#“the moon controls the tides!!” yet this one seems to do nothing but let oceans flood

[dailyhmsw]

loop 83

[stillebesat]

Beneath the Moon -part 3

Sanders Sides: Logan, Roman Blurb: After all the research he’d done, after all the signs he’d been experiencing. Logan needed someone to tell him he wasn’t crazy. And Roman…Roman had always been the one most likely to believe in the fantastical, the impossible, the…supernatural. Fic Type: Werewolf!AU Overall Fic Warnings: Bite Wound -Semi-Detailed, Dog Attack Mention, Injuries, War Talk, Fighting Talk, Death/Dying Talk, Gun Mention, Shapeshifting/Transformation, Brief Sensory Overload,  Taglist in Reblog.

To Catch Up: Part 1  Part 2 

The one key detail that had been consistent in every source Logan had looked up about werewolves was the change. 

While the imagery used in each had varied, the descriptions overall had remained the same. Changing into a wolf would hurt. He would feel like he was on fire. Burning as his body was forcibly changed from one form to another.

Heat. 

Because everything became more malleable when it was warm. Ice would melt. Plastic would bend. Metal would pool. 

Heat was the source of change. 

So to become a wolf. He would have to burn.

And yet.

All Logan felt was cold. Frozen really. Like he was stuck in a glacier, his heart slowly pounding, fighting against the tidal wave of ice that threatened to engulf him. Pounding like the waves of the ocean beating against the shore. The pull of the cool tide dragging at him, beckoning him to fall into the moon. To get lost in the never ending white light as it filled his entire vision. Filled his vision despite him knowing that only the top sliver of it had appeared. That the whole moon shouldn’t be visible just yet. That there was no way for him to be able to reach the moon from here.

There was a roaring in his ears as his breath caught in his throat, his body going rigid even as his feet shifted to run away, to hide from this empty void of space that called to him as the moon rose higher, beckoning him to let go of the earth and float into the sky with it. To free himself from the restraints of gravity and just---

Accept it.

The faint thought echoed distantly in his head as a soft whimper left his throat.

You said you would accept it.

The moon filled his vision. Pulsating. Like a beacon, it called to him. Called to him in a way that it shouldn’t. The moon had never held such an allure before now and his mind frantically fought against the impossibility. How could an object in space hold such power? How could it force him to be anything than what he was. 

Human.

Accept it.

Werewolves shouldn’t exist!

But research had shown. The bite on his hand--he--he---

Like a lonely foghorn sounding over the misty shores at night, a single howl broke through his turbulent thoughts, echoing in the night, overtaking any other sound, demanding his attention. 

Demanding an answer.

That answer was wedged in his throat. The urge to--to--but--he--he couldn’t-- 

Accept it. 

The howl echoed again and Logan could have sworn he saw a shadowy form flit across the surface of the moon. 

A shadow that looked like a wolf.

Logan shuddered, the shadow growing bigger in his vision, the eyes within glowing bright like the sun as it turned to face him, staring him down, the ice in his body threatening to drown freeze him, feeling the need to cry out to--to--

Howl. 

You said--

Accept it.

He had to--there was no denying with how the moon was calling to him. He had to if he wanted any chance of keeping his human mind.

Shuddering from the ice that seemed to flow through his veins, Logan threw his head back and let out an answering howl, calling for--for--he didn’t know. For the wolf? For it to come to him?

His voice still echoing in his ears, the shadow on the moon pounced, despite the impossibility of it all, wrapping around him like a warm current, heating the frozen ache that held his muscles captive like a warm wind on a hot summer day.

He couldn’t help but melt into that warmth as it massaged the ice away, falling to his hands and knees as a soft lilting voice whispered in his ear.

Welcome brother. 

His heart skipped a beat at those two very simple words. 

Simple words that he hadn’t felt applied to him either singly or together in a very very long time.

“Logan?” 

A chill ran down his spine as the warmth vanished as quickly as it had engulfed him, leaving him to stagger in place, his body feeling--feeling--

Not human.

Definitely not human.

His eyes flashed open and he flinched back at the not--at the--his eyes---he wasn’t seeing how he was used to seeing! It was too...clear? He knew it was night. The colors--He shook his head, heart pounding painfully quick as a snarl left his lips before he could stop it, his other senses going into overdrive as everything began to twitch. His ears, his nose, his--his--

He whirled in a circle, paws slipping on the grass as he caught sight of a long black--A whimper of disbelief sounding in his ears as he stared at--at--

A Tail. 

He. Had. A. TAIL. 

It was nothing like the one he’d tried to create before. Of course he’d known that. But still. It was--it was moving and he wasn’t sure if he was controlling it or not and he couldn’t get it to stop moving and with his ears twitching at every sound demanding to know what that noise was and his nose twitching as it filled with smells that were both familiar and yet totally unfamiliar at the same time that demanded he needed to investigate so he could figure out just what he was sensing and--he--he---

It was too much.

All that preparation had been for nothing. It was like that nightmare of walking into a final and realizing you hadn’t studied for it at all. He couldn’t do this! This was--

“Whoa, Lo. It’s okay. Breathe, Buddy. You’re okay. You’re doing great.” 

Logan shuddered at how his ears flicked towards the voice and away, another soft whine leaving him as he looked up to Roman.

Roman, who’s eyes were glowing as bright gold as any wolf’s in the moonlight as he stood tall, head held high, staring him down, one hand outstretched in a pacifying gesture despite the display of dominance. “You’re okay, Lo.” He said in a low voice, maintaining eye contact, his breath steady despite how quickly Logan could hear his heart beating. 

Because he doesn’t know if you’re a threat. 

And Roman had been trained to kill threats.

Logan lowered his head, ears laying back as he found himself reacting to instinct, crouching down so that his belly brushed the ground, to appear as small as possible in this...this shape. 

The golden light in Roman’s eyes softened as he took a careful step closer.

It took all that he had to stay in place, to not retreat against Ro’s advancement. Not that Logan was confident he could run at this point. As uncoordinated and off kilter as he felt he’d probably end up face planting into the ground after two steps.

Another whine left his throat as Roman crouched within lunging distance, his hand still outstretched. 

“I know it’s a lot to take in.” He said with a faint smile. “A lot to get used to. But I know you can handle this, Brainiac. You’re gonna be just fine. I know you won’t hurt me.” 

Such Trust. 

Such trust for a high school enemy.

And yet---Logan found himself cautiously creeping forward, belly still to the ground as he stretched out his head, instinctively sniffing Roman’s proffered hand. 

His ears perked as he tried to place the multitude of scents he found there, far more than should have been on a human’s hands. It was intriguing. So much he could sense with a bare sniff and yet he couldn’t place those smells. It was--He licked Roman’s fingers to get a better idea of just what was on--

Wait. 

Logan recoiled, mouth feeling like it was on fire as he gagged, his tail twisting down to hide between his legs. Had he seriously just licked Roman’s hand?! 

Laughter rang through the air as Roman reached out, scratching Logan’s ears with warm fingers. “Do I taste that bad?” 

He stiffened under the touch, his chest rumbling with a suppressed growl of disagreement. No. He hadn’t tasted...unpleasant. Just the fact that Logan had licked him in the first place was...disquieting. 

He closed his eyes, leaning into Roman’s warm hand. He’d been so focused on having the tail that he’d overlooked all other canine behavior he could exhibit with these...extra senses in this unfamiliar shape. 

 Roman huffed, dragging his fingers down to scritch underneath Logan’s chin before pulling back. “You’re overthinking this.”

His ears laid back, eyes flashing open to glare at him. What did Roman expect? Him to be a crazy rabid feral--he flinched, remembering too late just why he had Roman bring a gun out here. 

Because he should be feral. Wild. Aggressive. He was a freaking wolf now. And while he was thankfully thinking more human at the moment, unlike the mindless beast he’d feared he’d become, he was still in a wolf’s body until the moon set and he had no idea how was he supposed to figure this out on his own--

Roman exhaled, shaking his head, his eyes glowing a brighter gold in the darkness as he slipped his gun, still in its holster, from around his waist, tossing it into a nearby bush before Logan could react. “Instinct, Lo.” 

Logan stiffened, looking between the bush and his childhood friend before taking a cautious step away from where the gun had fallen. What was he doing?! That was Ro’s only protection against--

Roman’s heart rate slowed as he pulled his own shirt over his head, tossing it to the side as he stared Logan down with a half smile. “The wolf won’t remain tethered beneath the human forever. They’re equals within you now. You just have to take a breath. Relax. And--” He rippled like a mirage on a hot summer day before a wolf with reddish brown fur stepped forward to rub his head against Logan’s. ~Trust yourself.~

To Be Continued

[schmokschmok]

i’ll mako mermaid out of you

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationship: Keith Kogane x Lance McClain

Characters: Hunk Garrett, Keith Kogane, Lance McClain, Pidge Holt

Wordcount: 6,166

Freeform:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Alternate Universe - Fusion

H2O: Just Add Water Fusion

Mermaids

Comfort/No Hurt

Summary:

It's Lance's idea to steal Coran's boat to go to Mako Island, so it's basically his own fault that he'll never swim competitively again.

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29940753 

CN: Anxiety Attack, Blood (not graphic); Mentions of Death & Food

#1

What could go wrong?, Lance said.

It’s not stealing if we’re bringing Coran’s boat back before dusk, Keith agreed.

I don’t think it’s a good idea. Maybe we should wait ’til tomorrow, Hunk objected.

Vroom, vroom, motherfuckers!, Pidge exclaimed as they jumped into Coran’s boat. Get in, losers, we’re going Mako Island.

Keith’s got to confess that it seemed like a good idea when Lance first suggested it: Borrowing Coran’s boat, driving out to Mako Island, examining the bush. (He would be lying if he said that he didn't think about all the rumours of supernatural phenomena surrounding Mako Island. And he would also be lying if he said that he didn't feel excitement rush through him at the mere thought of finding signs of monsters or cryptids.) But now that they're trapped inside a fucking volcano, he begins to regret every decision that led them to this point.

“It’s too steep,” Pidge says, not for the first time. They stand at the tunnel they all climbed down about half an hour ago, Hunk’s next to them, and they both won't stop looking for a way out the same way they got in.

Keith and Lance, on the other hand, are pretty sure there's no chance they could climb up again. (Keith tried, okay, but if he can’t do it, it’ll be impossible for Pidge.) So, their fingers search for openings in the wall while their feet carefully avoid stepping into the pool in the middle of the room.

“Found anything, yet?” Lance asked from the other side of the pool.

Keith wipes sweat from his forehead and shakes his head before he replies: “No. Nothing.” He turns around and catches sight of Lance who's feverishly patting at the stone as if there could be an opening if he just looked thoroughly enough.

The full moon shines brightly through an opening at the top of the cave, seeping into almost every nook and illuminating the water, the floor and the crowns of their heads. Maybe, if they wait just a little longer, there could be enough light to see properly. Maybe that will help them find an alternative exit.

“Hey gays,” Pidge says suddenly. “There are tide marks on the stone.” They're sitting at the water now and feel up the edge with the tips of their fingers. Right beside them is Hunk crouching down to verify their assessment. “There has to be a connection to the ocean.”

Cautiously making his way back over to Hunk and Pidge, Keith attempts to look for a passage deep down in the water, but he can’t make anything out in the darkness. He wants to say It’s worth a try. However, in the exact same moment Keith opens his mouth, Lance says: “Heck, only one way to find out!” And he jumps in like there is not even the slightest possibility of sharks on the other side; like he could just do that without Keith jumping right after him.

And Keith definitely would have rushed into the water mindlessly if it wasn’t for Pidge’s hand on his shin holding him back. (He wants to look down and reassure Pidge that everything’s alright because of the way their fingers claw their way into his clothes and the underlying skin, but he can’t avert his gaze from the point where Lance disappeared into the darkness with not more than having taken off his shoes.)

It feels like forever until little bubbles surface and Lance emerges with a smug grin on his face. (Hunk, Pidge and Keith release a breath they all very much knew they were holding.) Almost floating, he moves his arms in little motions to stay above the surface.

On one hand Keith really wants to smack him, on the other hand he’s glad that their escape seems to be easier than feared. Lance’s voice echoes off the stone walls: “It’s not far. Everyone could do it. A toddler could do it. Even Pidge could do it.” Maybe his grin is even wider than before.

Sighing, Hunk takes off his shoes, slides his feet over the edge of the pool and slowly sinks into the water to Lance, with clear disdain on his face. Following his example, Keith crouches down to remove his shoes, when he hears Pidge’s voice low and almost inaudible near his ear: “Keith, I … I can’t do this.”

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Keith replies irritated and glances at their face. “Lance says it’s not too far.” They wince and move the hand they were leaning on in front of their body. (Keith doesn’t want to make a scene or draw attention to them but it’s hard given the fact that they’re only four people in one single volcano.)

“Keith, yes, it is,” Pidge says in a hushed tone, perhaps even quieter than before. “I never told you because I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it but … I don’t really know how to, y’know, swim.” Nervously, their index finger and thumb adjust their glasses and it’s obvious they expect some sort of comedic response or mild laughter but Keith only furrows.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to. We got this,” Keith reassures them, before gesturing towards their shoes. “Take them off. And don’t think we’re not going to talk about this later.” He sinks into the water, before reaching out to Pidge, who’s just now pocketing their glasses, encouraging them with a small smile to trust him. And, surprisingly, they accept the hand he’s offering without questioning him. Hesitatingly, they lower their body.

They can’t stand (in fact, none of them can) and Pidge holds onto Keith, panic evident on their face. To comfort them, Keith slings his arm around their waist.

“Everything’s alright?” Hunk asks, moving closer to them. “Pidge, you don’t look too well.” Wax-pale face and shaky hands, they nod, maybe a tick too frantic, but Hunk and Lance don’t seem to realise their emotional state. At least for now.

And that is precisely the moment the full moon is finally in its zenith, filling up the whole opening at the top of the cave. The water surrounding them begins to bubble and glow in an iridescent blue light. An unnatural fog builds up right above the water surface and disperses the moonlight between their bodies.

“What the fuck? What the actual ever-loving fuck?” Pidge screeches, while basically scrambling to get on top of Keith. Every word out of their mouth is accentuated by near hysterical panic and huffed, air sucking breaths.

In a nigh impossible attempt to not suffocate or drown, Keith holds Pidge in place, fingers digging into the hem of their top and stabilising their hip, while gulping down air and staying afloat. (But he’s barely holding it together himself because this? This is not natural. And it’s probably not good.)

Lance and Hunk cling to each other, indulging in litanies of oh, my gods and what the hecks.

It only lasts for a few seconds until the full moon surpasses its zenith and the water calms down, glow slowly fading. Aghast and brimming over with fear, Lance separates from Hunk and exclaims: “We should get the heck outta here.”

Hunk and Keith nod, then Hunk and Lance disappear below the surface without another word.

“Inhale deeply and don’t let go. On three,” Keith says, before counting to three in a low voice. Almost at the same moment Keith and Pidge inhale and submerge, following Lance and Hunk through the dark water and the passage deep down to the other side of the stone wall.

It only takes about thirty seconds until they reach the other side and break through the surface, able to breathe again. Not even for a moment did Keith’s grip on Pidge loosen. Nonetheless, they look deranged and almost close to tears. They suck in air heavily and cling onto Keith as if he’d let go any second now.

“Only a few metres, now,” Keith huffs, more paddling than swimming but without getting far.

Suddenly, there’s a second arm around Pidge’s waist and half of their weight gets lifted off his shoulder. Their face is still buried in his neck and their hot, heavy breath meets his exposed skin. Keith smiles at Hunk who lends him a hand and together they make their way to the shore under Lance’s sorrowful eye.

Pidge’s breath becomes shallower and shallower. They attempt to control it by forcefully holding their breath and then slowly releasing it. But it doesn’t seem to work. The shallow little breaths return.

Keith’s feet hit the ground just a moment after Hunk’s. With joined forces they carry Pidge onto the beach and set them down on the sandy ground. Or at least try to because Pidge won’t let go of Keith and he hangs awkwardly in the air right above them, placing his entire weight on his knees.

“What’s going on?” Lance’s low voice is almost inaudible because Pidge’s laboured breath is drowning out about nearly everything around them.

Voice matched to a soft murmur, Hunk answers: “Not sure.”

Keith wants to tell them what’s going on, just to make sure that they don’t worry too much, but it’s not his place to tell them Pidge’s secret, is it? (At least they’re keeping their distance in an attempt to lessen the pressure on Pidge.)

Keith’s hands wrap around Pidge’s and free him with slow, gentle movements from their grip. While carefully pushing them away from him, Keith murmurs comforting words to calm them down. (He’s not even sure what he’s saying.)

“You know, you’re seriously badass,” he says, and Pidge lets out a sound akin to a laugh. “No, no, no. I mean it. That was incredibly brave, Pidge Gunderson.”

“Fuck you, Keith,” Pidge huffs in between sobs, then they let themselves fall onto their back and giggle hysterically. “Shit! Shit!” Keith sits down next to them, and Hunk and Lance join them, still unsure how to handle the situation.

“You’re gonna tell us what’s going on?” Lance asks as he’s searching for Keith’s hand on the ground. Their fingers interlace with each other and Keith gives Lance a small smile.

Even though Pidge was in the process of wiping tears from their face, they make a dismissive gesture with their hand, telling Keith to answer for them.

“Well, apparently Pidge thought swimming would be a useless skill, so they never bothered to learn.” Lance freezes. The only reason Keith even realizes it is because Lance's grip on his hand tightens. He doesn't say anything and neither does Keith. Instead, it's Hunk who speaks up.

“Oh my god, Pidge, why didn't you say anything?” It's obvious he's working himself up and Keith knows for a fact how horrible it is to feel guilty on top of a panic attack, that's why he's shooting Hunk a look who immediately ducks his head and blushes.

“Pidge, is it okay if I hug you?” Hunk asks next, slowly reaching out to them but merely hovering above their arm, unsure if he's allowed to touch them.

A soft voiced and shaky “that would be nice” later, Hunk wraps his arms around Pidge and squeezes them tight against his chest. The pressure on their ribcage seems to force them to even out their breathing, and after good half a minute, it looks like they’re finally in control over their body again.

Lance is uncharacteristically quiet beside Keith, and Keith throws a glance out of the corner of his eyes towards him. There’s a tension between his eyebrows and his lips form a hard line, discontent oozing from every single pore.

“You okay?” Keith asks lowly as to not disturb Pidge’s and Hunk’s moment, ready to get brushed off by Lance who never really liked being called out on his insecurities, especially not in front of other people. Even if these people are his best friends. (It’s a strict one-person confidentiality with Lance, has always been.)

“It's just … they go to the beach with us regularly. I dropped them into the ocean several times. I could have killed them.” Lance stumbles over the words trying to come out too quickly and all at the same time, hushed voice almost breathless. Suddenly, all blood drains from his face, he’s even paler in the light of the moon, and he stares right past Keith at Pidge.

“Did you just,” Lance can’t seem to decide whether he wants to sound outraged or scared shitless. “Did you just dive, like, under water? Even though you can’t swim?! Pidge, what the heck!” Keith tightens his grip on Lance’s hand, but the tension in Lance’s shoulders doesn’t ease the slightest, and Lance doesn’t even close his mouth all the way before he continues. “This is dangerous as fuck, Pidge!”

It’s not hard to see how this is going to go if nobody stops Lance right this second. Keith can hear Pidge’s breathing picking up again and feel the rapid beating of Lance’s heart in the space between his fingers.

“Lance,” Keith says with a finality in his voice, “this is not helping. And you know I wouldn’t have let them drown. Matt would kill me. They’re stuck with us.”

Lance groans in response but keeps quiet otherwise. Keith doesn’t know what he did to shut Lance up, but this is clearly not the time to question it, so he turns towards Pidge and Hunk, the latter finally letting go of the former.

“I for one,” Keith continues, calling the attention to himself, “think we should get the fuck out of here.”

And no one tries to argue with him.

#2

It’s only been a day since they’ve come back from Make Island, hurriedly bringing back Coran’s boat before he can realise it’s been missing in the first place. Keith fell right into bed after a quick shower to wash off the sea salt because he can imagine all too clearly Lance’s smug comments about his dried up, flaky skin if he wouldn’t. And the thought alone is enough to warrant precautions.

He’s been lying in bed all day, only getting up to snack through the kitchen and bother Shiro during lunch hour. But after a few hours he got restless, skin itching with the need to go out again and exercise in any shape or form. So, he slipped into knee-length joggers and a tank to take a short run through the neighbourhood.

The first ten minutes stretch longer than anticipated, exhaustion from a too short night still prevalent. (He hasn’t talked to Pidge yet, anger at their carelessness and dishonesty predominating now that the initial worry has worn off. But it’s not their fault, they didn’t really lie about anything, and it’s in their right to not disclose information. So, he’s left with aimless anger that he’ll hopefully run out of his system.)

After almost half an hour, he finally feels more at ease, the steady thrum of his feet on the pavement soothing his nerves and lulling him into a somewhat peaceful state of mind.

And that’s when he runs past a sprinkler, right through the spray, seeking out every little refreshment in the summer heat he can find, and, all of a sudden, losing the ground underneath his feet, falling face first into the wet grass.

Keith doesn’t know what just happened, rolling onto his back to stare at the sky self-pityingly for a second, breath coming and going in short, controlled bouts. When he tries to plant the sole of his feet on the ground to get up again, he realises that he can’t and props himself up on his elbows to take a look at his feet, getting caught completely off-guard by the sheer absence of his feet. And legs. In lieu, a red scaled fish tail flops aimlessly on the ground.

“What the fuck,” Keith says to no one in particular, not even in the right mind to thank every deity in existence that there is no one to witness his incoming breakdown.

Without his own volition, his right hand reaches out and prods at a stray scale on his hipbone where the tail bleeds out into his skin.

Now, Keith knows the weirdest thing should be that suddenly he’s half fish or whatever, but he can’t comprehend that right now anyways, so he’s mostly weirded out by the fact that it doesn’t feel like he’s touching skin but more like applying pressure to a finger- or toenail. It’s not a real touch, but the ghostly remnant of applied pressure. It feels terrible and Keith fucking hates it.

“What the fuck,” he says again for emphasis, because how is he supposed to explain this to Shiro? Shiro, gotta move out, live under the sea, doing fish things? That's not going to happen.

He tries to get up a few times, to find footing even though he knows it's impossible. Because if he doesn't try to fight his tail, what is he going to do?

A few unsuccessful attempts later, hands and forearms covered in grass stains and dirt, he thinks that if he can't get up and walk away, he can still crawl his way back to safety. (His mind helpfully supplies him with Lance's name and face, apparently the only choice at hand as Shiro is still at work and Lance is the only human in Keith's life that he knows like the back of his hand. And for the first time ever it actually proves useful because Keith knows that around this time Lance is training for an upcoming swimming competition.)

Digging his elbows into the ground, Keith crawls his way off the grass, only to be met by the rough texture of the pavement that scrapes across his abdomen and tail in the most painful way possible. Dragging skin (or scales for that matter) across asphalt is admittedly not the smartest decision Keith has ever made.

For a moment he contemplates just rolling the whole way, but he’s as quick to dismiss it entirely when he experimentally rolls onto his back and sees the blood and dust clinging to his skin. Maybe the pavement had been rougher than anticipated.

His head drops onto the ground with a low thud, and Keith can’t hold back an exasperated groan. If anyone’s going to see him, he’s sure to find himself within a fish tank in under an hour. (Is he able to breathe underwater? What if he’s just a dude with a fish tail and can’t even breathe underwater, but they think he’s some kind of mythical mermaid creature in desperate need of water, and he drowns?) This can’t possibly get any worse, he thinks.

The sprinkler splutters to a halt, and the only thing Keith can hear is the crying and chattering of the seagulls and the ships and boats dashing through the water not too far away. Just one single human being with binoculars could end his suffering – or his life, depending on their nature. At least he’s still in the sun, slowly but steadily drying off (and out? He’s still not sure how this is supposed to work).

In the end, it doesn’t take too long for him to be completely dry again and a prickling sensation to set in in his legs – tail, whatever. He wonders surprisingly clear headed if this is how he’s going to die. Just softly prickling to death until nothing is left but a few stray red scales.

But instead of losing consciousness or ascending into another plane of existence, the collar of his shoe starts digging into his heel rather uncomfortably. Keith wonders if he did something wrong in this or in his past life to deserve dying with a shoe collar pressing into his Achilles tendon.  

Keith shoots upright with wide eyes and stares at his shoes, at the exposed skin of his shin and finally his grey joggers, trying to comprehend that the tail is gone. No scales, no fins, nothing. Not a single trace of his mermaid moment. This time around, Keith wonders if he hit his head on Mako Island, and the resulting concussion made him hallucinate for about ten minutes.

He doesn’t know what to do or think, so he jumps up and takes up his run again, changing directions towards the public pool in hope of catching Lance.

The pool comes in sight in record time, and if Keith had more on his mind than fuckfuckfuck, he’d probably be at least a little bit proud of the fact that he’s not panting in utter exhaustion as he passes through the gates and heads straight for the pool Lance is most likely to train.

When he reaches the pool, he can already spot Lance’s brown head of hair, surprisingly dry. Not a single drop of water clings to his skin even though he’s sitting right next to the water, only inches separating him from being able to dip his toes. His arms wrapped around his knees, he rests his head on them, too, gaze loosely directed at the surface, but Keith’s quick to realise that Lance doesn’t actually look at the water. He’s far off with his thoughts, and he almost jumps in shock when Keith flops down beside him.

“Jesus Christ, Keith,” Lance exclaims, hand pressed against his rapidly beating heart, “make a noise, dude.”

Keith doesn’t answer, studying Lance’s pale face instead, almost reaching out to touch one of Lance’s freckles to will the rest of his face into colour again, but he holds himself back in the last second possible, hand hovering aimlessly in the air until he places it gently on Lance’s shoulder as if that had been the plan all along.

“Everything okay?” Keith asks.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Lance replies defensively, obviously not good in the slightest. “You spooked me, that’s all.”

Keith nods, and silence engulfs them for a few heartbeats while they look at each other. Keith with an imploring gaze, Lance with a closed off expression as if he’d stand a chance not telling Keith what’s going on with him.

“Did something happen?” Keith asks after a moment because if Lance is in a bad mood, his ten-minute fish tail hallucination can surely wait half an hour or longer. Maybe he doesn’t have to talk about it at all again. If he’s waiting long enough, he’ll forget it himself. Maybe. Eventually.

Lance (who is really, really bad at keeping anything secret from Keith) almost mewls in uneasiness, but quickly corrects his outburst with a dismissive: “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

“Maybe,” Keith agrees, trying to keep his tone light. “Maybe I will. You’ll never know if you don’t at least try.”

Furrowing his brow, Lance seems to contemplate Keith’s words, weighing his options against each other, growing visibly more anxious with every second that ticks by. But Keith keeps quiet, gives Lance the space to make up his mind. And even if he doesn’t want to (and even if it will be the hardest thing to do) if Lance decides that he doesn’t want to tell Keith, then Keith will accept that, too. (Is that character growth? Shiro’ll be so proud of him, disgusting.)

From one second to the other, Lance’s gaze hardens in earnestness, and he straightens up, turning towards Keith, opening up his whole posture to puff up his chest while he says determinedly: “I can’t tell you.” He pauses as if to muster up all the courage in his bones. “But I can show you.”

In one flowing movement, Lance stands up and extends his hand for Keith to take, then he hoists him up with surprisingly little effort, and Keith’s cheeks heat up embarrassingly. But Lance doesn’t pay him any mind, just drags him along with their still intertwined hands.

“You can’t show me here?” Keith asks in confusion, watching Lance shake his head in response.

“I cannot. Under no circumstance,” Lance replies, not slowing down in the slightest when Keith almost trips on his own feet trying to trail after him.

They leave Lance’s bag behind, and Keith is soon to realise that they’re walking towards the beach, the rocky part where Keith knows for certain that the possibility of running into other people is slim. – He has no idea whatsoever why Lance would drag him there.

“Why did you come anyway?” Lance asks absentmindedly, clearly preoccupied with his own problem at hand.

So, Keith decides that it really, really doesn’t matter what he thought he experienced, and says dismissively: “Nothing of importance. It can wait”, and it can. Lance’s thing is much more important, whatever it may be. (And if Keith gets enough distance between himself and the aching scrapes on his stomach, then he can ignore the episode forever. Probably.)

“Okay,” Lance says lowly, and they don’t talk for the remainder of their way. Which is unsettling in its own way, because Keith can count on one hand the times that Lance hasn’t filled their silence with mindless chatter and exaggerated retellings of stories Keith has heard a hundred times before. Not one of those times had been a happy one.

He tries to swallow down the agitation welling up inside him, but it’s harder than anticipated to swallow down something that has already nested just inches shy of his stomach. Needless to say that he doesn’t feel calmer when they finally reach the beach and Lance climbs down the stairs, still pulling at Keith’s hand to ensure that he’s still following, still coming, still present.

After a short walk around and over a few large rocks, they reach a small part of the beach that is entirely secluded from the rest, sheltered from prying eyes and curious minds, and Lance comes to a halt, back still turned to Keith, but still holding onto Keith’s hand as if he’s in constant fear of Keith disappearing on him. (As if Keith could leave Lance. As if anything on this planet could make Keith leave Lance. It’s ridiculous.)

“I’m going to show you something,” Lance says before turning around and staring into Keith’s face, looking for something Keith can’t comprehend. “And you’re going to stay calm.”

“Yeah, I thought that’s why we’re here,” Keith retorts impatiently, agitation growing steadily, but Lance doesn’t let himself be bothered by Keith’s temperament. They’ve known each other for so long, Lance is probably not surprised by anything Keith does anymore. (Well, except the whole tail thing. Which Keith won’t bring up, so Lance doesn’t even get the chance to be surprised. Check and mate or whatever.)

A shaky smile appears on Lance’s lips, and he lets go of Keith’s hand all of a sudden, leaving behind a sense of loss Keith only experiences when Lance touches him and withdraws again. It’s a unique feeling that reminds him unpleasantly of the equally unique flutter in his abdomen whenever he sees Lance after too much time apart. (Too much is a malleable phrase, because on some days Keith can’t even escape the flutter when Lance comes back from the kitchen after getting up to fetch them a glass of water or a snack for their movie night.)

Lance walks backwards, eyes trained on Keith, until only a few inches separate him from the roll of the waves lapping against the sandy shore. With a last shaky breath, Lance repeats: “Remember, stay calm,” and takes a huge step backwards, suddenly ankle-deep in salt water.

For a moment, nothing happens. Lance just stares at him in apprehension, obviously waiting for something to happen. Keith is about to open his mouth to ask Lance what the fuck he’s thinking he’s doing, when the water around Lance’s feet starts to bubble, and his knees give out under him, sending him into the shallow water with a surprised yelp.

“What the fuck,” Keith hears himself say, not for the first time today, and most likely not for the last. “Lance!”

Keith stumbles forward a few steps, scrambling towards Lance, but he freezes as soon as his feet come too close to the steady waves, because now that he’s not only focused on Lance’s toppling, he realises that Lance seems to be more disgruntled and unhappy than hurt. Which could be caused by the large blue fish tail he wears like his least favourite shoes.

“What the fuck,” Keith repeats, loud enough for Lance to hear him, too. Because, let’s be honest, what else could he possibly say. Today is one big clusterfuck of a shitshow, and Keith doesn’t have the emotional range anymore to respond accordingly.

“I don’t know, man,” Lance calls back, even though Keith could probably hear him too if he were whispering. “You’re not going to, like, freak out on me, are you?”

“No,” Keith lies, you know, like a liar. He even shakes his head for good measure.

Displaying his vast knowledge of Keith’s tone of voice and every single expression Keith could sport at any given moment, Lance says: “Sure thing, buddy, please don’t, like, pass out or anything, I couldn’t catch you if I tried.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. He says: “No. I get it.”

“You do?” Lance’s voice is sceptical, and he furrows his brows again. Obviously dissatisfied with Keith’s reaction to the whole situation. Or rather lack of reaction. (Maybe he doesn’t know Keith as well as Keith knows him. Or maybe Keith is a terrible human being with one puzzle piece up his sleeve that Lance can’t possibly know about.)

“Yeah, still in shock, I guess,” Keith replies easily, toeing his shoes off his feet and taking the smallest step known to man toward the water. “Funny thing is that I came by to talk to you, too.”

“You said it’s not important,” Lance responds, face growing even more disgruntled. “We’re talking about my thing right now, Keith, get with the program.”

That pries a self-deprecating chuckle from Keith’s lips, and he draws in another deep breath, before he steps forward, cold sea water embracing his feet like an old friend. – Maybe they’re really friends now, considering the big fucking tail that appears where Keith’s legs have been until a second ago, sending him down into the water right on top of Lance who’s yelping in surprise again.

“You dick,” Lance splutters, mouth full of sea water. But then his eyes zero in on Keith’s tail and they grow wide in shock. He scrambles, fingers digging into wet sand until they hit Keith’s scales for the first time and hold onto them like Keith’s tail is Lance’s lifeline. Lance screeches: “This is not important? Not relevant enough to mention once?”

Being propped up on his elbows complicates Keith’s attempts of shrugging, but he thinks he’s getting the point across when he retorts: “You said you had something on your mind.”

For the first time almost completely engulfed by water, Keith tries to ignore the burning of the salt in the scrapes on his stomach, only to relent and navigate his tail into the same direction as Lance’s while rolling onto his back to lift his stomach out of the water.

Meanwhile Lance questions: “Have you always been a merman? Did you bite me to turn me into a merman, too?”, completely ignoring Keith’s admission. He eyes the contrast of their tails – red and blue, both unnatural like poisonous fishes –, wandering until they settle on his stomach, finally taking in Keith’s scratched up skin. “What happened to you?”

“Went for a run, got into contact with water, didn’t know it would end when it dries off, tried to move on asphalt anyway,” Keith rattles off detachedly, taking in the way Lance’s tail bleeds out into his back, singular scales just shy off the dimples above his hip bone. (The tail looks far better on Lance, but Keith won’t say that out loud.) “You seriously think I’d werewolf you into becoming a mermaid, Lance?”

“Maybe merfolk is immortal, and you just can’t live without me anymore,” Lance replies smugly, obviously growing accustomed to the thought that they’re amphibian now. Or whatever else the fuck mermaids are.

Keith decides to give Lance one more win to keep him from getting anxious again, even though he’s not sure if Lance really needs another reason to be self-complacent: “Well, if I were an immortal mermaid and I could turn you into my kind with a bite, maybe I’d do it.”

Lance grins at him now, big and wide and rosy-cheeked, and he lifts his wet hand to gently brush a strand of Keith’s hair out of his face. He doesn’t take his hand back, however. It settles on Keith’s cheek instead, cool skin soothing Keith’s fluttering nerves.

“You know,” Lance says, and his words don’t have the same joking quality to them anymore, clearing a path for earnestness that threatens to spill into Keith’s heart, “if I had to spend eternity with an immortal fish, I’d rather it be you.”

And Lance doesn’t know what he elicits in Keith’s soul, that he throws blotting paper into the burning hot flames of Keith’s yearning right beneath his skin. Lance doesn’t know, and it infuriates Keith greatly, beyond anything else. – And in extenuation of Keith as a person, he never said he’s got any impulse control, and just because he’s grown as a person since his angry teenage years, don’t make him less of a hothead. So, it’s to exactly no one’s surprise that Keith reaches out to Lance, cupping his face hastily and probably a little bit on the rough side to pull him close enough to kiss him.

Keith is not a strong man – mentally wise. He’s really, really weak emotionally speaking. And not kissing Lance has been on his agenda for so long now that he surprises himself with the fact that he didn’t do it sooner. Because only now that he actually does it, he realises just how natural it feels to have Lance pressed against him, bare skin on bare skin.

It doesn’t take long for Keith to realise that Lance hasn’t exactly kissed him back, which is as unsettling as it is anxiety inducing, so he pulls back only to be met by Lance’s wide eyes and slack jaw. Keith’s hand falls down, leaves Lance’s face hurriedly, but Lance stays glued to Keith’s cheek, mouth opening in quiet awe. (Oh, God, Keith really hopes it’s awe.)

“You kissed me,” Lance says matter-of-factly, eyes still widened in surprise.

Keith sighs sheepishly. “Yeah.”

“And we’re both some kind of weird half-mermaid,” Lance states for good measure.

Keith averts his eyes, not knowing where to look instead. “Yeah.”

“What the fuck,” Lance says.

“What the fuck,” Keith agrees.

And then Lance’s lips find his again, and he’s suddenly confronted with half a lap of blue fish tail while Lance’s second hand joins his first, burying themselves into Keith’s hair like it’s the only thing they were ever intended to do.

This time, Keith doesn’t immediately kiss back, still kind of reeling from the whiplash of Lance throwing himself at Keith. And Lance pulls back, almost bending over backwards in an attempt to give Keith some space if he wants it, because Lance is a good guy. (Which is probably the reason Keith fell for him in the first place.)

“This wasn’t some spur of the moment split second decision, was it?” Lance asks almost breathlessly. “You’re not going to back out on me, are you?”

“Kinda, I mean: No—well, I didn’t plan on it,” Keith says, shaking his head to drive his point home. Whatever that point may be. “Not going to back out, though. Don’t worry.”

Lance’s face almost splits in half with a smile so blindingly boyish that Keith forgets to breathe for a moment. He wants to frame this moment, savour it for as long as possible, and never ever let go of Lance’s face or arms or hip. (He will, they can’t stay in the water forever. But a guy can dream, right?)

(Kissing Lance is intoxicating, and it definitely makes up for the throng of hypothetical questions and hypotheses Lance throws his way in between, trying to examine every last possibility of their new state of being before plunging into the water and experiencing it first-hand, even though Keith can’t answer one of them because he’s as new to this as Lance. – Kissing Lance might even be the best thing Keith has ever done, and while he’s still a bit peeved that it took them so long to finally do it, he can’t help himself but think that he doesn’t mind the tail as much now that it is evident that it’s the catalysator of bottled-up feelings Keith didn’t think he could have endured any longer.)

Being a merman is kind of amazing. (Even if Pidge doesn’t agree.)

[rosesmith18]

Moonlight Night

This is a simple one-shot about Vanessa and the hardships she faces internally being a new mother to her son Thomas, and what doing your best as a mother can lead to. This story references some events from other story ideas of mine, and takes place at two separate periods.(You can also find it on Fanfiction.net under Phineas & Ferb if you prefer reading fanfics like that)

Phineas and Ferb Belongs to Dan Povenmire & Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh

Vanessa Doofenshmirtz Belongs to Dan Povenmire & Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh

Thomas Fletcher Belongs to Melty64 on DeviantArt

                                               Moonlight Night

Vanessa had always adored the night, for it's vast, bright sky of stars, it's calming, black emptiness, and of course it's ever changing master; the moon. The day her husband had exposed her to a true starry night under the full moon was still one of her fondest memories. So, as the cries of a newborn babe rang out calling for Vanessa to leave her soft bed, and enjoy the serene silence of the night much like the serene silence of her spouse, Vanessa found herself unable to begrudge for long.

"Oh, Thomas. What's wrong?" Vanessa questioned the whining brunet babe in his linen crib. A soft, tired, motherly smile on her face that managed to reach her eyes despite their weariness. This had been the fourth time this weekend alone she had awakened to the needy whimpers of her only child. It was never this bad when her husband was by their son's side. There was just a confidence in Ferb when he stared upon their child that Vanessa could never muster. Even now as she smiled down at him with all her motherly love; Thomas screamed with outreached hands for something Vanessa feared she could never give him. Hopelessly trumped by the ceaseless wooing, Vanessa pulled her baby from his crib and into her tired, trembling arms. Thomas clung to his mothers pajama collar as he went on whimpering into her chest. Vanessa's hoarse voice hummed the melody of 'Weißt du wieviel Sternlein stehen?' against the few tuffs of brown hair atop her son's head. Her feet carried them to the balcony that branched off from her and her husband's bedroom. She slid the glass door open and allowed Thomas' cry to fill the fresh air. The sounds of crickets chirping and leaves rustling in the gentle wind usually relaxed Vanessa, but not tonight, when they did nothing for the baby within her embrace. Vanessa looked upon the moon, a waxing crescent, holding itself high above the sky. It's light bared down on her as if trying to soothe her exhausted mind and body. Vanessa wondered to herself if that was even possible when Thomas' cries were as hoarse as her own hums. How could she find peace when there seemed to be none for her child? Her eyes pricked with tears as her thoughts became heavy, and her humming tempered out. Vanessa's expression tensed as Thomas' screams grew louder, and she winced when he tugged at a strand of her brunette locks. She instinctively yanked her head hair away in pain; Frustration and insecurity bubbling in the pit of her stomach. "Why…" She began to mutter out in a desperate plea for guidance when her sapphire irises met Thomas' own. His eyes were red and puffy from crying, his cheeks stained with tears, and lips squished inwards. His brow frowned in what she could only identify as unadulterated anguish. Vanessa's chest tightened as her mouth snapped shut. She was ashamed of herself for even thinking of asking such a thing. 'Why won't he stop?' She had been tempted to question the insightful light shining down on her, but that wasn't what she wanted. She didn't want to silence him. She just wanted to know, to know...exactly what he wanted to know. All she wanted was to know why everything seemed wrong; Why nothing she gave him brought him joy. But, this face devoid of all human deception and ruled by no human expectations begged for the answer to a similar question; 'Why can't you be happy with me?' It was such a simple question, as to be expected of a child. Why can't you be happy with me? Why can't you just smile at me? Why can't you live in the moment with me? Vanessa took a deep breath as she debated the millions of responses she could give that her son likely wouldn't understand. "I don't know." Was the reply she settled on; The simple, honest truth from which all her stress stemmed from. Her expression shifted to a tense less frown that one often gave when the situation couldn't become pleasant no matter what you did, though it became one of astonishment as she watched her own son's expression alter. His once agonized gaze searching for acceptance became one of acknowledgement as his features relaxed. It was as if he was telling her; 'That's okay. Neither do I.' then a yawn left his lips.

                                        *Thirteen Years Later*

The sobs of a lost soul echoed through the Fletcher resident with a vengeance. Determined in their aim to destroy and replace the fabric of serene silence that so often filled the almost boundless mansion, and yet, the sound begged to be silenced by that familiar, promising serenity. Sadly, the founder of the serenity they cried out for had left quite some hours ago. No, instead the lost souls' pitiful whines were heard only by another, younger lost one who prayed for a sign. 'Oh, what was it to do?' it asked the moon above which only shined down in quiet understanding as always. For moments the young one stood under the moon, thoughtful of everything around it; the vengeful sobs, dissipating serenity, and understanding moon. He felt alone in this contradicting, changing environment that was both oh so familiar and oh so foreign. But, he was not alone. Another was there screaming with an outreached hand for company that he could provide, that is, if he was brave enough. If he had the courage to take a leap of faith, and accept the hand in place of he who came before, yet did not come now. He locked eyes with the moon one last time, his irises as dark and as vast as the sky above. This time he did not ask what to do, or what to say, or where to go. He simply prayed for the courage to live-in this moment-as the moon did; with honest purpose, and knowing, and calming silence. His feet guided him to the home of distress that he would attempt to ease. His hand shook as it reached for the door. He turned the knob with as much control as he could muster, and with a deep breath, pushed the door open. On the bed, a brunette woman curled into herself, shaking yet unmoving. She sneered at the sound of the door, though did not look in it's direction. The younger felt the hair on his body stand up ready to hiss back, but he didn't let himself. He took a cautious step closer, and felt his heart tense as the woman pushed herself up quickly, and snapped her head in the younger man's direction. Her brow was frowned, her teeth bared, and cheeks stained. He didn't let himself hiss, or whimper, or attack, or run. Her sharp, intense sapphire eyes shattered before melting into a set of blue orbs more akin to the ocean tide. Her brow raised, her teeth disappeared behind her quivering lips, and her new tears danced down her cheek. He had seen that face so many times in the past few weeks; he knew his fear had shown on his face. She shot her head away in shame, falling to the bed once more.

"Oh gott…" She muttered under her breath. "...Was tue ich?" He did not know what she was saying, but he pitted the way the words left her. 'Oh, how broken she looked.' He thought, had thought more than once since meeting her. He stepped ever closer to the side of the bed, and when she did not move, he sat beside her. She glanced up at him with eyes that said what she dared not to, however he could read them as clear as a cloudless day. He didn't know how or why, but he could read her eyes. Bore into them with irises of identical nature and feel what she felt. She called him her son, her pride and joy, her only child, and he wanted so badly for her to be his mother. Maybe that was why he came to her when she cried for someone, anyone. When she cried to be held, and cared for, and told that everything was alright. He ran his fingers through her soft, chocolate locks that matched his own perfectly; in color, in texture, in tone. Her eyes widened as if he had promised her the world in place of these lonely walls, and she pulled his hand in hers. 'Stay with me.' Her grip begged of him, and despite the cold air that ran through his spine, he nodded.

[xaphrin]

It took every once of my control to NOT let this consume my entire soul. 

- - - 

It started in the most subtle ways. So subtle, that Raven didn’t even realize it for the first few weeks she was trapped on the island. 

The first morning she woke up to shells - beautiful, pristine ones - were arranged into a small pile on the sand. Raven had thought that maybe the waves had washed them in from the previous night. But the small piles of shells had continued, until Raven knew that there must have been something else behind it. She tried to stay up one evening to catch what was making this happen, but other than a ripple of motion just beyond the break of the sandbar far off the island’s coast, she didn’t see anything. 

And then last week, she hadn’t been able to catch or scavenge anything to eat for days, and when she thought she might be forced to try and eat something she’d rather didn’t, Raven found a fish in a tide pool. A fish that should have definitely not been there. She was grateful for whatever was taking care of her, but it felt… odd. Something was not right. So, she stayed up and watched the waves at night again, but other than the strange movement just outside of the sandbar, there was nothing to tell her that there was anything out of the ordinary. 

But something was wrong. It had to be. Neat piles of shells, and huge fish trapped in tide pools didn’t just happen. Something had to be messing with her… or, at least, taking care of her. 

And that was how this particular afternoon, she found herself swimming out to the sandbar far from the shore, where the sea dropped off into endless, infinite blue. She knew it was dangerous, she could get sucked into the undertow, or misjudge the distance between the shore and the sandbar and lose her strength. There were so many things that could go wrong, but she needed answers. Real answers. 

Her limbs were exhausted by the time she felt her toes touch soft wet sand, and Raven found herself wading in waist-deep water, looking around her for any kind of clue that might explain what was happening. But all around her there was nothing but that deep blue stretching out into the pale blue of the horizon. Raven stood there and looked at the sea around her, sighing in defeat. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she really was losing her mind.  

And then she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

Oh no.

This was bad. This was very, very bad. 

Her heart stopped in her chest and she saw a dorsal fin from a large shark slice through the crystalline surface of the water. Panic filled her, and Raven suddenly tried to think of what she should do. She couldn’t make it back to the shore without resting, and if she tried, the movement would draw the shark to her. She stood perfectly still and watched as the shark circled closer still. 

A rough tail slid past her leg and Raven jumped back, nearly flailing in the water. She jerked around looking for the shark again, and seeing the dorsal fin move closer. Raven took a step back, felt the rough skin of the tail slide past her over leg, and she panicked. She stumbled backward, and expected to fall into the water, but-

Warm hands steadied her, keeping her up above the water’s surface. Raven blinked, looking over her shoulder to see…

Curious green eyes stared at her, and Raven turned in the stranger’s arms to look closer. Was he a… mirage? No. She could feel his hand - large and strong, tight on her arms. She looked around the clear surface of the sea again, trying to piece together what happened. Had someone else washed up on the shore with her? Or was the island not as deserted as she had thought before? Maybe there was another settlement somewhere on the other side of the island she hadn’t gotten to yet. 

Slowly, she pulled back just a little and examined his face, took in the sharp angular lines of his jaw and cheekbones. Long, wet hair slid over his shoulders and rested against his chest and arms, clinging to olive skin, marked with an array of deep green tattoos and marred with scars. She slid her hand up an arm and touched a scar, as if trying to convince herself that he was real.

He didn’t shy away from her touch, and leaned closer to her, as if really examining her for a long moment. He picked up a hand and pressed it against his chest. “Damian.”

His voice was a low rumble, like waves crashing against rocks during a storm. Raven swallowed her pounding heart, and lifted her hand to her chest. “Raven.”

Damian’s hard-edged face softened, and he reached out to touch the shell necklace she had been making with the shells left on the shore. Raven flushed as he hooked his fingers under the shells and lifted them, looking oddly pleased with her handiwork.  

“Did you give these to me?”

“Do you like them?” His words were heavily accented, slanted with long, deep vowels and short, rough consonants, as if he wasn’t used to speaking her language. He threaded the strands of shells around his fingers, admiring the bright colors in the stark light of the sun.  

“They’re pretty.” Raven wasn’t sure what else to say. She had a million questions for him - what was he doing here? Where did he live? On the island? Somewhere closer? Why hadn’t he come to her sooner? They could have pooled their resources and maybe she could have gotten off this god-forsaken island in the middle of nowhere. And, what in the world was he doing out in the middle of the ocean alone? 

“Mm.” He gave her a small half-smile and dropped the shells so they lay back on her chest. Raven shivered as his fingers slid along her sternum, resting carefully against her heart. He leaned forward, looking into her eyes as if he was still searching for something in her soul. “Your craftsmanship needs some work, but it is still quite beautiful.” 

Raven opened her mouth to snap back at him, but she felt something slid along her leg again.  The rough feeling of sharkskin slid against her calf, and Raven pulled her leg away, looking down into the water to see a shark tail pressed against the back of her knees. She jumped forward into Damian, trying to step as far away from the shark as possible. How had the shark managed to sneak so close to both of them? Panic swelled in her chest and she nearly jumped into his arms.

“You are… frightened?” 

Yes! Of course she was frightened! There was a shark in the water with them! How did he manage to stay so calm? Raven’s eyes followed the long slender lines of the shark tail, up to…

…to… 

Raven swallowed, uncertain if she was really seeing this. The long, swaying tail was firmly attached to Damian’s body. She stared for a long moment, and then rubbed at her eyes and stared again. 

He was a merman. 

An honest-to-goodness, real life merman.

Raven then did the most embarrassing thing that she could possibly do - she fainted. 

-

When Raven woke up again, it was night time and the full moon lit the pale, white sand around her. She found herself on the shore with a pounding headache, and a new, neatly displayed pile of shells next to her. She picked one up and looked at it, her stomach turning over, trying to rationalize what happened. It had to be sun sickness. Or maybe the fish she ate had turned bad. Or maybe… maybe she was finally losing her mind. She’d been on this island for nearly a month now, and without any other human contact, that could be a real possibility. After all, what she had seen couldn’t possibly be real. She was just going to have to prove it to herself.

Raven sat up and pitched forward, holding her still throbbing head in her hands as she tried to think of any kind of explanation to make her feel… less crazy. Maybe if she swam back out to the sandbar, she would find a clue as to what really happened, or what she had actually seen when she was out there this morning. Maybe it was a shark, and her own fears had tried to fill in parts of her memory that weren’t really there. 

She waded into the water again, making her way to the sandbar far off the shore.

There was a loud splash to her left, followed by a low rumble of sound. “Careful, my love.” 

She jerked and looked out into the water, seeing the outline of someone standing there. She screwed her eyes shut, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves and try to pull herself together. Raven refused to faint again, like she was some kind of silly heroine in a bad romance novel. This was a dream, or a mirage, or something… something with a reasonable explanation. Carefully, she opened her eyes again, but saw him still standing there, watching her with a soft, amused expression, as if he was fascinated with her. 

Raven shifted in the water, her stomach twisting as something strange seemed to flood her whole body. Heat crawled up her neck, and she rubbed at her arms as she moved closer to him. The moon was bright and clear, casting silvery shadows around them, but Damian seemed to glow. The tattoos that meandered over his arms seemed to be on his sides as well, and on the tight V of his hips and… 

Raven lost control of her thoughts as her eyes traced every tattoo, examining the way they seemed to light up - as if they were bioluminescent, casting their own glow in the dark evening. 

Damian stepped even closer to her, and he watched her with a pleasant curiosity for a long moment. “You overexerted yourself today. You should not have made that swim out to the breaker. Not when you’re obviously still healing from the crash a month ago.” 

He moved closer to her, and Raven could see the tattoos on his body disappear into the water, lighting up two very human, almost normal looking legs. She must have had sun poisoning. There is no other possible reason she could have for making herself believe that this very real human in front of her had a tail.

“I’m alright.” Her voice felt swallowed by the silence around them as she tried to stumble over her own words. He stared down at her, still obviously curious. “Are you… human?”

His face fell, and he leveled a dark stare at her. “It is rude to ask someone’s species.” 

She stumbled backward and he caught her, his arm resting tight against her waist as he pulled her steady against him. Raven stood there and felt the whole length of his very naked body press tight against her through her now-wet shirt. Every twitch of his muscles, every deep breath… everything that clearly rested between his legs. There was no denying that he was very, very human.  

“I’m sorry. I…” She stumbled over her words, suddenly feeling foolish. How in the world could she have imagined him having a tail? “...it’s just that this afternoon I could have sworn you had a-” Raven cut herself off from saying anything more, or she was going to embarrass herself. She looked away, trying not to think about how the gentle lapping of the waves kept pushing her hips tight against his own. “Nevermind.”

“A… what?” He lifted an eyebrow. “A tail?”

Heat darkened her face. She was being ridiculous. “Sorry. It has to be sun sickness.”

“I do normally have a tail.” He said it so calmly, like everyone should have known that people in oceans had tails. Damian blinked and pointed at the moon behind him. “A full moon gives me the opportunity to come on land.” His lips pulled to the side, as if he was teasing her. “I usually do not have a reason to… but, you seem to be a curious exception to the rule.” 

He did have a tail. He had a tail and he was openly admitting it - to her face. Oh, god. Just what in the world had she gotten into? Raven fell backward into the water as she scrambled to get out of his arms, stumbling over herself and the waves. Damian crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her, both confused and amused at whatever her mind was going through. 

He cocked his head to the side. “My love, you seem… uncomfortable.”

“You’re naked.” She sputtered as her head broke the surface, pushing her hair out of her face. “You’re naked, and a merman or a shark or whatever, and I’m… I’m clearly losing my mind.” Raven stumbled to shallow water and sunk down, letting the soft waves lap against her shoulders. “That’s the only explanation - I’ve officially lost my mind. I’m stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, with no one looking for me, and I’m clearly descending into madness. That’s the only reasonable explanation.”

“You… you think you have lost your mind?” There was a tinge of hurt that lined his voice. 

“Well… merpeople don’t exist, so…” She motioned to him, trying to ignore the fact that while he stood next to her, everything below the hips was perfectly-centered at eye-level, and… gods be damned. There was no possible way that could be real. She took a slow breath and looked away, staring out into the dark line of the horizon. “You’re obviously a mirage I created so I didn’t feel so lonely.”

“Mm.” 

Raven looked over at him, and was presented again with the unadulterated image of his nakedness. “Sit down. I don’t want to stare at your…”

Massive cock.

“...manhood.”  

He chuckled and settled into the water next to her, leaning back of his forearms as he stared up into the sky. Raven pulled her knees to her chest and stared out into the endless nothingness of the ocean, trying not to think how very far away she was from everyone and everything she knew. She felt… hopeless, and lonely, and she wasn’t sure if she would ever find her way home. There was a long silence that settled between them, until Damian finally broke it. 

“The ocean is seemingly endless.”

She looked over at him, watching the long, dark strands of his hair disappear into the water, and she found herself wanting to wrap it around her hand, just to see if he was as real as she wanted him to be. She shifted and looked back out at the sea. 

“Is it such a strange thing to believe that something you have never met, or seen, exists beyond your understanding, my love?” 

She glanced back at him. “And are you going to tell me unicorns exist too?”

“Oh no, they were wiped out centuries ago.” His teasing smile returned, and he picked up his head, turning to face her. “But, we have adapted a bit better.” He lifted a leg out of the water before letting it slip under the surface again. His eyes met her own and he leaned even closer to her, closing all possible routes of escape. “And you do not look like you believe you have succumbed to madness.”

“That’s the thing about going crazy, you don’t really notice it.” She huffed out an annoyed breath, but didn’t pull away. “And I don’t think a very attractive man with a monster of a cock who calls me my love, is just going to be hanging out anywhere outside of my dreams, so… so, that’s obviously the only explanation. I’ve lost my mind, you’re a figment of my imagination, and-”

Her words were cut painfully short as Damian pulled her tight against him, his lips pressing against hers in a somewhat unrefined, but still toe-curling kiss. Her eyes widened and she tried to think of any reason she shouldn’t kiss him, but nothing came to mind. Not when he was kissing her like she was his entire reason for living. Her hand tightened on his thigh, and she pushed up into his lips, letting go of a soft sigh. His hand wrapped around her hips and he pulled her tight against him, slipping a knee between her own legs. Raven leaned into him, her mouth chasing after his as he broke free from her. 

If this was madness, then she was happy to live here.

He smirked, and curled his fingers under her chin. “My love, I only have until the moon sets before I have to return to the ocean until the next full moon.” He pitched his voice to a low, rumbling noise that vibrated deep into Raven’s soul. “And while I am enjoying this thrilling conversation about whether or not I exist, I would very much prefer to use my time in a more… physical way.”

Oh, yes. This was obviously a dream. In what universe would she ever find herself presented with an opportunity like this? Raven level a flat stare at him. “And what makes you think I’m just going to let you… mate with me?”  

He blinked, confused by her question. He reached out and tangled his fingers in the strand of shells. “You have been wearing the shells I bring you.”

Raven looked down as he fingered the shells. “They’re pretty, and you left them for me.”

“By accepting my small tokens of admiration, you have accepted my proposal.” He dropped the shells back onto her chest, lifting his head to look into her eyes. “And by wearing them openly, you are admitting that you are claimed by me.”

Raven let his words settle over her with all the weight of the world. Proposal. Claimed. Her heart stopped in her chest, and she dug her hands into the sand underneath her. 

“Damian… am I your wife?”

He just smiled.   

[idealistsinc]

closed doors

The morning dawns a gauzy pink over Bloodshore. The ocean’s song hums along the beach, the lapping waves a faintly-tapped tambourine. Vhox wakes to a nest of blankets tangled about his hips and, for a moment, permits himself to bask in the sleepy warmth that tingles in every limb. He’ll never get used to the novelty of a familiar bed, nor of such a pleasant bedmate—

But a fumble of his arm over cold sheets reveals that Rin had already risen bells ago. It’s very like him to get up too early—assuming he even slept at all. Rin probably moved to the den to fuss over the Gate’s logbooks for the third time this week, a cup of coffee close at hand, violet eyes narrow and focused behind his glasses, his ears perked...Vhox stretches languidly, something soft unfurling in his chest like wings. Rin works much harder than his paycheque warrants. Perhaps, Vhox thinks, he will welcome a distraction from the sea of numerals, columns, and tables.

Vhox indulges a daydream of his preferred method of distraction for a little longer than he ought, then at last puts forth the effort to drag himself out of bed. The chilled, dewy dampness of the wooden floor chases the lingering heat from his soles; he shivers reflexively as he crosses it, reaching for the door.

There is something black under Vhox’s fingernails.

The room contracts to the size of a pin. Dirt, he tells himself as he digs the residue out from under his nailbeds, but dread coils around his throat like a hangman’s noose, cinching tighter and tighter with each passing heartbeat until his lungs spasm, until his eyes burn. Dirt, it’s dirt, it has to be dirt—

Through the window streams a red sun. Vhox notices, then, what he hadn’t before: the stains that splotch the floor like pitch. Ruddy sheets snarled at the foot of the bed. The reek of salt. Gods, how the room reeks of salt.

“Rin,” he breathes. “No, no, no—”

It is the way of these things that, when Vhox scrambles for the doorknob on the knife-edge of panic, it will not turn in his hand. His palms slip, soaked (with what), and he chokes on the memory of another door that would not open, another door slammed shut as the dark blotted out his vision and the acid boiled in his veins and he— “Rin, are you there? Th’ door’s—th’ door’s jammed. Rin?”

Oh, there is so very much that flakes from Vhox’s hands.

He sets his shoulder to the frame. He knows, in the way of these things, that he must get through that door—he crashes his weight into it, the sound drowned out by the screaming lash of the ocean against the shoreline. It does not budge. The floor sways beneath Vhox’s feet. There is no room, after all, just the shadows like the brig they threw him into while they decided what to do with him, a closed hole that stunk of salt and shit, back when he didn’t even know what he had done or yet could do. He never remembers when that side of him closes over his head like a wave—but he must have wanted to do it, right? Otherwise, why would he… Vhox presses hard against the wood, listening with single-minded desperation for a scuff, a cough, a footstep. Anything at all to show that Rin is still there, but all Vhox can hear is the deafening cannonade of his own heart. “Can you ‘ear me? Rin, fuck, I need—I need you to open the fuckin’ door, I can’t—”

Please, let him still be there. Let it be that he can hear him but won’t open the door. Let Rin think he’s a monster because he is one, let him leave him in this room to rot like he deserves, as long as he’s not—he’s not—he’s not—

But Vhox knows, in the way of these things, that the floor on the other side of the door is stained with a fluid like pitch. That the air there, too, reeks of salt. That through those windows as well as these streams a red, red sun.

That Rin can’t hear him, because—

“For fuck’s sake, say something! Answer me! Rin—”

. . .

Somewhere else, Vhox lurches upright in a dark, dark room. The blankets snare his legs like a fishing net, like a binding rope; he scrabbles away in blind terror and nearly clocks his skull on the headboard, gulping breaths that yet smell of salt, why does it reek of salt—

“Vhox?” The body in the bed with him stirs, sleep-muddled. Vhox can’t make out any of Rin’s features past the reddish haze that clouds his vision. “Are you all right?”

The monster says, No. It stalks at the very edge of his consciousness, a sharp-toothed, many-legged thing that ever urges: Protect yourself. Let go. Let go. Vhox sinks his nails into his thighs without feeling it, his whole world shrinking to holding the monster at bay in a white-knuckled grip. “Get out.” It comes out too thin, too pleading. “Get out, Rin, I’m—”

Rin sits up. But rather than put the safety of a shut, locked, barred door between them, he shifts closer. Vhox feels a gentle hand brush his shoulder, startlingly cool on his burning hot skin. “You’re not,” says Rin. “You’ve been working with Charlotte, haven’t you? Tell me what she told you to do.”

It’s true that Charlotte has coached him for several moons. Breathe, she always tells him. Deep to your core. Cling to control with both hands if you have to. But how can he cling to it, when he is the monster and the monster is him; how can he breathe past the thorns that snarl in his chest, because Rin is sitting far too close to the part of Vhox that screams in the back of his head, Kill him. Vhox wants to shove him away, but is stopped by the sudden, bloody conviction that he will drive his fist through Rin’s ribs by mistake if he tries. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. Please, Rin, I don’t want to h—I don’t want to hurt you—”

“I know. And you’re not going to.” Rin is still touching him, palm gliding feather-light over his back. “You’re safe. We’re both safe, okay? Now, deep breath and hold it, like you’re going to swim. Can you do that?”

Vhox tries—for Rin’s sake if nothing else. He burns through breath too fast, exhaling roughly, struggling to fill his lungs instead of drawing shallow, whistling sips of the air. But after a few labored attempts, the strangling noose around his neck loosens. Rin waits until he breathes a little easier, then threads his fingers through Vhox’s claw-like ones, still clenched painfully on his thigh. “See? You’re not hurting me,” he says, guiding Vhox’s hand to his face with a confidence and trust that makes Vhox feel more than a little nauseated. He doesn’t dare so much as twitch as Rin skims Vhox’s calloused fingertips over the delicate flesh of his throat, his jaw, his cheek. “You won’t hurt me. You’re safe.”

He isn’t. Yet slowly, very slowly, the monster recedes like the tide, and the fear begins to drain down the scupper.

Rin must feel the first cord of tension release. He climbs into Vhox’s lap and presses flush against him, tucking his head into the space under Vhox’s chin, his skin smooth and bed-warmed, still. Vhox counts down a slowing string of heartbeats before he permits himself to touch him, feeling his way over the knobs of Rin’s spine, the sharp planes of his shoulder blades, the plume of his swishing tail—if Rin was frightened, if he at all considered he might end up with his guts spilled out over the bed for his trouble, he doesn’t otherwise show it. Vhox sighs into the curling strands of Rin’s hair.

There is much Vhox could say to him right now. Do you have a death wish? might be a good place to start. His stomach roils to imagine what he could have done to him; he wants to shout at him, demand to know what the fuck he was thinking to stay within striking range of a monster. But Vhox has done that already, more frequently than he would like to admit. And no matter how many times Vhox jolts awake in the middle of the night on the edge of a cliff, Rin weathers it uncomplaining—the man who bitches and moans when the sheets are the wrong thread count in seedy little Lower Decks taverns, uncomplaining when his sleep is interrupted and his life is threatened, as tender and gracious and kind as anyone has ever been to Vhox.

So Vhox tightens his arms around Rin, and instead, he says, “...Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Rin nuzzles Vhox’s sweat-soaked collarbone with a drowsy affection that turns Vhox’s heart over for entirely different reasons. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“Yeah. But s’nothin’.”

Vhox feels Rin tilt his head back a little as though to look at him, his voice dry. “Are you sure? If that was nothing, I dread to see what something looks like.”

For Vhox, something began when he woke one red Limsan morning to shredded bedsheets and a broken lock. He avoided spending nights with Rin for as long as possible, after that, until at last Rin’s increasingly obvious distress got the better of him and he had been forced to confess to the night terrors he once suffered—and apparently suffered still. And Rin handled it. By the Twelve, did he handle it. He paid for adjacent lodging at inns for a while, then slept perched in chairs when Vhox finally caved to guilt enough to share a room, ever accommodating when he should have been afraid. Why isn’t he? Vhox asks himself, too often, as he remembers how Rin stumbled into that camp a second time, the blood not yet dried on his bandaged arm, and begged for Vhox to come home. He should have been afraid, but wasn’t, because—

Vhox knows the reason. Even if he can’t admit it. Even if he doesn’t believe it, he knows. And though it would be for Rin’s own good to scare him away, though it would make him safe, Vhox can no longer bring himself to hurt him like that again. He is...too weak.

Perhaps it’s selfishness, but he doesn’t want to make Rin as terrified of him as Vhox is of himself.

“I’m sure.” He presses his lips to the crown of Rin’s head, aching in a way that does not bear thinking about too long. “But I’ll finish th’ night on th’ couch. More comfortable there.”

It’s a testament to how badly shaken Vhox must seem that Rin ventures no objections; he only leans up to kiss him properly, then reluctantly lets go. “All right. You’re welcome to come back when your shoulders start complaining about the sofa’s comfort, though.”

Vhox smiles wanly—not that Rin can see that, absent his glasses as he is—and slowly gets out of bed. The floor is cool and slightly damp from the humid air, but nothing more. It’s only when Vhox closes the bedroom door behind him, so that he lingers alone in the shadows and salt-sprayed air of the den, that he feels a disquieting echo...He cracks the door just an ilm, just to make sure he can. “Rin?”

“Yes?”

There is much Vhox could say to him. Thank you, to start. For his presence in his life and his bed, for the roof over his head, for a safe harbor to always return to. He doesn’t know what would have happened to him if Rin had not come back, if he had not reached out to the man and the monster both and said, “You don’t have to live like this. I don’t want you to.” Vhox remembers the domesticity of his dream before it soured, that sweet ambrosia of comfort and refuge, and begins in his heart, I…

No, not yet. Not even to himself.

“G’night,” says Vhox instead, the softness in his voice speaking to what he cannot, and melts away into the dark.

vhox belongs to @mimiorzea still

[seriouslyblacklikemysoul]

Her eyes, the stars - Bucky Barnes x Reader (Steve Rogers x Reader)

[I know, I am a ghost. Sorry guys. Enjoy.]

The reminiscence of a rose - the single flower that’s so impossible to hate, delicate and pretty, even when it stops blooming. Her voice could calm even the most chaotic oceans, always soothing with soft notes of comfort. Even her eyes could mesmerize the most soulless creature; her sweet face left him dreaming in heartache. On the nights his loneliness stung him harder than cheap liquor; he was always thinking of her. For he reveled in the memory of her heart placed on his hands. As he tried to get drunk on other people’s skin. Yet all that regret still burned his chest. And he realized that he once had the best. Since she loved his highs and lows. He thought about what he once held. He regretted leaving her. But she deserved more than his pettiness and demeanor.

She begged herself to stop loving him.She hated herself for all the mistakes she had made, all those wrong decisions - she blamed him for he made her vulnerable. He was the sun, never really committed to one planet, always dancing around the universe, with bright colors revealing themselves, leaving her in awe. Her heavy blues of night opened to reveal the chariot of the sun lighting up the sky with various shades of yellow and gold. The feeling was almost theatrical and the dramatic intensity was palpable. How could they end up in the same sky, when he was the sun and she was always so fond of the night? They were just celestial objects, trying to find the one perfectly still moment, so they could co-exist in harmony without worrying about nature's balance. That moment had passed them by, ignoring their desperate attempts to escape the chaotic force.She was a whole universe in motion - he had guessed that was why she seemed so tired lately...It must be an exhausting, yet beautiful thing to brush the orbits of all the universes she walked by. He had tried to stop thinking that he made her so unhappy. He couldn't. Instead, he tried to understand her a bit better than before, to get close to her, without hurting her. Again. She was no pawn in his game, she was clever and cunning - but just to hide her true self.

"You think you can define me, that I am a tick in just one box. Like my being is a door that a single key unlocks. But let me tell you something - something I figured out after you broke me. I have the universe inside, I hold an untamed ocean with a constantly changing tide. I'm home to endless mountains with tips that touch the sky, flocks of grand migrating birds and deserts harsh and dry. Please, don't tell me that you know me. That "this right here is what you are", trying to get an old and very dead version of me back. I am the universe in motion, for I was born from the stars" she was talking to him, trying to make a point, to seem sure about what she had become - but she was scared of her heart. Oh, the things it made her do. He wasn't taken aback, which surprised her. He was looking into her eyes, watching the soft colors of the sky fooling around with the dark strokes of her irises. It was true, her eyes held the stars. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the swirling feelings inside her. She felt every single cell of her body begging for her to forgive him - there was nothing to forgive, really, for he had done nothing wrong. It was her that could not - would not - handle things. She never saw herself in a relationship - so many obligations. She was not made for ballgowns and parties but for battlefields and saddles.

"I am yours, forever yours… and when the last star of the universe blinks silent, I will still be yours", his answer came naturally to him. It was the most sincere thing he had ever said. He knew her as a sea breeze, but now she met her as a hurricane. So he knew, she needed to be alone. She had been craving freedom so long and he had been blind. He was a liar- he lied to her, to the entire world, to his own self. He wasn't the Golden Boy, people made him to be. He had hurt her in ways he couldn't have imagined before. She softly smiled to his words, because she knew he was being honest. Once upon a time, everything was magical and they were found themselves walking through a chaotic paradise. The entire multi-universe had changed.

"I might have been too harsh, Stevie. Truth is that this, us, has turned to dust right after we were defeated. Five years now, we have been foolish enough to try and make things work. We have been lying to everyone, we want them to move on and be alright when I know that all those sleepless nights we have been thinking of a way to make everything as it was. I also know, and please do not try to deny it, that you are not mine. Not really, not entirely, not ever. For you, it's always gonna be Peggy. Accepting that, was the hardest thing I have ever done". His face twisted in a guilty way. Everything she had experienced for the first time, had been with him. It hurt her but she would move on, find someone else to make her feel alive again.

"I... I am sorry. I love you, you should know that. It's just. I can't shake the feeling… I am so sorry" he calmly apologized to her. He couldn't control his heart.

" And I love you. You can't unlove someone. You can, however, become just friends with them. I wouldn't want to lose you from my life. So... Hey dude" she tried to change the dark and painful situation into something less... 

It all happened so quickly and slow at the same time. It was a disaster and a triumph. Everyone came back - well, not everyone. Once she laid eyes on Bucky, she ran like hell and almost knocked him down as she enveloped him in a bone-crushing hug. How she had missed him - her best friend, companion and well...it would take her a while to admit it but there were butterflies, even though she did push them away every time, convincing herself that it was nothing more.

"I missed you Jay, so damn much" was all that she managed to say before Steve called them to assemble. 

They won. And they lost. All thanks to the amazing Tony Stark. After a horrific scene of Thanos wearing the gauntlet and snapping his fingers - only to realize that Tony had stolen them right on time - everyone's heart fell and crushed and burnt. Yes, Tony defeated Thanos but at what cost?

He had always been the only father figure she knew- if she thought that standing against him with the Sokovian Accords was devastating, this was torture.

When things slowed down, Steve looked at her for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. Her porcelain-like skin was bruised, stained and twisted forming a pained mask, her hands were trembling and she was leaning against his best friend- why was this the first time he was noticing the look on Bucky's face? Why was this the first time he felt that his friend craved to be more than a friend to her? 

Life has a strange way of revealing her secrets, a dark sense of humor. It goes on, like a circular river, never-ending, never resting. After the simple ceremony to honor Tony's memory, she took a step back, asking for a few weeks off of the team to help Pepper and Morgan. All she wanted was to feel normal again. One more task before that though.

Seconds before Steve stepped into that platform to be teleported back in time, she called for him. He knew it and so did she. She had seen it in his eyes after they had mourn Natasha. In all honesty, she understood why - he deserved the life that was taken away from him, without asking him if he liked the alternative options. Bucky knew it. He knew it when he saw him on the blood-stained battlefield. He felt it in their hug. He also knew that she knew- he was the one both her and Steve had asked for help before Thanos. He was the one who swallowed his feelings for her and gave her a friendly shoulder to rest her head. "Thank you" Steve mouthed to her. She smiled, eyes covered in tears threatening to spill. "Go".And he was gone. Bucky gave her hand a gentle squeeze and she turned to face him. Unknown him, she had become aware of his feelings. And her own, slowly but steadily. "A soul that carries empathy is a soul which has survived enormous pain" she softly whispered as if she didn't want to be heard. He felt that she could read his mind. All those years ago, another Bucky had existed- one who flirted shamelessly with everyone. He had to get in touch with him if he wanted a chance with her, he thought, only to be proven wrong after a while. He just had to be himself. 

She had finally realized that Steve and her were exactly like the moon and the sun- and their time together was an eclipse, a breathtaking phenomenon, a glimpse of what it could have been. A moment. And that was okay. She regretted nothing. It was perfect in its imperfection.

She found herself knocking Bucky's door, not knowing why. All she wanted was to see the stars but somehow when she was greeted by sliver blue eyes, the stars seemed inefficient. He was the night, she thought.

"Can I stay here for a while?"... because I am scared when I am alone? He opened up his door to let her get inside because he knew the part of the sentence that left unsaid. His room was warm with a serene view of the night sky. He knew that she loved to gaze the stars, how she would always complain that the moon was a hypocrite. But not tonight. She felt gravitated towards him which made him blush, thankful for the darkness. To say that he hadn't wished for a moment with her, it would be a lie. He was pulled towards her like a magnet and in all honesty, he didn't want to leave far away and get over her.

"Can't sleep?" he asked her in a hushed tone as he laid to his bed, eyes watching her every move. She let a tired chuckle and sat down next to him. He pierced her eyes and she felt naked - and she didn't mind. It was okay for him to see her in all her doomed glory.

"Jay, its past midnight and I’ve pretty much thought of all the words hoping to find something that can remedy this... I can try but my vocabulary falls short when it comes to describing the matters of my heart. My heart. Not yours - mine. I could fill pages about the likes and dislikes of your heart. What makes you tremble what softens you up. I know you like the back of my hand. I know your anger and I know your vulnerability. Vulnerability…. what does that even mean? I guess it happens when you finally take the leap to open up to one who might not ever see you the same again. I guess that your weakness is not supposed to be a different form of feeling when it comes to me. And it isn't. I guess that attachments don’t exist between the two of us. But it does. And I guess, well I guess, that I love you a bit more each day and bit less on the days you choose to ignore me. No, wait, that's a lie. And I know that this is way too forward and yes, he was, is, your best friend, and my ex, which can be a bit awkward -  but you know what? He made a choice, but not before I do. I had already fallen for you and if it's weird -" he did not let her finish. The words coming from hee mouth were burning fires inside his head, for years now. His lips were ever so gently upon hers. It almost didn't feel like a kiss.

In the end, everyone wanted to be like Icarus, hoping to fly high and soar far. Nobody was satisfied with their standing and kept pushing their limits. And that was human...  full of life, blinded, arrogant, wonderful... always falling in the end. But not every fall hurts. She landed softly on his lips, her hands caressing his face and his were holding her tight as if she was a dream and he would soon wake up.

He was the stars and she was the moon. Finally, it worked.

'From stars we came, to stars we'll return and in the middle is all we are'

[ala-mhinyan]

Dissension

{{ Feat Mentions: @dunrai-ffxiv​ and @talesfromthegameff14​ }} {{ TW: References to Physical Abuse! }}

Endless black was what greeted the Seeker when he found his way within the very center of his being; where his heart was most open and the melding of broken shards could acquiesce and converse with one another without one man looking half-mad as he  mumbled to himself in the middle of the hallway. He’d accidentally done it once before after Yasu had turned him and his loved one’s entire lives upside down and he’d be damned if he let himself slip like that again. Ayanga promised him that home was a place where he could be safe, vulnerable and do what was needed in the safety of a place he’d never be hurt.

But. Home was the mouth of a shark. Not always. Not often.

But right now? It was the gaping maw of a predator ready to swallow him whole should he lose his footing and come tumbling down. He wasn’t ready to fall. Not yet. There was so much to do.

So his feet carried him far from home. Dunrai had gone home with Ayanga after his conversation with Kadour and C’tolemy excused himself to be alone with his thoughts. How he ended up on the sandy beach lining Costa Del Sol’s ocean? He could never tell you—he was already crossing frigid waters until he was alone on one of the smaller islands off the coast. No one would bother him; the moon steady overhead, bathing him in her radiance and promising to protect his lone form.

The lumbering form of red, leather and comfortable wool sat kneeling at the water’s edge with his head bowed toward the open ocean and the Night Mother’s omnipresent gleam. He lowered his guard, dropped his anchor and let himself fall within, carried along by the jangle of anklets and the slosh of ocean waves.

.::.

C’aziza was standing in front of him when he found himself within the inky abyss, her radiant self a perfect reflection of what C’tolemy was—only feminine. In the sway and curve of her hips, the full of her lips, the soft of her cheeks and the heavy sway of breasts that she didn’t seem at all bothered by. She retained his muscles, his wide shoulders and the overall dangerous outlook that he carried but she had a feminine wile in her that would not be tamed. He didn’t want to anyway.

She was beautiful.

She was the woman his soul represented and he was her perfect counterpoint; the man his soul represented all bound up and bowed nicely into the one everyone knew as ‘C’tolemy’. An amalgamation of woman, man and wild, unchecked aggression in the form of a gleaming yellow eyes.

C’tolemy, or—more accurately, Dasa, approached the golden women in a smooth motion of silver flesh—the contours of mountain peaks and hills mapped across his flesh to adorn him as something closer to godlihood than man. Each step sure and calculated, the flick of a long tail granting him grace you only find in performers and dancers well into their years. The flex of each muscle. The bulge and pinch of skin, sinew working underneath like a well oiled machine to move his hulking form. His golden eyes met her silver ones and her golden skin met his silver flesh.

Perfect, complete counterpoints. Two halves of the same whole.

She was the first to speak.

“We can’t do this.”

His expression veered from placid observation to politely controlled. Walled off. He was already pushing her away. “While I understand your concerns—”

“Do you? You don’t love him like I do. No one does.”

A snarl sets under his lips, “You’re right. No one loves him like you do. No one would be that stupid.”

C’aziza never could stand for insults and that was more true now than ever—with C’ajnee’s demise lingering in the distance and the growing rift between the shards within, it was no wonder she was the first to strike Dasa. The thunk and crack of bone against porcelain splits his beautiful jawline like a shattered vase. He doesn’t retaliate more than cut his eyes into a glare.

“Is this what you want, Dasa?! You want me to hurt you? To fight with you over what we’re going to do? You may pretend like you’ve changed since you met Dunrai and Ayanga but I am no fool! You can hide your heart behind the shroud of darkness and play at being heartless to everyone else but you can’t hide your heart from the one sharing it!”

Dasa rolls his jaw, popping it in several places. Unless his more feminine counterpart, he doesn’t rage wild and hot—he burns cool and steady. Ice to her fire.

“I want you, for once in your life, to be sensible. I know you love Kushal more than anything else in life but you have to see that if we go back to him he’ll break us into more pieces. It won’t end until there is nothing left of us and we’re dead in the ground never having lived a life of our own. Is that what you want? To be his.. His slave for the rest of our life?”

C’aziza bristles, a snarl rolling hot between fangs and the slim space of cheek with tongue. She looks like she’s just about ready to strike him again when she turns on her heel and stalks away from him, tail lashing. “You don’t understand. Kushal wouldn’t do this to us. He wants us.”

“He never wanted us,” he hissed bitterly, “You are the only one that still believes that lie.”

“And you want to believe it! You want to believe Kushal still wants us! That he’ll touch us tenderly and call us little one and stroke our cheek and look at us like we’re the one thing in this world he’ll never hurt! Why—Why do you always act like I’m the unreasonable one when you feel the exact same way as me?!”

“Because I won’t risk US again and YOU would! Want to, even!”

She’s upon him like a hurricane before he can think to put up a defense, crashing to the ground of the black void in a heap of glittering silver and gold. Blows are exchanged too quick to stop the tide, fists breaking against flesh and cracking it with each hit. The more they scuffle and fight, the more damage each receives—until they both are breathing hard and missing limbs. Dasa, without his left leg and Aziza missing her right arm. They separate in a flurry of color and circle about one another, hissing and testing ground between the two of them. Waiting for a slip.

Waiting for the moment one of them is off-guard.

This time, he’s the one to strike first.

“You have to face it.”

“There is nothing to face!”

“He doesn’t even care about us, you know it’s true! You know all we are to him is a toy. A play thing to use and abuse and toss away when he’s done. You think he doesn’t have another he’s grooming just like he did us?” C’aziza opens her mouth to retort but… nothing comes out. Dasa seizes the moment; tackling the woman into the ground and pinning her by the wrists so she has no choice but to look him in the eye. The struggle ensues but ultimately? He’s just a little more clever than she is powerful, catching her leg under his knee and forcing his body weight down hard to trap her where she is.

“I won’t let you undo everything we’ve done—All.. All of our progress, our growth, our healing just because you want to go back to the man that broke us in the first place! We’ve come so far, we’ve done so much—You want to throw all of that away?!”

“I won’t help you kill him!” She shrieks in return, voice hollow despite the bite and tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

“FINE!”

C’aziza stills—Maybe she’s wo…

“I’ll do it by myself.”

“NO!”

Aziza sucks in a breath, beside herself with emotions that hit her from all angles at once—trying desperately to beat the man atop her off so that she can gain some distance… So that she can breathe. “We don’t have to do this, Dasa! We don’t have to kill him, we can go back to how it used to be! We—We can be together again! We can be perfect!”

“How can you even say that?! Did you forget what we went through? With every hit, every slap, every punch, every kick, every time he threw us off a cliff or starved us or slammed us into the ground—Every single time he hurt us he made us into a more perfect version of his fucked up little experiment, and for what?! For him to use us, train us like a damn dog?! YOU WANT THAT AGAIN?!”

“I DON’T KNOW HOW ELSE TO BE!”

She’s screaming.

“I DON’T KNOW EITHER! But I don’t want to be THAT! I NEVER want to be that again!”

“He’ll treat us differently this time, I know it!” Aziza cries out, struggling with shaking arms against the steel grip of silver hands at her wrists. It does her no good but she can’t just lie there and let this go on like this. So she struggles; she kicks and twists and beats her tail into his ribs like a bludgeon to get him off—to topple him in some way so that she can wriggle free and put space between them. “We won’t be broken like last time! Kushal is different, can’t you see it in his eyes when he looked at us? He wants to treat us so gently. He… He lov—”

“DON’T!”

The golden woman goes still.

“Please,” When did he start sounding so weak? So tired? “Please don’t say that.”

“It’ll be…” She swallows roughly, voice so high and strained. “It’ll be different. I know it will be.”

Dasa shifts above her in a slow, predatory motion until he’s properly planted over her belly and looking down at her from where he has her pinned. Golden eyes scream pain, reopened wounds of a decade gone by shining like blood on water in his gaze. She flinches and tries to look away from the hurt shes caused. He forces her to look at him with a cruel jerk of her arm, straining the socket enough to drive home his point.

“Do you understand what you’re suggesting? Really, Aziza? Can we disobey an order?”

“No, bu—”

“Do you still twitch when he raises his voice? Do you fear when his hand moves? Do you feel sick and anxious when you’re near him? Do you feel the dread? The terror? The panic?”

“Dasa—”

“We’re scared of him, Aziza. We… We shouldn’t be scared of the person we love. Is it really love if you’re terrified of their every move? Is it really love if you want to disappear when he says your name?”

. . .

“Isn’t it love that we want him in-spite of that?”

Dasa’s gut churns at the implication of those words and he’s starting to pull back just as Aziza pushes forward—flipping the tables in a turn over that has Aziza pinning the man of silver. Their bodies roll and the wild, feline screeching kicks back up as blows are exchanged between each form. It seems ceaseless for how long they continue this useless tirade and it’s only when Dasa stumbles back—missing his entire lower jaw and his tail in a mess of broken silver chunks on the floor that he finally speaks.

“If you won’t go—I will.”

“I won’t let you!”

Gold falls and crashes to the ground in a clatter like porcelain, the doll-like structure of both individuals leaving them vulnerable to each other’s targeted attacks. She stares at him with wide silver eyes, hands curled into tight fists at her side that she’s doing her all to keep to herself. Her leg is missing and there is a massive hole punched straight through the center of her chest. They both share a state of total disrepair, yet neither of them is willing to back-down from their stance. Neither willing to yield to the other’s demands for what they think is truth is so polar opposite to their counterpart.

They look like they are seconds from leaping at each other when a rush in the darkness catches their attention, the shifting darkness swirling around the form of an animal placing itself squarely between the both of them.

Pale yellow eyes stare back, unflinching as the beast holds its ground to their anger and rage.

Dasa stares the Wolf down for several long, tense, silent moments. He draws in a deep breath and edges down very slightly into relaxing, uncurling his fists to let his hands hang loosely at his sides. That seems to satisfy the wolf, turning slowly to turn that gaze onto the woman of gold. Where Dasa yielded? She hisses and snarls at the very presence of the third part of their soul.

“I will not let you kill Kushal. I—I won’t let you do it!”

The wolf takes a step forward and she takes a step back, screeching furiously at the beast as a threat to her person should it take another step forward.

“That’s enough, Aziza. It’s over.”

“This isn’t over! I love him, I won’t let you take him from me!”

“I won’t let you kill us for him.”

“We could have everything, Dasa. We’re so close.”

“And you want to ruin it all. I won’t let you.”

She snarls again, louder—hotter, burning as bright as the sun in the void space that surrounds the three of them. The brighter she seems to get, the warmer the space gets and the colder Dasa seems to run, despite the limbs they both lost in their scuffle. He lets out a low breath, frost gathering in a cloud at the tip of his lips. Everything stills and silence reigns.

Until…

“I’ll kill you if I have to.”

Aziza stares in utter disbelief at what the other half of her soul just said to her, the bewildered expression doing extra to drive that point home. The Wolf turns his head to look back at Dasa, then looks right back at Aziza and holds her gaze.

“You… You don’t mean that, Dasa. You can’t. That would ki—”

“I know.”

“And you would sti—”

“I will shatter everything that you are with my very own fists if you force my hand.”

“D...Dasa—”

“Don’t make me kill you, Aziza.”

That makes her stop and stare at Dasa like he’s alien to her. How could the other half of her very soul threaten her with destruction for chasing after the man they both love and both want to return to, even if it means breaking them apart into nothingness. She feels his emotions just as keenly as he feels hers; she knows he loves Kushal. She knows he wants to go back to Kushal. But he believes Kushal will be their undoing and she believes Kushal will be their rebirth. The look in her eye only makes Dasa tick his head up in open challenge. He isn’t backing down.

He means it.

Aziza’s face twists from disbelief to wild, uncontrolled hatred of the man in front of her—glaring daggers at him. Despite her anger and the way she snarls with malice dripping from her tone, she seems to relent. “Very well. Do what you must.”

Dasa takes a step forward and Lupa whirls around, a low growl building in the center of the wolf’s chest. It makes the man of silver take a step back and hiss low at the beast between him and his other.

“You’ve said your peace, Dasa. Leave her be.”

“I only want to keep us ali—”

“Leave. Her. Be.”

Golden eyes flick up from the wolf to rest on the festering glare of the woman just a foot out of reach—and he relents, turning his head away. If this is how it must be? It is how it will be. Aziza turns away from the man and wolf, stalking away. Dasa and Lupa soon follow her example, splitting off and going into three different directions. Their world wobbles hard and is swallowed by darkness, leaving nothing but an intense feeling of wrongness and hurt that cannot be explained.

C’tolemy’s eyes open slow, a hand reaching up to wipe away his tears as he gathers himself back together enough to stand up. His legs feel like jello, his heart aches so badly it feels like he’s moments from cracking apart but the deal has been settled. All he must do now is hold it together until the hunt is complete.

Then he will be free. They all will be.

A gathering of aether forms at the center of his person and he whisks himself away to Shirogane where a warm home and welcome family awaits. And he will greet them—

With a cat-like smile, both eyes closed and the edges of his lips upturned in a slight curl.

The smile he only gives when he doesn’t mean it.

[holy-mountaineering]

This spread is for @Kotm

Thank you for donating and the kind words!

Your spread is a 5 card Pyramid spread, three cards making a upward pointing triangle  with two crossed cards in the center. In this spread the triangle represents the first formulation of an object or a second dimension in space. There is a sort of beginning, middle and end. When you draw a single dot for 1 and if you add another dot for the number 2, you can create a straight line but add a third dot and now you have a triangle, a shape, an object in two dimensional space. The center card on the bottom of the two represents the internal or emotional central idea of the spread. The top center card represents the external central idea or what action is crucial to what you’re set to do.

Now imagine that you’re looking at one side of a pyramid dead on.

The first and uppermost point of your pyramid is the Prince of Cups, the airy part of Water.

Thinking about how your feel, ideally, this is being smart about emotions and connections to other living things and people. This is the need to intellectualize and integrate how you’re feeling and connecting to life. This isn’t just thinking, this is airy water or steam moving the fuck away from situations that make them boil. The Eagle pulling the chariot here hovers above the water and is only connected by the evaporation and out pouring, like the rain cycle. The Eagle is a form of Scorpio, which has been described as a bit mysterious, so the air and thinking could expose some of those mysteries of feeling and connecting.

Do like steam and get away from the heat. Do like the Eagle and stay above shit that makes you boil. Your emotional states and connections to people that seem confusing just need some clear thought and the ability to pull away if it gets too heated.

The second point, the first to connect to the earth is II The Priestess, Gimel, Lvna. “The Mystic Desert Traveler”

This is the High Priestess of LVNA, Diana, Artemis, and all things of the Moon. She is moved by invisible forces, like   the tides of the Oceans or the sands of desert wastes. This Priestess intuits and feels all phenomenon not seen by the lying eyes. She rides through the endless dunes on her camel, one of the few animals evolutionarily adapted for such harsh environments. She, like her camel, know the value of the desert, which is vast and sparse and awesome in it’s scope and intensity. Many mystical texts revolve around desert scenes of travel for that very reason.

She is also of Artemis, who loves animals and chooses them over Gods or men (or Goddesses or Women or   anything else) but is the Huntress who also kills and consumes them. Love is complex and often involves several (possibly metaphorical) deaths. Taking in the energy of something that once was is very healthy if done sustainably. 

The High Priestess is no simple worshiper of unseen phenomenon, she runs the temple of Higher Feeling. The takes the vibrations and reflects them back out in the Universe, like her Deity, LVNA. 

Focus yourself to subtle vibrations that cannot be directly seen, yet are slowing moving things. Trust your intuition when it provides results. Prepare for a difficult and illuminating journey through what the layman would call a wasteland. You are built for this, you just have to feel what is not seen. Eat death, give life.

The last point and the corner that then connects again to the top completing the geometry is the 6 of Cups, Pleasure. 

For reasons I call this the plumbing card. The water is not flowing freely as though it is pouring, it has been pumped through a series of tubes intricately woven together to fill the cups placed in the shape of a hexagram. Emotion and connectedness to life are intentionally being directed by unseen but invited forces. Someone who wasn’t looking closely could see nothing but knots and chaos and even wonder how the damn thing worked in the first place. Those people are squares and should be avoided at all costs. 

Do what gives you pleasure that also instills clarity. Center on the best you can feel even if onlookers can’t appreciate what you’re doing connoisseurs (and you) will dig it.

The heart of the pyramid holds the Princess of Cups, the earthy part of Water. 

We could consider this the substance in water or water hitting substance head on. This is the idea of the canyon wall being ground down over the millennia by moving water. The nutrients and minerals in the earth are transported down river to the fertile delta. This is the natural, “following your feelings” within your daily life. Try not to fool yourself, follow your intuition, not just passing whims. Feel, don’t necessarily react immediately.

Go with what you feel and intuit, let yourself go with the flow, if you will. Allow your situation to move with your emotions and be patient with your progress.

And the limestone surface of the pyramid is marked with VI The Lovers. 

These Lovers aren’t about romantic love as much as it is the ‘Love unites the divided.’ This is the ceremony part of the alchemical wedding or the announcement of the intention to dissolve duality. Coagula.

All inverse and adverse elements of the card are brought together under the blessing of the Initiator who is giving the sign of the enterer. This is to say he is blessing your entering into this union of your shadow and conscious self.

You have some work to do on making a more unified you. There are issues that once brought together and balanced make more sense. Bring opposites or aspects of yourself you’re not familiar with/comfortable with together in your life to make a more complete whole. Set intention to do this, maybe even formally.

Well, what I get from all these Cups and Trumps (the only two “suits” in this spread) is that you need to focus on your emotional well being so you can get further in touch with your higher intuitive, connective and even “psychic” (for lack of a better term) abilities.

Think about how situations and people make you feel and figure out a(n escape) plan for people, places, and things that are setting you off in ways that you don’t feel like you can control. Figure this out so you can use those feelings to better serve you instead of being a servant to them.

Oddly enough, what’s connecting you to the Earth is basically the most “out there” card in the deck. “It isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey” doesn’t begin to cover this, but it is really time, once you get into the game, to focus on not focusing, haha. No, really though, you have an opportunity here to begin a real mystical journey through your own waste lands to rediscover those secret things in and outside of yourself that’ve been calling you for a while. Go into the desert, keep going.

And this process is to and will help you find this pleasure and truth about yourself and your situation you’re not going to be able to find using regular, logical means. This is complicated and only for you and if other folks can see it, good for them, but you are the one who needs to untangle this knot.

And remember, just let it happen, don’t force this and don’t use logic to make this happen, it won’t work that way. You must know that there is substance in the way that you feel and let that guide you not some idea of what that should look like.

This is all accomplished by, well, saying you’re going to do it. By making arrangements and agreements with yourself and then holding yourself to it. The point here is to integrate the higher and lower, the without with the within to make a more complete you! Yell it from the rooftops if you want, but make it so!

Thank you for donating and please get at me with any questions, comments, or concerns.

-Frater Nought

[zrtranscripts]

Season 8, Mission 17: Red Right Hand

Worth Dyeing For?

~

AMELIA SPENS: Janine, you do look dreadful.

JANINE DE LUCA: I'm perfectly able to participate in this mission, Miss Spens. The nanite control box was smashed, and the scientists on Dearg aren't answering our messages. But in the absence of a cure, I refuse to surrender to my illness.

AMELIA SPENS: Oh goodness, I wasn't suggesting you retire to bed. We need you on this mission. I was merely suggesting a little concealer might be in order? No one suits that "just climbed out of my death bed" pallor.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: For goodness sake, lass, have a little tact!

JANINE DE LUCA: You needn't concern yourself with Miss Spens' manner, Chief Macallan. Five and I are quite used to it.

AMELIA SPENS: And it's not lass, if you don't mind. It's Prime Minister.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: We don't recognize the authority of the British government here!

AMELIA SPENS: But I'm sure you recognize the authority of a fully-armed nuclear submarine parked off your coast. Besides, you lot are in no position to complain after the mess you've made of the mainland. There are red fungus infestations on beaches all down the west coast.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: That's got nae to do with us.

AMELIA SPENS: The fungal seed pods were carried on currents from this island and they left here on the day your people arrived, Janine. We burned most of them out before they could get a foothold, but Bangor was swamped before we knew it. [sighs] If I hadn't kept a burn cube aside for a special occasion, we could have lost the whole of Wales! And you lost the Edda, the only thing that might help us understand how to fight the fungus.

JANINE DE LUCA: We believe Jones may have had some help from someone on the island. That may be who has the Edda now.

AMELIA SPENS: And tracking down that someone will be my next priority. But first, we must discover the source of the red fungus. My sub has released a dye north of Mor Island into the same current that carried the seed pods to the mainland. If we follow the dye on the tide, we can locate the origin.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: I can see it. A bright green stain on the waves.

AMELIA SPENS: What are we waiting for? Let's go.

~

DUNCAN MACALLAN: The green dye doesn't seem to be putting into land. It's following the curve of the shore. This could be a long run.

AMELIA SPENS: I'm sorry, are we inconveniencing you, Chief? Did you have something better to do with your day than save the entire United Kingdom? Maybe there's some minor theft or trespass that needs investigating?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: You were the one who wanted me to come on this run, if you remember.

AMELIA SPENS: For your local knowledge, not your stimulating conversation. You should take a leaf out of Five's book. Never a wasted word.

JANINE DE LUCA: Chief Macallan, did you tell anyone else where we were going?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: No. Uh, why would I?

JANINE DE LUCA: Because there's a figure on the moorland to our left, watching us. Miss Spens, my eyesight is not what it was. Can you describe what you see?

AMELIA SPENS: I can't make out much. The gray of their coat blends into the sky and the rocks behind them. I can see a broad purple stripe down the front. They have their hood pulled up to cover their face.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Oh my Lord. A skincoat!

AMELIA SPENS: I beg your pardon?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: That's what they call the coat they're wearing. I haven't seen them for a long time. They were fishermen's coats originally, oiled with caraway to keep out the water. That's what gives them that pale green color.

JANINE DE LUCA: And the purple stripe?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Aye, well, that's something else. The skincoat came to be a badge of office, you see, for those chosen to guard the island and its ways, the role of the coats passed down through families. It was all done away with when we appointed a modern police force.

AMELIA SPENS: Modern-ish.

JANINE DE LUCA: So what does it mean that someone's wearing one today, and watching us?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Ach, I'd hoped it was just talk. Every since your torpedo uncovered the old sculpture, Prime Minister, some people have been saying it's a sign, a calling back to the old ways.

AMELIA SPENS: Why do the old ways always sound so sinister?

JANINE DE LUCA: It needn't necessarily be – oh. The person in the skincoat, they're gone. I didn't see them leave. Did you, Five?

AMELIA SPENS: Well, if they want to dress up in silly clothes and lurk about looking spooky, that's all very well. But we've got more important things to worry about. The leading edge of the dye is drawing ahead of us. We can't let it out of sight. Chop chop!

~

AMELIA SPENS: The dye's leading us around another dreary, rock-strewn headland. How delightful. It escapes me why anyone would choose to live here.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: This place is in our blood. We've tended it for centuries and it's kept us safe. At least until you outsiders came along. No offense, Janine. But we did fine when we kept to ourselves and our old ways.

AMELIA SPENS: You kept yourself safe by sending your murderers off to kill people on the mainland.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Aye, well, Jones never fitted in here.

AMELIA SPENS: And yet he seems obsessed with the island and its traditions.

JANINE DE LUCA: He was quite fixated on this king of the rocks ceremony of yours.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: "When gale blows and the moon shines, then gather at the silver pools. Swing around the rocks that stand. Give fruit to the sea to bless the land."

AMELIA SPENS: What?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: It's a rhyme about the king of the rocks. Bairns here learn it at their mother's breast. It explains how to do the ceremony. Gather at the rock pools on the night of the full moon. Pull the three standing stones upright if they've toppled, and dance around them. Then throw fruit from the cliffs into the ocean. In some ways, the king of the rocks is Mor Island. It's no wonder Jones was obsessed. It was the only piece of home he could keep with him.

JANINE DE LUCA: That, and the Edda.

AMELIA SPENS: I've had a team of the very best Norse scholars searching for sources on the missing fragment that Jones stole. We found a line drawing of the outside of the document. It's bound in white lamb leather embedded with rubies. Not the sort of thing that someone could hide in plain sight.

JANINE DE LUCA: I gather your men are conducting house to house searches?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Which isnae going down too well.

AMELIA SPENS: I'm supremely uninterested in the islanders' delicate sensibilities. The Edda and the fungus, these are the only things that matter.

JANINE DE LUCA: We're one step closer to locating the fungus. The stream of dye is moving shoreward at last. Quick, we mustn't lose sight of it.

~

AMELIA SPENS: You were right, Janine. The dye-stained waters are near to making landfall. We're very close to the source of the red fungus, and once my men have located the Edda, I can leave you people in peace. Not to say tedium.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: What about Janine's cure? I thought she was a friend of yours.

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, Janine will be just fine. The scientists will find a way to fix that nanite machine for her, or Five here will perform some last-minute death-defying rescue. You don't know the residents of Abel the way I do, Chief. They're annoyingly resilient.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Is that a note of respect I hear?

AMELIA SPENS: Heaven forfend.

JANINE DE LUCA: Look! The dye is heading for that cave mouth.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: There's a disturbance in the water near the shore, can you see? It's churning like crazy!

[water splashes, zombies growl]

JANINE DE LUCA: Zombies, two of them. Probably stragglers from Jones' invasion force.

AMELIA SPENS: We can't let them cut us off from the cave mouth. It will be a month before we can conduct this experiment again.

JANINE DE LUCA: Then we will need to run.

~

[zombies growl]

DUNCAN MACALLAN: The zoms are still on our tail.

AMELIA SPENS: Can't you do something about them, Five? Lead them off down a side tunnel or something?

JANINE DE LUCA: These caves are a maze, Miss Spens. Five could become entirely lost.

AMELIA SPENS: But on the plus side, so could the zoms. Oh, they look awful covered in that green dye, as if someone's toy soldiers came to life and then started rotting.

JANINE DE LUCA: Look up on that ledge. It's very high, but isn't that a skincoat, Chief Macallan?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Aye.

AMELIA SPENS: Just standing there watching us. You! What do you think you're doing?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Gone again. Just faded back into the wall. Oh, this is troubling. The skincoats did keep justice here, but their idea of justice was often rough. Torture, and hunting men across the islands. I dinna like that someone wants to bring those traditions back.

JANINE DE LUCA: How did they get here before us? Ours was the most direct route, and we've been keeping a good pace!

DUNCAN MACALLAN: There could be more than one. Traditionally, there were nine skincoats. Nine guardians for the island.

JANINE DE LUCA: We've bigger things to worry about. The dye-filled stream is heading westward into that side tunnel. We must follow before we lose it.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: And before the zoms catch us!

~

AMELIA SPENS: I can't hear the zombies. Have we lost them?

JANINE DE LUCA: Perhaps they find these caverns as confusing as we do. Wait. I do recognize this cave. It's where you located Jones' original camp, Five.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: And look, we've reached our destination. The green dye is sinking into a borehole in the center, but I don't see any signs of your red fungus, Prime Minister.

JANINE DE LUCA: Five, help me to quarter the area. We must conduct a thorough search.

AMELIA SPENS: No need. Look up!

DUNCAN MACALLAN: At the cave roof? There's nothing up there but island pomegranates.

AMELIA SPENS: Those aren't pomegranates, they're seed pods. Can't you see the way the four leaves are folded open?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Aye, I suppose. So what?

AMELIA SPENS: So that is the source of the fungal infection, you moron. There were pictures of those things in the Edda. The fungal spores were held inside.

JANINE DE LUCA: Five, didn't you say that Jones had a fire burning here when you found him? Perhaps the heat caused the pods to ripen.

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Oh. I suppose that explains why the Dearg scientists were so interested in them. They took some away for study years ago. I remember it because we all laughed at them in their hazmat suits, acting like the wee small things were dangerous when we'd had them on the island as long as anyone could remember.

JANINE DE LUCA: Do you mean to say these fungal pods are found in more than one location on the island?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: They're scattered about in the caves. No one paid them any mind.

AMELIA SPENS: And the scientists from Dearg were studying them years ago, before the zombie apocalypse?

DUNCAN MACALLAN: Aye, I think so.

AMELIA SPENS: Janine, your cure has become a lot more of a priority. Or should I say cover story. You need to go to Dearg immediately.

JANINE DE LUCA: They may not let us in. They've been refusing to respond to our comms requests.

AMELIA SPENS: Then you'll just have to find a way in without their help. We need to know what they're doing with the pods and why, and we must find out where the rest are located! [sighs] I suppose I'll be staying on this godforsaken rock longer than anticipated, or at least in my stateroom on the Undaunted. If we can't find and eradicate all the red fungus, the mainland will never be safe.

~

[taenchanted]

walking on starlight

☾ a tragedy of fate

⤖ pairing: yoongi x reader

⤖ genre: angst, hints of fluff

⤖ word count: 4.1k

⤖ warnings: death mentions

⤖ author’s note: I wouldn’t consider this a complete tragedy, it is a bit sad, but please enjoy ♡

Things fell apart in a calm, understated manner. Nothing was extravagant or blatantly obvious at first, it was all just quiet, hushed. At the time, you had been outraged. You hadn’t understood what was happening to you. Looking back on that period of your life you felt the change within you more than you could identify it. You recognized the delicacy of the threads of life— appreciated them, even. Everything was so intertwined; it was impossible to not gain a sense of respect for the way everything fit together.

Yoongi’s hand slid just as easily into yours now as it had when this had all started. The soft reality of his touch was no different. The way his fingers locked into yours was just as grounding as it had always been. The difference was in the way you clung to each other, the way your fingernails crushed into his back every time you parted ways. He joked that you held onto him as if the world was ending, and you tightened your grip around him.

“There’s plenty of time left,” he murmured, fingertips lightly skimming down your spine. He was less straightforward about the way he felt; he always preferred a hasty change of subject or a quick reassurance over a frantic plea.

You hummed in agreement, reluctantly pulling away. “I know. I just missed you.”

He laughed and the sound vibrated warmly down the coast, melting into the waves and the slopes of sand. “Missed me? It’s hardly been any time since you last saw me.”

“Well, I still missed you.” You smiled and let his hand find yours again.

He turned his gaze back to the sea, lips curled up, and shook his head slightly. “In that case, I missed you too.”

The beach was so beautiful that it hurt to look at it, at times. Sunset was a particularly lovely time to go venture the shore, but it was more lovely when you knew that Yoongi adored it more than anywhere else. He never said outright that the sunset was his favorite time to walk on the beach, but the muted wonder that brightened his face was enough to say it all. Looking out into the endless sea of rolling turquoise filled you with a sense of sadness, despite all of the happiness you associated it with.

“What have you been up to?” You asked, kicking at a small hill of sand.

Yoongi gave you a glance, eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Since when do you do small talk here?”

You snorted. “I can’t be interested in your life?”

“It’s just… been a while.” He paused, rolling his shoulders back. “You know what I mean?”

You smiled, though you felt a small wave of sorrow pull at your features. “I know, Yoongi.”

“Yeah, you always do.” He planted a quick kiss against your temple, as if it was an afterthought, as if he did it by instinct rather than intention. “Always have.”

Despite the creeping sensation of dread that was rising up in your chest, it was no match for the love that slid through your veins, through every cell in your body. You had never felt so much love, so potent and blinding and searing, but it was there, and it was more than enough to quell any other emotions.

He coughed lightly, enough to be suspicious, enough to be recognizably nervous. “Do you really want to know what I’ve been doing?”

The words gouged deep into your mind for a reason that you could not quite pinpoint; an ancient memory that you couldn’t bring to light anymore. “Of course I do.”

“I’ve been thinking. A lot. About everything, not just about what we talked about earlier.”

If you had been tense before, those few words sent you over the edge. What you had talked about earlier. You knew that the information was there, but you couldn’t find it. “What did we talk about earlier, Yoongi?”

His expression flashed for only a millisecond, a racing glimpse into what he was thinking, but it smoothed out into a calm mask just as quickly. “Nothing, I was just talking about our future. Not entirely surprised that you weren’t paying attention.”

You rolled your eyes in an effort to play off the panic that pulled at your gut. “I listen to you quite a bit, Min Yoongi. We talk about our future a lot.”

“I know we do. I’ve just been thinking a lot about all of this.” He gestured to the sea, the lull of the waves. You didn’t know if you would have minded being swept up in the tides— the lapping of the water was gentle, tender; to be swept away with Yoongi seemed like a dream more than anything else. It was hard to imagine anything menacing hidden behind those silken waters.

“I have too,” you whispered. The sun was rolling down, methodical but consistent as it sunk. The sky was painted in pastels without a single cloud to obscure it. “There’s a lot to think about, I suppose.”

He nodded absentmindedly, thumb brushing across your skin. “I would stay here forever if I could.”

You smiled. “I know you would. Maybe right there?” You pointed to a small bluff that loomed in the distance, not far away from the shore but enough to be safe from rising tides. You could picture a cottage there; nothing too big, because he wouldn’t want too much space. You could see a studio set with a perfect view of the ocean; rumpled papers of poetry and scribbles of artwork adorned the walls.

“That would be perfect.” He stopped in his tracks, chin lifted to the warm breeze. “Just you, me, and the beach. I can’t imagine anything much better than that.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do yet?”

The question seemed to throw him. “What I’m going to do about what?”

“About your life. I know that’s why you come here, Yoongi. The beach has always been your favorite place to think about life.” You thought about how many times you’d strolled along the sand, hand in hand, discussing the future and the past and your theories about just about anything. It had become your safe place; a realm that reality had no right to breach. The only thing that existed at the beach was the two of you.

His fingertips danced through a lock of your hair, lips pursed, and the love that glowed in his eyes was nearly enough to make you believe that everything was fine. “I like to think about life anywhere, actually— but you’re right, it is especially easy to think about it here. It’s our beach, after all. No one else comes here.”

It was, perhaps, an exemplary reason why you loved it so much. It was dangerously simple to fall into Yoongi’s touch here, to sink into his mind and greet the familiarities of his psyche. In a place that seemed built for your hands to clasp together, there was no room for other souls to interrupt that magic.

“I meant it earlier, when I said that I missed you.” You shuffled in the sand. “You know that, right?”

Yoongi gave you a long look. “I know you meant it. I wish that you didn’t have to miss me.” He lowered his gaze to the ground in thought. “It won’t always be like this. You won’t always miss me, and we won’t always have this beach to fix everything.”

“Is it really fixed?” You asked hoarsely, and then you paused. He faltered as well, lips parting in surprise at your response. “This doesn’t seem fixed to me.”

“No, it can’t really be fixed.” He smiled faintly but it left you with a bittersweet taste. “There’s nothing else to do. Believe me, I’ve tried everything. You’ve tried, too, I know you have. We did everything we could.”

The sun was cresting the horizon now, a massive orb of gold that illuminated the sky, splashed gold on the sand. “That can’t be true.”

He raised his chin slightly. “I wish that it wasn’t, I really do. I wish that I could be an optimist and tell you that there is something else we could try. I wish that this wasn’t the way it is.” But he was not an optimist, he was a realist, and he knew the truth better than you ever could. “But then I would be lying to you, and I would never do that. You deserve better than that— you deserve more than a fantasy. You deserve the truth.”

You felt your heart burying itself under driftwood and pebbles. “And what is the truth, Yoongi?”

He shook his head, set his jaw. “Not yet. The sun hasn’t set. Please, please trust me when I say that it is better to wait. I’ll tell you, I swear, and if you want me to say it now, then I will, but if you trust me, you will wait a little while longer. I don’t want to keep it from you. I just think we should wait until later.”

You furrowed your eyebrows, dread weighing your limbs down, but you nodded slowly. He was right. You didn’t know why that was, but you knew that he was right, and you knew that he needed you not to protest. “Okay, Yoongi. I trust you.”

He nodded, relief settling into the planes of his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to ruin this.”

“We’ll be okay,” you said, holding his hand a little tighter now, to reassure him, to reassure yourself. You needed to believe it. Because you had never needed reassurance before, even when you had known that something was wrong— because something was different this time, something had changed and you understood with perfect clarity that it was out of your control. It was out of his control. It was all falling apart and it was not anyone’s fault.

He hummed softly and ruffled your hair, but he said nothing. There was nothing to say to that. He would not lie to you.

With a feeling that was more encompassing than the air around you, you began to fully understand that when the moon took its place in the sky, nothing would be the same. The world was waiting. It was quiet, entranced and apologetic but waiting nonetheless. The certainty you felt about that was so searing that it made your lungs hurt.

“Do you remember the first time we came here?”

Yoongi’s voice sent pain lacing down your spine. It was rare that he ever grieved in front of you; he loved to tuck his feelings away, to hide them deep where only he could find them.

“With the picnic blanket?” You struggled to keep yourself composed; it was a battle to not cry in front of him, and you didn’t even know why. You didn’t seem to know much of anything that was going on.

“Yeah, with the picnic blanket.” He pursed his lips and swung his arms. “Our sixth date, I think. The first time we came here was on our sixth date.”

How many times had you seen him since then?

“I loved you then,” he said suddenly. “It wasn’t that I didn’t love you before then, but on that date, I put it into words for the first time.” Yoongi blinked, as if he was surprised he said it. “I want you to know that.”

“I loved you then, too.”

The sun was dipping down, dripping into the sea and turning it into crushed gold. It all felt very far away, like no matter how long you walked towards the lull of the current, you would never quite reach the edge of the shore. The sea stretched out into the universe, a vast path into a tangerine galaxy.

Yoongi’s shoulders relaxed, the tight clench of his jaw smoothed out. It reminded you of the initial date that had led you here— the tension and the uncertainty bled away, leaving only one constant. You loved him then, and now, no matter what.

“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” He whispered, a tug of a breeze blowing his hair out of his eyes. “How all of this happened?”

It was beautiful. You had always thought that.

“Yoongi, what happens when the sun sets?” You asked hoarsely, trying not to look at him.

He took a deep, shaky breath. “Well, usually it gets darker, and we get to see the stars and—”

“Yoongi.” You felt the tears now, pricking at your eyes until it hurt. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t be scared, love.” He smiled and took your face in both of his palms. He might have looked sincere if it was not for the deep mourning that raged in his eyes. “There’s not enough time to be scared. I’m right here. We’re going to do this together, alright? Just like always.”

And you had always done everything together, had suffered, had cried, had loved— everything had always been with each other, for as long as you could remember the feeling of his warm hand in yours and the press of his lips on your temple.

The sun was almost gone now, and you began to feel a rush of panic. “What did you mean earlier, when you said that I wouldn’t always miss you?”

“Well, you won’t. It’s not always going to be like this.” The same words from before, but you felt them differently now, felt them resonate in your bones. “Eventually, there won’t be such a distance between us.”

And that could have meant so much, could have vast implications that you could have interpreted any which way, but instead, you heard it and time seemed to stop.

“What do you mean by that?”

He stopped, turned to face the sea with the gentlest gaze you’d ever seen, and gave the faintest hint of a sad smile. Just as he began to speak, just as the last light of the sun dissolved beneath the waves, you understood it all.

“Time won’t keep me here, but it won’t keep you there, either.”

The oxygen in your lungs ripped out of your throat with an icy fervor.

“Where are we?” You asked, hand reaching up to cover your mouth. You already knew the answer.

Yoongi had never been one for delicacy. He carried the weight of his words with as much intensity as he deemed necessary; he would not lie to you, ever, even if that meant being sincere. But he was careful then.

“Something like a memory,” he said quietly. “You always choose here.”

Because you weren’t really there, were you? And you knew why, you felt the truth boring into your mind and tearing it apart, you felt your heart collapsing as memories flooded back and ripped into you.

“A memory,” you repeated, voice quivering, and he flinched away from the sound of your voice.

“This is all we have left.” He said it with such finality that you wondered if this had happened before.

Yoongi wasn’t at the beach and neither were you. You could never have believed that; you saw the pulses of the waves and felt the sand give beneath your steps— you could never have believed that, except for the fact that you knew the truth.

“I know you remember, and I am so, so sorry.” His voice cracked. “It’s never enough time here. Even if I don’t tell you, you always remember when the sun sets. We can’t avoid it.”

“Say it.” You sounded hollow, far away, but if he never said it, then perhaps your mind had deceived you. Perhaps it was all just a vivid hallucination, and if he didn’t say what you knew to be true, then you would never have to hear it, but that would be a lie, and you weren’t willing to live in a lie anymore.

It would not be hard for him to say it out loud. To Yoongi, saying things out loud did not make them any more or less true. He knew what had happened, and for him, that was plenty. Hearing the truth was equal to already knowing it. You wished that you could be more like him in that moment— because that would mean that you would be content without hearing the words leave his lips. But you were not like him, you never had been. It would not be difficult for him to say, but it would be difficult for you, and that would make it the hardest task in the world for Yoongi.

“We aren’t on the beach. I don’t know where you are right now, love, because you are alive, and I died.”

Just as the sun set, Min Yoongi had taken his final breath. He died in a place that meant absolutely nothing to him, and for as long as he had been dead, you had been wishing that he could have been somewhere he loved. Nearly a year ago now, and you existed on a world that he no longer walked upon. He was gone, but you were not.

“Every night you come here, right to this beach. I think it’s because you know how much I loved it here.” Tears were spilling down his cheeks now, a rarity that he always avoided. “But I don’t know where you really are, I can never see you unless you try to find me. I think it’s a dream.” He was shaking, but he wasn’t really, was he? “Every night, you come to me, and you never remember why. Every night, I wait until the sun goes down, and then you remember everything. And in a few minutes, you’ll be gone, and you’ll forget this place.”

You wanted to tell him that that was impossible, that you could never come here and forget about it, but the heaviness of your heart betrayed your desires. You couldn’t begin to imagine how many times you’d been here. You couldn’t begin to imagine what that would be like for Min Yoongi— who was dead, who spent his death still loving you, who had to watch you come here and not remember. Every night, every dream, you would come right back here, to see him, and he would know.

“I won’t go.”

He reached over to gently smooth his hand down your arm. It had always been a habit of his; even when you were only friends, he had done it on instinct. “It’s not up to you. Nothing here is up to either of us. We get some time together, and then you remember, and then we just have a few minutes left. We’ve tried everything— it has to be like this.”

“No. It can’t always be like this.”

The light from the sun remained, though night was falling too quickly and it would all be over so fast. You would disappear from this memory, return to the world, return to a life that Yoongi was no longer in. You wanted to be right. You wanted to believe yourself, but you had already been here so many times— you could see it in the defeated slump of his shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, eyes soft. “I want you to know that. It’s okay that it’s like this.”

“It is not okay,” you said hoarsely. “How could you say that? You were so young, Yoongi— your life had barely begun and now— now what? This? You deserve better, you deserve so much better—”

“Hey, listen to me.” He hastily wiped the tears off of his cheeks. “You’re right— I wasn’t even close to being ready. But it happened. It might not be fair that it ended, but I can’t be bitter. I can’t. If I resent dying, then I will have nothing left.”

“I can’t even remember,” you whispered. “I come here and I never remember why. You deserve better than this. There has to be something more for you— it can’t just be this beach.”

He hummed softly, laced his fingers in yours. “I’m sure there is something else out there. But this is all I want, at least for now. We should have had quite a bit more time together; I think this is a gift. You can take this place however you want, but I would like to believe its an apology. We get a little bit of time every night.”

“I don’t want you to be trapped,” you said quietly. “I want you to be happy.”

Yoongi took a deep breath and smiled. “And I want to be with you. I won’t lie to you and tell you that this is all that there is, because it’s not. What I will tell you is that it is my choice to be here. I would not stay unless I wanted to.”

And you knew that was true, because Min Yoongi had never bowed to rules, and of course he would not start now.

“Will you go? Someday?”

He paused for a moment before he nodded. “Yes, I will. This is selfish for both of us, I know that. It is not fair that you come here every night without remembering why, it is not fair that you have to remember what happened every time, and it is not fair that I am always here when we should both be moving on. But I just can’t go quite yet. I will, one day, but not now.”

You thought of the first time you would come to this beach, confused but expecting Yoongi to be there, only to find yourself alone. The thought of feeling that lonely was frightening and calming all at once. Because that would mean that he had moved on to greater things, and it would mean that it was time for you to truly move on. It meant things that you were not equipped to process yet.

“It’s almost over, isn’t it?” You bit your lip harshly, trying to stem the flow of tears.

He slid his hand across your back and held your waist gently. “Over almost as quickly as it begins. I am sorry that it has to be this way. I am so, so sorry.”

The grief swept through you in aching waves. “I know that I couldn’t have done anything, but— but you didn’t know that was your last day. I didn’t know that was your last day. I might have done things differently if I’d known; I thought that we had all the time left in the world, but the last time I saw you, I barely got to say goodbye.”

“I heard you,” he said quietly, and your brain wrenched you back to the final few moments of his life, how you had been convinced that he could no longer hear you. “Every word. It was the last thing that I heard. I wasn’t scared, I want you to know that. I want you to know that it’s okay.”

A light smile touched your quivering lips and he reached out, wrapped his arms around you, and you finally understood why you had been holding him so tightly. It wasn’t as peculiar that you wanted to crush him against your chest when you knew that it was all a fleeting glimpse. He clung to you just as tightly, face pressed fervently into the crook of your neck, fingertips digging into your back.

“I won’t go,” you whispered, terror seeping into your bones. You didn’t want to disappear. You didn’t want to return to a life that he wasn’t in.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, pressing gentle kisses into your hair, “you can leave. I’ll be right here when you come back.”

The sky was darkening, and as lovely as it was, you never wanted to see the stars again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, alright? Bring a picnic, will you?” Your throat closed and as much as you wanted to say to him, it was enough. He knew everything you could have ever wanted to say to him.

Yoongi choked out a feeble laugh and planted his lips against your forehead. “Anything for you, love.”

And a surge of peace, sweltering and tender, curled around your heart, nestled into your lungs, and toted you away, far away from the beach, far away from Min Yoongi, back to a realm that he was no longer a part of, but one that he had loved with his soul, and for you, that was plenty. To be anywhere that Yoongi loved was to be in paradise.

a/n: I left some parts fairly vague— some things felt better left up to the imagination ♡ I hope you all enjoyed!

[thesacredverdict]

I wonder what you do but you seem to be like a star in the sky to me, so far away, hard to reach ..but you seem to blend well with the stars, in the sky, where you belong, enigmatic, and beyond reach and beyond imagination. You control my thoughts and fantasies.. all of them.. and you hold several threads to a thousand different versions of me; they are all overshadowed by the thought of you as a queen to every bit of all these versions. You build your nest slowly and it looks like no other nest, a whole new perspective of how homes should be like. I contemplate you from behind these bars where I have locked my love inside my chest for so long and put a crescent for you there so you beautifully rest on it every night. When I want to see you, I close my eyes and watch your sensual presence as if lies on top of this crescent.. how so soft… you're a healing space in my chest that allows me to escape these harsh bars and stifling prison...… I can imagine you embracing me and tugging me on your soft breast. your hands are like feathers so light. it’s too unbearable how light and sweet and pure you are.. I can't bear it.. despite the lightness... I know I am imprisoned but no sign of contempt marks my pale face because your love has been tattooed all over me, there's a degree of pain after which you feel nothing can hurt.. you burned me alive.. you burned my skin..to the point where I became blind to everything but you... everyone can see it but I am oblivious and drunk. You’re the prettiest one I have ever seen. Your face haunts me .. your heavenliness.. but heavens are out of reach.. we can only fantasize about the heavens.. There's yet an early version of you I have met... it has become so ripe… and I am the other half of your ripe apple only rotten or eaten away. You can be my harvest but my ship is moving inside me so slowly swayed by winds, storms, tides and the endless cycles of the moon .. I am holding it ... this ship.. I managed to finally hold it.. and I am now controlling the sailing, sadly, realizing my slow pace that now makes it so hard for me to reach you. you’re either on top of a fruitful tree or above a high cloud, in all cases, unreachable and far above and beyond... the closer I get, the further I realize you have gone. My confused steps, pushed you farther and lengthened my distance. Lazy steps makes the road longer..! Can we build a house in the sky, can we run away and hide together.. can we climb these thorny mountains together, can I give you a bouquet with all my blues so that you forgive me and take me in? Can you believe me when I say I know you are my other half? I now know.. I could not let you go.. why can't I let you go? How can I let go of my other half? Can you believe me when I say you’re the only one who have given me wings? Who made me see who I really am? I am holding you so close to my chest, you grow inside of me and one day this eggshell will crack open and the love will fly and be all over the place. I am saving a ship I am using to sail towards you, saving it from drowning inside of my tears and sadness.. I won't let this ship die in an ocean of hopelessness anymore. I am saving this ship.. this is the only ship I have left to sail towards you… wait until you, my shore, my garden of eden…my eve.. let's restore our place back in heaven there, next to God.

17-10-2022.

[diverdowns]

tidal volume (read on ao3?) implied kira yoshikage/kujo josefumi. spoilers for JJL 49-52. rated T; 2.4k words

Kira smiles, eyes shuttered and secretive, and Josefumi thinks: this is what it’s like to drown.

“Do you enjoy playing God?” Kira asks, watching Soft & Wet draw bubbles around the seam where the two branches connect. The bubbles pop, one by one, revealing a smooth join grafted flawlessly together.

“Do you?” Josefumi replies. He doesn’t have to ask, but he does anyway to humor Kira, maybe. He doesn’t expect Kira to reply. True to form, Kira says nothing, shooting Josefumi a pensive look. Look at me, Josefumi thinks. What do you see?

Josefumi shakes his head, running a finger along the branch and checking for imperfections. Kira’s eyes follow, sharp as a hawk.

“I enjoy fixing things,” Josefumi says. Kira’s silence is expectant where it hangs in the air between them — heavy, tangible. “This branch — it was taken from another plant. Separated from the main tree, it would die. But like this, joined together again, it can bloom. It can bear fruit. Taking something apart to put it together again, slightly different, something new from the old — it’s fascinating.”

Is that what you think you are? Kira doesn’t ask. Josefumi hears it all the same in the weight of his gaze, in the sweep of his lashes. It makes Josefumi’s lips quirk upwards, briefly — a small, bitter thing.

Yes, he doesn’t reply. Maybe. Would you take me apart? Josefumi’s hands are steady where they slide away from the branch, as steady as Kira’s eyes trailing up his arm to graze thoughtfully over Josefumi’s face.

I think I would let you, if you asked. Take me apart, that is. The words rise in Josefumi’s mind and stick at the back of his throat, fierce and unrepentant. The waves tug relentlessly at his heels and there’s salt on his tongue, iron in his lungs.

Kira smiles, eyes shuttered and secretive, and Josefumi thinks: this is what it’s like to drown.

.

The beach is a familiar dreamscape, waves crashing tumultuously against the coast. The moon is full where it hangs in the sky, pale light casting a spectral glow across the surf. Josefumi’s feet sink into the cold sand. He represses a shiver when the tide glides through his legs, the icy water reaching his knees.

He’s pacing the length of the shoreline, steps mechanical, practiced. Two strides. One and a half meters. Kira’s voice echoes in his ears.

“It’s all in your steps,” the wind whispers, with Kira’s voice. Josefumi closes his eyes, as the tide draws in steadily higher.

Twenty strides. Thirty meters.

“You need to walk the distance. First, in real life, then in your mind’s eye,” Kira murmurs, and Josefumi takes a shuddering breath. Thirty strides. Forty-five meters. The water is cold where it brushes against his chest, and Josefumi has a split-second of instinctual panic before familiar hands brush across his waist, his neck.

“Keep your strides steady,” Kira says, and Josefumi obeys, his movements sluggish in the rising tide. “Josefumi.” Forty strides. Sixty meters.

“Kira,” he tries to say, but when he opens his mouth, saltwater rushes in. Josefumi jerks, choking, but when he opens his eyes, Kira is in front of him, pale and otherworldly where he floats in the water.

“Josefumi,” Kira says again, his voice clear despite the water around them. Kira’s eyes are greedy, focused, predatory. “Are you alive? Or have you already drowned? Choose, Josefumi. You can’t stay here, on the boundary, or I’ll choose for you.”

He puts his hands on Josefumi’s neck — soft, at first, and then hard — and Josefumi is choking, the world exploding into pinpricks of light and dark around him as he thrashes, struggling for breath. Kira shushes him, pressure insistent at his throat, and Josefumi thinks, his hands are beautiful —

— and then he’s awake, jolting upright, breaths coming fast and labored and shuddering as he savors the feeling of air in his lungs.

“Josefumi,” Kira calls, and Josefumi realizes, distantly, that Kira’s hands are on him: his shoulders, his arm, the small of his back. “You were dreaming.”

Josefumi hugs his knees to his chest, controlling his breathing and sliding a hand across his neck. There is no soreness, no bruising. When he looks up at Kira, all he sees reflected in his eyes is curiosity, concern — and yet.

“Kira,” Josefumi croaks out, running a hand through his hair. The remains of product he’d missed in the shower flakes off onto his fingers like salt from seawater. Kira draws back, just out of reach, and stares at him, waiting. Josefumi feels like he’s going to laugh, like he’s going to cry, like he’s going crazy.

Will you leave me? he wants to ask, but the words don’t come. Instead, he glances out the window, at the dim night sky, approximating the time as a few hours after midnight with a grimace. Strange, he thinks, to see Kira out of sync with his carefully maintained sleep schedule.

“Why are you here?” Josefumi asks, finally, and Kira blinks, eyes darting off to the side. With one hand, Kira thumbs absently at the cuticles of his index finger, a nervous habit. There are faint circles under his eyes, and without his ever-present sailor’s hat, Kira looks strangely vulnerable.

Maybe it’s just the low light, Josefumi tells himself.

“You were calling my name in your sleep,” Kira says. None of his emotion shines through in his voice, flat and devoid of inflection when he speaks. Josefumi knows better, and he waits, letting a beat pass in silence before he shrugs.

“Okay,” Josefumi murmurs. He shifts on the bed, making room for Kira. It’s an unspoken invitation that Kira hesitates at before settling, cross-legged, on Josefumi’s mattress. It’s a small space, a guest bedroom converted haphazardly into something resembling Josefumi’s old room — something resembling Josefumi’s new home.

The silence seems to Josefumi a false calm, like the smooth waters heralding the approach of a storm front. Kira bows his head, his spine a tired, sinuous curve. Josefumi turns to him.

“Holly,” Josefumi says. He’d reach out, if he was braver, if Kira wasn’t who he was: sterile, calculating, detached. Josefumi, in comparison, is compromised, and he knows it — his emotion and his fears gnaw endlessly at his core, digging into him like rust on the hull of a boat. He keeps his hands to himself, letting his voice bridge the gap instead. “She’s going to be okay.”

Josefumi says it for his own sake as much as Kira’s, but he lets himself breathe when Kira nods, when Kira’s fingers twitch slowly against the sheets, his only tell.

“I know that,” Kira replies, his voice placid, and Josefumi lets his eyes drift shut, wondering who Kira’s trying to convince. Neither of them smoke, but Josefumi finds himself thinking that if they did, now would be a good time to do it. The silence hangs in the limbo between tense and comfortable and awkward, and Josefumi speaks before he can catch himself.

“Teach me,” he starts, hesitating. Kira waits, ever the patient one. “Teach me to do that trick, where you measure distances by sight.”

Kira’s quiet, his body going still, and Josefumi almost stops breathing to match him. He counts his heartbeat instead, counts his pulse, heavy in his ears like the crash of waves against the shore. After a few seconds — six beats, Josefumi’s mind supplies — Kira relaxes, acquiescing as he rises to his feet.

“It takes practice,” Kira says, gesturing for Josefumi to come towards him. “It’s all in your steps.” Strides. Meters. The waves speed up. Josefumi can feel them beat against his fingertips if he focuses. He’d thought of Kira like the ocean at first, vast and untameable, but he knows now that Kira is the moon.

“Try me. I’m a fast learner,” Josefumi says, and follows like the tide.

.

The kitchen cabinets are organized meticulously, sorted by color — layers upon layers of green lie behind closed drawers. Josefumi doesn’t ask. If he opens the bathroom medicine cabinet, he never mentions it. He’s not going to judge. He has his own issues.

When he moves in, Kira shows him his room, sets up his futon, and Josefumi just accepts it, letting Kira sort him into his space. He wonders what that makes him. Another box of peas, maybe, another possession of Kira’s, filed safely away into the sanctity of his home. It doesn’t sound half bad to Josefumi, being used, as long as Kira keeps him in the end — another discarded clipping to bottle and catalog.

“Kujo,” Kira calls, beckoning, and Josefumi surprises himself when he speaks.

“Call me Josefumi,” he says. Kujo was the name of the father I never had.

“Okay,” Kira says, unsurprised. “Josefumi.” His name rolls smooth off of Kira’s tongue, shaped like a question instead of a curse. Kira surprises him in his familiarity — the man’s manner is almost deliberately succinct, obtuse, and yet — Josefumi finds himself reading the twitches of his fingers and the tension in his shoulders like a well-worn book, pages fluttering through the wind to reveal Kira’s thoughts.

Who are you? Kira’s eyes whisper — and Josefumi wishes he had an answer.

.

The first lesson Josefumi learns as a child is that abandonment is human nature. His teacher is the burn in his lungs when he watches his mother through his fading vision, still on the shore where she watches him drown. Betrayal stings like salt in his eyes as the water crashes into his mouth, his nose as his mother calls his name, refusing to move. In an instant, he’s swept out into the tide, ground pulled out from underneath him.

After the fact, he acknowledges simple truths. He has no home. His mother, for all she tried to hide it, found him only a passing fancy at best and ultimately, an inconvenience at worst. His parents’ divorce, in the end, is only more salt in age-old wounds.

Holly and Kira gave him his life back, but Josefumi doesn’t start living until he meets Kira for the second time. Kira, unyielding and apathetic, who looks at Josefumi and says, There’s space for you here, if you want it, who hollows out a piece of his home for Josefumi without a second thought. Guilt claws its way into Josefumi’s chest with the weight of a life-debt and speaks for him when Josefumi opens his mouth to say yes — yes, I’ll move in, yes, I’ll help you steal the fruit, yes, I’ll help you save Holly’s life.

Josefumi wants to trust him so badly it hurts. He wants to believe that he’s not just another tool, another pawn, another unfortunate complication of a one-night mistake — he wants to believe that Kira cares about him, even as he learns to unravel Kira’s secrets, as he learns that the man Kira is can’t be what Josefumi craves, what he needs.

Kira’s voice, smooth and manipulative, starts to haunt Josefumi’s dreams, eventually.

Are you alive? Kira asks, in Josefumi’s mind. Or have you already drowned? Choose, Josefumi. You can’t stay here, on the boundary, or I’ll choose for you, he whispers, as his hands — always his hands, beautiful and lithe and deadly — close tight around his neck, before Josefumi inevitably jolts himself awake.

In daylight, Kira is quiet and cunning, deliberate when he extends small concessions to Josefumi. Josefumi doesn’t know what to make of it. He waits for the other shoe to drop, as he knows it inevitably will. He accompanies Kira to sea, trips with the him on his small boat evolving from novelty to habit to comfort as Kira folds Josefumi effortlessly into his life, just as intentional and planned as every other aspect of the doctor’s daily routine.

And still, always there in the background is the rokakaka tree, growing and blooming and flourishing as the season winds down, a living time-bomb. Josefumi wonders, despite himself.

“You can stay here,” Kira tells him once. “Even after, if you don’t have another place to go. I don’t mind it.”

I don’t mind you, Josefumi had translated, exasperated.

Josefumi had tried, with all his heart, to believe it.

.

It ends how it begins.

I’m going to be abandoned, he thinks.

His body collapses and sharp pain consumes his skull as Tamaki forces the bill deeper. Josefumi chokes back a scream, voice breaking in a desperate sob. If I’m going to be left behind — does it make a difference, this time, if I make the first move?

Kira’s voice interrupts his thoughts before he can say a word.

“Josefumi, you run away first,” Kira tells him, voice dark and tinged with resolve. The wound in his side bleeds sluggishly where his body is folded over on itself like a grotesque paper doll. Josefumi thinks he’s going to be sick, watching as Kira’s hands — beautiful, even now — applied futile pressure to the gash, blood running scarlet over his fingers. His jaw is clenched, breath ragged with pain, and Josefumi feels guilt, heavy and all-consuming, wrack through his body as Kira forces himself to talk.

Josefumi’s vision swims with tears.

“Don’t worry about me,” Kira murmurs, voice soft even as his gaze bores hard into Josefumi’s eyes. “Okay? Go on ahead!”

Did he know that I was going to talk? Josefumi thinks, desperately.

“Sorry, Josefumi,” Kira says, a pained smile making its way across his face. “I roped you into this mess… None of this is your fault. You haven’t done anything wrong.” His voice is reassuring, gentle — it sounds like forgiveness, like understanding, and Josefumi starts to fall apart.

Karera appears, the world explodes in a rain of light and sound and blood, and Josefumi runs.

He spots the rokakaka tree, eyes narrowing on the two fruit hanging from its branches. Kira is limp where he sags against Josefumi’s arms, his blood painted red across Josefumi’s hands. Josefumi breathes, and he runs, and he counts.

Sixty meters away. Forty strides.

Thirty meters away. Twenty strides.

One and a half meters away. Two strides.

He watches his hands harden and crumble as the fruit makes its way past Kira’s lips, and Josefumi understands. He lets it happen, feels the exchange take him apart, piece by piece. He can hear voices in the background, fading out to static — waves, crashing in the distance.

Kira, he thinks, watching the cracks climb up his skin. The strange, oppressive pressure feels like hands at his neck. I’ve made my choice.

[tmariea]

Pulled Like the Tides

For Sormik Week Day 3 - Nature

Summary:  Life as a seraph is governed by the elements. But what of the forces that govern the elements themselves? And what could have more of an effect on water than the moon?

Associated with my post about water seraphim and the moon.  This is a collection of vignettes at different phases of the moon, in both childhood, young adulthood, and a little bit post-canon.  Each one is not related to the others, or in any variety of chronological order.

Read on AO3

NEW MOON

Sorey wakes before Mikleo.  He sits up and looks at the shock of white hair just peeking over their shared blanket, and wonders if there was ever a time before that Mikleo wasn’t awake before him.  It’s strange, and maybe a bit worrying, but mostly he’s frustrated, because he wants to play.  He’s about to reach out to shake Mikleo’s shoulder when he hears his name from behind him.

Gramps is sitting in his normal position by the fire, smoking his pipe.  He takes a puff before beckoning his charge close with it.  Sorey makes his way over and sits close to Gramps’ side, but his eyes stay on Mikleo.  He’s getting more worried now; he thought seraphim didn’t need to sleep.

“Why isn’t Mikleo up?  Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, just tired,” Gramps reassures.

“But seraphs don’t need to sleep,” Sorey says, with all the seriousness of a seven year old who knows everything there is to know about the world already.

“No, but we can still get tired.  It’s different from needing sleep; more like needing rest to restore mana.  But, you have rather rubbed off on him.”  Gramps reaches out to twitch Sorey’s nose, and he screws up his face in reply.

“But why is he tired?” Sorey asks, but they are interrupted by a stirring in the bedding.

“Sorey?” Mikleo wonders, sitting up and looking around.  He seems just as confused to find his companion gone as Sorey was to find him still asleep.

“Mikleo, here!” Sorey calls with enthusiasm, and opens his arms as an invitation.

Mikleo shuffles towards them around the edge of the circular fireplace, dragging a blanket with him.  As soon as he plops down next to Sorey, he’s swept up in a tight hug.

“What are you doing?”

“You were still asleep,” Sorey says as way of an answer.  When it seems Mikleo has neither interest nor energy for fighting him off, he hugs even tighter, doing his best to try to lift Mikleo off the ground in the motion.  Since they are both sitting, it doesn’t work.  They end up in a pile of limbs, more than anything.

While they bicker over this arrangement, Gramps returns with a book in hand.  Until that moment, neither of them had realized he left.  He settles next to them, and the boys shuffle closer, until the result is two small heads nearly in his lap.  He opens the book to a page which shows the moon in all its different shapes.  He teaches them the name to each phase, and the way a water seraph’s mana will fluctuate with it.  Then they move onto the other things the moon affects, like the tides in the ocean, and the subject meanders from there onto the ocean and its waves and its weather.  Mikleo only looks like he’s taking in bits and pieces as they try to read along with Gramps’ voice, but that’s okay.  Sorey never minds reading a book over again.

WAXING GIBBOUS

It takes a while to find Mikleo.  He’s in the forest above Mabinogio and tucked behind some bushes and a chunk of crumbling wall.  He starts, as he hears Gramps and Sorey coming up behind him, and does his best to hide a cookie behind his back.  Even if he had been quick enough, the crumbs around his mouth would have given him away.

“He stole all my snacks!” Sorey yells from where he is clinging to the back of Gramps’ tunic, while pointing an accusing finger.  He’s so mad that tears are forming at the edges of his eyes.  He rubs them harshly and continues to glare.

“Mikleo,” Gramps says, in his best ‘I’m disappointed in you’ voice.

For half a second it seems like Mikleo is going to cave to it, but then he draws himself straighter and says, “No I didn’t.”

“You have a cookie behind your back,” Sorey says, and darts out from behind Gramps to try to grab it.  Mikleo turns to keep Sorey away, but that puts him in Gramps’ range, who takes the cookie and looks at him with raised eyebrows.

“He wouldn’t share,” Mikleo claims, looking up with defiance in his eyes.

“You ate all your own snacks already, why should I share!  Seraphs don’t even need to eat.”

“You said you were full already, and I was still hungry.  I’m still hungry now.”  Mikleo balls his small fists and Sorey copies the motion.  If it’s a fight Mikleo wants, he’ll get one.

Gramps sighs and crouches down before his charges.  He waits, patiently, until they realize that he is and turn to look at him.  “Mikleo, you need to tell us if you need something, rather than taking it from Sorey.  And Sorey, if it’s something you don’t need, you should think about helping others.  Now, say you’re sorry.”

They look at least a bit admonished.  “Sorry Gramps,” they chorus.

“And to each other.”

They turn to each other for a moment, before both looking away and mumbling an apology.  Gramps breaks the cookie in half and hands them each a piece.  Sorey takes his and eats it before Mikleo can take it.  But Mikleo is also focused on eating his own cookie as fast as he can.

“I’m still hungry,” He whines when he’s finished.  “Why am I still hungry?”  He sounds like he’s maybe going to cry.  Sorey feels bad.

Gramps sits, so he can tug Mikleo down to sit in his lap.  He looks up at the sky and explains, “The moon is nearly full.  Your power is nearly full, but not quite there yet.  So, you feel the need to fill up and hurry it along.  Since we do eat human food, even if we don’t need it, your body sees it as something to use to fill up.”

Sorey isn’t quite sure he understands, but he does know that whatever this is makes Mikleo upset.  He sits close before them and says, “I’m sorry Mikleo.  I should have shared.”

“It’s okay,” Mikleo says, still sounding a bit sniffly, but somewhat better.  “But next time you’d better.”

“Okay,” Sorey agrees, and then grabs Mikleo’s hands to pull him out of Gramps’ lap.  Argument forgotten, there’s much more playing and reading and exploring to be done.

FULL MOON

Sorey thinks Mikleo looks like a silvery fairy in the moonlight as he stands on his doorstep, all gap-tooth smiles and barely-contained excitement.

“Come on, come on!” he says, and grabs Sorey’s hand to tug him forward.  “It’s too nice a night to stay inside.”

Sorey isn’t hard to convince.  They stumble out into the dim fields of Elysia, holding hands and holding in giggles at the thought that they aren’t supposed to be out right now.  Although Gramps probably knows; Gramps always knows everything.  They collapse onto their backs near one of the cliffs, and stare up into the sky.  The moon is so huge and bright that it nearly seems to drown out the stars with light.

“Here, look.  I wanted to show you this.”  Mikleo stretches his hands up toward the sky and spreads his fingers.  Small bubbles of water form between them, and then float upwards of their own accord.  He stops then, and turns to face Sorey so that he can watch his reaction.  He gathers a breath of concentration, stretches his fingers just the smallest bit further, and the bubbles light up blue, like a field of magical fireflies.

Sorey gasps in delight, and sits up to reach toward one of the bubbles.  It balances on the point of his finger, before rolling down his hand and along his arm.  It travels all the way up his neck, which makes him shiver with the cold wetness, and to the top of his head, where it finally pops.  “Mikleo!”

The small seraph laughs.  “You should have seen your face.  And when it rolled up your neck?  You looked so funny.”

“You’re mean.”  Sorey isn’t mad though; it was too cool to let his annoyance get the best of him.  “How can you control just one like that?”

“The moon I think.  It’s easier when it’s full.  But come on, lay back down and watch.”

Sorey obliges, and stares up into to the cluster of bubbles again as they twirl about.  It takes him a moment, but then he realizes what Mikleo is doing.  He’s making new constellations, from the stars and his own artes, and Sorey is enraptured again.  They stay out until the moon sets, naming them all.

WANING GIBBOUS

Sorey is bemused, to say the least.  Most days, by the time he wakes up, Mikleo is already washed, dressed and over in Sorey’s house making breakfast.  There are days when he isn’t, true, but not often.  What he did not expect was to wander over to Mikleo’s house, hair uncombed and stomach growling, to find only a shock of white and blue hair visible above a veritable fortress of books.

“Mikleo?” he calls, pausing to wipe the dew from his bare feet on the soft mat just inside the door.  His stomach echoes him; he is used to a hot meal before he is even dressed.  In bed if he can get it.

The head makes no moves to acknowledge that it has heard, not even a twitch.

Sorey makes his way up the few steps into the main room and around the book fort.  On this side, he can see it is not complete, with side walls gently sloping to the floor.  In the middle, sits Mikleo, surrounded by three open books and several shards of masonry, which they had brought them back from the ruins in the forest above Mabinogio two days ago.  They had done some amount of study, and argued back and forth on the era, but nothing on this scale.

“What are you doing?” Sorey asks.  He tries again when Mikleo stays silent.  He doesn’t reply to his name either.  “Fine, keep it a secret,” Sorey says finally, and plops on the floor.

From where he sits, although it does take him much long than usual to read from upside down, he could pick out a book on Era of Asgard temples, a book on Temperance of Avarost temples, and the Celestial Record.  It looks like the pieces of masonry had been cleaned, better to see their worn patterns.  As he watches, Mikleo picks up one of the smaller chunks and holds it up towards the light of the hanging lantern.

Sorey reaches up, quick as can be, and puts to use that half of an inch of extra height he’s gaining on Mikleo to snatch the piece of stone away.

Mikleo shrieks, eyes wide, and tumbles backwards into the wall of his book fort.  Sorey lunges after him, attempting to prevent the inevitable collapse, and then when that fails, trying to prevent Mikleo from getting crushed in a book avalanche.  He yelps in pain as the books rain down on his back instead.

Mikleo, who is truly trapped beneath Sorey at this point, scowls impressively and snaps, “Sorey!  What were you doing?  You scared me!”

“I said your name three times!” Sorey shoots back, bruised and in no mood to deal with much anything other than Mikleo’s undying gratefulness for getting buried in the books in his stead.  He sits up with a wince, as the books which were on him thump onto the floor.  “Ouch.”

Suddenly, Mikleo’s expression changes to one of remorse and worry.  “I’m sorry.  I was focused.  All night, I guess.”

“I could tell,” Sorey continues to grumble.  But Mikleo’s apology makes him feel better.  It makes him feel even better when Mikleo shuffles around on his knees and lays cool hands on his shoulders to heal the forming bruises there.  “What were you studying?”

Once again, Mikleo doesn’t answer until he is done with his current task.  When he is, he makes an inquiring hum.  Sorey repeats his question.  “Oh,” Mikleo says, “I’m gathering proof that these aren’t Era of Asgard, like you say.”

“They are definitely Era of Asgard!”

“You think everything is Era of Asgard.  Everything can’t be Era of Asgard.”

“Oh, you are so on,” Sorey says, diving into the book pile to try to retrieve the ones Mikleo had out earlier.  Breakfast is forgotten until much later.

NEW MOON

Sorey thinks that new moon mornings are his favorite.  Any other day of the month, no matter how hard he tries, Mikleo is awake before him, or wakes the moment Sorey starts to stir.  But, on these mornings, he gets time to gaze at the sight of his hair tousled across the inn pillow, blending into the fabric apart from the blue tips.  The way his lips part just slightly – no drool, that would be undignified and Mikleo would never allow himself – with his slow, even breaths.

This morning, he is dappled in the light and shadow that falls through the open window, shifting as the leaves of Marlind’s great tree sway in the breeze.  Sorey takes a moment to smooth out the loose strands of hair, tucking some of it behind Mikleo’s ear.  It’s gotten longer since their journey; not noticeably unless he really looks, but under his fingers it’s different.

Next, Sorey moves to trace the outer shell of Mikleo’s pretty ear.  Some days he’s curious what would happen if he took off his earring and put it on Mikleo instead, how it would look.  Mostly, he gets too distracted blushing after that.  Today he’s not blushing, but he’s more interested in continuing across Mikleo’s face, to stroke a thumb across his cheeks, and then his lips.  Mikleo doesn’t even stir under these ministrations, and so Sorey settles back down and hugs him close until he does.

A few moments later, Mikleo shifts, just enough to tuck the blanket closer to his chin.  He doesn’t open his eyes yet, but Sorey knows he’s awake when he feels a pair of warm lips brush against his neck.

“Good morning,” Sorey says, and takes up the occupation of finger combing Mikleo’s hair.

“Good morning,” Mikleo echoes, although it really sounds nowhere close to actual words.  But, Sorey is well-versed in sleepy Mikleo talk.

Sorey scratches lightly at his scalp, and Mikleo leans back into the touch.  Now that his face is visible, Sorey can see that he still hasn’t even bothered to open his eyes yet, and he laughs gently before reaching out to kiss Mikleo’s nose.

He isn’t expecting it, and his purple eyes fly open in surprise before he whines, “Sorey!”

Sorey skips right over the objection, and says, “We should have a big breakfast, today.  Something really filling, and maybe sweet.  And then, I was thinking it would be good to check up on the town – see how trade is doing and make sure all the plague victims have recovered well.  I know Rose will appreciate the time to check in with the Sparrowfeathers, too.”

Mikleo hummed in thought, turning the plans over in his head, before saying, “Sounds like you just want to laze around.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Really, it isn’t Sorey who needs the time to rest, although it certainly won’t hurt.  But, Mikleo doesn’t like to admit that anything beyond normal activity exhausts him on new moon days any more than he likes feeling like a burden.  Sorey is fine with playing the idle one.

“Alright, I suppose we can take an easy day, so long as we get that done, and restock some of our supplies, too.”

“Of course.”

Even though there are tasks that need doing, it’s still another half an hour before either of them even think about stirring from bed.

WAXING GIBBOUS

Mikleo has gotten much better at hiding his extra snacking over the years, and to his credit, he did only take three cookies.  But Lailah is relentlessly protective of her cookie stash, and he should have known better.  When he deflects the blame onto Sorey, the Shepherd just smiles sheepishly and takes the light scolding in stride.  It’s alright; he knows what Mikleo needs.

Late at night though, it is apparent that other hungers are just as potent.  In the way he leans close, murmurs, “I need you,” and then licks his lips, he is hungry.  His lips are truly greedy in stealing Sorey’s breath and every sound he makes.  His hands and mouth are ravenous as they glide across sweat-slicked skin, and press and bite hard enough to leave a red and purple mosaic in their wake.  He reaches for pleasure in the meeting of every thrust, every stroke, intense and drunk on the feeling of almost full and grasping at anything that will fill him the rest of the way up.

FULL MOON

When Mikleo disappears after sunset, and doesn’t return to the inn even when Sorey would normally sleep, he has an idea of where to look.  On a night like tonight, when the moon is big and full, he knows he won’t find Mikleo inside.  He is never good at being surrounded by walls and stone and manmade things when the moon is full.  He gravitates toward the nighttime sky in the same way that a compass needle seeks north.  So Sorey turns his steps towards the gates out of Lastonbell, the ones that lead to the Meadow of Triumph.  That’s where the most moonlight will shine, where Mikleo will inevitably be.

True enough, once Sorey sneaks out through the smaller watchman’s gate, the only one accessible at this hour, he can see a figure in the distance.  He makes his way down a slight slope, into the dip in the land which shelters the copse of trees where Mikleo is crouched.  Sorey thinks he is gathering herbs.  He knows he is beautiful in this light, and surrounded by his constellations of tiny glowing bubbles.  Mikleo is every bit as silvery and magical as when they were children, maybe even more so.

As Sorey approaches, a few bubbles break away from the group and float towards him, and then more.  It almost looks as if he is walking through suspended rain, first light and getting heavier as he comes close.

“Sorey,” Mikleo says, without pausing in his work examining the leaves of a chamomile plant.

“How did you know it was me?”

“I took a cue from all those awful eyes in LeFay.”  As he speaks, a single bubble swirls around Sorey and comes to settle on his shoulder, as if emphasizing Mikleo’s point.  It is cold, but it keeps its form.

“That’s so amazing!”

“It’s imperfect right now is what it is.  I don’t have a clear view, just enough to make an informed guess.  Since you’re the most likely person to come looking, I figured it was a good one.”

Mikleo straightens just in time to see Sorey pout; he dislikes it when Mikleo doesn’t see himself as worthy of a compliment.  But it makes Sorey feel better to see the soft, calm smile on his face.  He is reminded again of how beautiful Mikleo looks in this light, how smart and talented he is, and he wonders how he can go even five minutes without saying how much he loves him.  Right now, he’s not even going to try.

He steps forward to grasp both of Mikleo’s hands, dirt and slightly-crushed chamomile and all, and rests their foreheads together.  “I love you.”

Most days, most times, Mikleo would flush and cover a small smile with his hand.  But here, calm and centered in the pull of the full moon, he hums, let’s his eyes slip closed, and says, “Me too.”

WANING GIBBOUS

The light, when Sorey wakes, is a dim white-gold wash.  The flickering flame from the lamp would have blocked the moonlight completely, if it wasn’t for the fact that Mikleo has every window thrown open wide, to invite it into the room in broad shafts.  Mikleo himself is working at the desk with his back to Sorey.  It’s no hard task to figure out the nature of his project – there is the sound of a quill, scratching quietly, yet quickly.

Sorey grumbles, and flops his head on the pillow, debating whether he’ll get up.  He knows Mikleo’s concentration will be too complete to hear him, but he also wants to stay in bed.  Wanting a warm person to cuddle wins out.  He crawls out of bed and crosses to the desk.  Mikleo still doesn’t notice, so he drapes himself across his shoulders.

Mikleo jumps, and squeaks.

It always makes Sorey laugh a little bit, when he does, and then nuzzle his face into the crook of Mikleo’s neck.

“I wish you would stop startling me like that!”

“You know there’s no other way to get your attention when you get like this,” Sorey says, but he places a kiss at his shoulder as an apology.  “What are you working on?”

“Writing.”

“I could tell that.”

“I’m writing down our journey.  With all the various rumors we’ve encountered, I want to make sure that someone tells it accurately,” Mikleo says, with a sigh.

“I guess that makes sense.  I’m sure you will write it well.  But how about in the morning?”

Mikleo shakes his head and moves to pick up his quill again.  “You can sleep on your own for one night.”

Sorey intercepts his hand, and pulls the quill gently from his fingers.  “You fought six battles today.  You healed me twice, and Rose three times, made ice cream for everyone, practiced artes with Edna and Lailah for hours, and now you’ve been up writing half the night.  Come to bed.”

“Seraphim don’t need to sleep.  Especially not right now.  I want to get things done.”  Mikleo looks wistfully out the window.  The moon hangs near the top, nearly full but starting to shrink.

“Mikleo, please?” Sorey whines.  It’s a low tactic, but typically effective.  Mikleo shakes his head, though; the energy still buzzing in his veins is resistant to any such tricks.

Sorey changes tactics.  He’s in the perfect spot to begin to kiss his way up Mikleo’s neck.  “Could I redirect that focus elsewhere, maybe?”  He knows he can get Mikleo to sleep after sex.  And really, he’s not going to complain about the sex either.

For a moment, the question hangs.  It seems like Mikleo will refuse, but then Sorey begins to suck at a spot just behind his ear, and his head tilts to the side as he lets out an audible breath.  “Okay, yes,” he murmurs.  Sorey gives him a moment to cap his inkwell and blow out the lamp, before tugging him up from the chair and back towards the bed.

NEW MOON

Mikleo has been in those ruins for weeks.  He’s fascinated, and caught up, and sees no reason at all why he should return to the outside world.  There’s enough in here to keep him occupied for months, if need be.

And he knows he won’t lose track of the time, no matter how long he might stay.  The feeling of the moon thrums in his mana, even in moments when he nearly forgets that it is there.  Right now, even though it is daytime, he knows that the moon is dark in the sky.

He’s a little tired, an extra bit of weariness fizzling in his thighs as he walks, and a lower pulsing in his reserves of mana than usual.  But it’s nothing enough to deter him.  It’s been years since last the new moon exhaustion required extra rest.

He walks through a hall dedicated to fire, full of heat and lava.  It is beautiful, but his nature and its do not mix well.  Over time he will document it all, in small bits of study.  But for now, he moves on to the next chamber.

Here he is immediately comfortable, surrounded by cool blue, and gentle light, and tiles that give the illusion of rippling water.  The monolith at the center is set with a beautiful stone.  He wonders about its origin, its purpose here, and approaches.

As he reaches out to touch it, and the floor groans under his feet, it occurs to him that maybe he’s more tired than he had thought.  Because, really, he has encountered enough traps that he should know better.  The floor cracks and falls away.

Before Mikleo has a chance to berate himself further, he’s stopping in midair, with a hand around his wrist and a painful wrench to his shoulder.  He looks up to see his rescuer; he recognizes this hand, this glove, and even though his profile is in shadow from the light above, he knows this face.  But for the years between, he could say he knows this face better than his own.

Mikleo smiles, heart more full than it has been in centuries.  As he reaches up a hand to grasp at Sorey’s to feel that yes, he is real, he is reminded that a new moon is not only an end, but also a new beginning.

[alarawriting]

A Hole In The World

A lot of this comes from trying to capture a dream I had. I don’t actually know where this is going to go or what kind of plot I could attach to this, so it’s definitely incomplete. 

There is a hole in the world.

You’d expect a hole in the world to be at the North Pole, or the magnetic North Pole, or maybe on the Equator, or the International Date Line. Someplace meaningful, someplace where the skin of the world might be expected to pucker.

But it’s technically not the Earth that the hole is in. It’s reality itself, and who the hell knows why reality would decide to spring a hole on a tiny planet at the far edge of an insignificant galaxy? So honestly, you suppose, it could be anywhere. You still can’t help visualizing it as a place where the plastic wrap of existence, wrapped around the Earth, has managed to not quite meet itself completely in a small pucker of non-reality, but most people say that analogy doesn’t make sense to anyone but you.

In fact, the hole is in Iowa.

Why Iowa? Why not? Maybe it needed to be someplace flat, but in the middle of a huge land mass. Who knows? It’s in Iowa, and ever since the government certified that it was, in fact, completely safe, and had their spooks running all over it for who knows how longer, it’s finally been declassified and opened to the public. Kind of like the Internet, if the Internet were a combination of an airport and the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota. Like the roadside attractions that used to be found all over the US highways, those weird pieces of Americana from your grandparents’ day, before the interstates came and made it much easier to glide over the land you were traveling through without stopping or looking around (though honestly you always found those places creepy, overrated, or both… maybe they were more special in the days when there was nothing to do but watch 3 channels of television and listen to bad music on the radio.) 

In the early days, when everyone wanted to try it, the hotels within a three hour drive of the facility would be jam-packed, every day, and people would stand on lines for 16 hours, or camp there overnight, for a chance to get in and see another world. Nowadays, there’s a Best Western and a Sheraton and three separate kinds of Marriott-franchised hotels and a Holiday Inn Express, and that’s just counting the ones you’ve been to and not the motels, all within a ten minute drive of the facility. And mostly, except on weekends, they’re kind of empty. The novelty has worn off. People are no longer nearly so desperate to see the other side of a hole in the world, now that they know what’s there.

And nowadays, even when there are a lot of people, everyone’s bought their ticket off the Internet, in advance, so no intolerably long lines. You can’t blow up a hole in reality with a shoe, or a liquid explosive in a thermos, so there’s no ridiculous security nonsense to hold the lines up. They do check you for weapons, of course, but it’s no more intrusive than a visit to a courthouse. And then you sit and wait, in a well-fitted lounge that actually has comfy chairs, because back when the lines were really long they made enough money to afford comfy chairs, until your number is called.

You walk with the others whose numbers are in the same range as yours through a door, into a very large, concrete room, rather like an airplane hangar. There’s nothing inside. They built the huge room around a hole in the world when they didn’t know what they were dealing with, if the hole might expand, or suck people inside, or explode, so they contained it in a gigantic building that’s almost empty. The floor slopes down. You’re not sure why. Is the hole technically below sea level, or was this entire building made artificially higher than it needed to be because some bureaucrat thought the hole would be safer if it was at the bottom of a slope? Probably you could Google it, if you cared.

There’s ten people in the line with you, and you’re right around the middle. Good enough. All of you walk down the slope, to the archway.

The arch is in what looks like the middle of nowhere, a place where ordinarily no one would ever put an arch. It is also mobile. That, you did Google. If the hole ever moves, the arch can be jacked up onto wheels and rolled to its new position. If you’re going to have a random hole in the world in the middle of an empty airplane hangar, you need something to indicate where it is. The arch is covered with those almost-clear flaps of plastic you find in garages and workshops sometimes, to contain dust or pretend to contain noise, so you can’t see the other side. It doesn’t really matter; you’ve been through it before. You know there’s nothing to see, really, until you see it.

One by one – or occasionally in twos – people walk up to the agents at either side of the arch and present their tickets.  The agents punch in some codes into the keypad that’s next to the arch, and wave the people on. Then the people step through the plastic curtain. Normally a person would be visible on the other side of a plastic curtain like this – the flaps aren’t really clear, they’re too thick to be transparent, but they let light through, and shapes. You’d normally see the person’s shape on the other side, but you can’t. Once they walk through the curtain, they’re gone.

And then it’s your turn. There’s no disruptions. The last time you were here, a group of fourth graders on a field trip and their teacher tried to cut in front of you on the logic that the teacher’s number was lower than yours, even though all of the kids were higher and it’s policy that a group goes with the highest number in the group. This time it’s smooth sailing, no arguments. The agents punch in the code for the destination you requested, and wave you on, and you step through the curtain.

Onto a beach.

Here’s the thing. The hole in the world leads to another world. But it’s no Narnia, no place of magic and secrets… as far as anyone can tell. There’s one sun burning in the sky, the plants are green, the ocean is blue (sort of… actually in your opinion oceans are all kind of bluish-green, but this one is no different from the one on your world). The other side seems to be kind of identical to Earth as nearly as anyone can tell, with two important differences.

The first difference is that there are no people. Either humanity never evolved here, or killed itself off, or… something. No one knows. There hasn’t been time to explore the entirety of the other world. A few destinations have been built up, because the arch allows the operators to control where in the new world you end up… sort of. Destinations that were mapped painstakingly by military grunts and government agents, where none of them knew whether the new random code being tested would drop them in the ocean, or the mouth of a live volcano, or on the side of a mountain. They can test to make sure that there’s matter at the destination, so no one ever got dropped into the air, and they can test the density of the matter so there’s never been anyone who got materialized into solid rock, or at the bottom of the ocean. But it turns out they can’t tell the difference between the ocean surface and the land surface, and you can’t see anything until you’re all the way through. Try to stick your head through the hole in space and you can’t. (On previous trips, you’ve tried.) It’s like it’s not there until your whole body is through it, and then you’re there and your footing’s on whatever’s on the other side.

Your choice is rarely chosen. You see a few people in the distance, along the sides of the beach. It’s not a perfectly combed beach like the touristy places at home – there’s sharp rock, and sharper shells, embedded all over the sand, brought by the tides -- and there’s nowhere to get a pretzel or an ice cream cone. You brought food for three days in your giant camping knapsack, and a tent, and some useful items like a solar-powered water distiller and a small camping stove. People far, far down the beach have apparently done the same. You see their tents.

This is the destination. It’s marked by a slab of concrete, which seems out of place in this land that’s otherwise pristine, barely despoiled by humanity. You step off of it and down the beach, away from the other humans, toward a promontory you’re familiar with where the fishing is good. You breathe in the air, rich and salty with no taint of human activity; the wind blows off the ocean, inland, so if the distant campers set fires the smoke will never reach you.

Here is the other thing that makes the world different. It’s like a drug.

Not because it’s clean and pure, although it is. There are still places on Earth that are clean and pure. No. Something thrums in your veins, something buzzes in your head, something jumps up your heart rate and makes you feel like absolutely anything could happen. You are an alien here, and something in your primitive hindbrain knows it. Everything is simultaneously surreal and yet hyper-clear, and if the sun turned pink or rose in the west it seems like you could accept it.

It’s probably the oxygen. There’s more of it here. Extra oxygen gets people a little high, right? Maybe that’s why you feel, when you come here, like you can do anything.

The moon – if that is in fact the moon, and a lot of reputable scientists say it’s probably not – is huge, much, much larger in the sky than at home, and it’s mostly greenish, and you don’t think you’ve seen the same face of it twice. It doesn’t wax and wane like the moon at home, which is apparently exactly the right size to disappear into the Earth’s shadow. Here, whatever hangs in the sky is big enough that you can see the planet’s shadow moving across it, never fully eclipsing it. If you can’t see the moon it’s because you’re pointed in the wrong direction, not because it’s covered in the earth’s shadow. This makes the tides high and wild – the beach you’re standing on is a thousand-foot walk from the water, and extends nearly a mile behind you, and during the times when the tide is at its most extreme, the water can go from where it is now all the way to the tree line a mile behind you. But the water’s so briny you can almost float in it, so as wild as it is, it’s less dangerous than it could be.

The trees, behind you, are tall, so very tall, and entangled with thick vines everywhere. You’d need a machete to make your way into the forest – or a chainsaw with a battery that can be charged off sunlight. They make those nowadays, but not within your budget and the charging station is unwieldy and large, a pyramid of solar panels encasing the battery, two feet tall. Not something you want to carry with you in a backpack. It’s all right, though, you don’t need to tackle the trees. Just being here, just breathing the air, just feeling the buzz of the energy that races through you, is enough.

This makes you unusual. Not unique – the number of people sitting in the lounge with you reminds you of that – but not typical.

This is why humanity hasn’t started dumping huge swaths of its population into this world, why heavy industry hasn’t come through and started strip-mining, why only three of the mapped destinations have anything resembling permanent settlements and they’re tiny and very much tourist traps, populated almost entirely by workers who go home at night and travelers spending a weekend, like you are. This world feels wrong, and for most people, the wrongness doesn’t excite them, fulfill them, make them feel as if they’re Superman charging up under the light of a yellow sun… it terrifies them. People get paranoid. They jump at shadows. They eat the food of a different earth and then they throw it all up. They break out in hives. People with anxiety disorders have actually died here, suffering heart attacks or strokes in the midst of what should be a perfect paradise.

Most people are day trippers. They come here, they spend several hours, they leave. They don’t camp. The ones who are desperate enough to work in the tourist traps are not mom and pop entrepreneurs; they’re employees of huge, faceless corporations who are rich enough to afford to send a whole crew of people through in the morning and have them all come back in the evening, or sometimes two shifts’ worth, because people can’t sleep here. Unless they’re like you (and you feel like you hardly need sleep while you’re here, it’s too exciting, too much of a thrill just to even be here that you barely feel like closing your eyes.) And apparently people like you are rare enough that no one has found any of them willing to man a kiosk that sells McDonalds.

A few, a rare few, have moved here. That’s a little too rich for your blood, still. There’s no human infrastructure over here, no emergency rooms, no place to order a pizza, no Internet. That’s part of the thrill, of course, but you don’t want to live that way. Not yet.

Once you reach the promontory, which is slightly higher ground and juts out over the ocean like a natural pier, you walk inland far enough that your tent probably won’t be swept out to sea at high tide. (Probably. There are no almanacs for this place.) You hammer the tent into place, set down your gear, and get out your fishing rod. There’s food for three days in your pack, but if you don’t come home with two days’ worth in reserve, you’ll consider yourself to have failed at this, at least a little bit. What’s the point to going to an alien world if you can’t eat the food?

There are fish that are just like any you might find at home. There are fish that are so strange and alien you haven’t dared to eat them when you catch them. And there are fish in many positions in the wide range between. The same’s true for the plants, but you avoid eating any of them unless you’re sure they’re safe – you’ve got a testing kit, mash up a plant, mix tiny bits of it in with small amounts of different reagents and use different testing strips, and you can identify 100 different poisons, but there’s no guarantee that this world won’t have one that doesn’t exist at home and can’t be tested for. Generally you only eat the plants you know are good, and you take home samples. People are encouraged to bring in samples of plants that haven’t been tested yet, when they come home; if the plant you found was unique, you get a discount voucher for your next trip, and you can pick up a brochure in the lounge that lists all the ones they’ve found and whether they’re edible (or download it to your phone or netbook while you’re in the lounge, so you can read it offline over here.)

Later, after you catch yourself a fish, or get tired of trying, you will take photographs – you’ve been to this promontory before, but your camera can catch the fish underwater, and there’s strange birds in the sky and strange flowers near the tree line and the shells, oh, the variety of shells… plus there’s always the moon. People never get tired of pictures of the sun setting over the ocean with the green alien monster moon in the sky. You’ve got a blog where you post pictures from your vacations and write about how you spent your time, and it’s popular enough that the ad revenues and prints of your photographs just about pay for your vacations. You come over here once a month, sometimes twice. You’re addicted, honestly, and you’d be better off if you saved the money, except, if you saved the money what would you blog about? And what would you save it for that could possibly be better than this?

[mistwolf-wanderer]

Oceandust

This, now, is your story.  You know that epics are often told with a sense of belatedness—a wistful sense of what was, what could be, what could have been in worlds past.  Repetitions of reminiscence—one, because it is all the same, and you know this—make up every history book and every novel you could ever find.  You can reframe the same story 200 times, make the shadows on the wall slightly different with each retelling, play a different song in the background to change the mood and make it seem like the plot will go a little differently—when it won't.  You know this intimately well, because this is the way your story flows.

Try as you may to change the rhyme—the rise and fall of the syllables of your life, the rhythm, the time, the tone of voice or sound—you cannot change the way your tale is written.  So you stumble with your ink and pen, and the parchment you hold so dear, and you stutter your way through the pages, tripping over syllable and description.  You hold your lute to your chest and run, as always, and you sing a little song to yourself to make the minutes pass faster.  But you will not make it to your destination.  You know this.

You are late.

~*~

The sea shifts tirelessly around the bustling port city of Taeseon.  It sits nestled in the mouth of a great bay—one that leads out into the Eastern Sea and into the Unknown.  One thousand strangers have passed through here, together and apart, to sell goods to each other or ferret away and start a new life.  Some come and go, like the ephemeral clinks of gold and silver on leather palms, while others settle in and leave parts of their souls for the sea to take in its lonely hands.

The tides were high on the dawn you were born, lapping hungrily at the shores of the city and inching closer, as though to answer your keening cry.

You may blame your curse on your mother, because she met your sire at the wrong time and place.  You are born screaming, covered by the crash of waves, to a nationless mother and a father who already has a family.  She cradles the tiny bundle in her arms and sings hoarsely in the dim candle light.  The nurse present stays two weeks, then absconds as soon as the clock allows her, paid off with gold and a necklace to keep her mouth shut tight.  Your father lingers for a time at the edge of your mother's tired vision, watching solemnly, occasionally looking out into the darkened sea.

They see you squirming in your sleep, and share a moment of fondness.  Your father asks your mother what he should call you, but she gives him a calculated look and tells him that he should choose the name.

"My people are not treated well in this country," she says sternly.  Her voice is hard but there is a softness in the way she cradles you close.  "You should choose the name."

He gives her a sad look.  She passes you to him and he holds you quietly in his great arms.  You curl a little closer and sigh, calm despite the coming storm.

He gives you a gentle name that could mean silver, or kindness, or nothing at all, and gives you back to your mother to settle.

Not a week later, your mother disappears, and your father takes you in like it's a gesture of charity.

~*~

You must realize that this was not your fault.  You were born; this, you could not avoid.  Some things simply fall outside of control, and this is one such event.  Though unfortunate, you came into the world kicking and screaming just like the rest of us, and you will leave it in such a manner.  But you will not be allowed to leave it until your story is done.  For no great writer has ever let their creation go quietly into that vast, yawning dark.

You are painted in an outline, in the shadows that have not yet been fleshed out to become fore.  Lines cross over your face and blur the places your eyes should be and you look messy and disjointed.  Something is off about the way the light plays on your face, the way you smile, the way you hide.  The way your world calls your name clashes with the way you think it in your head, and it all becomes a jumbled mess of color, light, and sound.

~*~

It becomes too obvious that you are not just some wayward refugee child your master found on the street after the war.  Your hair is too black and has a distinct wave; your skin is too dark and your cheekbones too high.  Your eyes are too familiar and wide and full of curiosity, and your master's wife is not stupid.  She knows that deep brown and tender shine too well, and confronts your master about it one night.

And this is how you are late, truly.

You stay wide awake at moonrise, staring at the mild glow.  You keep a chart of the twilight sun and watch it as it changes, observing the ways the ocean moves and dances with each passing night.  The young master who shares your quarters finds this deeply annoying because it snatches him straight from his dreams and lays him out on his cot, staring up at the half-dark in the room and hating you with all his venomous, ten-year-old might.

But this time, it is convenient for you both.

You hear voices outside your room, arguing.  Both are calm—exceedingly gentle.  But the words themselves clap in staccato despite the soft-spoken tones.  You peek out from around the corner and observe them.  Master looks down at his feet, hand rubbing his neck, shaking his head.  His wife's shoulders are pulled inward like a shield as her hand gesticulates in the air below her chin, her shoulders hiking up and up and up until her arms unravel and she talks more with her hands than her voice.

The most telling sign is the way he treats you.

But shouldn't he treat his servants with care?

No, this is different.  He knows what this is about; his wife isn't an idiot.  He knows.  God, he knows.

There were things that happened in the war—

But that is not an excuse!

The words are finally harsh, punctuated by fury, hushed by a love for one who should be sleeping and fear for the other.

So what is the truth?

You had long since learned to breathe silently, but now you do not breathe at all; the air is caught up in the same net the master's is.  You could swim through this tension, fish in it for tomorrow's breakfast if you wanted to.

"She's mine, but she isn't yours."

This is how he phrases it.  It is true, but somehow, it makes you feel very far.  Shadows flit across the wall as both figures freeze.  The only sound you can hear is the sigh of the wind through the hallway.  And now, you hear your brother behind you, breathing through his mouth and staring up at your father and his wife with wide brown eyes that are distinctly hers.

They stare at you.  You can feel six eyes—three pairs—stick to you like the honey that stains the young master's—your brother's—clothes in the summer.

You are frozen in your spot, can hear every creak in the wooden floor as your father begins to turn to you.  He calls your name before his wife sweeps before him like a crane on wing.  She brushes past you and takes your brother away.  She does not look at you any longer, but you can feel your brother's eyes on you still, burning into the back of your skull.

Your father drops to his knees before you.  He gives you a tender kiss to the forehead, and you suddenly feel a sense of longing you had only felt when you saw the moon.

"I'll buy you a dress tomorrow," he says quietly, with a loving smile on his face.  "You are my daughter, after all.”

He slips past you, after his wife and your brother.  You hear the door sliding shut, and your father's sigh, but he does not come down.  You wait and wait, watching the moonlight pass through the great sky.  You find him sleeping in your brother's tiny cot and give his wide knuckles a gentle kiss.  Belatedly, as you settle in, you thank him.

What a poor decision that was.

~*~

You are outlined on parchment, ink settled in line and contour.  The shading is made of hair-like fragments crammed at various lengths and stops.  There is a smudge where your mouth should be, and your eyes are a little worse for wear, but you exist, and that is what matters.  As an artist, you know that finishing is more important than the quality of the work, as long as you know you are improving.

But you are told that you are a mistake; that you were never meant to exist, but the stain was already there, so why not make it into something nicer to look at?  This is your family.  See? Look at them smile.  But here, you see, you aren’t supposed to be there.  They are built with sharper lines and glorious color.  You are a sketch by an artist who decided last second that they didn’t need the extra character.  But it seems the artist died before he could erase you, poor thing.

The pen falls and flutters down, scatters ink droplets across the floor in an arc of black.

Now, what constitutes finishing?

~*~

You will weather years of distant, passing affection that leaves you craving more without a voice to beg for it.  Because while your father loves you, he is not often here.  His wife has not spoken to you since she found out who you were.  Your brother calls you things you do not like or understand.  Then, you learn what you are, and so does the rest of the town—half-breed bastard child of a misguided soldier—and you learn what those inherited names mean.  You feel dirty, disgusting, unwanted.  It would be better if you had not been born.  

Some months, your brother ignores you.  You come to think that you may or may not exist, but the way people look at you in the streets leads you to believe that you must, if only to be hated or marveled, or perhaps sold.  You are learning to play the lute from a traveling bard who wears a silver crescent on her ear, and she says that selling yourself is sometimes the best way to get by.  A quiet part of you hopes it never comes to that.

The bard says that your people were born of the moon.  That they were painted in azure and grey when it first dipped down over the horizon and greeted the sun from afar. Your people were created curious and quick to race across the world and learn all its secrets.

But somewhere along the way, your people must have strayed, because the war began, and things fell to fire.  It is easy to blame your people for the war because it is easier to blame a vulnerable people that put up a fight and call them war-like savages than it is to believe they were fighting for their lives.  Now the men are called dogs and the women are called whores and anyone in between is either lost to time or killed.

You.  You were born of dirt and wood, christened with sea water and grown under the green-gold light of another world and time.  You know enough about this new world to know that they could not be blamed for the war either; that this was all a trick played by a third party that wanted both nations to fall.  But this is not something anyone would believe, coming from a mongrel like you.

So you were born of moon and sea, earth and forest.  You watch the night carefully and sit beneath still-growing trees and feel a connection to both.

You meet a knight in the marketplace.  The emperor hired a chapter of knights from the desert lands in the West.  They are a dutiful bunch, full of honor and bound to code, but one stands out to you.  This one wears a helm in the shape of a snarling dog, stands tall in matching emblazoned armor.  They are broad, handsome; missing a leg and living well just the same.  Their smile is lopsided and blinds you like a direct look from the sun, because it feels as precious as gold and makes your heart skip twice as much.  They are a little awkward, but so are you, and you stutter and stumble, learning the way their large, blunt hands move and navigate the wind on a sword’s edge.

You first share apples, then you share rice.  Then follows meat and water, and then come the stories you tell in secret, under whispers.  Words are the most precious gift of all.  You meet in the bustling crowds in the market, because that is the only place a knight and a lady can meet here without straying too far from duty and into something else.  But of course, this is what you both want.  First, you show them the best tree to sit under, then you show them the best place to skip rocks.  Then, one rainy evening after your brother has been shipped out for training and your father and his wife have gone out to the capitol, you show them your home, and they stay with you a few nights.

They tell you things they never told anyone, they say, though you aren’t sure you believe them.  You tell them things you never told anyone, because no one has ever listened.  They like your name and they like you, and you like them too.  They are like you, except they are a child of the sun.  You tell them this does not surprise you.  You spend five good months with them, sleeping and living and meeting in the marketplace with apples and flowers.  It becomes routine—the norm.  It becomes like home for you, and you smile more than you have ever smiled before.  You memorize the roadmap on their hands and sing them songs about the sea while you rock beneath the stars.  You spend the summer and fall in their arms, and you learn to love being held this way.

And then, the frost creeps in beyond the shores, and they have to go.

The commission is over.  Their entire chapter is leaving now—to go back home to the most powerful place in the world.  Your knight fumbles with their helm in their hands, hair messy and black and beautiful against the cold winter sun.  They look to you and to their ship, and they seem to hurt when they touch your cheek again.  You cannot bring yourself to look into their eyes.  You are trying not to cry.

By this time, your father knows who they are and offered to take them in, but they have a duty, and they are bound to it.  As you are bound to yours.

They hold your face and give you a heartbreaking, heartfelt smile.  They press a kiss to your forehead and you rush forward to hold them one more time.  

You are also the first to pull away.  You cannot speak.  You have no words, no voice.

They hold your shoulders and squeeze.  It makes you stand a little straighter.

They call you something beautiful—an allusion to the moon.  They give you a roguish, lop-sided grin. "Look for me on the West wind."

***

It is night, and you are alone.  You watch the moon rise and fall from the bed, and before you close your eyes an hour before dawn, you think loudly, to no one who can hear.

I love you.

~*~

You run along a path that builds itself as you scurry, but you misstep and trip into shadow.  Now, this place is not safe, and you know that, but you like to think that you've always known where this path was going, so you keep running, and running, and running, into the ink that surrounds you.  Bright eyes stare through the deep cloud as the seconds whisper by you like ants crawling in your ears.  Rapid ticking chimes with your stuttering heart and you sprint just a little faster.

It becomes hard to breathe and your path is long behind you.  Your fingers reach to feel the walls of cold dark but find purchase on nothing.  You know you must continue even as the world crashes to pieces the further you go down this narrow street.  Perhaps this is a forest, or perhaps this is a desert.  You can taste iron and salt as you run, run, run, down and away, into the unknown.

You must run faster.

~*~

When you turned ten, you found a bird with a broken wing outside the sliding door.  Your father had taught you how to set the bone, and you nursed it back to health.  He taught you with steady, gentle hands and a quiet voice.  The bird flew away into the sky, and you smiled after it, laughing as it soared.  Your father grinned, patting your head affectionately.  You swore you saw it every time your father took you out to sail with him.

When your brother’s ill-tempered blade shatters and cuts you across the face, your father pays out of pocket to save your life with a slightly illegal, very expensive procedure.  He even pays to fix the sword.  You are left with the biggest mass of scar tissue from the bottom of your chin to the top of your left brow, but you are not allowed to bleed out or lose an eye that day.

Your brother and your father’s wife think the expense was impractical because you only know how to sing pretty songs and tell pretty stories.  You have no ‘real’ job, and you know you look nothing like your mother, so why keep you?  But your father wants you around, and that is enough for you.

It happens that your father is one of the only people that seems to love you.  There is something about the way others let you cry and hurt and bleed where your father rushes to heal and help you.  Perhaps he is not the best—he is a fisherman, not a doctor—but he tries for you, and that is what you treasure most.  He is the one that tells you that your stories are good—that your voice could carry him to places he’d forgotten or dreamt.

“You’re just like your mother,” he says one day while you practice on the beach.  “She used to sing the most beautiful songs.  She told the most wonderful stories.”  You smile and hum a foreign tune—one that reminds you of a forgotten storm and a lost family.

You love your steadfast father more than you love anything else.  But you do not tell him he is your lifeline, because you assume he knows.  Perhaps you loved the wrong things about him.  Perhaps you loved him too selfishly, because you do not notice him begin to fail and fall apart.  You do not notice him leave.

You are singing songs and spinning the tales of places far and gone in a local tavern when someone quietly gives you a solid gold piece and tells you your father has collapsed.  His ship came in, he stepped off the deck, and fell to the ground there, not five feet from the landing.

You are the fastest runner in the city that night, making excellent time from the tavern to the sea.  You pick him up on your own, dump your earnings out on the floor, and hunt for the city’s doctor all night.  You could hear your father’s wife yelling at you—the first words she has said to you in over ten years—but you cannot, for the life of you, know what in the deepest demon hell she is saying.  Probably blaming you and calling you a bad name, as many do.  You run through the city and find the doctor locking up his clinic for the night.  You shove your entire savings into his hands and drag him back to the house, apologizing but not apologetic enough to send him home.

You have paid him twice the amount he needs to diagnose and treat your father, and he does his best.  Your father is dying.  You should settle his assets soon.  Where is your brother?

Away.  He is away.  He hasn’t written back in almost a year now, because you were the only one writing after a time, and he has learned to memorize your handwriting.  He never responds to your letters.  You do not even know if he is alive.

It all comes out in a harsh rush and the doctor just shakes his head.

A woman cannot inherit the family fortune.  You must find him, or get married, or risk losing everything.

Your brother hates you, but you feel it—he is alive somewhere.  You say you will go find him.  You tell your father to rest easy and you kiss his great knuckles with a small, sad smile.  You give your father’s wife all the gold and silver you have ever earned without letting your hand touch hers.  You tell her that you will bring her son home.

You hem your brother’s old travel clothes so they fit your tiny frame, and you pack your bags to leave.  You pad out late in the night, on foot, without saying anything.  There is a chill in the spring air and you do not want to linger here any longer.  

You set up camp after a day of travel, just outside the neighboring city, and light a fire.

You sit in the flickering glow and cut your hair beneath the light of the stars and moon.  You watch as the dark strands fall and burn, and know that your father will be dead long before you return.  You can hear nothing but the sound of birds and strays in the forest that night.

You are alone.

~*~

A bird flies across the sky, sending ripples through a star-bright sea.  Black-blue feathers play on the magpie as drops of blood grow solemn trees.  You sit silent still on the stair, waiting for this page to pass; for you know now to take care when handling the shadows cast.  But this you learn belatedly—long after you watch the fallen star burst into flame with silenced plea and leave the city scarred.

You were there when the golden city fell, weren't you?

~*~

It has been three years since you have seen them.  Three long years, but something is wrong.  You fell in love with the warmth in their smile and the way their grin seemed so sincere beneath the scars and the joking, but now you see blank pain in their eyes.  Annoyance, distrust, shame, exhaustion.  You want to reach out and help them, find out why they're here, so far away, so different, but then,

Then, they make the same disgusting comment everyone seems to give you, and you snap.

So that's what you think of me?  You too?  Is that all?  Your thoughts race faster than you can keep up with and you find yourself kissing them roughly, painfully, fully.

Fine!  Fine!  If that’s all you want, I’ll give it to you…

They taste like alcohol, probably mead, and you hear them drop their tankard to pull you a little closer.  There’s something needy yet guarded about their touch, but your heart hammers too hard in your ears for you to contemplate the words they’re saying.  You can’t read them right anymore, and it hurts to know how distant they are from you now.

Well, this is better than nothing.  You breathe them in and close your eyes.

***

You stand apart and feel years away from them as they sit back on their throne with a deep sigh.  They look like they are in pain as they call the others in.

"We will talk later," you assert.  They grunt, massage their brow, bleary eyes blinking stubbornly.

Broad Arikar saunters in, clapping the thinner Piers on the back good-naturedly.  The sun priest smiles in turn.  Quill and her dire cat pad in behind them, surveying the room carefully.

And you stand very still before the king, meeting their brown eyes with yours in deep defiance.  You search them and their soul and construct their story in your head as their eyes flash in the bright temple lights.  But then they smile that wicked jackal stretch again, and the insight you had is gone.

"What did you want, Piers?"  Their voice is like a dull knife through wood.

The priest smooths his gold-trimmed robes, something in his face cracking.  "Well, your Majesty—"

"Actually, I don't care," the king cuts him off.  "I never really did."  They give him a tired smile, leaning on their fist, slouching in their gilded throne.  Piers blusters for a moment before falling silent.  The king rolls their eyes and sighs.

"If there is nothing else, then here's your gold.  50 apiece." They wave their hand and you are paid the appropriate fee, feeling insulted despite the tempting gleam.  "Now fuck off out of my city.  I don't want to see you again."

Arikar mutters something about rudeness and Quill glares, but you stare at your hands and feel the creeping hollowness bleed into you again.  Your party begins to turn, but you linger, staring at them before turning as well.  Piers stops.

"Actually, sire, may you rise?"

The king sighs and stands, swaying slightly on their feet.  You pivot on your heel.  You sense something off in the air.  Words trip through your mind in booming, far away syllables.  It takes a flood to open the gate.

This room is familiar.  You had seen it on the mural.  The demon crystal, it’s sitting right behind the throne, behind the king, a point away from their slow, steady heart.

Piers crosses the room like a ghost, to the step before the king.  He gives them a pleasant smile, a careful, sardonic grin.

Dexaris—the king among runaways—stands before you with tiredness in their eyes and sadness in their posture.  They stand without their helm, without their sword, without their armor.  They look naked, almost; bare of anything that made them great in years past.  They are king, but they look as though they are made of nothing at all.

Piers smiles at them, the last knight in the land, and kicks them into the pit.

They sink in slow motion.  Betrayal echoes through their eyes as they slip, drunken arms falling out to their sides.  Piers jumps upon them, spear raised above his head.

You slip on the temple floors, tumbling, struggling, reaching out.

The priest roars and thunder cracks through the room.

Light erupts from his spear as the king falls, impaled on crystal and fire.  You fly backward with a strangled cry, landing on your back a few feet away.  The horrid stench of blood and burning flesh sears the air as the king writhes and dies on the crystal, staring through you and mouthing something that looks too much like your name.

Black shadows slide out of the crystal like ink, flooding the temple grounds with a sickening, rasping, metallic scream.  Tendrils clasp around the party's ankles, catching them and drowning them in clinging, suffocating obsidian.

You claw at Piers and grapple his robes—cursing, sobbing as the world blurs around you, and disappears.

~*~

You are falling.

Falling straight through an inky cloud of thick pitch and living void that stretches far beyond you, around you, in you, through you.  It tears away everything you knew—everything that made you feel like you—and leaves you naked in the bleak ash of eternal night.

They say that, before you die, your life flashes before your eyes, and you must be dying now, because nothing can describe this pain, the howling, grinding scream that fills the world, your ears, your head, the dark.  It feels like a mad warrior dissected you with a scimitar's edge, bleeding the air out of your lungs and rending your heart clean from your chest—out into the falling shadows for you to ponder it before you lose it.  You fumble in the tar-night, fingering tears and curses as you cry into the abyssal terror.

They could call you timeless, endless, out of time—one who has missed every single opportunity in her life because she was too slow, too much, too late.  Too fast, too small, too early.  You missed it.  And even when you rush and plan and search, combing every space in the universe for a solution, for a sign, for a skeleton key, you never know enough to save.

And in the end, that is your story.

You hit the ground.

You are too late.