaves the problem of jujutsu sorcerers being short staffed year-round.

There are still curse users out there, and a missing armory from the Zenin Estate that no doubt is finding its way to the black market for exorbitant prices. The work of a sorcerer is unending, and Sundari joins Satoru on his investigations and missions, acclimating to life as a modern-day powerhouse, feared, scorned, and respected all at once.

So it goes, round and round.

Time seemed to slip through their fingers like water. The work of fixing Tokyo, of chasing curses new and old, of rebuilding the parts of Tokyo ruined by Sukuna alone…it is exhausting, and it is bitter. But it must get done. Even Nanami, injured as he is, finds a way to contribute in other ways, lending his expertise to the less experienced sorcerers, ensuring they have what it takes to survive in a field as chaotic as this one.

Little by little, jujutsu society finds a way to limp back to life.

And Satoru finally does the one thing he has been wanting to do since before this whole mess began: he buries Suguru.

Once, he might have seen to this task alone, but he calls Shoko, tells her his intentions, and she meets him at the chosen location without any questions asked.

Watching Suguru’s pyre burn feels like he is burning an old version of himself. Satoru cannot quantify what this moment will mean when he looks back on it later on in his life, when the grievous wounds have finally been balmed to oily scar tissue. He just knows that the version of him that loved a version of Suguru that died long before his body, no longer exists. As Suguru’s remains burn, and he and Shoko pick the bones from the ashes and place the ashes in an urn, Satoru lets himself weep for the first time.

Shoko watches the strongest sorcerer alive curl up and weep, and she takes him in her arms and lets him. Satoru weeps for all that he has lost, all that was denied him, and all that Suguru could never become because his Six Eyes couldn’t tell him what was wrong before it was too late. He weeps and mourns at last—at long last—and purges his heart of everything. Suguru should have been here. This dream was because of him, and he should have been here. But Satoru knows he must let that regret go too, if he wants to succeed at all, he has to let it go. And after a while, the tears run dry, and his body feels soft and pliant in Shoko’s embrace. He sees the silent trail of tears down her cheeks and knows that they both needed to be here for this.

It feels like a chapter being closed for both of them, and an unspoken apology for their own culpability in the wounds both of them bear from it.

But there is no more room for guilt and self-flagellation.

Satoru gives himself three days of quiet reflection in the aftermath, running the gamut of grief in all its ugliness and beauty and catharsis, and then he returns to the searing present. He returns to the realization of his dream.

He finds his phone, sends a text to Sundari.

Satoru resists the urge to point out the joke about too many appendages and organs, considering Sundari’s appearance. If he intends to get any affection tonight, he must behave. He still laughs, though.

Satoru smiles to himself at her reply. It’s sweet of her, really, to give him space to grieve. Still, funnel cake sounds good, and he misses her. With everything returning to some semblance of normalcy, Sundari returned to her apartment, which didn’t surprise him in the least that it’s in Ginza. He makes a note to tease her about it later. Apparently, Nadja left everything to Sundari in her living will should anything happen to her. Satoru finds that ironic, as well. Still, it’s left Sundari nearly as wealthy—if not wealthier—than he is.

Satoru considers it. He likes her apartment. It’s a quaint, earthy place with a vibe that reminds him of a rainforest in the middle of the city. Sundari keeps so much green, growing stuff in her home that the very air feels different.

Satoru can already hear Sundari’s laughter in his head.

Satoru is glad no one is around to hear his veritable squeal of glee. He needs to tell Nanami to get a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever he’s into. Having one is actually amazing. He wastes no time, packing a bag and taking a cab to Sundari’s mid-rise apartment building. It’s an older building in a more solid style, and far more spacious than newer buildings tend to be. Satoru can make out her balcony, crawling with pothos and wisteria. Smirking and glancing around, he teleports into the air, floating over her balcony railing. Sundari just happens to be walking by when she spots him. Satoru grins when he sees her four eyes go wide, and she lets out a startled shriek before calming down to let him in.

“What is your fucking problem?” She demands, but there’s no heat in her tone. Satoru closes the distance between them, wrapping her in his embrace and kissing her soundly.

Sundari forgets his unorthodox entrance in favor of the kissing. By the time Satoru pulls away, his cheeks and hers are flushed, both of them heavy-lidded and half-drunk from the contact.

“Oh,” Sundari sighs, a drunken smile slipping onto her face before she lets out an involuntary giggle. Satoru grins. It pleases him that he can fluster her and make her soft when the rest of the world must experience her so harshly.

“You hungry?” Sundari asks. “I can order something or cook.”

“I came here to eat you,” Satoru says easily as he removes his shoes before entering the apartment proper. Sundari glances at him with a smirk over her shoulder. She doesn’t fluster from his declaration, not after everything they’ve been through, and she doesn’t take his desire for granted.

“Is that why you’re here, pretty boy?” She asks in that tone that makes Satoru shiver and smile. Yes, he’s her pretty boy. He wants to be her pretty boy. Hers and hers alone.

“Yeah,” he says and without warning, he activates his technique. Sundari yelps as she’s suddenly drawn to him by an unseen force. Satoru catches her in his arms, and then he’s kissing her again, this time leaving his marks on her jawline and neck, breathing in deeply to imprint her scent on his very soul. Sundari makes small noises of pleasure, letting out a whimper when she feels the soft, wet muscle of his tongue trace patterns on her neck, tasting the salt of her skin.

“I missed you,” Satoru murmurs into her skin. “I’m so happy I found you.”

Sundari doesn’t know why her eyes suddenly sting with the threat of tears, and she has to catch her breath and blink several times.

“I missed you too, Toru,” she whispers, and then lifts his head to look at him, staring into the pieces of Heaven he calls his eyes. “And I’m happy you found me too. More than.”

It’s simple physics after that.

Satoru and Sundari make their way to the bedroom, stripping as they go. She loves getting him out of his teacher’s uniform at the end of the day, and Satoru loves undressing her in general. Sometimes what she wears leaves little to the imagination [which he appreciates], but tonight she’s clad in clothes for lounging: a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top that has clearly seen too many wash cycles. Satoru helps her out of all of it, until she’s bare and laying back against the pillows on her bed, looking like some goddess out of a myth.

As far as Satoru’s concerned, she might as well be. His goddess, at any rate. And he will pray to her in a way that only he can.

For a moment, they take one another in, blissfully naked. There’s no skylight above Sundari’s bed, but there is a lantern that throws mandala patterns against the walls, dancing through the leaves of her massive monstera that crawls across her ceiling, making everything look wild and erotic and dreamlike. Satoru reaches out, traces the cursed markings on her body: the concentric rings on her strong shoulders; the black bands on her arms, wrists, thighs, and ankles; the ones on her face; the ones on her chest, following the swell of her high and proud breasts. He grins when she gasps as his thumb and forefinger capture and roll a nipple between them. He watches her legs part a little, eager. His eyes drift down, catch the sight of the mandala pattern illuminating the slick on her inner thighs, dripping from her cunt.

His eyes travel back up to her face, framed by blush-pink curls. Four ruby eyes gaze back, guileless and expectant.

“You are so fucking beautiful, Sundari,” Satoru whispers reverently. “I could look at you forever.”

Sundari’s cheeks bloom with heat and she bites her lip, suddenly feeling bashful. She knows she is beautiful, but it makes her stomach go into freefall whenever Satoru tells her. Her heart flutters in her chest.

“You’re beautiful too,” she whispers, holding out a hand and beckoning him closer. Satoru goes to her, crawling between her spread legs, his cock hard and heavy between his thighs. Sundari’s hand lowers, her fingers wrapping around it and making Satoru hiss in surprise and then pleasure as she swipes her thumb over the head, smearing the droplets of his seed forming at the tip.

“My pretty boy,” she whispers, her voice husky with desire. Satoru leans in, makes a whining sound as she squeezes his cock and nips his glossy, pink lips. “Mine.”

“Yours,” Satoru says in a rush of breath as she strokes his cock with the tender firmness of one who knows he’s hers. It’s true, and his fingers curl into the sheets as he fights the pressure building in the base of his spine.

“Sundari…” Her name comes out as a strained and hoarse gasp. Sundari smiles at him knowingly, and he sees the tender cruelty in it.

“Yes, baby?” She asks, slowing her stroking. Satoru’s hips thrust involuntarily, seeking more of it. He wants to be inside of her—needs it, actually. He wants to envelop himself in the tight, wet confines of her cunt and never leave. He wants to fuck her until she dissolves like spun sugar in his mouth.

“Oh?” Sundari’s smile becomes a grin. “Is that what you want, pretty boy?”

Fuck. Had he said all that shit out loud?

Satoru is silent for a moment, his cock hard as stone in her hand. He’s not the strongest sorcerer for nothing.

“Yeah,” he says, his tone suddenly harder than before. “I do.”

The equation between them shifts as Sundari’s eyes light up in excitement and Satoru pounces on her before she can react to the shift in the air between them. They struggle for dominance, of course, mindful of their strength for the sake of the bed itself rather than one another. Satoru still thinks fondly of the crater left by their coupling in his yard.

This is different, though. There is no adrenaline from battle to fuel them: only the need and want for one another.

And love too.

Satoru is so sure this is love because he has tried being without her and he can’t.

Don’t leave me baby, I just found you.

Eventually, Satoru pins Sundari, grasping her legs to place over his shoulders. He pushes her legs back, exposing her cunt, which opens like a beautiful flower, petals glistening and dripping with dew for his mouth.

Satoru grins, his eyes glowing in the dim light, and spits directly into her pussy.

Sundari moans and writhes in response at the obscenity of it all, and then Satoru leans down and meets her dripping cunt in an open-mouthed kiss. He does as he said he would: he eats her. Satoru’s jaw will ache, his tongue will ache, but Sundari will be thoroughly and unerringly sated. He makes sure of it.

His lips wrap around her clit, sucking hard, moaning as if she is the best meal he’s had in ages. Sundari reaches for him, legs spread, and his hands find hers, linking their fingers while he gets lost in the slippery, wet heat of her, eyes closed in private bliss.

“Ngh…Satoru…” She moans and he makes an inquisitive sound, looking up at her through heavy-lidded cerulean eyes, glowing brighter than a galaxy’s heart. Sundari keeps moaning his name, dragging out the vowels and hissing out the consonants as he works her clit until tears spring to her eyes and she’s panting and flushed and quivering with the desperate need for release.

He pulls away just before she can come, and she lets out a frustrated sound.

“No,” he says, his voice hoarse; chin, cheeks, and lips glistening with her juices. “No, baby. I want you to come on my cock. I want to feel this pretty pussy squeezing me when you lose your mind.”

Sundari, so desperate to climax, nods and agrees. Satoru leans up, sitting back on his heels and dragging her by the hips into his lap, keeping her comfortably laying on the bed. His cock seems eager too, straining and hot against her went cunt. Satoru bites his lip before reaching down to grasp his cock in one fist, stroking himself before pushing the head inside of her. Just the tip.

“Satoru!” Sundari hisses, and her eyes flash dangerously even as he rewards her with a smug smirk, teasing her by sliding the head of his cock up and down her slit.

“Yeah?” He breathes. “Just testing the waters, baby, don’t worry.”

And then he slips inside of her, relishing the guttural moan that spirals up from her as he sinks down to the hilt inside of her. For a moment he holds her hips, and it very still. He looks down at where they’re joined, the soft white hairs of his pubes rubbing against her clit and making her shiver. He bites his lip again when he feels her walls constrict around him. He’d almost forgotten about her conscious muscle control. But he’s ready, this time.

“Mmm,” Satoru groans, tightening his grip on her thighs. “Ask nicely, Sundari.”

Four crimson eyes narrow at him, and he rewards her with a blade-ready smirk, eyes flashing like stars in the dusky twilight of her bedroom.

“You come into my home to make me beg?” She demands, moaning in frustration and indignation and pleasure alike as Satoru moves his hips just so, giving her just enough friction to make her pulse leap in her veins, but stopping just short of satisfaction. He can do this all damn night. He can do this until the world crumbles to dust.

“No,” Satoru says. “I came into your home to make you come, but I want you to ask me, Sundari. I want you to ask me to make you come.”

Sundari glares up at him and Satoru can’t help it: he laughs. She looks so much like Sukuna, down to the way her nose wrinkles to show her displeasure. Sundari bares her fangs.

“Something funny, Six Eyes?” She growls, and Satoru feels her strength returning, legs pushing against his grip as her ankles lock behind his back. He’s still buried nine inches inside of her, but the way she’s focused you wouldn’t know it. Satoru reaches down, makes her watch as he swipes a thumb against her swollen clit.

Sundari lets out a choked sound, her control momentarily slipping. Satoru teases her clit with light, tight circles, and her eyelids flutter. The lower ones even close.

“That’s it,” Satoru purrs, watching her as he feels her pussy grow wetter around him with each stroke against her clit. He contemplates making her come without having to move his hips, but he craves movement as much as she does. It’s a contest of wills at this point, and unlike battles involving jujutsu, the flesh is far less durable during sex. He can only stem the tide of his own climax for so long.

“S-Satoru…” Sundari’s voice comes out as a stammering whimper, and she pulls with her crossed legs, trying to force him to start moving. He sits there, stroking her clit idly, and there’s an almost cold wintery expression on his face, as if he’s the god and she’s the supplicant.

The Honored One grins as his goddess opens her mouth and begins to beg him.

The words come first as a stammering trickle, then a sultry, moaning torrent. She begs him and as she does, he increases the pace of his stroking thumb, spreading her slick over her clit, noting with pleasure when he sees his cock glistening with her fluids in the soft, golden light.

“Come for me,” he murmurs and Sundari does. Satoru hisses as her walls flutter around him, and he holds her steady, stroking her clit through the orgasm that has her writhing and calling his name. It’s only when she’s about to settle down that Satoru gives in and begins to move his hips. He has been nice enough, and his goddess is strong. He fucks her.

Sundari’s hands claw for purchase, one fisted in the sheets, the other going to her headboard to grip it tightly or risk getting her head knocked through the wall. Satoru doesn’t give her time to adjust because he’s indulged her pleasure. It’s his turn to chase that glittering edge, and he wants her to take it. God, she has done so much in the short time since her unsealing, he just needs her to take his cock right now.

For a long stretch of time there is only the sound of Sundari’s short staccato gasps, Satoru’s labored groans, and the heavy, wet sound of skin meeting skin as Satoru attempts to nail her to the mattress. Sundari can’t think straight, and she knows that’s exactly how he likes it, gripping her hips and lifting her halfway off the bed to pull her along his cock. She throws her head back, screaming his name, begging him not to stop, begging him to come inside of her.

Satoru plans to grant all of these requests in due time, but right now he wants her in every way he can have her. He stops his rhythm to pull her up. Without needing to be told, Sundari tangles her limbs around him: four arms pull him close and together they situate themselves into the Lotus position, face to face, heart to heart, body to body.

“Hey you,” Satoru murmurs, nipping her lower lip with a smile. Sundari meets his gaze with heavy-lidded eyes, the concentric circles within them swirling. The curse she carries is gone, but the brand of her lineage remains. She is terrifying and beautiful and wild and he lovesherlovesherlovesher.

“Hey you,” she replies, her voice sultry and husky.

This time, they move as one, surging with one another’s breaths, cresting and falling into the troughs of one another’s respective rhythm, and finding harmony. Somehow the pleasure is insurmountable this way, and both of them become exceedingly aware that this is different.

“Satoru…” Sundari breathes, and she can’t seem to fill her lungs fast enough as she clings tightly to him, nails scraping his back as she moves. “Satoru…I…”

“I know, baby, I know,” Satoru murmurs, kissing her tenderly, open-mouthed and saturated, wanting to share her very breath in this moment. “I feel it too.”

That bright and terrible presence from her domain inversion is watching them. The universe itself is sanctioning this union, and by doing so, redressing an imbalance for which their stars were written.

The pleasure is beyond flesh, now. Sundari moves her body without thought and Satoru maps the contours of her back with his hands, sliding them up and up against her. He chants her name, kissing her temple, her cheeks, her neck, and taking her earlobe between his teeth just to feel her shiver in delight.

In this space there are no demands made of the other, no commands, and no roles. There’s only the frequency of pleasure they have found, reverberating through both their souls like some primordial note sung long ago, and sustained through every cosmic union so heavily soaked in fate and destiny.

When Satoru comes, he realizes that this is exactly how he felt when he was on the edge of death twelve years prior. And Sundari tumbles after him, clinging to him tightly as their thoughts and their very souls seem to touch like two exposed wires, sending sparks to spangling in their blood.

The bright presence recedes like an ancient wave, and as they return to the skin and bone of their bodies, sweat-slick and panting, they realize that the only presence in the room now is their own.

“Holy shit…” Satoru breathes, burying his face in Sundari’s neck. “That was…I think that’s the best sex I’ve ever had in my fucking life.”

Sundari smirks, turning her head to nuzzle him with an almost feral purr.

“Yeah,” Sundari agrees, her voice quiet and mystified. “Same. Do you think…what did it mean?”

Satoru raises his head, his eyes swirling with a steady rotation of what Sundari swears are clouds this close. She blinks before the side-effects can start setting in: dizziness, vertigo, and dissociation. Satoru explained it like microdosing Unlimited Void.

“I have a theory, but let’s talk about it in the morning. Tonight is for fucking.”

Sundari’s laughter rings in the air like temple bells.

Winter gives way to the tentative thaw of early spring. Most of the curses have been cleaned up, and Tokyo is almost back to her old self: hustling, bustling, busy, busy, busy. The rhythm of the city returns, and sorcerers resume their work of managing the cursed energy of an entire people. There are changes, however.

The pay is better, for one. Satoru consulted with Mei Mei for that particular bit, and called a meeting of the clan heads, large and small, as well as elders in the community, and representatives of independent factions in order to oversee the drawing up of a new charter. It took several months, and there was dissent, but the basis of the new charter was laid, and Satoru sees part of his dream brought into reality. Just like infinity.

Satoru’s snide remarks to Gakuganji the previous summer turned out to not be in jest or even in spite: his birth did herald a shift in the jujutsu world, and the biggest change is the number of sorcerers being born and those recently awakened to their abilities. Satoru helps delegate the task of assessing these new sorcerers and offering them a chance to study at Jujutsu Tech. He has been consulting with his colleagues and they came to the agreement that they can no longer feasibly pull only from high school aged students, especially since Kenjaku’s awakened sorcerers need guidance.

Thus, Jujutsu Tech becomes open to all sorcerers for study, regardless of background or nationality. Satoru knows the biggest blind spot they had with regards to Kenjaku’s scheme was their obsession with secrecy, even from one another. He vows not to make such a mistake again.

The changes are met with varying degrees of excitement and disdain. The students currently enrolled are thrilled to welcome more classmates, and sorcerers working for Jujutsu Headquarters begrudgingly welcome the extra hands.

Despite all this, it is Sundari’s presence that polarizes jujutsu society. Sundari herself has known that it would be this way, but when she receives the first, crisp press of her new Jujutsu Tech instructor uniform, she knows that Satoru has fought a hard battle to approve her for training.

The uniform itself is splendid: all black, of course, a tailor-cut jacket, with the gold swirl buttons representing Jujutsu Tech, a black mock-neck sleeveless top, and a black form-fitting mid-length skirt, slit up both sides for ease of movement. Her choice of footwear is a pair of black, platform boots. Sundari notes that the jacket itself has the trishula symbol embroidered in red on the back, to match the marking that adorn her and Sukuna’s brow. She smirks, knowing that it was Satoru who likely had a hand in that particular design choice.

These don’t have to be a curse.

Sundari observes herself in the mirror with a hint of pride. Her pink curls are styled into two puffs atop her head, and she blinks all four of her eyes and for a moment she thinks she sees her father’s reflection instead of her own. She traces her face markings, and then smiles.

“Well dad,” she murmurs to herself. “Here’s to a better way.”

Sugisawa Municipal High School, Sendai City, April 4, 2019

The sun is shining when the car winds through the hills toward Yuji’s former high school. Ijichi is silent but occasionally glances at Yuji and Sundari, who sit in the back seat, each peering out their respective windows. The radio is turned to a news station, and they listen with half an ear as reports of Tokyo’s continued recovery from the Culling Games. Of all the barriers that had trapped players inside, Sendai’s region had been the most violent, and the scars of that war—invisible to non-sorcerers—are clear as day as they pull up to the high school.

“Are you sure about this?” Ijichi asks as they step out of the car. Yuji and Sundari share a look, and Yuji nods.

“It’ll be fine, Ijichi-san,” Yuji says brightly with his characteristic grin. The scars of Sukuna’s domain are faded, leaving only the slash he received from Mahito, and the scar at the corner of his mouth. Sundari’s own scars from Malevolent Shrine are faint, looking more like tiger stripes than anything else, and nothing can compete with the stark black lines of cursed ink.

“Alright, I’ll defer to your judgement, Itadori-kun, Hikmat-san,” Ijichi executes a perfunctory and crisp bow. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to go.”

Yuji and Sundari head toward the school. Since the Culling Games Sendai has been quieter, mostly because the residents are still frightened of the curses that sprung up over the winter like mold. Sundari’s cursed presence alone is enough to send any lesser curses scattering. They are like shy animals, crowding up against the borders of humanity, eager to taste the very people who feed their existence.

They cross onto the football field and Sundari’s brows furrow.

“Is there a dead body buried out here or something?” She asks. Yuji glances at her, eyes wide.

“Wait, so the rumors were true?!” He asks back. Sundari blinks several times, staring at him. She decides not to press the matter further as Yuji leads her to the Stevenson screen further outside of the football field’s endzone. Yuji fishes an ornate, silk-wrapped box from his pocket. The inside is lined with red silk, and sitting there is a mummified finger belonging to Sundari’s father…and Yuji’s uncle.

“And we’re sure this is the last one?” Sundari asks. Yuji gives her a knowing look.

“Yeah!” He says. “Since he can’t come back through the Fingers anymore, the energy can ward off evil. A good talisman, don’t you think?”

Sundari looks down at the box, and it’s not lost on her that both her parents have been reduced to such small talismans. Her mother’s ashes sit on her dresser, and her father’s remaining Finger will now ward off evil. She makes a mental note to come back and see about purifying the energy of this place because she is pretty sure there’s a dead body buried around here.

Yuji places the box within the screen and shuts the door. Both he and Sundari press their palms together in prayer. For a moment the air is charged with the scent of burnt ozone or burnt sugar. Their cursed energy blooms like a lotus in tandem, the power of their jujutsu sealing the deal, as it were.

When it is done, the air seems to return to normal, and the sun shines a little brighter. Sundari feels as if her heart is lighter, and there’s a warm feeling in her chest. She bites her lip as tears prick her vision. She never thought she’d feel a modicum of anything for her father. He’d been nothing short of horrible to her in the brief time she knew him.

And yet…

He’d loved her mother once. Loved her enough to beg for Sundari’s existence. Loved her enough to stay his hand from killing her. Loved her enough to call Sundari’s existence a miracle.

Maybe he’d loved Sundari a little bit too.

“Hey,” Yuji says, glancing at her. “You okay?”

Sundari blinks away the tears and nods.

“Yeah…just…taking in the moment. Thanks for doing this, Yuji. It was a brilliant suggestion.” She smiles at him, and he beams with pride, and for a moment he doesn’t look like a war-scarred sorcerer. Just a boy of sixteen with a strange family tree and a new lease on life. Sundari turns away from the Stevenson screen, away from the last vestige of her father.

“Let’s go,” she says. “I promised Satoru I’d grab some kikufuku for him on our way back. And I’ve apparently got more teacher training.”

Yuji and Sundari walk back across the football field, back toward Ijichi and the car, chatting about what kind of kikufuku to get, and Yuji offers to show Sundari around Sendai, claiming he’d already given Sukuna a tour, but he wasn’t as excited about it. Their voices fade across the field as the sun crawls across the sky, its light shifting the shadows in the trees.

Unnamed Shore, Unnamed Time

“Well, well. What’s this, our second conversation?”

Sukuna stares down at the cursed spirit, who leers up at him with that oil-slick grin and mismatched eyes.

“Something like that,” Mahito says, recalling that none of the so-called “conversations” had been pleasant ones. He stands to his full height, but even that is nothing compared to the overwhelming height of the King of Curses. “My ability has to do with reshaping the soul, so I guess it makes sense that I wound up in this place.” But something about Sukuna is different…

“Hey,” he says. Fuck it, there’s not much the King of Curses can do to him in this place. Sukuna raises his brow in response. “Something I meant to ask you. You were lying before, weren’t you? About living according to your nature. You weren’t acting in accordance with your nature at all, were you? You were taking vengeance for what was done to you.”

Sukuna stares at the cursed spirit and for a moment Mahito thinks he’s fucked up again.

Instead, Sukuna lets out a laugh that sounds almost amused and self-assured.

“What difference does it make?” He asks. “I lived how I knew how to go on. I…” He thinks, shuts his eyes a moment, remembering. “Well, not entirely true. I was afraid my own curse would burn me up, so I could only spit out the curses writhing in my guts. I had two paths open to me, and I chose.”

He doesn’t need to look to feel the familiar chill of Uraume by his side. They are quiet, eyes downcast, but Sukuna can see the tears glimmering on their cheeks. He places an arm around them, giving their slight shoulders an affectionate squeeze. The shiver that runs through them is one of relief and despair. Sukuna looks away from them, his eyes searching.

“Looking for her?” Mahito asks, his tone taunting. Sukuna’s crimson gaze cuts to the cursed spirit sharply for a moment, questioning without a word. Mahito wonders how far he can press his luck before Sukuna makes good to kill him once and for all.

“She passed through here not too long ago, we chatted for a bit,” Mahito places a finger on his lips. “Unfortunately, I don’t think her bosses took kindly to her loitering. She’s mortal now, after all. Can’t be caught holding up the cycle!”

Sukuna’s expression hardens, and the wheels of his mind turn quickly. Where was she, then? If she passed through this place, then her soul must already be on its way to rebirth.

Two choices.

In every lifetime, I will probably love you.

Sukuna shuts his eyes.

“I see,” he says quietly. “Then if there is a next time, I think it would be nice to walk a different path.”

“Do you think you’ll find her?” Mahito asks, grinning his malicious grin. Sukuna does not spare the curse a second glance as he takes Uraume’s hand and begins to walk, toward the darkness, toward the light.

“You’ve gone soft, old bastard!” Mahito grouses. “Chasing after love! Blegh!”

Sukuna laughs. “Of course I have,” he says. “I lost, after all.”

Uraume looks up at Sukuna, a rare breach of their unspoken decorum, a question writ in their lilac gaze.

“We’ll find her,” Sukuna says. “No matter how many times the Wheel spins, she was made for me. We’ll find her.”

Fin. Masterpost 𑁍 Previous Chapter

Author's Final Note: So, here we are at the end of a journey. I don't know if anyone is out there, silently reading my words and bobbing their head to the playlists, but to everyone putting eyes on this story and ears on the soundtrack: thank you! And to the folks who have been commenting on the chapters, or sharing my stories in the fandom: thank you! What initially began as a thought experiment of "what if Sukuna had a daughter with an immortal" became so much more, and I'd like to thank Gege Akutami for giving us Jujutsu Kaisen. I really haven't been this inspired to write for fandom for almost a decade, and I decided to check out this manga/anime and I've been obsessed ever since. It makes me so happy to write stories in such a fascinating world with such intriguing and fun characters.

Even though the manga is over, I'm holding out for an amazing anime adaptation going forward, and JJK is honestly a classic for me that I know I'll love revisiting it for years to come. I have other fanfic for JJK for those of you who are down to hangout at the Parallax Afterparty where I'll be posting stray stories, scenes that didn't leave the cutting room floor, character studies, and other cool lore that doesn't fit into the fics! Or, if you're really fucking with my galaxy-brain OC x Canon agenda, head on over to Lost Worlds & Endless Nights for the Parallax AUs. Or if you want different leads in other universes, head over to my series Sonder! I don't intend to leave the fandom, so for any holdouts: come get ya fanfic, here, hot off the presses! I'll be churning out these puppies for at least another six months to a year.

Again: thanks for reading. Talk to me in the comments or come holler at me on my other socials [if you got 'em] if you've got questions or wanna yell or whatever.

𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍 Muse 𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍

© 2024 Hajara Asiri. Do NOT copy, translate, plagiarize, repost anywhere without permission [reblogging posts is okay]. This includes copying my masterlist format or feeding ANY of my writing to the uninspired AI garbage machines. I only upload on Tumblr, AO3, and FFN. Title and footer banners by me. Dividers and support by @cafekitsune.

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