#❝Saying that I want more ، this is what I live for.❞ (Vallen)

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

So you know this party banter between Aveline and Carver?

Aveline: I don't like some of the people you've been associating with, Carver. Carver: Talk to my brother/sister. He/She's the one in charge.

If you're on the rivalry path with Aveline, she says:

Aveline: Who says I don't mean him/her too? This city's full of people who are dead set on ending badly. I don't want to see you end up the same way.

I just- Aveline, you- you're so- hhhhnnnngggggg

I always rival Aveline when I play a mage, and if you think Edgar Aristide Hawke, who practically raised Carver and Bethany after Malcolm died and Leandra became a distant mother in her grief, wouldn't stop dead in his tracks at Aveline heavily implying he's a bad influence on his brother and Carver shouldn't hang around him so much since apparently Ed's someone set on ending badly...? Absolutely not.

This is another case of me wishing Hawke had the option to jump in during party banter with different options, because Ed would've chewed Aveline out for that.

Oh, and then there's:

Carver: Would asking you to stop spying on me help in the least? Aveline: No.

Aveline...................stop it.

[scoobydoodean]

ok so forewarning, i don’t really have a question here, just lots of thoughts.

there’s so many layers to the general *badness* about the mia vallens therapy scene. like to the manipulation (for lack of a better word) that sam rewrites. like it makes such a difference that she thinks jack is their little brother instead of the son of the thing that killed dean’s best friend/loml. not to mention the fact that it’s been what like a week since *everything*

and like yes dean’s being cold towards jack and giving him orders (which, i could argue they weren’t uncalled-for), but tbh he’s only being moderately colder/more direct with him than he’s been with cas at times on hunts (thinking hunteri heroici) and even similar to how *sam* has been with like claire and even dean himself (thinking that episode dean turned into a teenager and all of MOC). like genuinely, how was sam expecting him to act like?

also (half joking) i genuinely think dean would’ve warmed up to jack even quicker than he did (we can already see it in this same episode, like that look he gives jack when he asks mia if buddy hurt her too) if he heard jack say he hates anakin skywalker lol

ok wait i do have a question. do you think jack actually was “terrified” of dean during that therapy scene?

(post linking to some context)

Okay so I rewatched 13.01-13.04 on a plane this past week so it's all extra fresh on my mind rn. The thing about 13.04 is that Dean wasn't comfortable bringing Jack on the hunt, and Jack didn't want to go, but Sam pushed insistently for all of them to go on the hunt together... primarily because Dean's feelings were thwarting Sam's plans for Jack and his own emotional coping mechanisms in a larger sense.

I think Dean's feelings compared to Sam's here are relatively more simple (and yet somehow still intensely misunderstood to a baffling degree). Dean was grieving. He was grieving Cas who died right in front of him, he was grieving Crowley (he pleads with Chuck to bring "even Crowley" back in 13.01!) and he was grieving Mary.

The thing with Dean's grief over Cas is this: instead of viewing it from Dean's perspective, we tend to analyze it as omniscient viewers who know Cas will come back, refusing see how miraculous Cas’s return truly was. We refuse to see Cas's death was different this time and appeared very permanent. There was no uncertainty like there was in season 7 or 8. His wings burned into the ground and his grace extinguished. Dean pleaded and prayed for Cas and Mary and Crowley's return to the only person who ever brought Cas back from certain death (via explosion in 5.01 and 5.22)—the person who told Dean in 11.23 he was leaving and Dean was on his own. Dean didn't hear back. The ONLY reason Cas comes back in 13.05 is that 1) Jack woke him him up unwittingly using powers no one knew he possessed and 2) Cas then annoyed a creature they didn't even know existed into letting him out of a place they 3) didn't even know existed and 4) Cas somehow came back with a body even though he had been burned to ash. All of this is completely miraculous. It was unforeseeable. It doesn’t even make complete sense as a viewer. In other words, Dean has ZERO reason to hope for Cas's return. There was ZERO reason to refuse to acknowledge that grief… but that's exactly what Sam does. He suggests Dean pray for Chuck to bring Cas back in 13.01. As soon as Sam knew Dean already tried that and Cas was DEAD dead, he treated Cas as something Dean needed to reframe and get over:

SAM: You thinking mom is gone and Cas is gone, and that Jack can’t be saved. Dean, after everything we’ve gone through… We just lost people we love, people who have been in our lives for a long time. Everything’s upside-down. I get it. But we’ve been down before. I mean, rock bottom. And we find a way. We fix it because that’s what we do.

This is the "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" speech in 13.02—like a day after they burned Cas's body. Sam's wording here is cruel too—saying Dean is "thinking" Cas is gone as if he didn't die right in front of him? He refuses to acknowledge Cas's death as something Dean was actively and rightfully mourning. This becomes a major point of contention between the brothers at the end of 13.03.

DEAN: Look, I know you think that you can use [Jack] as some sort of an interdimensional can-opener and that’s fine, but don’t act like you care about him! Because you only care about what he can do for you! So if you want to pretend, that’s fine! But me? I can hardly look at the kid! Because when I do all I see is everybody we’ve lost! SAM: Mom chose to take that shot at Lucifer. That is not on Jack!

Sam will only name Mary—the one person whose death they can’t 100% confirm (the same thing happens in front of Mia in 13.04). The absence of Cas’s name here is pointed. So Dean says:

DEAN: And what about Cas?

And how does Sam respond?

SAM: What about Cas?

Uh... wow. That's what really sets Dean off to full on shouting:

DEAN: [Jack] manipulated him, he made him promises, said, ‘paradise on earth’ and Cas bought it and you know what that got him? It got him dead! Now you might be able to forget about that, but I can’t!

Sam's denial of what Dean literally SAW (Cas died) and how that hurts—his insistence that Dean also halt grieving to hope for the impossible—it's a major sticking point and very revealing of Sam's own coping mechanisms. Sam's chief response to grief is to disassociate himself from it. We see a textbook case in season 8 (see: 8.08), but in most of the series, what this actually looks like for Sam is to keep moving and hunting (ex: 1.02, 2.02, 2.10, 2.11, 2.18 3.11, 4.09, 9.01) which is also why he insists on bringing Dean and Jack on the hunt in 13.04. Sam tries not to think about what they've lost and focuses on what he CAN do. He focuses on hoping Mary can be saved because she's the one person he didn't SEE die.

The thing about Dean’s grief over Mary is this: he convinces himself Lucifer had to have killed her. She's the one person whose death Dean can't be certain of, but he absolutely cannot bear the thought of hoping she’s alive and it turning out he’s wrong. He knows he wouldn’t psychologically survive hoping in that and his beliefs being crushed. It would be like losing his mom all over again (a THIRD time). So he sticks to what is most likely: Lucifer killed her. He can't contend with the hope Sam is clinging to desperately, and that's what makes them such poor companions in grief. Sam feels off balance when Dean won't keep moving and hoping like him—when Dean can't keep up the pace Sam wants to run at in his own grief—and in doing so, Sam keeps pushing Dean to contend with hopes that open Dean up to a WORLD of pain Sam can psychologically convince himself not to feel. Grieving together just really just doesn't work for them because they're never on the same page and deal in such different ways—and this has been hurting them from as early as 2.02!!!

Now to bring Jack into this more fully: Jack represents Sam and Dean's different perspectives on grief and on Mary. Just like Dean despairs over Mary's demise, Dean despairs over the possibility of Jack being good. He can't bear the idea of hoping in that and being wrong. The psychologically safest option for him is to assume the worst and not hope or believe in anything turning out okay.

Sam, on the other hand, pretty much immediately sees a way to use Jack to get Mary back. This is clear when he and Jack get locked up together in the jail cell in 13.01. After establishing that Jack isn't hearing things and (probably) isn't going to murder him imminently, Sam immediately starts down a line of questioning establishing how well Jack understands his powers, and then asks him outright:

SAM: Jack, look, um... before you were born, you -- you opened up a door to another world. Do you remember that? JACK: Yes. SAM: Okay, um, could you do that again?

Shortly after, when Sam arrives, he tells Dean (who is convinced after everything that happened in 12.23 that 12.19 that Jack is evil or will turn evil):

We need him.

Sam repeats this sentiment multiple times with clear meaning, and later in 13.04, he admits to Jack that he wants to use him to open the portal. This doesn't mean he doesn't also grow to see himself in Jack quickly and genuinely believe in his capacity for good, but he isn't fully honest with Jack about his motives until 13.04 where he finally comes clean, and this poisons the well with Jack a little.

@shallowseeker has pointed out before that in 13.03, while trying to figure out how to get Jack's powers to work (and spying on Jack through cameras from another room) Sam is seen reading "The Drama Of The Gifted Child". I wish I could find the post because Shal probably brought it up too, but when I was rewatching this episode, I noticed the chapter Sam had just settled into read before being interrupted was titled,

"Depression and Grandiosity: Two Related Forms of Denial"

Given the accusations flying from Sam toward Dean then from Dean toward Sam about denial in the following episode (13.04), this feels amusingly pointed. Dean is depressed (and about to attempt suicide in 13.05), Sam is depressed and has "grandiose" ideas of using Jack to pop open a portal to another reality while hiding behind the guise of being the most rational person in the room when he... isn't necessarily? And it's easy to argue "Well, Sam turns out to be right even if he didn't ultimately have much of a reason to think he was" but the core problem here is how his beliefs effect how he treats other people's grief. He isn't honest with Jack about his motives (while Dean is somewhat brutally honest) and pushes and watches even while claiming he's giving Jack space (13.03), he refuses to give Dean space to grieve even the family member they know is dead, he inserts a therapist into the situation and criticizes Dean's grief when Dean won't play his game, and in 13.05, after Dean says that he can't believe in anything right now, Sam's clumsy attempts at help involve plying Dean with alcohol he says he doesn't even want and trying to send him off to strip clubs—believing that Dean performing being okay will somehow address his mental state because Sam's idea of coping himself is simply "going through the motions".

As for Jack, I don't think he's scared of Dean. I think he's scared of what Dean believes. He's scared that Dean is right. From 13.01-13.06, Jack is contending with the question of whether he's destined for evil or good, and in his depressed state, Dean believes Jack is destined for evil because hoping in anything is completely beyond him at that moment. Sam tells Jack that he can be good, but he hides ulterior motives as to why he's being nice, and when those ulterior motives are revealed, it leaves Jack thinking Sam is the kind of person who will lie to Jack and tell him he's good just to get what he wants. Meanwhile, Jack knows Dean is being completely honest with him about what he believes. 13.03 and 13.04 clearly demonstrate that Jack understands the difference between beliefs and facts: Dean could be right or he could be wrong. What Jack holds onto like an anchor is that he can trust Dean to tell him the truth about what he believes—even if it hurts.

It's also just so obvious that Jack immediately wants Dean—specifically—to like him (see: Jack mimicking Dean's mannerisms while eating in 13.02, and his clumsy attempts to earn his favor in 13.04). Sam also picks up on this, and encourages Jack to seek Dean's approval in 13.04 to try and change Dean's beliefs. Sam (and to some extent Jack) are thinking in 13.04, that if Jack can prove to Dean that he can be good, and if Dean tells him he did a good job (which Dean does in the end), Jack can believe that. Sam sees that Jack wants Dean's approval and the impression that Dean's beliefs have had on Jack and thinks by pushing them together as soon as possible (when neither of them want to go on the hunt) and treating them as a family and forcing Dean to accept Jack when Dean just isn't ready (including by paralleling Jack with himself in a way that becomes an accusation), he can "fix" Jack so he isn't scared of his powers anymore (13.03) and then he can teach Jack to use his powers and Jack can open a portal to save their mom.

Jack's attempts to earn Dean's favor in 13.04 are clumsy. His first attempt is directly ignoring Dean telling him to wait in the car and sneaking into the crime scene, potentially contaminating it. At Mia's office, Jack's outburst about losing a mother is what allows Sam to set up the whole family therapy trap to begin with, and because Dean knows Sam is going to use that to hurt him, he warns Jack not to make outbursts like that. Dean is not being nice. Point blank. And I do think his tone is a little different than with Cas which in the past felt more like exasperation. I also don’t think it makes him the devil. I think that's understandable when putting in even a tiny amount of effort and it's kind of laughable to me how few people seem to even try because they're so caught up in Sam's happy family narrative and the idea that someone wanting Dean's approval presents an obligation that Dean give it no matter how emotionally impossible—and in a situation where asking him to lie would actually destroy that much more of Jack's trust.

[anathemafiction]

I know this is (possibly) far away, but for the other ros, I was wondering if you already know when and how their first kiss in the story will be? I remember you saying something like sometimes certain story bits come to you just as when you are about to write them, and I was wondering if the first kiss for the ros are included in this :>

(Also since we are talking about it, I can't wait to kiss the actual love of my life, my sweet angel, the reason that I live for: lady Ysabella 💚 I absolutely love her posts on your patreon, they are amazing and so sweet, and they make me even more excited to romance her in your story! ❤️❤️)

The first chance to kiss the twins is both set in stone and is not far at all from the beginning of Book Two. I'm also pretty sure when there'll be a first time to kiss Rafael and Lance, although this can vary depending on the type of romance route you're on. It can come at a later time if you're on the oblivious route or the slightly antagonistic route.

As for the Pirate and Neia, I have some ideas, but I'll have to see what feels right when I get to some pivotal scenes — it can be earlier or later than I expect.

Vallen is also kind of a toss-up. On the one hand, I can see one occasion that would work great... on the other, the mood, although adrenaline-high, may not be the most romantic. Or lustful. So, she's the one I'm deliberately not planning too much now and let the character take me where she wants to.

[octoqueen10]

Daphne and The Haters

TW: Hate, past abuse (not explicit but implied), negative self-talk

A/N: I do not own Violet or any of her children, they all belong to @jokerislandgirl32, I tried my best to write from her POV but any mistakes on context/accuracies/characterization are entirely my own. Also, the names used from the haters are meant to be funny and are not reflecting of anyone with these usernames

Daphne’s life was perfect. She was finally happy. She had to be, her life was as good as it ever had been. It didn’t matter that her dad didn’t say goodbye before he moved in with his new girlfriend Allison, who she doesn’t think likes her very much, and lives in another state now. Who cared that all of her ‘friends’ don’t seem to include her in anything anymore and say things behind her back. She didn’t mind being alone all the time, she had her phone to keep her company. Her internet followers were never mean to her and always seemed to multiply every time she checked her social media pages. They loved Daphne and she had nothing to worry about. Her life was truly a daydream. This is what Daphne was thinking about when she opened her Instagram page to see what the most recent comment was.

@/ImATrollWhoBulliesKids thought she was annoying. Maybe Daphne was a little bit annoying and nobody told her. @/IHateSuccessfulPeople thought she was an ugly attention seeker. Hundreds of comments flooded Daphne, nitpicking her for everything. There were anonymous comments too, telling her how awful she was without ever revealing themselves. Maybe Daphne wasn’t as good as she thought. She really wasn’t good at anything. Daphne decided that she would change herself to be what she thought her perceived audience would want her to be, and changed who she was. It would make the world love her more, it was worth it. It was worth it and Daphne was happy. It was what she always dreamed of. She had to do something drastic, something no one could expect, something different. Then she would be happy and be able to finally be who she had always wanted to be. She would be perfect.

Violet Varmitech was worried about Daphne. She knew the power words could have on somebody and how they could affect them, especially at a young age. She was no stranger to criticism, working in The Lost Colony Outdoor Drama. Her ex boyfriend, Travis, further contributed, nothing she ever did was good enough for him. She began to spiral, going into a dark place, until she met Zach again. He was able to remind her of the amazing parts of the world, and taught her to love again. She loved him and her life more than she could imagine now. Violet worried that Daphne was spiraling headfirst into that dark place, and nothing anybody said would get her out of it. She loved Daphne since the day they met, with Daphne arriving four days later than Donita’s due date. “Fashionably late” as she said. She loved Daphne’s determination and tenacity, and how she can get so focused on a task, much like her husband. Violet even secretly ‘shipped’ Daphne with her youngest son, Vallen. She could tell Daphne was changing. She saw her spending less and less time with her family, and more and more on her phone, alone, reading comments. The comments could be a vile place, and Violet could only imagine the horrid things people were saying about Daphne, someone so kind and determined, and what she was absorbing. She knew she had to figure out a way to teach her about the internet more and fast.

[waltwhitmansbeard]

go on, claim my heart: chapter forty

see my masterpost for what came before this.

Keyleth is grateful that Percy brought her back to the cottage instead of to Pike's chambers. The cottage was farther, but she is much more comfortable here, on the little sofa in front of the fire, with her baby girl in her arms and the castle far from view. Pike sits just next to her, her palm on Keyleth's shoulder, glowing golden yellow as Pike keeps up a seemingly limitless font of healing.

And she does feel better, except in all the ways in which she feels worse. The sickening sludge has left her body, and she no longer feels as if she is teetering on the edge of death, but as she watches her daughter, who gnaws on a polished ring of wood, blissfully unaware of how close she came to losing her mother and grandfather in the same week she nearly lost her own life, she still feels sick to her stomach.

There has been so much death. Her mother. A ballroom of innocents in Syngorn. Four members of the Vesran noble family. Percy, for a moment. Her father. At this point, likely the Archduchess as well. All for one man to ascend to the throne that Keyleth spent her whole life wishing were someone else's. She would understand if Vallen had been motivated by love, or fear, or even revenge, but power? Only a fool who had never had any would go to such lengths to seek it out.

Pike's hand slips from her shoulder. "I'm tapped out, I'm afraid." Her little arms come to squeeze around Keyleth's waist. "I'm so, so sorry, Keyleth."

"As am I, Pike." She's sorry that this is the world that has been built for them. She's sorry that Vallen believed he could slaughter his way to power, and she's sorry that he came extremely close to being correct. She's sorry that the people of her nation were robbed of so much—her mother's heart, her father's wisdom, whatever gifts Duchess Uvenda's rightful heirs might have brought Vesrah.

Vilya drops the teething ring onto her chest and reaches up toward her mother. Keyleth lets her grab onto her finger. What terrors will await this next sovereign of the Ashari Nation? What bids for power will wreak chaos and suffering on this tiny child, one whose laughter is bright like sunshine and whose smile could bring an army to its knees? How is Keyleth meant to balance her fidelity to her people with her near-feral devotion to her child? She'd told her father, right here in this room, that she would let her nation rot if it meant protecting her daughter, and she hadn't been lying—but what can she do to protect them both?

What she must.

The door to the cottage swings open, and Vax is there, eyes wild until they land on Keyleth and Vilya. She watches the tension seep from his shoulders as he comes in toward them. Keyleth turns to Pike. "Will you do me a favor?"

"Of course." Pike slips off of the sofa.

"Will you gather the rest of the Council? And bring them here?"

Pike's brows knit in confusion, but she nods all the same. "I'll be back as fast as I can." She leaves just as Vax comes to take her seat beside Keyleth. He bends down to kiss Vilya's forehead first, then Keyleth's lips, his hands on either side of her face. He tastes like sweat and blood, and Keyleth wishes more than anything to freeze this very moment, to live in it until the whole world falls to ash around them.

But something must be done.

.

Vax keeps Keyleth's face in his hands, inspects her eyes, her cheeks, her neck, whatever bits of her he can see. "Are you alright? What did Pike have to say?"

Her smile is soft, indulgent, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "I'm fine. Tired, but then, what else is new?"

There's something about her, something off, but considering he found her mere heartbeats away from death, it's not like he can be that surprised. He gathers her in his arms, pulls her and Vilya closer in. "He confessed to everything," he says quietly. "The entire scheme. Son of a bitch wouldn't even let me torture it out of him."

Because he wanted to, wants to, even still. Vax's fingers itch to slide his blade beneath Vallen's skin, peel back his layers inch by inch to the score of his screams. Vax has killed before, for survival, for money, for duty, but this one he'd do for the pleasure of it.

But Vex had to show up, descending into the same dungeons where Vax had interrogated Finefirn, with that look on her face, the one their mother used to give Vax when he was a boy. And though Vax's hands were already slick with Vallen's blood, he could not exact his revenge, not with his sister's sharp call of his name echoing through the crooked stone halls.

Were he a better man, Vax would be able to admit that his sister's admonishment was well-earned, because Vallen had not merely confessed, but begged for mercy as well. And though Vax would enjoy nothing more than coming up with new, inventive ways to make this insect of a man suffer, he knows that any denial of mercy must come from the one most wronged.

So he says to his wife, "He has asked for clemency. Specifically, he has asked to speak to you about the matter personally, though I hope you can understand when I say I would rather burn the castle to the ground with him trapped beneath than let you within half a mile of him." She doesn't say anything, so he presses on. "It should be your decision, the fate he now faces. I...know that you are more compassionate than most, and if you wish to merely keep him locked away for his crimes, well. As I said, it should be your decision."

Still, Keyleth says nothing, staring down into their daughter's curious face. Vax finds himself in the familiar position of wishing he could hear all of the private thoughts swirling in her head. He knows better than to push, knows that she needs the space and the time to come to decisions on her own, and the gods know that Vallen isn't going anywhere; he is currently hanging by chains imbued with an anti-magic enchantment with a gag bound tightly in his mouth, his cell watched by no fewer than a dozen of Vex's best men and women. He'd be lying if he said that he wasn't hoping Keyleth would ask him to make Vallen suffer, but even as ruthless and unforgiving as he saw her be in Whitestone, he doesn't know if she has that kind of cruelty in her, that thirst for violence.

"Please forgive me."

Her words are so quiet, for a moment, Vax thinks he's imagined them. When he does realize what she's said, he thinks she must be speaking in reference to her decision regarding Vallen. He is disappointed—his thirst for vengeance only grows stronger with each passing minute—but of course he would forgive whatever choice she made in this regard.

Except...she isn't speaking to him. She's still looking down at Vilya, whose eyelids now droop heavily as she begins to drift off in her mother's arms. Now he's confused; what on earth would she need Vilya's forgiveness for?

She pulls herself from his embrace then, turns to face him with shining eyes. She takes a deep breath, and he braces himself for whatever it is she is about to say.

"I am abrogating the Ashari Nation."

.

Once the words are said, a wave of calm washes over Keyleth. For the first time since Vilya was taken, she feels as if she can breathe. She looks down at her sleeping daughter, the fluttering eyelashes, the slightly parted lips. It seems so simple, now that she's made the decision. She can feel the consternation radiating off of Vax—he must start and abandon at least two dozen questions in rapid succession—but she sits in silence, waiting for the others to arrive.

It takes Pike about half an hour to gather the entire Ashari Council, and in that time Keyleth lays Vilya to sleep in her cradle, which has been moved into their bedroom for the time being—she doubts she'll ever be able to sleep in a separate room from her again—and sets a kettle over the fire to boil some water for tea. The whole time, Vax watches her as he might a rabid animal, as if her every move is erratic and unpredictable.

There is little room in the cottage for the five councilmembers, Keyleth, and Vax, but they make do. Keyleth remains standing, giving the seats to the others. Vax dithers, unsure of where he should be, and Keyleth holds out her hand to him. It has always fit into hers so nicely, like it was the only place it was meant to be.

"Thank you for joining me here," she begins. She sees Master Gilmore open his mouth, but she raises a hand to stop him. "I am sure you all offer your many condolences for my loss and congratulations for the rescue of our daughter, and believe me, your support, your kindness is appreciated now more than ever. In fact, it is that very support that I require for the future of the Ashari people."

She takes a deep breath. The decision was easy. This part is hard. "Until Vax, until Vilya, my greatest love—my only love—was for the people of this great nation. My father raised me to understand that to be a sovereign was to be a caretaker, to assume responsibility for the well-being and livelihoods of thousands, people I would never meet all across the continent. He raised me to love those people, to want to do the most good for the most people with every decision I make. I have always known that that mission would involve making difficult choices, choices that some people might not like, choices that might make my own life harder.

"And I have made one such choice." She's squeezing Vax's hand so hard, she cannot believe she hasn't broken his fingers. Since the Council's arrival, she's been avoiding Percy's gaze. She meets it now. "I believe that the best thing for the Ashari people is to dissolve the Ashari Nation."

Lady Kima, who had just taken a sip of her tea, spits it out in what would, in another circumstance, be a truly comical display of shock. Lady Allura starts to splutter out something unintelligible, but it's Percy's reaction Keyleth can't look away from. Her normally stoic, reserved friend is rapidly tripping through a myriad of emotions, each flashing so fast and bright across his face she has no hope of telling them apart.

Master Gilmore is the first one to find the words. "Your Majesty, please...elaborate."

She nods. "The current system we employ for governance and security is not working. We should all be astounded that it took this long for a member of the Ashari nobility to realize that all that stands in the way of our nation's capital's moving to their city is the callous murder a few people who are essentially strangers. Of course Vallen was motivated to erase my family's line here in Zephrah; it was the key to bringing his own family line to power, to bringing him to power.

"Our constituent cities, as connected and beloved as they are, are too far apart to be truly considered one nation. I believe it is in the best interests for Vesrah, Terrah, Pyrah, and Zephrah to each become independent city-states, self-governing as they see fit, in an alliance or confederation with each other. We form our own governments, our own laws, our own economies, and we rely on each other in times of war or strife."

Her eyes bounce between the council members, trying to gauge their thoughts on the matter. She's mostly seeing shades of bewilderment, so she continues, "And to start, I would like to declare that from this day forward, Zephrah will be a republic governed by a democratically-elected council." She sweeps a hand out. "Starting with you all."

Everyone starts talking at once. It is a cacophony of objections and questions and exclamations of surprise, and Keyleth smiles placidly at all of it. Vax's hand squeezes hers once, and she turns to see him mouth, Are you sure?

She's never been more sure in her life.

Allura's voice cuts through the noise. "Your Majesty—"

"I am begging you, please just call me Keyleth."

She watches contention twist in Allura's eyes, but the Mistress of Arcana presses on. "I don't wish to question your wisdom, but...I worry that you are making this...rather grand decision from a place of pain, of hurt."

She isn't wrong. Keyleth is in such exquisite pain, a turmoil as unwieldy and overwhelming as roiling seas. But in the center of the storm is a respite, a space of calm from which she has come to realize the best course of action for both her family and her people.

"My pain has forced me to see what pain our nation has been in for some time now. And my pain has shown me what may very well await my daughter should we continue down this same path. I...have thought a great deal about fate, these past few years." A romance fated for tragedy, a treaty to rewrite the fates of nations, the goddess of fate restoring her life in exchange for her husband's fealty. "I am not one to care much for the gods, powerful though I know them to be, but...what could they have given us these fragile lives for if not to choose our own fates? What is the purpose of us, of them, if we are not meant to build something new, something beautiful?"

Percy, who had been leaning back against a kitchen counter, pushes off and crosses over to stand just in front of Keyleth. He takes her free hand. "And what of you?"

She looks into his eyes. He arrived in Zephrah already so grown up, all buttoned and polished and quiet. She devoted much of their shared childhood to cracking open his shell, to finding what secrets and chaos lie beneath, but all she found was the piece of her family she never knew was missing. "I have everything I need right here."

He smiles at that, and the idea strikes her like a lightning bolt to a tree. "Percy?" He hums. "If you would be amenable...I would very much like a fifth city-state to join this alliance."

He's confused for a moment, and then the realization dawns across his face. "Whitestone?"

"With its rightful lord at the helm."

Percy is silent for a long moment, his eyes darting around in shock, but then he throws his arms around her neck. She catches him with a smile. "You're not getting rid of me, Percival de Rolo. The Ashari Nation may be no more but you will always be my family."

From the sofa, Pike clears her throat. "We have much to discuss. Much to discuss. This...this is big."

Keyleth lets go of Percy. "Of course, we will need to discuss this with the Archdukes and Archduchess—which reminds me, when we are done here, Allura, please take Pike to check in on Duchess Uvenda. With any luck, we will be able to prevent Vallen's final murder from being completed." The two women nod. "I suppose what I must ask now is...do I have your support in this?"

She holds her breath as the council members look to each other, having brief, silent conversations with one another as they consider the rather large proclamation she's just made. Finally, one by one, they begin to nod, and Keyleth lets out the breath as they start to confer amongst themselves, their brilliant minds already whirring as they commence the construction of a new government.

Keyleth turns to Vax, who is watching her with bright, awed eyes. "And you?" she murmurs, bringing his hand, still entwined with hers, to her lips. "Do I have your support?"

Vax brings his free hand up to cup her cheek, and she pushes her face into it, eyes sliding closed. She feels his lips brush her forehead, and then he murmurs low, "In everything you do, my love."

Her eyes open, and she smiles slyly. "You won't be married to royalty anymore."

He shrugs. "I was thinking about leading a revolution anyway. Storm the castle, topple the monarchy, that old song. You saved me a bunch of trouble, actually."

And for the first time in a long time, Keyleth laughs, sharp and bright, as she folds herself into Vax's arms.

[brievenuitinnsbruck]

Outdoor athletes and Tesson

Opnieuw wat schrijfsels die steeds vertrekken van artikels die ik afgelopen maanden las.

Outside online gaf het woord aan deze ski-vedette (Collison). In plaats van het klassieke verhaal van happy-go-lucky en dagen vol met powder, gaat het over een top-atlete die begint te struggelen naar het einde van haar carrière. Hoe dat zij omgaat met haar twijfels, is zeer herkenbaar en charmerend. En toch wordt het niet over-geromantiseerd.

“She’s carried the lessons she learned from Hawks with her. He’d say that we only have control over two things in life: attitude and effort. In his death, she started to be more open to what she calls the mystery of life, and began thinking more about how she wanted to live hers.”

Het blijven natuurlijk Amerikanen: “Sometimes things break us. Sometimes we break open. Sometimes we break down. Sometimes we break free,” she began, the words flowing easily. “I feel stuck. How do I get free? I don’t trust myself, I’m scared. Do you see yourself in me?”

Collinson posed a question to the viewer: “Is there a skin that you’re aching to shed, and are you afraid to let go of something? Is there something that you’re longing to move toward but don’t know where to start? And if so, I really get it. And I’m in your corner, for whenever you’re ready to take the leap. You’ll know.”

Onderstaand citaat komt van een schrijfster, die beschrijft hoe haar verhuis naar natuur/dorp/stilte niet bracht wat ze ervan had verwacht:

“Ik was niet klaar voor dat soort verstilling en stabiliteit. Ik vreesde dat mijn ervaring van het leven te verschillend zou worden van die van andere mensen. Het is belangrijk voor mij om in een algemene realiteit te blijven.”

Het volgende citaat is van Whitman. Ik ben opnieuw vergeten waar ik het tegenkwam. Maar het raakte waarschijnlijk een snaar omdat het beschrijft hoe dat het de natuur is die ons steeds opnieuw exact geeft wat we nodig hebben. Hoe ouder we worden, hoe meer iedereen dit begint in te zien. Maar zoals het citaat van hierboven: niet te vroeg, niet te ver en niet te isolated.

“The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.”

Conny Aerts (astrofysicus), die recent geïnterviewd werd in een Belgische krant (naar aanleiding van het winnen van een grote prijs, zei het volgende:

“Blije mensen werken niet.”

Meest beluisterde podcast van 2022: Touché.

Niet door de gasten, wel door de fantastische interviewster.

Siska Schoeters, hoe ver haar wereld ook is van die van mij, gaf 3 principes/uitspraken, die we vaak genoeg tegen ons eigen zouden moeten herhalen.

“Niks hangt af van vandaag. Vandaag hoefde dat niet te beslissen. Sommige dingen wijzen zichzelf uit. Op nen dag vallen de zaken wel zoals ze moeten.”

“LaLaLaLA”

“Een verhaal heeft twee kanten.”

In interview met Elisabeth Lucie Baeten:

“Wat hebt u geleerd van het leven? Dat ik niet mijn gedachten ben en dat alles in golven komt.”

Het lezen van “La panthère des neiges” is een relevatie. Het wordt waarschijnlijk m’n laatste boek van 2022 maar daarmee direct het beste en eentje dat staat voor “de cirkel die rond is”. Wat begon met een betovering door de film en muziek, in een kleine cinema in Innsbruck, werd dan een heerlijke laveren, leren en aanduiden over het verloop van weken en maanden. Hieronder enkele passages die mij bijblijven.

L‘imprévu ne venant jamais à soi, il faut le traquer partout. Le mouvement féconde l‘inspiration. L‘ennui court moins vite qu‘un homme pressé.

Soit ces aplatissements géographiques reflétaient mon état d’âme. Etant neurasthénique, il me fallait des steppes. Peut-être y aurait-il eu là une théorie géo-psychologique à bâtir. Les hommes accorderaient leur goût géographique à leurs humeurs.

Les esprits légers aimeraient les prés fleuris, Les coeurs aventureux les falaises de marbre, Les âmes noires les sous-bois de la Brenne, Les êtres plus épais les socles granitiques.

Chez les bêtes, on voisine, on se supporte, mais on ne copine pas. Ne pas tout mélanger: bonne solution pour la vie en groupe.

[disorderlyintentions]

“All I do is drink coffee and say bad words.” - Vallen

“I mean, I can’t really argue there. Add being a giant nerd to that and it’d be more accurate though.”

[jina-juhi]

the possibility of us.

pairing - yuta × female reader

word count - 7.7k

warnings - Panic attack (i tried to keep it short) penetration, protected sex, grinding, corruption kink, yuta is not angry and dom, controlling, over stim if i can say so? oral ( both receiving ) and literally everything that comes w this. choking!!!! yea. heh.

summary - You promised yourself you wouldn't fall for him, and you thought he could never fall for a girl like you. There was no way you both could be together, and even if there was one, your past wouldn't let you.

playlist

"eyes off you" - prettymuch

"phases" - prettymuch

"under the influence" - chris brown

"slow down" - chase atlantic

"show me" - black atlass

"safety net" - ariana grande

"used to this" - camila cabello

"chills, dark version" - mickey vallen

"3:00 am" - finding hope

"no guidance" - chris brown ft drake

Authors note:- so this whole thing is someone's request and i have not done justice to it. But here i am still hoping that they like it. I wrote like a whole seed to tree thing but it all got deleted and then I just left it to where my mind led me. I swear im working hard on my English vocab and duh sentence forming skills, but i hope you get the feelings mentioned below~~~

also if u wanna like request something~

m.list

so fucking loud.

The party was getting louder and overwhelming. You were quite alright just a few seconds back but it only takes a thought, to remember everything you want so badly to escape.

You danced like crazy, and drank. A lot. To forget. And now your head is hurting like hell and you don't know what to do or where to go, everything is spinning around and its all a blur. One thing that you could think of right now is your phone.

Searching your pocket and the couch you have been sitting on for so long, you can't find it. Its not lost its with Haewon, your friend. Sadly though your friend had to leave early due to some urgency, you thought it would be okay, you would manage but truly speaking, you're just a child. You try to be brave but being left alone is one of your biggest fears.

The fear kept building up since you were a kid and now it has settled in and made itself permanent in you. First it was your dad leaving you and your mom for a second family, then your mom in chase of her new life and then your so called first love who thought you were too fucked up to be loved. Leaving you like you were a crumbled up piece of paper ready to be dumped. Since then, you have not loved.

Not because you forgot, but because you're sacred.

You're scared everyone would leave you just like them and in the end, they'll move on, they'll live better but you're gonna be wounded. Trust me, you're already wounded enough to go out there and put a knife in your chest with your own hands. You know better or so you may think. That being alone, and not letting anyone in is the key to overcome this but truly, it is just making it worse. You can't help it.

You stumble on your way out of the once filled room with sweaty bodies, heels in one hands and a bottle of water in another. Your legs hurt more with every step you take, mentally cursing yourself for going absolutely reckless. You stand leaning against the main gate, supporting yourself so you don't fall in the wait of a cab.

You watch as tired bodies pass you by one by one. Everybody having someone to lean on to, you have a door. Not complaining but it feels sad sometimes not to have that one person who's always gonna stick by your side and other deep shit. It gets lonely. Fiddling with the hem of your dress, you give up on waiting, shifting your wait from the gate to your feet, you start to walk in the direction of your home, finding it hard because of all the alcohol.

Not even two steps forward, you hear a faint voice calling your name, a voice you would recognise even after your death, a voice that could send you into overdrive in a mere millisecond. You find yourself panicking, why is he calling your name, he shouldn't be calling your name. He's supposed to be the mean guy like everybody says but he's good to you, he's supposed to be cold hearted but he's kind to you, he's supposed to ignore you like he does everybody else, but he treats you different.

Nakamoto Yuta is not supposed to know you.

But he does, and that's what got you falling for him. Hard. It began with a single look in the hallway, you were a fresher and he was in the senior year. You weren't allowed in the library back then which you didn't knew, so you went in to issue some books. A bunch of seniors saw you, scolded you for not abiding by the rules, they could have gone too far but Yuta kinda saved your ass in there. He'd been kind, which was very unlikely of him because they all called him cold-hearted, but you saw no such characters in him, he'd always been nice to you. No matter how much you refused you did had a minute crush on him since that day, which eventually turned in something you'd rather not give a name to.

You turn around to see a very familiar face, you could draw an exact replica of him with your eyes closed. You fumble, he hands are firmly griping you by your arms, holding you upright, "you okay?"

On usual days, if Yuta is taking the first floor hallway to get to his class, you'd take the third floor even if it means you'll be late by five. But on some very rare unusual day, when your hormones decide to throw random tantrums and make you realise how much dry of a pussy cat you have, you'd take the same hallway 0as he does in order to feed your brain with his mere looks alone, which would be enough for the next 5 to 6 days so you could go back on avoiding him, for the sake of your sanity.

Today, most probably was a usual day. Throughout the party, you made sure to not cross paths with him but always keeping in check as to where he was. He looked drop dead gorgeous today in that white tshirt of his, loose hair falling over his face blocking your sight of view but adding up to his perfection. Maybe, just maybe you might have been too obvious with that watching from afar game of yours you think he didn't notice but he does. He knows, he always has known. Boys like him, they always know.

"I just wanna go home." Your voice comes out tired and slurred, the alcohol in your system is probably damaging your sense of judgement, you're saying things you're not supposed to be saying.

"It isn't safe for you to go alone." His voice could make you fall to knees, yea that is the amount of power he holds on you. If he says your name one more time with that pretty mouth of his, you'd be curling into a ball and stay like that for the rest of your life because it would save you from the embarrassment of facing him with your red flushed face and needy eyes. Yes, you're a sucker for him and you don't like it. It's not about him it's about you. How could you risk everything again for just a crush. He's not just a crush. And what about the too fucked to be loved part? What if thats true? You can't risk losing Yuta.

"I'll tak- a cab or somethin you don't have to." Sitting in the same car, having him around you when you're drunk and could literally say anything is not a safe option, safer than going alone though but, it's just too much of a risk. He doesn't give you much choice when he says he's gonna drive you home and you're gonna be quite and let him. All those moments in which it was only him and you alone, all the amount of tension in the air there was is playing on repeat in your mind right now. What could possibly go wrong right? Nothing really went wrong before, but you also weren't drunk.

He takes you to his car, walking beside you still holding you tight. You didn't say but your stomach keeps hurting from time to time, probably from all the drinking you think. Opening the door for you he seats you in, placing his hand on your head carefully so you don't bump your head in the process.

You wait for him to come inside the car, hearts already beating fast. Don't know why but the alcohol has somehow made you more hornier and confident than before, especially him touching you played a major part it in. I mean your allowed to have a crush right, and even though you don't really want someone in your life right now you too want some, need some. How many days can you go without being touched? is two year a normal number?

"Put your seatbelts on." You were too disoriented to understand and implement, he repeats. "Oh!" You try to pull the seatbelt down, its stuck. Or maybe you're just weak. He notices you struggling. What happens next is not the first time, he does things like these often that do some unexplainable things to you. He would randomly place his hands on your shoulder in the middle of nowhere making you jump out of your skin, or rub his thumb against the back of your hand when you're having coffee with him. Play with the long strands of your hair, tangling then detangling them. Eyes contacts were definitely his thing, he's eyes would never leave yours during a conversation no matter how small or big, it made you hard to look at him and hold his gaze. These were some of those moments you couldn't get over even after trying hard.

This guy would be the cause of your death. All happens in one sudden move, he loosens his seatbelt, leaning over you extending his hand to reach the seatbelt that seemed to be really stuck, which he could have managed to pull from afar but no, he had to come close. Goosebumps from his wild eyes form on your skin when they watch you, like undressing you. Up and down and around. Biting and wetting his lips unnecessarily just to turn you on. You, on the other went stiff, for you it was like some one had pushed the pause button because every second felt so heavy, the weight of his gaze was so hard you felt your lungs crushing under the pressure. You could literally listen to your heart thumping in your ears like some one was playing a boombox on maximum volume. Afraid to take your eyes off of him, you just stare blankly at him, though that blank expression was more of a wanting one.

He knows what he's doing, the little curl on his lips showed that, and he knows the effect it has on you so he always over exaggerates everything that he does. You never stopping him is his motivation.

"Dumb girl" he mouths and secures your seatbelt. You gulp hard and release the breath you were holding in. Before you could register what had just happened, his hand was reaching for your forehead with a tissue. "You sure you good? you sweating like crazy!" poking his tongue he hands you the napkin, you pretend wipe your face, actually cursing him making you sweat like this. The ac is not broken, its his fault.

Its so fucking complicated it's like you've got this big crush which isn't even a crush anymore, and it is him who turned it into real damn feelings that you don't want. You know you're better off without him, without the feelings part. You're not ready for him. You'll never be. You know it still you always fall for him, even when you don't want to, even when you know someone's gonna get hurt in the end. It must be something that he said that got you off track. That got you thinking shit and feeling shit, you just can't ignore that anymore. A year is a long time to pretend that you absolutely do not adore Yuta. Its getting harder to pretend.

You crave him.

You need him.

You want him.

but no.

You're saying it as if he wants you too. The possibility of him falling for you is as rare as finding a galaxy in the night sky with naked eyes. Impossible. He's got high standards or maybe you're just not his type. He may play round and about but it's just a play. Not reality. And you've come to peace with that. You're not gonna try, you're not putting your heart at stake but if you do, just in case, there's no way you're gonna have your heart broken because after doing all the math and physics, the probable occurrence of this event called 'us' is zero, even after considering all the factors affecting.

There is a chance, but you wouldn't take it.

But even the greatest of the greatest laws have exceptions, don't they? Not everything can be calculated or predecided. Now who knew a day like today would come in which the drunk you would be driven home by a totally sober Yuta, and the very science that you thought was denying the possibility of you both being together is giving you an unforeseen factor that could change the whole equation, alchol. And alcohol, as we all know is a bitch.

Miserable looking you was sat on the passenger seat, hair tousled, body covered with sweat that glistened whenever light fell on it, lips dry and eyes tired. Though the heat you feel is undeniable, you try to not give in and have some sense of control over your mind that's floating in the pool of hormones mixed with alcohol right now. Pushing your hair back, you look out of the window, chasing the street lamps, counting them to keep you distracted. Clearing your mind, trying not to think anything. Not to feel anything, but the ache in the pit of your abdomen is growing with passing time. You see yuta roll down the window, his hair swiftly swaying with the breeze, what a sight to be witnessed, enough to distract you from your chosen distraction. Allowing yourself to calm down letting go of all the blood rush from before, you take a deep breath, sleep kind of taking over your body but the pain isn't allowing you to. Feeling even more uneasy, you shift a little in your seat pushing the feeling away. You try and concentrate on the moving landscapes, breathing deeply.

Yuta has been noticing you. Hes certain of what's bout to happen. He doesn't panic, he must have had the experience. He lets you take your time. Breathing helps for some time more, but doesn't prevent it. You have to throw up, "Can y- stop the car?"

In a minute, Yuta pulls over and you're out on the street seated by the footpath trying to empty your stomach. Yuta was seated by your side patiently with a water bottle in his hand, rubbing your back in sweet circular motion, and holding your hair back. "It doesn't wanna come out!"

You complain in a broken tone. "Who told you to drink that much when you can't handle it?" he says side eyeing you.

"It's hurting"

"Drink some water" And before you could, you were already throwing up. He calm you down, never once leaving your side, holding your hair back, he knows you're weak especially right now.

Cleaning up you pout, "I was feeling good"

"Now you're not, dumbass."

"Why do you always call me dumbass." you fake cry, more like dunk cry.

"Because you're too cute." He half chuckles.

"I don't wanna be cute." You snap at him. "I wanna be hot!" This makes him laugh. "And i wanna be cool and i wanna be free and i wanna be different and confident and happy and not dumb. I'm not dumb, though i like it when you call me dumb, but im not im not dumb!!"

He looks at you, amused, brows up like a puppy, smiling like a child at this new face of yours that, that he doesn't quite know how to describe it, but is adorable. "You don't talk this much when you're sober, you should drink often."

"And throw up like this every time."

"Yea maybe, it would be an our thing"

"An our thing?! Oh and i don't talk? you don't talk!"

"I don't because you don't, and i respect that."

"I- I don't? i do, i want to."

"What stops you then?" You think.

"Yuta." and you chuckle. "He makes me nervous."

His eyebrows furrowed for a second after suddenly listening to his name from your mouth. Conten and eager to know more, "Why?"

You sigh loudly, hiding your face in your hands, "It's hard to explain you know? It so fucking hard-!" by getting to the end of the sentence you actually break down into tears. Yuta sees this, suddenly extra concerned about your situation, he takes your face in his hands, cupping it, making you look at him. He has a soft expression on his face, a kind one. "hey there, don't cry, it's okay." he coos, wiping a tear away.

You sob a few times in his arms, trying to catch a breath. You don't know why and what you're saying, but it just flows out of your mouth, "I like him, i think i do, like so fuxking much. And it's sad because I don't think he likes me back, like why would he and even if he does, it's not gonna change the fact that im too fucked up to be loved."

He frowns, disappointed in you. Looking deep in your eyes, you try to hide away from him,"You're not girl. Look at me! you are capable of being loved"

"I don't think so. Even if i am, why will he ever like a girl like me!" You say blandly.

"What if he does?"

"You think he likes me?"

"All you need to do is ask."

"Why can't he!?" His hand leaves your face, wiping your fallen tears. Making you drink a little water with his hands, he slowly says, "what if he's afraid he would scare you away?"

You're tired eyes look into his bright one, searching for meanings you couldn't find. He helps you up, now that you've been feeling better than before. "Not if he holds me tight enough." Yuta doesn't reply to this rather his eyes glint, as if he was satisfied with your answer. As if he knew what to do now. He makes you seat in his care again, securing you with the seatbelt, too tired to even move your finger you let him guide you home.

Soon enough you were standing in front of your apartment, staring at the locked door and then staring at each other, "I'm sorry." you apologise because apparently, you lost the keys and no they're not with Haewon. "It's okay lets just go to my apartment." You nod your head, tip toeing behind him like a child, on the stares he lets you walk by yourself but watches out for you. In the car he gives you a bottle of electrolytes to sip on. In the lift of his apartment he practically have to carry your weight because your legs gave up walking and your brain stoped working.

_______

Wet kisses were planted down your spine, leaving a tinglish feeling behind. With every kiss your breath hitched a little more, eyes squeezed even harder. He plants a kiss at the bottom of your bare back. You arch your back, rolling your head back in pleasure. He stands up behind you, your knuckles turn whiter. He grips your hair in his fist, pushing your head back further enough to plant a small kiss on your forehead, then releasing the grip. Holding back a moan, you let a short breath out. Seeing your efforts at holding your moans back, he lands his palm flat against your clothed ass making you fall ahead on the counter. Smacking it hard again, making you yelp in pleasure, the sound echoes in his small bathroom. "Let me hear that sweet voice of yours baby." His voice calling you baby makes you dizzy, a whine leaves your lips without your permission, but on his command. Anything he wants you would do. Rubbing and groping your ass cheek he pulls you a little up by your hair, making you stand straight. He bites and nips at your earlobe. With his one hand squeezing your ass and his lips occupied by your ear, his other hands creeps it's way in front of you, dipping lower and lower until it cups your pussy, applying only slight pressure on your throbbing, untouched clit with his middle finger, just enough to take you over the edge. His hand is so big. He taps it, feather touches only. Once, twice and he continues slowly with long intervals in between the taps, leaving maroon marks on your shoulder. He only plays with you to make you wetter so you could take his dick, he's not letting you cum just yet, you deserve more, you deserve his dick and you deserve a grand climax, because you're his. Without much efforts he pushes you flat against the counter top, carefully though, he doesn't wanna hurt you. Delivering you pleasure is his only motive, and he does just that when he pulls your underwear down enough to expose your ass to him. You wiggle it a little in anticipation, and he gives in to your plea, after all it would be his pleasure to serve you. He greets you with a spank. And then another spank followed by intervals of him easing the pain and rubbing your ass cheeks untill you voice came out louder than the sound of his hand meeting your flesh. And in a blink of an eye your panty was slid all the way down and his thick girthy cock was being shoved in your already dripping aching hole. He was showing no mercy, fucking in and out of you at a demonic pace, looking like an angel! His long hair covering his face, slick because of sweat. He yanked you up with your hair causing you to scream out, still slamming in and out of you, this angle enabling him to go deeper. Sinfull voices getting louder and louder with every thrust, you hear him say your name, "y/n!" He sounds concerned. Furrowing your brows, "Yuta, don't stop!!" you whine as he slows down his pace.

Another loud call of your name forces you awake from your dream, panting heavily you adjust your vision to the lighting in the room. The first thing you see is Yutas face, concerned. Seeing him in your bedroom starled you, you hastily move back in defence, "what are you doing here" You question him in hoarse voice, your throat dry.

"It's my bedroom and you called my name. " he hands you a glass full of water, sitting by the bedside. That's when you realise the change in the intensity of light and the unfamiliarity of the duvet. Embarrassed, that you just dreamt of the guy sitting in front of you, you thank him for the water. You try to play the events of last night that might have led to this, nothing comes to your head. Its all a blank. You mind curse yourself, head hurting a little probably because of hangover. The second thing you notice is that the cloths you wore weren't yours, it was one of his black tshirts, as he owns many, and before you could look at him with an unquestionable question, "You were sober enough to change, I didn't." He answers. You relax your shoulders, sighing.

Just the very presence of him makes your head go into a never ending spiral. It was embarrassing looking like shit in front of him. You called my name, what the fuck. "Your head must be hurting?"

"Not really, I just need to take a shower." You say shaking your head confirming that you are alright.

He gets up.

You don't know what you did last night with him, or said but it feels like you pretty much fucked up in every way possible. You don't even know if the whole session was just a dream or you both actually really did something. You watch him uncover the curtains and opening the window so some fresh air could come in. He opens his cupboard taking out some pills, keeps them on the side table for you. Too busy thinking, you didn't hear whatever he said and watch him exit the room keeping a black tee on the chair.

whatever the fuck happened last night.

Taking the pills you went for a quick shower, wearing again one of his tshirt. Going in the another room, he already prepared lunch for you. You take the spoon in your hand, and it's some kind of soup. You smell it, the aroma filling you up. "You're not eating?"

"I am." he says sitting down beside you. You never knew he could cook, such a dream boy. You dip the spoon and circle it around in the bowl feeling anxious. "You talked quite a lot last night, you kno-" he bantered eyeing up playing with the spoon. Without a second thought you interjected, "What exactly did i say?" not looking at him.

"We have a lot of time to discuss that in detail, right now focus on eating." he poked, smirking. "Just tell if i said something offensive or you know, stupid I won't stay for long." Finally taking a sip of the soup while it's still hot. "Look outside, its raining." he says moving his head towards the window wanting you to look out. It indeed is raining, which means you will have to stay. 

"So now that you're staying, why not have some fun? You play video games?" he asked cheerfully.

"No." you deadpanned.

"I knew, we'll watch a movie then." You look at him blond eyes, he's goofing around again.

He made popcorns, everything was set in front of his decent sized tv. It was like he was being extra cautious about everything, thinking twice before saying or doing anything. You on the other hand were embarrassed and awkward as hell. God only knows what beans you spilled last night, the possible things you could have that are coming to your brains are extreme. Plus he's not even telling.

He kept a decent distance between you two when he sat down on his small sofa, it was a small sofa so the decent amount means close enough to feel him right next to you. The movie was playing but neither of you were paying any attention to it. If it wasn't for the presence of the other, you could have both said the rain was distracting. Already tired and even more tired after forcing yourself to concentrate on the movie when exactly you dozed off to wonderland you didn't remember. One loud roar of thunder startled you back to life, "It's okey, just a thunder, go back to sleep." His words come in a low register, whispered close to your ear his hot breath almost tingling. You shift comfortably on what felt like a lap, shooting your eyes open you realised the position you were in and quickly sat up murmuring sorrys and fucks while trying to hide yourself, "When did i sleep!?" you mumbled, rubbing your eye, in order to avoid his.

"Sleep again you look tired." he pointed out looking at you. As if it wasn't awkward enough already for you to sleep in his goddamn lap. You shake your head, "No its good." You grin at him. His eyes never leave your frame. You shift to the left putting as much distance possible in between. He notices it. "Do I make you nervous?" 

 fuck yes.

It was like the oxygen was taken away from you. You tried breathing but it was useless. So this is one of the manys of what happened last night. "I said that?" He looks at you, nodding his head lights. "And they say one doesn't lie when there drunk." raising an eyebrow. Pressing your lips together you turn your head to the tv, "Let's not talk abo-" he didn't let you finish, "Answer me." He turns off the tv causing you to frown, "Answer!" You roll your eyes looking away again, it's hard maintaining eye contact right now. "What do you wanna hear?" 

"Truth."

You look at him. For a minute nothing was spoken. You looked at him and he looked at you. And that was that. Many of the hardest one minutes of your life. You sigh out in defeat, giving up the eye game, he sits straight. "What else did i say last night?" 

"Just that." 

You laugh, "That can't possibly be true." 

"Then you already know what you might have said last night." Wetting your lips, looking out of the windows, rain pouring harder by every passing hour, things getting more and more awkward. You could either tell him everything, and expect him to not act on it and be awkward Or you can just ask him to pretend last night never happened and let everything be awkward for the rest of the lives, because theres no way things are going back to normal, as if they ever were. 

Clicking your tongue, "Will you drink hot chocolate?" The only way to avoid a conversation is a hot chocolate. It works most of the times. All you wanted to do was escape his vicinity.

You stand by the window in his small kitchen, rain drizzles over your face as it falls down, rainy seasons are gloomy, you think. Cold air rushes in leaving you cold and shivering, alone, in the middle of the darkness in this room with your thoughts which are way too louder than your capacity to hear. You don't know why but him knowing how you feel about him just complicates everything by a thousand fold. And what if he wants to be with you? What will you do then? Yes you like him but, you can't risk being in a relationship again. You've already lied to yourself everyday by believing that you'll not love him, but now you do. And the fact that last night will fuxk everything up between you two is saddening because you are going to say no and he will not be very appreciative.

If; he likes you back. 

You feel his presence behind you. Not too close but not too far. You call out his name, he confirms. After a moment you speak, "Yes you make me nervous." trying to speak loud and clear but you voice only manages to come out in whispers. You hear him cackle. "I know." His deep voice goes straight down to your core, leaving you weak in your knees, he's standing just behind you. You feel his breath on your ear making you hold your breath, not moving even one inch. How desperately you want his hands on you and how badly he wants to sqeeze you in his arms and tell you everything he's been keeping inside for so long. Only if you knew. Only if you saw his face right now, looked into his eyes. You would know he wants you too, he always has. Since the day he saw you on your first day he craved you. Every day being by your side wasn't enough but oh he was just so scared to lose you after being told everything you've been through by your batchmates. He figured your past won't allow you to. So he kept quite. Falling in love with you everytime you looked at him, everytime you smiled at himz shyed away from him. He fell in love with the way you lived and laughed and cried. Just like you fell for him. 

"Take a chance with me?" he spoke lowly, carefully. You turned around, facing him. Shaking your head no caused the tears to fall down that were building in your eyes. You kept shaking you head moving back untill your back touched wall. You sobbed, no you were practically crying like a child in front of him only it was on mute. He approaches you coming closer and closer it was like you lost your mind and your senses gave up on working. "I can't" you managed to speak aloud.

"Why?" he asks trying to stop your crying at the same time. Holding you by shoulders, gently stroking up and down, calming. "You don't know what happened." 

He lifts your tear stained face up by his fingers, making you look at him, "I'm willing to know." he pushes further, caging you between him and the wall. "And if I don't understand, make me!" it's hard to understand the expression on his face. He's sad but, he's also angry. And frustrated and hurt but at the same time, gentle and understanding and concerned. Hands moving to cup your face, "You want me to confess first right? I love you okay? I have ever since god know when. And i know you do too so why the fuck can't you just let go and let me!?" The last part he says through greeted teeth while punching the wall behind you, you jump out in fear, "Fuck Im sorry." he apologizes under his breath, realising he's being to harsh.

He moves in closer, connecting his forehead with yours, "I'm sorry." he breathes out heavily, he's crying. He's hurting. "I can't help but think of what we could be." You open your eyes to look at him, tilting your face up a little, closing in the gap even more. His eyes are tight shut. "I can't help but think about you." He opens his eyes to look into your dark ones, getting lost. You both breathe heavily, hearts beating at the same pace, passion shooting through your veins. He closes the inches left in between you too, both of you close your eyes, nose touching, breathing in the air only the other can provide. His lips linger close to yours, quivering, afraid to harm you. Afraid to scare you. Chest heaving up and down in synchrony, lips ready melt into each other, only a moment apart, only a touch apart, still apart.

He draws a sharp breath in moving away but only slightly. You look down, the tension in the air is so heavy it could crush your weight under it. Tears still falling down like a waterfall.

 "Please don't say no." he speaks in the quietness. You shook your head again, whispering "Don't cry." 

He wiped it as quickly as it fell. "I'm sorry" you say, trying to move past him, but he stops you holding your hand, making you turn around. Gripping you face with only one hand he crashes his lips on yours, you pause. You didn't try pulling away, not because his grip was too tight but you didn't wanted to. When you moved your lips, he moved his. He held you by your waist with his other arm. Making you dizzy, holding you close you could feel his beating heart against your chest. Head tilted to deepen the kiss, body crushing into each other like planets colliding, teeth clashing like two swords in a battlefield, hands roaming the bodies freely, holding on to each other like you were to lose them the very next second. He could taste your tears in his mouth. He could taste his life. It was beautiful, it was perfect. In that moment you felt you could let go of everything that was holding you back, you past didn't matter in that moment. You saw one chance, one possibility. 

Struggling to stand straight, he walks your over to the counter never leaving your lips. He slows it down, letting you breathe. Softly sucking your swollen lips. He takes your lower lip between his teeth, he bites it so hard you whince in pain, which only makes him lower his hands and squeeze your butt, pulling you lower body to meet his, grinding into each other, desperate for each other, not getting enough and wanting more and more. The visible bulge in his bottoms evidently hit the right spots, making you lose control, making you go wild and grind yourself into him too. The height difference makes it so much easier like his body was made keeping you in mind so you both could fit each other perfectly. His hands travel north, tangling your hair and pulling them down, which makes your head go back, exposing your neck to him. His lips leave yours, sucking in a new space found, leaving deep red marks, marking you as his.

It took one single thought to pull you out of it, again. You try to push him away, struggling at first, he backs off, and the moment he does you leave, "So you're going to ignore me now?" he says panting, making you stop and turn back. He looks at the red mark on your neck that he created. He chuckles, "Thats the plan? huh? Ain't gonna work." you're hurting him you know it. You turn around to leave, "You're gonna come back."

And you leave.

You just leave. 

And like that, 5 months pass. The day turns into night and night into day, you go to college and come back home then go to college again. You see him every day and he sees you everyday and like strangers you cross paths. He started a new job, you heard. You started having panic attacks, he heard.

Sit and stare out of the window, thinking of all that you could have done differently. You thought not being with him or anybody would make things alright. Being alone would make your head clear and a little less messed up and then maybe you can go out date freely without having to be afraid of what might go wrong. But it seems like it all backfired on you. Now you have one more thing to forget, one more thing to carry everyday.

You thought you would get better, but little did you know it was him who was making you better. You thought you would get over him but you really do love him. You can't get him out of your head and he's gone, you fucked it all up. You broke his heart which ended up breaking you too.

Sitting on the couch in the parties is the only thing you've been doing lately. How long can someone pretend that they're okay? A month? A year? You've been doing it since your childhood. You're tired of pretending and tired of hoping that it's all gonna get better. You can't even pretend anymore to be honest, it's evident you do that you miss him. You've been sitting here for 3 hours, just sitting not drinking. What if you get drunk? Who's gonna drive you home you have no one. He's here too. Not drinking. Not looking at you, not thinking about you, rather having fun actually. he moved on?

Why wouldn't he, why shouldn't he? It wasn't his fault. You're the only one to blame. He cried, he begged you to stay to not say no, but you didn't listen to him. Why should he wait on someone like you. You push all your hair to one side letting them cover your face in an attempt to hide from Yuta, you can't help but watch him closely, laughing and talking and everything, he's faking it. You know him this much to know which smiles he is faking. And suddenly he is looking at you. Earnestly. 4 minutes of intense gaze and then you give up. Breathing already uneven and your palm is sweating, you know what's gonna come. You throw your head back to rest on the sofa and stare blankly at the ceiling.

I shouldn't have said no.

I should have stayed.

Why did I do it.

I knew you i wrong.

I broke his heart.

It's all my fault.

Something is really wrong with me.

I made him cry.

He really loved me, how could you!

"Fuck."

The walls were closing in on you. It was going dark before your eyes, you couldn't shut your brain up. It was like you were trying to breathe but couldn't like someone evacuated your lungs out of oxygen or maybe there wasn't any oxygen left in the air to breathe. Head was hurting like someone was constructing a fucking road on it. You were panicking, heart beating at an abnormally high rate, sweat collecting at the low of your back. You lose complete sense of the surroundings. You try to get up but can't, so you just sit there on the sofa in the middle of a crowded room, trying to breath, with your head down to your knees. The music and the people get too loud, it felt like they were screaming your name you shut your eyes and cover your ears with your hands, just praying this would pass away soon.

A jacket was thrown over you, over your head. He was rubbing your back up and down, in an attempt to soothe you. He makes you shift from the position you were in to a position where your head was down on his knees, and his jacket still covering your face. His hand creeps under the jacket to caress your hair and he whispers sweet nothings in your ear, trying to make you focus on him, and on his voice.

You start crying in his lap, under his touch listening his voice after so many days, you missed him. His heart aches seeing you like this, watching you deteriorating day by day. He hated that he couldn't do anything, couldn't help you through it but he knew better. He knew nothing he could have said or done would have made you realise that running away was not an option, you have to face it, face your past and get over it, let go. And let love. Because what is love is not a risk? what is love if not taking a shot in the dark? what is love if not a mere chance? what is love if not a distinct possibility? Him trying would have just made you push him away even more! He wouldn't let that happen, so he waited on love. He waited on you. . He calls your name, twice "listen to my voice okay? It's okay, you're okay! Just try to breathe." You nod your head, the tears disappearing in the fabric of his jeans. "Let's go out okay?" He asks, after five minutes or so he walks you out of the room. Breathing the fresh night air somehow calms your nerves but you're still hyperventilating. He makes you side on the boundary wall that's pretty low. Your still a mess, eyes watering and breaths hitch you murmur small sorrys to him. The crying is just making it all worse, he noticed. Taking your face in his hands making you look straight into his eyes, "Breathe in." he asks you to and you do "hold." you hold your breath. "Release." you let go. At first it was hard but with his help you gained control again.

"I'm so sorry Yuta, i was i was trying to protec- protect you. I didn't wanted to hurt you i swear on my life." You sob. He nods, coming face to face "I know, you did your best."

"But I made you cry."

"because i couldn't see you hurting, also you left but i knew you were gonna come back."

"I tried that day, i wanted to stay i wanted to be with you but i couldn't i just couldn't bring myself up to believe that i was deserving to hold you. I-

I didn't deserve you, i still- "

"Don't complete that sentence or I'm gonna be real mad at you."

"no listen to me i don't have anything to give you I'm just I'm a messed up piece of shit i would've just wasted your time and energy."

"Well then you're my messed up piece of shit, whom i get to take care of because i want nothing but only you. And i totally wanna waste my time with you."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be, Its all good now"

You took a deep breath. Nothing is gonna change the fact that you hurt him, but he was wise enough to know you weren't intentionally trying to. Love. "I don't know what else to say but i love you"

"And that's more than enough babe."

"Ba-be?"

"I've been dying to call you that you know?"

"Why are you so good to me?" He just shrugs and ruffles your hair. "Wanna complete watching that movie together?" You sigh in relief nodding your head a big yes.

You thought he was taking you to watch a movie, but it was a whole different scene the moment you entered his apartment. He changed the lights. They are a warm shade of yellow now. He did put the movie on, but you weren't paying any attention to it. Your head was hurting because of the sudden attack you had at the party, so he insisted on sleeping instead. 

You tried sleeping, but the smell of his perfume on the bed kept you awake. makes you reckless. made your thoughts run wild. You remember how it felt the last time you were here, in his apartment. The tension, the dream, the heat, the kiss. Not the fighting part of the whole situation, but the part where you were wholly in love with him. The part where you wanted to take a chance The part where you wanted to give him your all. 

Feeling too overdriven by your train of thoughts, you get out of bed. You follow the noise that was coming from the kitchen to find Yuta making something. "What are you doing at this hour of the night?" You speak softly, standing by the door frame. He looks at you unfazed. "I assumed you were sleeping," I said. "The bedsheets smell like you." You walk behind him slowly, his eyes following your every step. "Quite distracting." 

"If you weren't drunk enough the last time you were here." 

"Then I wouldn't have been here." 

"Fact," he says, nodding."Try it," he says, handing you the cup. He emptied whatever he was making, tea. "Since when did you start drinking tea?" you question, placing the cup down, trying to sit on the counter. He helps you jump. "Since hot chocolate started reminding me of you." 

"I'm sorry," you whisper quietly. 

"You don't have to do it, and you shouldn't waste your time!" He scolds you, taking the empty cup from your hands and placing it in the sink. "I'll say it as long as I need to." 

"Useless "

Then how can I make it up to you? You can only tell. " 

"Endless ways I can think of right now." There was a sudden change in the way he spoke. The hoarseness in his voice lingered in the air and warmth creeped into his eyes. The coldness in the air was replaced by this heavy heat of want that was engulfing you and him alive. "Like?" 

Keeping your voice at a hearable volume, you make space between your legs by separating them, which was taken by him the very next second, "like finishing what we started." " You know what's coming next." The movie? " You put on the most innocent face you ever had in your life, looking him directly in the eyes, playing with him like he plays with you. "Now now, what a disappointment you are," he says while tapping your cheek with his index finger. Biting your lower lip, you say, "Someone used to call me dumb..." 

"You're playing the wrong game, babe." He warns, tracing your jaw line and down your neck. He then lines your clavicle up and down, "You're gonna lose." He takes both his hands behind your back, pulling you closer with a jerk. His face was only inches away now, his lower body already in contact. You could feel him hardening against your pussy. He was this close. 

"What if I want to lose?" You answer, your voice barely above a whisper, the taste of the tea still in your mouth, sweet, but you want his taste now. He chuckles lowly, his lips brushing against yours as he speaks, his voice firm and demanding, unlike yours. "Well then, wait for me in the bedroom." 

It was new and exciting to get to see this side of him. Unlike his normal caring and soft self, this Yuta knew what he wanted. He is precious and just, and he needs no explanation for anything he does. "Oh and babe, undies off but keep my t-shirt on." You follow his command, going straight to the bedroom and removing your underwear and tossing it aside. 

You wait in anticipation, but don't quite know what to do. You were pacing around the room like a mouse chased by a cat. Butterflies in your stomach won't quiet down. The mere thought of what might happen causes goosebumps on your skin.Sitting at the edge of the bed, you check the time. It's 12:30 in the morning and that's when he enters. 

All of them changed. His demeanour was that of a wolf out on a hunt. And you were his prey. He shut the door behind him. His eyes were darker and his skin appeared a little bit colder than before. It's not like there's a third person but. You get up on your feet and just stand there in the middle of the room, a thousand thoughts in your mind playing every possible scenario that could happen. He drags a chair by its arm, situating it just in front of you, and sits down on it like a king. 

"Come ahead!" he orders. You start walking in an instant, almost tripping. His voice alone makes your insides curl and your pussy clench around nothing. Wetness is leaking down. 

"You really want to go down this road?" Changing his expression suddenly, his eyes glistened with a golden tint, probably because of the light coming in from the window. You try to play along, "Aren't we already down?" He smiles. "You can stop me anytime you don't feel comfortable, okay?" You nod, melting into his softness. How can this person do it? switching between personalities in mere seconds. 

"I doubt I'll stop you." You push a strand of your hair behind your ear, getting a little closer so your legs touch the chair. His legs were separated, and you were in the middle. The only source of light in the room was the street light, perfectly lighting up his face and your body. He lifts an eyebrow at what you just said, sitting upright in his chair. "Confident much? I like that. It won't be for too long though. " You shiver when his hands rub your outer thigh. He was waiting for a reply from you, but he was correct. The moment his hands touched your bare skin, all the confidence you were mustering up to talk back was thrown out of the window. His hands travel south and leave your skin hot, high, and dry. 

You gasp at the loss of contact. Being touched by someone, by him after so many years, you don't think you can last in this game for even a minute. 

"Let's begin, shall we?" 

You manage an "uhhm..." as you brace yourself for whatever he's about to do. He relaxes in his chair. With his eyebrows lifting up and down, he asks you to sit on the bed with a simple but powerful command. "Sit." 

You sit at the edge of the bed, your legs shut tight, your hands sweaty, and your mouth dry. 

"Let me see you." You didn't quite hear him, but you heard him. It was just so shockingly sudden. 

"Huh?" you stutter under his strong gaze. 

"Lost already." He deadpanned. He was mocking you, and he knows it's affected you. "Spread your legs, sweetheart." 

On his command, your agape mouth was shut, your legs already following his order, deciding to move on their own as your mind had given up on thinking ages ago. 

The show hasn't even started yet, and he's enjoying himself watching your timidity in every move you make. "No, actually, shift a little back. Make yourself comfortable." He gets up and shifts his chair forward as you move back on the bed. He got a glimpse of your core while you were shifting. You know he did because you saw the expression change on his face. Right there in that split second, you saw him almost lose and regain his composure.

Not letting him speak again, you spread your legs wide and open. The loose t-shirt that was covering you shifts up automatically, leaving you uncovered for him to devour you with his eyes alone. You looked at him and he looked at your core, shamelessly. This somehow gave you some kind of power over him. He is too weak for you. He curses under his breath, closing his eyes and breathing deeply but fast. 

The moment he opened his eyes and met yours, your soul definitely left your body. Your breath hitched, and you tried to look away from him, but his gaze was so hard it locked yours. You couldn't. "Touch yourself." You clench at his words, and he sees that. 

"Be more specific." That was bold of you to say that. He almost choked on your words. You may be the shy girl who is affected by small things, but you are also a freak. Although you do want to lose, you'd still give it your best shot. 

He poked his tongue under his cheek, nodding his head in approval of your regained confidence. "Touch your clit with only one finger and don't move it." 

Very precise. You do as he says. There is only one finger on your clit, and there is no movement at all. 

"Tap it." You do, lifting your finger up and keeping it gently on your throbbing clit. You clench again the moment your fingers touch, gasping out silently. "Keep on doing it until I say stop." He bites his lower lip as he watches you enjoy yourself at his command. The fact that you were doing it while he was watching you with his sinful gaze has already got you gripping the sheets and curling your toes. 

You do it slowly, sensually, watching him watch you. He's affected in ways he can't explain and in ways you can't fathom. Feeling good, you take your lower lip between your teeth and close your eyes. You get more comfortable as you fully submit to the task you were given. You let your head hang freely, trying to be more vocal, but letting out soft whimpers only. You didn't want to give him too much just yet. 

"Stop." 

You hiss at him. Drawing in a sharp breath, you bite your lip harshly in agression, not wanting to stop but stopping anyway. You look forward to him, his dilated pupils eyeing you like a scavenger, making you light-headed. "Enjoying yourself too much?" 

You nod slowly, your gaze never leaving his, and it drives him insane. 

Warmth creeps beneath your skin when he gets up from his chair and motions for you to come forward. You get on your knees, the t-shirt covers you again and you crawl to him to the edge of the bed to where he was standing. Sitting on your heels, you watch him loosen his belt. Then he undoes the waist button and unzips his pants. He slides them down, revealing white boxers and his untamed bulge, which he somehow managed to keep inside and hidden. 

You're dizzy by just imagining the size of him. You're unsure of what to do. Should you help him undress himself or should you just sit back and anticipate? Like a lost child, you wait for him to tell you. He asks a question instead. "I suppose you don't know how to give a blow job." Feeling belittled, you shook your head, looking up at him, "perfect." He compliments.

He slid the boxers down, his hard, thick and girthy dixk slapping against his abdomen, now free of any restrictions, standing tall and proud in front of you. You were too busy focusing on his perfection that you failed to keep up. He had already removed his shirt, and was now standing completely naked in front of you for the very first time. It's nerve awakening.

That is when you actually felt the gravity of the situation. It wasn't just some game you were playing; it was actually happening. You and he were actually happening. You fucking confessed to him yesterday! Yuta thought he was going to be angry and not talk to you at all because you broke his heart, but it's the complete opposite situation, he just couldn't be angry at you. Yuta knows better, good for you. He loves you. You love him and all your dreams about him were about to come true, he was going to make you his. 

"Fuck!" You didn't mean to say that out loud.

"Like what you see? I bet you dreamt about me. " It was like you were hypnotised by him or you lost control of yourself. It was like you were high on some drug. Or maybe you were high on him because you weren't thinking before nodding your head when he asked you that question. 

"What was I doing in them?" He takes his cock in his hands and starts palming it. You swear you saw it grow even bigger in size, as if it already wasn't. Too astonished to see the action just inches away from your eyes, you answer, "You were fucking me raw. From behind." You look up and gulp, "And you were spanking me, pulling my hair, kissing me, and marking me yours," you say in a small voice, so shameless, so pure.

"Get up on your knees." You do, inching yourself closer to him; he's still stroking his length in between. You look down, a new angle to admire him. You place your hand on his, your hand moving up and down his shaft with his. He slows down. "Want me to do all those things for you? Want me to touch you? " You looked up, mouth parted and eyes glistening to meet his dark ones. "Want me to pull your hair? want me to kiss you? fuxk you?" 

You nod frantically consumed by your arousal, his voice travelling straight to your untouched, unlooked, un-taken-careof core, your wetness literally sliding down your thigh. It's hurtful. 

"Oh baby, don't be that cute or I'll just have to fuck you right now." He says this restlessly before connecting his lips with yours. You let out a sigh of relief before giving into him. It was kind of the first physical contact he made after getting in this room, which has been nothing but hard for him to keep his hands away from you. He deepens the kiss. Tilting your face to the left, he locks his fingers in your hair, pulling them. The kiss was sloppy and messed up and just perfect, laced with desire and lust in every bit of it. Your tongues collided, your teeth clashed; you both just couldn't get enough of each other. Your hands rested on his neck, gripping tightly for support. He bites your lower lip making you gasp, then sucks it like candy. 

You reciprocate his every move. You try to, but you are getting out of breath. His hands travel down your back, lifting the t-shirt up and gripping your ass, squeezing it hard. You say his name aloud, breaking the kiss, "Yuta!" Your forehead rested on his shoulder while he kissed and nipped at your ear while kneading you, "Yes baby, you like it?" You hum in response, lifting your head up and looking at him, holding him close. "Rub your clit for me, baby." 

You bite your lower lip, lowering your hands and legs, your gaze never leaving his. You rub yourself up and down and in circles. He can't really see, but he knows. It makes his dick twitch. You let out a loud, breathy, dragged out moan, setting up a pace, "mhmmm shit."

He mimics that moan, his eyes burning with desire and lust. "Mhmmm shit... Nice and slow, yea baby, so good for me." You let out another breathy moan, closing your eyes but quietly this time, not wanting him to mock you again. 

His finger was placed on yours, on the one that was rubbing circles on your clit. You jump, in shock or excitement, you don't know. Your brain seizes the movement of your finger completely, "Why did you stop?" he takes over. His fingers move up and down, making yours move as well. Resting his forehead on yours, he continues to play with you, making you whimper with every flick. 

He moves your hands aside, your face contouring in pleasure when his fingers touch you, bare and raw, with nothing in between. There were chills running down your lower back, your stomach tightening with the pleasure he was delivering. Slowing down a little, he collects your wetness in his fingers, bringing it to your mouth to suck on it. You lick it first, then swirl your tongue around it, and then take it in completely, sucking like a lollipop. 

You kiss him with your flavour in your mouth. His hands find their way back between your legs, rubbing your clit, up and down and sideways, the wetness making his movements sloppy, his fingers gliding frictionless on your sweet swollen nub. His finger circles your opening before carefully dipping it inside of you. You purr in his ear while his lips ghost over the exposed skin of your neck. His breath hits you every time he exhales, absolutely burning your skin to a hot red. You clench around his finger, not letting it escape. Well, you finally have something to clench around this time. He stays inside of you for awhile. 

"Rub yourself again." And in no time, you're following his words, bringing your right hand to circle your clit. Now desperate to release, you don't go for slow motion but rather set a high pace. 

"Slow it down." 

You might be in disagreement looking at him but he gives you one look and you're slowing your fingers down. He pulls his finger out just to push it in again, and again, and again. You try to match your movements with his, setting a slow rhythm. You go up every time he pushes in, and that's how he drives you to your first orgasm of the night.

You've been at the edge for so long, you're coming undone with only one finger. You stop circling yourself and hold him to keep yourself up while his fingers are still working you up, slow and steady, riding you through it and pushing you into the beginning of the next one. 

His finger was buried up to his knucles, deep in you. He places his palm flat against your mound. You press into his touch. Moving your hips to grind into his hand, breathing harshly, he supports your body and whispers praises in your ear about how good you are and the amazing job you're doing. Just when you thought you could cum again, he makes you stop and removes his hand from between your legs. 

Licking his finger clean, he asks you to get on your hands and knees, "face down ass up, fast!" he said while pumping himself. The site of his hardened veiny dick was hard to look at. It was begging for your attention, but you weren't really confident with that. Instead of following his order, you stare at him palming himself. You look at him with a question written in your eyes. He understands what you're asking for but doesn't really acknowledge it. "Please." You kneel in front of him. He rolls his eyes, but gives you a look of content. 

"My girl wants a taste." 

You smile when he calls you his girl, "Yes. Your girl wants a taste." emphasis on the, "your girl." 

When you bring your face closer and look up at him, ready to take him in, he curses under his breath, holding your head in place with his hands clenching your hair in a fist, in the softest manner. "Open your mouth." You do, also giving a little extra you stick your tongue out for him.

He places the tip of his dick on your tongue, gently sliding it in against the surface. You close your lips around it. He slides further deep into your mouth, controlling himself to not push in too deep. Very slowly, he draws it out, leaving you empty and wanting more of him. He lets you take a taste, though. Slithering against your tongue in swift motions.

You swirl your tongue around his tip, which is already leaking. You try to take him deeper but his grip won't let you he only fucks his tip in. Finally bringing up the courage to take him into your small hands, you wrap your hand around the base of it, applying slight pleasure, moving your hand up and down his shaft. 

"Just like that." His voice boosts your confidence. He lets you play with him with your innocent little hands which are like a tease to him, until he can't take it anymore. Seeing you determined, his grip on your hair tightens and with his other hand, he moves your hands aside. He yanks your head back. "Open wider" He growls, as you do. And he slams his cock deeper than before. The sounds you produce are embarrassing. He goes deeper, causing you to gag, your heartbeat fastening even more all of a sudden. You mumble protest, telling him to remove himself and wrap your hand around his wrist, taking a hold of it. He withdraws himself, you cough a little, breathing deeply, then open your mouth again to take him in. He grins, "Now that's my baby!" tightening his fist around your hair and pulling your head a little more up. 

He slides his dick down again, slowly and gently going deeper. He wasn't even going deep to be honest; he was just at the brim, yet your mouth was full of him. Hair messed up and eyes watery, swollen lips wrapped around his girthy member, saliva trailing down your neck, only acting as a lubricant. When he finally siezes his dick after seeing your tousled state and didn't want to cum just yet, you try to regain your breath. Holding your hair back, not pulling anymore, rather soothing your nerves down. Wiping a tear away, he devours your glistening lips with his, not taking any time to deepen it. Pushing you down on the bed, he hovers over you, keeping his knee in between your legs, very very close to your aching to be touched core. His lips leave yours, connecting to your still aching jaw. He leaves a warm wet trail of kisses down your neck and everywhere in between. Sloppy kisses were placed along your clavicle, purposely sucking and leaving red marks around, making you hiss in pain and take his name. 

His hands roam up and down your body, making sure there isn't a single inch left to be touched and explored by him. His hand stretched the tee you were wearing, revealing only the upper part of your breast. He kitten licks the area, then bites the flesh and soothes it with a kiss, making every part of your body his, messed up, burning hot and so beautiful. 

His lips go south, taking your hardened nipple in his mouth and sucking on it through the thin fabric of the tee. While playing with the other, Your lower body automatically starts grinding on his knee, trying to obtain some friction, but it seems to be not working, but you swear the amount of heat dissipating from just the mere contact was enough to melt gold and silver. 

He is too intoxicated just by the way you feel against his lips. He brings himself back to reality to perform the second main job. He gets off the bed only to sink down on his knees in front of you. His face only a few licks away from your heat, you move closer to his mouth. He separates your legs further away, only able to look at you in full bloom this once. Drunk already, he dives in for a sip, and he is not disappointed. A long lick from the bottom of your warmth till up to your clitoris got your toes curling. While he laps at your juices, you curse his name a hundred times. He flicks your clit with his tongue, then sinks it as deep as it can go into you while nuzzling his nose to brush against your clit, it's a perfect blend to which he adds his fingers, the middle one he pushes in first. Out he comes to push it in 2 knuckles deep and then finally sink it deeper, curling it inside, making you roll your eyes back in pure bliss. You're feeling extremely. He adds another finger. That hurts a little but is soon replaced with pleasure. He works you up to your second orgasm, but doesn't let you cum just yet. 

His hands leave your body at once, and you hold back a moan, trying not to sound desperate. His figure walks across the room where he must have kept his wallet. 

You hear a wrapper being torn, goosebumps crawl up on your skin. He takes no time to return. "Make room for me." He gets on the bed, splitting your legs wider. He lets you rest in a comfortable position, keeping a pillow under your head. He drags his fingers between your folds, collecting your juices and spreading them on his member. You look up at the ceiling, aftain, excited, impatient. The yellow lights are forming abstract patterns on the wall. You feel his tip at your entrance, and soon he pushes it in with optimum pressure. You contract your muscles and your eyes shut tightly at the feeling. It's one of pain and fear and not pleasure. "Yuta, it hurts." You breathe out and call his name, your hands trying to grab his shoulders. He pushes in further, rather slowly this time while towering over you and coming face to-face, "Good." 

You lift your hips up a little to ease out the passage, and he bottoms out. He stays like that for a minute. No words were exchanged, just the feelings being felt. His breaths are uneven matching with yours. He connects your foreheads together. You don't know if his eyes are closed or open. They're closed. You inhale him in as he exhales you. 

"Fuck," he growls just before abruptly slamming into you, "Fuck." 

And then it continues, and it hurts no more. He's fucking you hard and slow, going deep and deeper. Making you cry out every time he hits that spot. His voice is husky and low, sending shivers dancing up and down your body. You whimper under him. Your sounds, mixed with the slickness of your bodies crashing into each other, were playing on repeat; warmth and lust in the shade of red were decorating the room, and the orange glitched tint was illuminating the perfect parts of him and you. 

He goes from a painfully slow to a pleasurably fast pace, no mercy he was showing, abusing your little cunt with his big thick dick, driving all the pleasure out for himself as he should, while giving you exactly what you wanted. So good. It feels so good to finally have him inside you, using you, destroying you to only mend you as whole, as his. 

He's fucks you so right.

He lifts his body up a little, supported by his hands over you, looking at your contoured face. He slaps your cheek playfully in an attempt to get you to open your eyes and look at him while he fuxks the shit out of you. He grabs your hands and pins them behind your head. Oh, he knows you are going to come, but it doesn't make him stop or slow down. He continues fuxking you harder and harder until you come undone under him. Your body convulses. Waves of pleasure travel through your nerves, hitting your brain. Your vision go black and, for a brief moment, you lose complete sense of reality, being in a state of complete euphoria. You've never had an orgasm like this before.

And the best part of it all is that he doesn't stop. 

He's drilling in and out of you at a monsteric pace. Your body writhes under him, trying to squirm its way out of his grip, but all these go in vain when his fingers wrap around your dainty neck, applying only the right amount of pressure to hold you down and keep your body fixed in its place. 

When he loses control, his merciless pace becomes even more merciless, banging his head hard, fast, and deep all at once. His thrusts became sloppy and rushed. Chasing after his high, he goes feral. You watch him clench his jaw in pleasure, the sweat rolling down making his hair stick to his skin, his low grunts and humming sound. He's trying to contain himself. What a sight. It makes you want to cum again. 

The pleasure starts building at the pit of your stomach again. You wrap both your hands around his hand, the one that was choking you, while rocking your hips back and forth, trying to match him, looking into his eyes, speaking with an unspoken language. 

And that's how he fuckls you into believing that you are enough, for him and for yourself. That you are capable of being loved and taken care of. That even if you're messy and stupid and dumb, you're still perfect. That you can let go and you can trust. That you can be.

Be his.

And then he explodes inside of you. He couldn't be more grateful, couldn't be more precise in saying that his wait was worth it. You were worth it. He rubs you into your third orgasm. And after that, nothing was like it was before. 

All of you changed. 

All of you changed when he kissed you and told you that he loved you so much. All of you changed when you saw him clean you up in the after hours. All of you changed when he fell asleep beside you, taking you into his arms. 

All of you changed when you met him for the first time.

______

did not proof read, but hope u liked it, The constructive criticism is accepted here, do leave a follow ~

[tiktaalic]

breaking my silence. i think lebanon is good. i know what it’s trying to do, which is put the “is john winchester problematic?” question to bed by saying no. he’s a dad. which is complicated and lovable <3 but so much of the show has punched so many holes in that theory that TO ME the face value falls apart. here’s the way i’ve kaleidoscoped it which, again, is not what was intended, but to me, is the path of least narrative resistance:

dean wishes for his heart’s desire and doesn’t know the mechanics of how it’ll work

this brings his dad back

this is not what sam or dean thought that dean was consciously wishing for

the john winchester who appears acts a few degrees removed from the s1 - s9 characterization in a much more palatable way (effusive with praise, contrite over his mistakes)

game theory: dean’s desire was NOT to have his dad back but to have a sense of closure with his dad, because he never got that. and that’s what he gets. now his last memory of his dad isn’t being told to kill his brother before realizing that his dad’s just traded their lives, it’s a family dinner he never ever had and always fantasized about. it’s literally a what is and what should never be redux.

3 episodes ago do we remember 3 episodes ago. where michael dredged up all of dean’s deep dark resentments against his family that he’s ashamed of feeling (cas, jack, sam). john 100% makes the resentment list. so does mary! dean’s said as much at various times. but dean’s had his Resentment Closure moment with cas. and jack. and sam. and mary. he’s never had that with john. but in lebanon? his dad says i’m proud of you. his dad says i made mistakes. his dad says i didn’t want you to have to live like me. his dad says all these things that dean’s wanted to hear but never has, and his dad sits down for a family dinner that dean’s always wanted but has never got. but in the end this is what is and what should never be 2. it’s a fantasy. it HAS to come apart at the seams. it’s not attainable long term.

tldr. pearl gives heart’s desire. sam thinks heart desire is no michael. dean think heart desire is having his dad back. true heart desire is to be able to bookend his dad’s memory with something happy that’ll allow him to continue to fudge the numbers into his dad being a relatively uncomplicated figure. the pearl mia vallens his dad so dean can see him one last time and hear him say all the things he never did before leaving again. THAT is what dean wants more deeply than anything. closure.

[raspberry-starship]

Start reading the series here.

Masterlist for this book is here.

Read by scrolling up the tag here.

FIVE YEARS LATER

A hand with a rag wiped across a polished wooden surface. Dean straightened, satisfied that the bar was clean. All around him was cowboy memorabilia, and in the window there was a sign that was turned to say “sorry, we’re closed!” There was a soft meow and Dean turned to see a tabby cat on the bar. It looked up at him and meowed again a bit indignantly.

“Alright, I hear you.” Dean grumbled as he worked.

This was Cas’s cat who had been named Oliver by Jack. Behind Dean, a door opened leading to the basement. Cas appeared, carrying a crate of glasses. He muttered a soft “excuse me” as he slid behind Dean. Dean turned his head to watch with a soft smile.

“Heya, sunshine.” He said as Cas set the glasses down.

Cas smiled gently and looked up at him. “Hello, Dean.”

“When are they getting here?” Dean asked.

Cas checked his phone, “Sam says he’s on the way. Shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes.”

Dean nodded, “Good.”

A couple minutes later they sat at the bar together, a beer in front of each of them. Oliver lay across the bar beside Cas, on his side as Cas pet him.

“So Charlie found a case that’s nearby.” Cas said, “It looks like ghouls.”

Dean nodded, “Alright.”

The bell above the door rang and they both turned to see Sam coming in, a big grin on his face. “Hey, guys.”

Dean and Cas stood, smiling too as Ren, Jack, and Ian filed in after Sam. They all hugged hello and then took up residence at a big table in the center of the bar. Oliver immediately jumped up to lay in Jack’s lap—Jack was his favorite.

“Where’s—?” Dean began when the bell above the door rang again.

They all turned to see Sadie coming in, lugging a big baby carrier with her.

“Hello!” She beamed, setting the baby down beside Sam before going to hug each of the kids.

Cas leaned over the empty seat between he and Sam to get a good look at the baby. She squirmed a little, yawning like she’d just been woken up. He beamed and leaned down to offer her a finger. She took it in her meaty hands, big eyes looking up and all around.

“Hello, Alana.” Cas said gently, shaking his hand a little.

She let out a small giggle, smiling up at him.

Soon Sadie took her seat between Cas and Sam, pulling baby Alana out of her carrier so she could sit in Sadie’s lap as they talked.

The kids were all home from where they lived together in New York City. Ian worked in music therapy aiding kids, while Jack was studying to be a teacher. Ren worked currently at a publishing company but in the years to come, she would publish her own work.

Dean and Cas ran Campbell’s together, a bar just outside Lebanon and still lived in the Bunker which was now more of a halfway-house for hunters. Sam ran all the operations in the Bunker with Alana who he called his assistant even though all she did was sit on his knee and play with her stuffed bunny. Sadie organized a network of therapists including Mia Vallens who knew about the supernatural and could help people who suffered from monster-related PTSD.

Alana Mary Eldredge was born on January 13th, 2024 after a long an arduous battle about what her name would be. At first Sam was rather annoyed by the fact that Sadie didn’t want to give their child his name but the more the argument dragged on, the more he realized that if Alana was born anything like her mother, she’d probably just change her name to Eldredge when she turned eighteen, so he relented. In return for this, Sadie agreed for Alana to have two godfathers—Cas and Dean. Cath and Charlie would be the godparents to their second child, born in 2027, Wyatt Winchester Eldredge. Then his younger sister would be born in 2029, Isa Ruth Eldredge, and would have three godparents in Jack, Ren, and Ian.

Ian would meet a nice man at work named Walter Park and together they would adopt a son named Clay Park Eldredge. And then after that they would adopt three more kids—Finley Tyler Eldredge, Elliot Jack Eldredge, and Brie Renna Eldredge. Cath and Charlie would never have kids themselves but they would adore all their nieces and nephews.

Jack and Ren would live a long life as humans that were no more special than the person next to them. They’d move back to Lebanon when Jack was done with school, Ren a full-time writer by this point and he’d teach in the local middle school. In Heaven, perfect harmony would be achieved between Michael, Zophiel, Tala, and Adam. They would spend many years re-educating the remaining angels on how to have compassion and patience with humanity as well as encourage them to build relationships with their vessels.

In Heaven, Bobby sat in a rocking chair on the Roadhouse’s front porch, looking out at the view. A beer appeared in his periphery and he turned to see Rufus there, offering it to him with a remarkably unemotional expression. Bobby smirked and took it from him. Rufus sat down in the chair beside him.

Inside the Roadhouse, Jo was wiping down the bar. Ash lifted his computer up so she could get everywhere and Ellen came out of the back. She slid a beer down the bar and a hand shot out to catch it. Pamela offered her a sweet smile as she thanked Ellen for the drink.

In a cabin down the road, Mary and John slow-danced in their living room, beaming at each other before they kissed. A little ways further down the road there was a house that looked like it’d been plucked from suburbia and plopped into a national park. Coming out of the open windows was the sound of someone playing the cello. In the house’s living room, Mrs. Tran glanced up from the magazine she was perusing to watch Kevin’s back for a moment as he played. She smiled softly at him.

During the coming years, Kaia and Claire would get married, Donna would move in officially with Jody, and Alex would become a doctor. Life was not easy, but it was significantly less stressful without an apocalypse every year. They liked it this way.

* * *

Zophiel sat in their library, Tala sitting across from them and the both of them reading. Many years had passed and now they were no longer in charge of Heaven. Jack and Ren had taken up their true work some time ago, now both adults. Cas was their right-hand man and Zophiel was back to the work they’d grown to love over the past couple millennia. Cas’s powers were restored after his human death, leaving him an angel once more. However, every night he went home to he and Dean’s house in Heaven. Meanwhile, Michael was their left-hand man with Adam, the two of them visibly content with the work they we’re doing. Jack and Ren kept a regular schedule, though, like they were still living as humans. Ren requested that they work that way and Jack agreed.

Zophiel glanced up as there was a knock on the door standing inside a bookcase beside them. The door opened and an angel poked their head in.

“Zophiel? They would like to see you.” He said.

Zophiel nodded and set their book down, getting up. Tala had disappeared, going with them in spirit. They followed the angel down a couple white corridors until they came to a balcony overlooking all of Heaven’s bubble universes. There, Jack and Ren awaited them with smiles.

“Hello, Zophiel.” Ren said.

“Hello, Renna. Jack.” They nodded to each of them in-turn.

“We were wondering if you wanted to come with us this time?” Jack asked.

Zophiel’s brows rose. “R—really?”

Ren nodded and held out a hand. Zophiel carefully drew closer and took it. The world turned upside-down and they closed their eyes. When their feet hit solid ground, they opened them again.

They were in a huge backyard, where a long set of mis-matched tables and chairs were all pushed together. At the grill, Dean raised his tongs and gave them all a wave.

Jack and Ren went over here every couple days to have dinner with their family, so they wouldn’t lose their sense of community. Today, however, was a big affair.

Mrs. Tran was in the kitchen, feverishly putting together a salad big enough for their large group. Walter was helping her and Ian was watching with an amused look on his face and a cider in his hand. Cas walked past with a tray full of uncooked hamburgers, going out onto the back deck that Dean had built. He went right over to the grill, where Kevin was standing with Dean, a beer in hand. Cas gently put a palm on the small of Dean’s back to silently let him know he was there. Dean glanced back at him and smiled.

Cath sat with her arm around Charlie’s shoulders at one of the tables. Across from them, Jo and Inara laughed at something Ash had just said and Ellen looked on from beside them with a smile. Both versions of Jo had congealed into one when the second version of her passed away from natural causes in her late eighties.

Cas walked down from the back deck of the house to check in on Kelly, who was reclining in a lawn chair beside Sadie. He put a hand on her shoulder, asking if she needed anything. With an adoring smile, Kelly waved him off.

Across the lawn, Bobby and Sam appeared from the woods, having just walked over to Sam and Sadie’s house to see their new renovations. In front of the house, a car pulled up and Donna, Jody, Alex, Kaia, and Claire got out, joining everyone in the backyard.

Zophiel looked out at all of the people in wonder, honored that they’d been asked to join. Cas approached with a smile.

“Zophiel.” He nodded to them once, “Glad to see you took the invitation.”

Zophiel nodded a bit awkwardly and Ren put a hand on their shoulder as she passed. Jack moved first to hug his father, then Ren took her turn. Cas beamed, clapping them both on the back.

Sam and Sadie lived in the woods beside Cas and Dean’s house, where they had two dogs and awaited the arrival of their children. Dean had taken up woodworking like his mother, and built most of he and Cas’s house himself. Sadie had a beautiful big garden in the yard behind their house, where it was surrounded by trees from all different parts of the world. Sam was allowed to take out any book from Zophiel’s library which left him more than content in his retirement.

Soon, they were all sitting down at the table, their food in front of them. At the head, Dean stood, raising his beer. Everyone quieted, turning to look at him.

“To family.” He said, “Now, not everyone could make it today but they’re with us in spirit. I expect I’ll see you all at the next one, too.”

They all cheered raucously, clinking their glasses and bottles together before they dug in. Dean sat down in his chair and glanced to his right, where Cas was already staring at him, a dopey smile on his face. Dean smirked and took his hand on the table.

“I love you.” Cas murmured only loud enough for Dean to hear.

Dean smiled warmly. “I love you, too, Cas.”

A/N: Hello! Holy shit it's done. I can't believe it. That's a bit under a year and a half of working on the same project. I wrote the ending the way we all deserved to have it. Thank you so much for reading, -R (P.S.- don't be shy! If you read this all the way through I'm sure you have thoughts and I'd love to hear them!)

[mattzerella-sticks]

metamorphosis

Chapter 2 (ao3)

Prologue (ao3) (tumblr)

What if, when Jack was born, he stayed a baby?

A retelling of season 13, with a few key differences.

No planned schedule, will update when I finish chapters lol

Chapter 2 - Sam I

           Sam cursed Jack’s aim as he hit him directly on his chest. The pee immediately soaked through the fabric, Sam suffering its unnatural warmth. He blindly groped for anything nearby to shove atop Jack and staunch the flow from his bladder before it spread too far. He gently pressed a motel towel down, Jack giggling all the while as he ruined it much like he did Sam’s shirt. “Seriously?” Sam sighed, “Couldn’t have done this earlier?” Jack answered with more laughter, kicking his feet in the air to punctuate his glee. Seeing his joyful wriggling lessened Sam’s exasperation. “Okay… It was kind of funny,” he told Jack. Then, leaning closer, “Next time, do it when Dean changes you… if he ever changes you.” Sam faltered, smile drooping slightly. He adjusted to cover that momentary lapse, his expression softer. “You done?” Jack stuck his fist in his mouth, babbling around stubby digits. Sam, hesitantly, lifted the towel away from Jack. There’s no active peeing, but the large stain on the towel was not something Sam wanted to see. Dissimilar to his shirt, it’s unsalvageable. “Damn – darn, darn it!”

           Tossing the towel over his shoulder, stain-side up, Sam finished fastening Jack’s diaper. His nose scrunched from the wafting odor, and he audibly gagged because of it. Leaving Jack on the bed, Sam whipped the towel off and dumped it into a waiting trash bin. Then he wrapped his fingers along the bottom hem of his shirt to take it off in one swift move.

           Dean returned partway through this struggle. He whistled, slamming the door behind him. “Stripping for the baby?” he chuckled darkly, his eyes dull and his grin vicious, “Not what I imagined when I told you to go nuts with him…” Dean emptied his pockets onto the room’s lone table, tugging his necktie free when done.

           Sam ignored him, balling his shirt between twitching fingers. “So,” he started, “did you figure out if we’ve got a case or not?” He opened his duffel, zipper ripping through the silence of what he chose not to say.

           Dean shrugged, stepping out of his leather agent shoes, chair held for leverage. “Maybe,” he coughed, “A connection, something…”

           Sam paused, temple creasing from the sudden onset of a migraine. He closed his eyes, grip tightening on the unstained button-down in his hands. “A maybe…” he repeated, quieter, “then you’re not sure?”

           “I’ve got a hunch,” Dean growled, “and we’re not leaving ‘till I at least make certain of it.”

           Closing his eyes, Sam rocked back on his heels. He rubbed his neck, feeling every strain and ache from the past few days weighing on his body. “Of course we aren’t.”

           Dean used the same excuse when they arrived, and with each delivery it became increasingly unflinching and stubborn. During its first appearance, Sam rightfully challenged him. He cornered Dean outside the motel’s lobby, demanding why they pulled off the highway instead of continuing their journey home, to the Bunker. Dean explained, “There’s been a few deaths in town, our M.O.” Sam’s unsure how he learned this. He guessed, during Dean’s shift in the passenger seat, he feigned unconsciousness to scour the web. “Figured we’d scope it out and gank whatever summ’na’bitch’s wreaking havoc.” Sam, exasperated, reminded Dean of the little bundle with immeasurable power somehow asleep in Baby’s backseat despite Dean’s atypical car door slamming during his exit. “What?” Dean asked, his voice a dark and stormy sound that rattled Sam’s bones like lightning, “Dad hunted with you when you were his age. It’ll be fine.”

           Now, hearing about Dean’s ‘hunch’, Sam ground his teeth and refrained from speaking his mind. He told himself that this case, Dean’s attitude, was part of the healing process. Some point down the line, Dean will be in a better place where he wouldn’t have to handle his brother with kid gloves. Only days have passed since they lost their mom, an ally, a virtual stranger, and their best friend. If Sam applied pressure too fast, too hard, he might crack Dean’s already fractured well-being into a larger mess where there’d be no hope of repairing. He shouldn’t take any unnecessary risks with his brother’s well-being.

           “So?” Sam asked, doing up his new shirt, playing along. “What’s this hunch you have?”

           “Well, when I checked the victims’ houses for haunting signs, I came up empty,” Dean said, hopping into his jeans, “Turned my thinking around, started asking if there were any connections between the two stiffs and, apparently, both were seeing the same therapist.” He fastened the button of his jeans, then moved to dig out some shirts. “Some woman named Mia Vallens. They’d been seeing her, separately, because both had – uh… had lost someone in their lives.”

           “What are you thinking then? Revenant? Shifter?”

           “Not sure,” he said, “But that won’t stop me.”

           Sam’s eyes floated behind his eyelids, “Please don’t go in guns blazing.”

           Dean scoffed, thumb lightly brushing the hammer of his gun; unholstered, ever since he started changing outfits. “I’m not that reckless. Thought I’d snoop around, y’know? Get a sense what kind of monster she is before I put a bullet between her eyes. That way I don’t get it wrong and tip her off.” He slipped into an old flannel, worn at the elbows from use, and gestures at his outfit. “You think this is good enough?”

           Sam huffed, “For what?”

           “For therapy?”

           “Pretty sure there isn’t a dress code for therapy,” he snickered, “Is this why you didn’t just go straight there?”

           Dean nodded, “Figured a badge and gun might make her antsy, raise unwanted suspicion. Going in as a new patient’ll help me fly under her radar.” He paused, clearly thinking about what he will say next. He swung his keys around his pointer finger, metal jingling with every spin. “Plus,” he added, “wanted to check in, see if you were ready to join me. United front and all that… going in blind’d be better with two bodies rather than one.”

           “Dean, it’s just therapy.”

           “Don’t remind me.”

           Sam shook his head, glancing at Jack. The young boy watched them with keen interest, golden brown eyes unblinking as they studied them; like he understood what they discussed. Sam discarded this thought in his next breath. He might have ancient power coursing through him, but he’s not even a week old. “You know I can’t,” he started, “Someone has to be here with Jack.” Since Dean refused to do it, Sam’s stayed in the motel for most of this case.

           Dean’s attempt to appear cheerful dispersed like smoke, familiar dreariness scarring his features. “Kid’ll be fine by himself for an hour or two,” he muttered.

           A vein throbbed in his forehead, forcing Sam’s eye to twitch. “He’s not a kid. He’s a baby.”

           “He’s part angel.”

           “That doesn’t change anything,” Sam seethed, “Actually, that makes it more important we don’t let him out of our sight! There’s no telling what he can do, or what might happen if we left him alone for even a second! So, sorry if I can’t run off at the drop of a pin to play hunter because I have more important things to worry about. Things that you should be worrying about, too!”

           Dean recoiled like he’s been slapped, squeezing the keys so hard Sam can see his hand visibly tremble. Regret rose to his ankles and then, as if a dam broke, it’s at his neck and Sam struggled to breathe. He looked from Dean to Jack, the baby’s stare was still trained on Sam like he waited to see what he will say next. Like Sam will have an answer that fixed everything, pleased everyone.

           All Sam could give was a compromise.

           “I’ll come with,” he said, gaze trapped on his feet below, “Jack will, too. That’s the best I can offer.”

           Sam’s resolve stayed firm. He flexed his toes against the carpet as the silence dragged on, Dean obviously warring with himself over whether to accept Sam’s terms or storm out like Sam feared he might. The tension snapped with a high-pitched squeal from Jack, followed by some more clapping that had Dean saying, “Fine. Hurry up, then.” He didn’t lift his head until the door closed behind Dean and it’s him and Jack left in the room.

           Visibly deflating, Sam selfishly took a moment to gather his thoughts. Once he felt a semblance of normalcy, he began gathering what he needed. Sam hurriedly finished dressing, throwing on his jacket and almost tripped shoving his feet into some boots. Then, he returned to what he was doing earlier, helping Jack into his tiny shirt and overalls. Sam set Jack aside in the baby carrier, focusing on assembling the baby bag and slinging it onto his shoulder.

           Dean sat in the driver’s seat, engine running. He revved it as a warning while Sam safely tucked Jack in the back, Sam glaring at Dean’s dead-eyed expression in the rearview. His irritation ebbed by the time he joined Dean up front. The passenger side door barely closed, and Dean hit the pedal. Sam buckled his seatbelt after Dean peeled out of the parking lot.

           They reached the therapist’s office at record speed. During their drive, Sam kept a careful eye on both the speedometer and Jack, his gaze bouncing between the two, ensuring they were where they should be. There were few instances where Dean sped, testing Sam’s patience. But Sam would clear his throat, and the needle rebounded into lower numbers.

           Dean, in an act of revenge for Sam’s nitpicking, abandoned him for the therapist’s office without any offer to help once they parked. Although Sam wondered if it should count, since Sam hadn’t expected Dean to go out of his way and help him, regardless of how Dean caved when it came to bringing Jack. He fleetingly considered this, but ultimately decided it didn’t matter. He needed to hurry.

           Alone, Sam balanced the baby bag and Jack’s carrier in his hands. He chased after Dean, climbing the steps as a man, tall, white and utterly average, descended. They bumped shoulders, Sam mumbling an apology on reflex. He heard the passerby say something while Jack spewed raspberries in response. He didn’t give it more thought than that.

           Sam found Dean near the front desk, angrily slamming on a concierge bell. “C’mon, c’mon…” he grumbled, “it’s way past lunch break.”

           “Dean…” Sam stormed towards his brother, dropping the baby bag as he slammed Dean’s hand atop the ringing bell. “Quit it.”

           “What?” Dean barked, “Not like I’m annoying anyone.” He gestured around the waiting room, sweeping his arm to show Sam all the vacant seats pushed against the walls. “Am I?”

           “Actually, if you rang that bell at least three more times, I’d’ve gotten a headache.” A woman stepped into view, her dark skin glistening under the fluorescent lighting. She wore an oversized, orange turtleneck and a long skirt with pointed boots peeking out at the hem, adorned with rings, a necklace, and a barrette clipped in her afro puff hairdo. She forced a polite expression on her face, pocketing her hands in the folds of her skirt. “Can I help you with anything?”

           “Yeah,” Dean said, “We’re looking for the doc. You know if she’s in?”

           “I do.”

           She walked behind the front desk, ignoring Sam and Dean rather than finish speaking. Dean briefly glanced at Sam before clearing his throat. She stopped rifling through papers, arching her brow. It’s not likely she’ll do more without some prompting. “Well,” Dean growled, “where is she?”

           She huffed, fiddling with one of the rings on her fingers. Sam noted how it, like all the other pieces of her jewelry, was gold. “You’re looking at her,” she said, “I thought that was obvious.”

           “Not really,” Dean said, “I mean, you’re not even wearing a white coat!”

           Whatever expression Sam made Mia mirrored. Jack, meanwhile, giggled and shifted in his carrier, delighted by Dean’s idiocy. Jack’s carrier swung from the force of his mirth, forcing Sam to readjust his grip. As he did that, Sam used his other hand to pinch Dean’s wrist and forced his brother’s attention onto him. “That joke wasn’t funny the first time.” Dean rolled his eyes at Sam, then wretched himself free from Sam’s hold. Sam steered the conversation from there, “Sorry about him. We were here wondering if you might have an opening today?”

           Dean coughed, mumbling to himself. “Looks like she might…” He parried Sam’s scowl with a jerkish smirk.

           Mia glossed past Dean’s comment, folding her arms across her chest as she studied them. “I was actually about to close early,” she said, “had a lot of cancellations and… I’ve got some errands to run” –

           “Please,” Sam tried, leaning far into her personal space as he could without climbing the desk. “My brother was supposed to make an appointment, but with the move and everything it, uh… slipped his mind.” He dialed his puppy dog features to their highest setting, blasting her with his best Labradoodle. “When we left town, our previous therapist said falling back into a routine was the most important thing once we settled. It was hard enough getting him to go the first time, and with the baby I didn’t want him to become an excuse to not go back because we… we were doing really good, before.” Every lie did better when sprinkled with the truth, covering up the bitter taste. From what he saw, Mia ate every word and didn’t gag or wince.

           “Well…” She sighed, smoothing her hands down her sweater, “I guess I can squeeze you in. Come on.”

           Mia led them into the next room, leaving behind the non-descript lobby furniture and peeling yellow wallpaper for a cozier space. Sam scanned the area, noting pictures and degrees hanging on rogue-painted walls alongside other knick-knacks cluttering the space. Other than the door they entered from, the only exits Sam saw were twin windows covered by heavy drapes on either side of a dark fireplace and an unmarked door to the side. He made sure to stay wary of that door, in case uninvited guests might stroll in.

           Sam sat on the edge of a plush sectional, placing Jack beside him. Dean seized the chair nearest Sam, collapsing into it and leaving Mia with the last available chair across from them. They’re separated by a magazine-laden coffee table. “Pretty swanky duds you have here, doc,” Dean told her, poking one of the magazines, “must say I am disappointed there’s not any of those beds that they showed in the movies.”

           “Yes, well, I find a lot of how therapists and therapy is portrayed on film leaves much to be desired…” She shifted, throwing a leg over her knee and laying a notebook she pulled from elsewhere on her lap. “Among other things.” She spoke so quietly, Sam almost missed it. “Anyway,” she cleared her throat, “before we get into our session, I do want to mention that even though I am a therapist, my specialization is in helping patients overcome grief-related trauma relating to deaths of loved ones. Is that okay, Mr…?”

           “Just Sam is fine. And yeah, better than okay, actually,” Sam said, “What finally convinced my brother to finally start therapy is because we lost someone very close to us.” Dean visibly tensed, clawing at the chair’s arms with enough pressure Sam feared he might rip it. Distracted, Sam faltered halfway through his spiel. He recovered enough in his next breath to finish it. “Our mom… she passed.” Hearing about their mom caused Dean to relax considerably, into a familiar apprehension. Sam’s confusion, in response, deepened.

           “I’m sorry for you loss.” The perfunctory statement rolled off her tongue as expected. At least it sounded sincere. “How recently did she pass?”

           Sam grimaced. “Uh… a few months back?”

           “Although,” Dean chuckled, “it still feels like it was only yesterday.” His chest puffed up, goaded by the reproachful glance Sam shot his way. “What? It’s what I’m feeling. And ain’t that what therapy’s all about? Discussing what I’m feeling.”

           “Yes, it is.” Mia scribbled a quick note in her journal, frowning. “However, sharing your feelings is not mandatory.” Dean sunk into his seat, knees bumping against the coffee table. Mia jotted another line to her observations. She pointed at Jack with her pen, “And him? What’s his story?”

           “Jack?” Sam asked. He glanced at the baby, hand reflexively reaching for the carrier’s handle. He paused midway, instead slipping into it to pull Jack’s fist out of his mouth. “We took him in after a… a family friend passed during childbirth.”

           “That’s very unfortunate,” she nodded, “and… coincidental.”

           “Yeah, losing our moms around the same time isn’t the best of things to have in common but…” Sam bit his lower lip, confidence wavering on whether he should finish. The words teetered in his mind, rocking back and forth. He pressed on a side, tipping it over and into existence. “I mean, I guessed that was part of the reason we decided to look after him. I might not remember what it was like, growing up without a mom, but I knew it wasn’t easy for me” –

           “Excuse me,” Mia interrupted, drawing Sam away from Jack to her. He kept his thumb and forefinger looped around Jack’s wrist. “You didn’t grow up with your mom?”

           Sam winced, shrugging in response. He tried tagging Dean in, to help explain, but his brother had a faraway gleam in his eye that matched his childish pout. Sam realized he was on his own for now. “After I was born, she… she left,” Sam told her, “Without a trace one night. My dad he… it devastated him, broke him in some way that he couldn’t get past. Like, up until he died, he refused to believe she left him like that, by choice, and kept going on about how she died, and every day we were alive was for her, to do right by her. And because of this I only knew of our mom through stories he and, sometimes, Dean would share… but then one day Dean he… he happened to run into her.” He rubbed at his neck, head bowed so the fringe of his bangs shielded his eyes. “And she’s back in our lives. Just like that.”

           “How did that make you feel? Having her back?”

           “Weird,” he said, “There’s this woman who says that she’s my mom, and I believed it at first. But then, the more I learned about her, the less it felt like she and the mother I grew up with, the… the ghost of her, were the same person?”

           “It’s common for adults to have difficulty in reconciling the image of the mother in their heads with the person they actually are,” Mia said, “Kids take their parents for granted, a lot of times forgetting that they have a life outside of their children’s concerns, and this continues despite growing out of adolescence.”

           Dean huffed in agreement, “Ain’t that the truth.” Sam tamped down the urge to punch him, to make him behave.

           “So Sam,” Mia pointed with her pen, “did this disconnect affect how you processed your mother’s death?”

           “Uh…” He asked himself the same question. Sam’s brows dipped into a shallow grave above his head. “Maybe,” he answered her, “But not in the way you might think? Like… I missed her, back before, but I didn’t know her. Now I miss her but I… I got to know her? She’s more than my mother, to me. And that’s… I’m happy I got to know her before she died. Still, I feel a little guilty because why should I… she’s my mom, she died, and I shouldn’t be happy, should I?”

           “Have you considered that instead of happiness,” Mia says, “what you’re feeling is closure?”

           “Closure?”

           She planted both feet on the ground, now, bent forward as she expanded on her point. “Your mother was a mystery for most your life. A puzzle with most of the pieces missing. Then, she comes back and with her are those little pieces that complete the picture for you. Suddenly your mother isn’t much of a ghost or an ideal. She’s a person” –

           “So what?” Dean chimed in, “This was some cosmic joke, then? Have her kick up some dust long enough we form a connection with her, fill in a few blanks, and then poof? She’s no longer needed?”

           “It’s unfortunate what happened to your mother,” Mia stressed, good mood tempered by Dean’s outburst, “but comfort can be found in closure. My patients lost people in their lives suddenly, like you did, but there’s a gap in their healing because a lot of times there were words or feelings never expressed that they still clung to, that if they had a few more seconds, they would have gotten off their chests.” She turned to Sam, directing her next question at him. “Is there anything you think wasn’t said between you and your mother before she died?”

           He reflected. Sam parsed through the leaflet of memories he collected of him and his mother, wondering if, within them, there is a moment of regret where he bit his tongue when he shouldn’t have. There were none. “No, I don’t…” he mumbled, “I don’t think there was.” Sam’s lips curled into a tepid smile. “That’s weird.”

           “How so?”

           “I guess I’m not used to closure, is all,” he sighed, “for most of our lives, things and… and people – it all tends to be cut short. Usually, we’ve got to keep our heads up high and move on. Like with…” Sam trailed off, Eileen’s name caught in his teeth. He refused to let Eileen go and swallowed her name into the murky depths of his soul along with the other things he didn’t think about, where he stored everything that was in the way of doing his job. Because that’s what they’re here for, led there by Dean’s hunch. He couldn’t forget that. Mia’s stare burned on his profile, waiting for him to continue. He will be disappointing her. Jack’s tugging on his finger, sticking it in his mouth as he gummed it and guided Sam free from his stupor. Sam forced his mind to settle by wading into safer waters. “That might be another reason why we took Jack in. His mother… we knew how much she’d regret not being there for him. So by giving him a home, a family who will love him… I’m hoping it gives her comfort wherever she is. Or closure, as you might put it.”

           “God,” Dean groaned, slamming his head on the chair’s backboard, “If I have to hear that word one more time, I swear I’m gonna scream.”

           Mia’s journal was open again and rapidly taking notes, her attention diverted towards Dean. “I’m guessing that’s not how you’re feeling about all this, then?”

           “Like what? Like everything’s wrapped up in a neat little bow?”

           “If that’s how you wish to describe it.”

           “Well it’s not,” Dean spat, “It’s a big mess of string that’s tangled with no hope of ever being untangled! In fact, it’s like the more effort we go into untangling it, the messier it gets, and the larger it gets, spreading past us and mucking up everyone else in our lives!”

           Mia didn’t seem fazed by Dean’s tantrum, and Sam wondered if she truly is a monster like Dean suspected. If Sam were in her place, he wouldn’t know how he’d have maintained composure when dealing with his brother acting like a damned ass. There’d be blood splattered everywhere by now. “In my professional experience, many times we believe we’re ‘untangling’ the mess in our lives… it’s actually the opposite.”

           “You saying I did this to myself?”

           “What I’m saying is that… messes in our lives happen because of misunderstandings and miscommunication. We assume something about another person and act according to these assumptions, only to find out those were wrong, and we dig a bigger hole for ourselves. We lie because we believe it’s easier than the truth, and we hold in things we think don’t need to be said because there’s a misbelief they might not matter.”

           “Trust me, doc, things were definitely said,” Dean seethed, crossing his arms. He broke their staring contest, Sam surprised at the momentary flash of hurt that radiated from Dean’s gaze. Dean smothered it immediately, returning with hardened steel. “And maybe things that weren’t said were that way for a good reason, to not rock the boat… or mess up something that was already better than I thought I could have…” He blanched, face paling in realization of what, Sam guessed, he hadn’t meant to say. With this new awareness, Dean won’t give more than he already had. He stayed as he is, frozen in stubbornness.

           Sam wished he would. His forehead pounded, the beat of his heart loud in his eardrums. It didn’t sound like Dean was talking about their mother, but he can’t exactly name who Dean meant with his latest revelation.

           Mia had the same inklings. She’s better prepared, and perfectly distanced, to needle him about it. “Are you dealing with more than your mother’s loss?” she asked, “Did you lose someone else? Or… were you close with Jack’s mother, before she passed?”

           Dean deflated, anger whooshing out of him like a burst balloon. “It’s nothing.”

           “Because if there is something you wish to say, to someone,” Mia says, “I do have methods and exercises you can try that will help you work through these feelings” –

           “I said it’s nothing, okay?” He stood, body rigid and tense like a taut bowstring. “I think we’re done here.”

           Sam rose, too, ready to disagree. The thin press of Dean’s mouth warned Sam he shouldn’t argue. He accepted an early defeat, but in his own way. “Thank you, Doctor Vallens,” he said, offering his hand to her, “I’m sorry about my brother and his… assness, but this was a great session.”

           “I’m used to people like him,” she said, accepting the gesture and pumping his hand twice. Mia moved onto Dean. She’s the bigger person, holding her hand out for a handshake. “If you weren’t too put off by my methods, maybe we can work on what’s bothering you in another session?”

           Dean smiled, seizing her hand. “Trust me, I’m capable of finding that on my own.”

           Mia shouted, reeling backwards. In her haste she drops her journal, too concerned with touching the red welt burning on her hand. “What did you” –

           “Silver bullet,” Dean said, wiggling the ammunition. He uncovered his gun and loaded the bullet back inside it. “Only silver thing I had on me that you wouldn’t notice.” Dean shifted his stance, holding tight to his gun’s handle with a finger hovering near the trigger. “Though I bet you’ll notice it better after I’ve blasted it into your skull.”

           “No, no!” Mia pleaded, stumbling behind her chair, building distance between her and Dean, “You don’t have to do this!”

           “Oh, I think I do,” Dean growled, advancing, “otherwise you’ll just keep going on killing.”

           “What? I’m not – I haven’t killed anyone!”

           “Right, like I’m supposed to believe that.”

           He might not, but Sam did. He leapt between them, quickly disarming Dean. Sam twisted Dean’s wrist until he dropped the gun into Sam’s waiting hand. “Stop it.”

           “What the hell?” Dean yelled at him, massaging his sore wrist, “Sam, what do you even think you’re doing?”

           “Hearing her out,” he said. Sam, on instinct, glanced behind himself at Mia. She hadn’t run. She didn’t flinch when their eyes locked. As they did, Sam saw an apprehensive trust hidden within her eyes. Sam wouldn’t comment on it, to try and ease her fear. He was still a hunter. He still had the gun. His opinion might change, and she might need to spring into defensive mode again when Sam levelled the weapon at her. “You’re not human,” Sam pointed out what’s already obvious.

           Her shoulders tensed. Mia straightened to her full height; her expression now free of any earlier fear. “I’m not.”

           “What are you?”

           “A shifter.”

           “Are you actually a therapist?” Dean asked, an incredulous lilt to his tone. He jerked his thumb at the wall of degrees Sam noticed before. “Or did you shift into this poor doctor’s life after you killed her.”

           “Yes, I am a therapist,” she told them, palpable anger coloring her tone. Dean finally struck a nerve. “These are all mine… went to a lot of trouble getting them. But I did my time, like everyone else.”

           “Except you’re not like everyone else,” Dean said, “are you?” Mia’s lips flattened into a tight line, a refusal to answer. Dean continued, not expecting her to. “Okay, can we shoot her now?”

           “Shut up, Dean.” Sam snapped the safety of the gun on, then tucked it inside his waistband. He directed his next question to Mia, “Do you know why we’re here?”

           “I guess therapy was a cover?” she scoffed, stepping out of her hiding spot. Sam nodded. Mia chuckled low in her throat, shaking her head. “Of course… dammit I should have – I should have known what you were from the moment you walked in… And I didn’t think there’d be any harm in one last session before I left town altogether” –

           “Leaving town?” Dean jumped onto that last statement, clinging to it, “Only guilty people leave, y’know.”

           “This isn’t my fault. Those deaths, they weren’t my fault,” she argued, “I’m a victim in this as much as they are.”

           “Sure, right…” Dean angled his head away from Mia, muttering in Sam’s ear, “Seems like she knows about the deaths, and she’s a shifter. If you keep distracting her, I can sneak the gun out of your pocket and –“

           “No, Dean.”

           “What the hell is wrong with you?”

           “I could ask you the same thing.” A hot wave of fury blistered Dean’s face, transforming the terrain and leaving a barren, ashen wasteland in its trail. Dean stormed away from him but didn’t move far. He hovered by the door to the lobby, fiddling with a wooden statue. Sam let him. That he remained in the room spoke more to his willingness of hearing Mia’s story than anything he’s said this past hour. Sam turned to her, “You were aware of the deaths in town?”

           “They were my patients,” she said, “They’re always my patients.”

           “Always?” Sam asked, “Has this happened before?”

           “In about every town I moved to in the past two years.” Mia sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose as she wandered towards the fireplace. He watched her grab a box of cigarettes and a lighter from atop it. “Mind if I?”

           Sam thought of Jack, about his little lungs. He almost denied her, except Dean cut in and shrugged, “Sure, why not.” Sam glared at him, nodding his head at the carrier. “What? It’s not like it’ll do any damage to him.” He hated that he’s right. Sam silently gestured his assent to Mia.

           “Thanks.”

           “So,” he said as she lit the cigarette and took a long drag off it, “you set up shop in a town, and at some point… your patients start dying and you have to move?”

           “For my patient’s safety,” she explained, “For my safety. From people like you, and… and him.”

           “Him?” Sam asks, “Who’s him?”

           “My ex, Buddy, that’s who.” She tapped cigarette ash into the fireplace, leaning against it as she told her story. “Another shifter I was dating. He was a nice guy, at first, and, well… it’s not like there are a lot of options when you have to peel off your skin every few hours. Besides my mom, he was the only other shifter I ever knew. We started dating during my graduate program and he… he seemed so supportive. Things changed when I actually started practicing.” Mia began pacing in front of the fireplace now, hand holding the cigarette bouncing with every step. “He started complaining that I never had time for him anymore, that I was letting my hobby push him out of my life, and I was caring more for my patients then our safety.”

           “Why would he say that?”

           “Because he was jealous,” she said. Then, briefly, a sheepishness tints her cheeks. “Also, I might have been using my abilities while practicing?”

           Sam’s uneasiness swiftly returned. “What does that mean?”

           “I told you, how a lot of my patients have things and feelings they wished they’d shared with people who were no longer with them. Sometimes… after I noticed how talking about it or grief journaling could only do so much I – I shifted. Became the person who died, but only so that my patients could unburden themselves of what they carried, that’s all.”

           “Right,” Dean chuckled, “and people bought that, no questions asked?”

           “There’s nothing someone won’t believe if it meant a few more seconds with someone they loved.”

           That shut Dean down better than anything she said all afternoon. Sam didn’t worry too much about his brother’s weighty silence, however, pressing her further for information. “Your ex didn’t appreciate that?”

           “No. Our fighting got so bad, I had to break things off. He was getting… violent. A few days later, the first death happened…” She sucked on the cigarette a final time, discarding it into the soot-covered fireplace beside her. “Since then it’s been the same thing over and over. I leave, find somewhere new to practice, he somehow finds me, then finds out who my patients are, and kills them until I start this fucked-up process over again.”

           “Hey,” Sam motioned to the baby carrier, whispering, “Language.”

           “…Sorry.”

           A silence dragged out in the room as Sam digested her story. He considered it from every angle, taking great pains to ensure his instincts weren’t wrong. That Mia told them the truth, and the real monster was somewhere skulking around town, searching for his next kill. Sam was almost convinced. Something did trouble him, though, keeping him from fully believing her. “It said in the police reports that both victims were killed by people who looked like their dead loved ones… how would Buddy’ve known who they were, let alone who to shift into?”

           “I… I don’t know,” Mia said, “I never knew how he found me… he always… I did my best, staying off social media. I don’t even have a damned website for my practice, or a LinkedIn page!”

           Dean snorted, finally rejoining the conversation, “Maybe he tried doing what we did and played your heartstrings like a fiddle.”

           Sam could kick him for that remark, for it being rude and, unfortunately, being completely plausible. He asked Mia, “Could he?”

           “I…” Mia sighed, rubbing a tired hand across her face, “I want to say no, that I wouldn’t be that much of a fool to do that, but… you two made it work.”

           “Okay,” Sam smiled, “that’s a start. Is there anyone who you’re close to that he might’ve taken the form of? Friends? Coworkers?”

           Mia shook her head, “The only people I speak to on a regular basis are my patients, and I’m the only doctor who works here since I, well… also live here, too.”

           “So that front desk out there?” Dean said, scoffing, “that for show? Or do you find time to shift, shrink, and answer calls?”

           “Oh, no, I have an assistant,” Mia told them. Sam shared a glance with Dean, the same idea building within Sam’s mind reflected in his brother’s eyes. Mia interrupted their silent communication, “No, no, it can’t be Jim.”

           “How sure can you be?”

           “He’s on vacation, right now.”

           Dean chuckled, “Because that’s a bulletproof alibi…”

           “How about this then,” she huffed, smirking, slowly approaching him. “I drove him and his boyfriend to the airport because he didn’t want to leave his car in the parking lot for the next two weeks.” Dean deflated, blanching uncomfortably at her words. He ended their contest, stiffly shifting, facing the wall. She further encroached upon his personal space, “How’s that for an alibi?”

           Dean pinched his red ears, mumbling, “…Seems pretty airtight.”

           Sam, once more, ignored Dean’s strange behavior in favor of continuing his line of questioning. “If it’s not your assistant then it has to be a patient. Is there anyone you’ve seen lately who might have been… off? Maybe they were acting differently than you might remember?”

           “Not that I can say, off the top of my head.”

           “Okay…” Sam said, “Do you have notes that we can look at – if, if that’s not an invasion of privacy, or whatever? Maybe we can establish a pattern or – or see whether there’s differences between sessions based on what you wrote?”

           Mia shook her head, squeezing her elbows as she turned from him. “That’d be a serious invasion of privacy I can’t allow, even if I thought it’d be of any help.” Sam hummed a sour note, tearing a page out his mental notebook as he scrapped another idea. Before he returned to the drawing board, Mia gasped and spun back around. “But,” she continued, “I do have something I think will help. Follow me.” Mia brushed past Sam, heading into the lobby.

           Sam trailed behind her, Dean, too, judging from his footsteps. He paused in the doorway, however, remembering Jack and how he shouldn’t leave him alone. As he was about to double back, he bumped into Dean who hissed, “watch out” while shoving him off. Sam’s gaze dipped low, then, hearing a familiar giggle. Jack beamed up at Sam from his carrier; it gently swinging, held in Dean’s hand. Sam glanced at Dean, his older brother knowing well to avoid the other’s gaze. “What?” Dean mumbled, “Shouldn’t we see what Mia’s doing? For all we know, she’s out the door while we dawdle here…”

           Sam surrendered without a fight here, too. He chose his battles and could see how meaningless it’d be to press now. He filed this away, though, to use for a later date.

           They huddled around Mia in the lobby, at the front desk. She clicked through different tabs on her assistant’s computer. “A while back, we had these teens break in and mess the place up searching for cash, or whatever. I didn’t press any charges – nothing was stolen, and all I had to replace was a window and a few magazines – but Jim didn’t want to come back to work unless I installed some type of security system. I didn’t want to hire someone new so… I caved and got cameras. I never usually bother with them, since they’d do me more harm than good. But given all of us know what’s what…”

           “We can use the cameras to figure out which one of your patients is your ex,” Sam finished her thought, laughing, “that’s perfect!” Both Mia and Dean stared at him with twin, strange expressions on their faces. He cleared his throat, “…Sorry.”

           They lapsed into an anxious silence after. Even Jack fell into a quiet lull, entertained by the pacifier Dean stuffed into his mouth when he set him on the desk. Although his focus, like theirs, was trained on the screen. Together, they watched people – regular people, given how their eyes didn’t flare – walk in and out of frame for longer than Sam would have liked. When it seemed as if they hit another dead end, Sam saw Dean storm into view. “This is us,” he said, Sam’s own figure appearing at the same time the man from earlier had.

           Jack clapped his hands, the pacifier spat from his mouth. Almost like the raspberries he blew at the other man. The stranger craned his neck to smile at Jack, giving the camera a clear view of his face.

           A view of his glowing eyes, too.

           “Him,” Sam tapped the screen, “Who is he?”

           “Travis?” Mia sighed, running a tired hand across her face. “Travis Hodgins. He’s someone I’ve been seeing since… since I started my practice. Lost his daughter to cancer, and his marriage to the grief of it. He was… he was getting better…”

           Sam offered her condolences that Mia shrugged off. “Do you know where he lives?” he asked instead.

           “Yeah, it’s not that far from here…”

           Sam looked at Dean, “You want to check it out?”

           “Alone?”

           “Someone has to stay here, in case Buddy comes back,” Sam said, “besides, if he is there, just text me and I’ll find my way to you.”

           Dean didn’t appear too pleased with the orders, but like the soldier he was raised to be, Dean listened regardless. Sam handed Dean his gun and muttered a few quick words of encouragement his brother rebuffed.

           Soon, it was Mia, Sam, and Jack in the lobby, the sun having set some time ago and casting the room into an eerie darkness. They returned to the warmer light of her other room and its many lamps, Mia readying another cigarette while Sam dug through the baby bag for a bottle of milk. He settled beside the carrier, helping Jack onto his lap to better feed him.

           Mia’s shadow stretched over him. She stood behind the couch, nodding at Jack. “Is what you said about him true?” she asked, “Or did you borrow him for the ruse?”

           “He’s ours…” Sam sank into the couch, tilting his head to better meet her guarded stare. “We didn’t know his mom that well, but we were all he had after…” He trailed off, unsure how much he should share. Mia didn’t need to hear the specifics. “After this big… this big blow-out. Cost us his mom… our mom… a few friends” –

           “So you did lose your mom?” she asked, “That wasn’t fake, too?”

           “No…” Sam shifted, discarding the empty bottle on the nearby coffee table. “She died a few days ago, actually.”

           Mia hissed, a harsh cloud of smoke drifting past the space of her clenched teeth. “And you’re here? I heard hunters had to have hard hearts for the job, but that sounds brutal even for me…”

           “It wasn’t my idea to come here,” Sam confessed, “Dean… he kinda hijacked our trip back home. I didn’t like it, but I get it – in a way. He’s coping.”

           “Poorly.”

           “There’re worse things he could be doing, like drinking,” Sam defended his brother, “at least he’s trying to get back to normal. We both are.”

           Mia shrugged in response, drifting towards the fireplace to dump her second cigarette. Sam didn’t mind, busying himself with burping Jack. They existed separately in this space, lost in their own thoughts. Although Sam found himself wanting to reengage with Mia, continuing their conversation so he might better explain their situation. His stomach twisted itself in knots, like he ate bad gas station food, because he felt like she misunderstood him. It was stupid. It was completely unnecessary. It shouldn’t matter what her opinion of them was.

           “It’s not healthy,” he started, slowly rocking Jack in his carrier. Sam watched the little boy as his eyes began to droop, instead of Mia. “You’re right. The fact that Dean and I are still hunting, after everything that’s happened to us – all we lost, all we’ve bled because of the job – we’re insane for waking up the next day and carrying on. But it’s all we know. Our whole lives have been about the hunt. We’ve tried to walk away from it… and it works for a little bit… but somehow we always find ourselves back in the thick of it.” He swallows around a terrifying lump in his throat, of a secret held he never spoke of. “When I was younger, there was nothing I wanted more than to not be a hunter. Now… I don’t see myself doing anything else. This is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

           “And your brother?” Mia asked, “Is this what he wants?”

           Sam, used to speaking for his brother, especially tonight, was at a loss for words. He struggled piecing together an answer. It went down like expired milk. “He’s never said anything to make me doubt otherwise.”

           “I believe that,” she scoffed, “Dean doesn’t seem the chatty type.”

           There’s another half-formed defense waiting in Sam’s arsenal, but his ringing phone reminded Sam where his priorities should be. He answered, “What?”

           “House is empty.”

           “It is?”

           “Except for the rotting corpse of Mr. Hodgins,” he said, “but I don’t think he should count.”

           Sam cursed, bolting upright from his seat. “If he’s not there,” he mumbled, pacing, “then where is he?”

           He heard the gun click before he saw it, felt the cold muzzle of it knock into his head, right above his ear. Mia gasped where she stood, and Dean kept repeating Sam’s name like a siren. Sam glanced to the side, seeing the man from earlier holding the gun. “Put that down,” Buddy ordered, punctuating his threat by shoving the gun even closer.

           Sam nodded, hitting speaker and placing the phone next to Jack’s carrier. As he did, he said, “You roll in from funkytown or something?”

           “Real funny, scumbag,” Buddy chuckled, “why don’t you go and stand next to the bitch who thinks she’s a doctor?” He made it halfway towards Mia when he heard Buddy cluck his tongue at him. “Hold it.” Sam waited, scowling as Buddy’s hand traveled his body, stopping only as he felt the oblong shape of Sam’s gun tucked inside his jacket. Buddy relieved Sam of his weapon, taunting him with it, dangling it in front of his face before dropping it. He kicked Sam’s ass, making him stumble on his path to Mia. “Now get!”

           Buddy hurriedly swarmed he and Mia, crowding them further against the fireplace. The gun wavered. Not enough Sam might risk retaliating, but every few seconds it left him and was trained on Mia. “Look how far you’ve sunken, baby,” Buddy purred, stroking Mia’s chin with the gun, “teaming with hunters? I knew you were a traitor, but I didn’t realize it had gotten this bad.”

           “If anyone’s the traitor, it’s you, Buddy,” Mia said, “breaking my heart. Making me think you were some kind of good guy and not the scuzz you really were.”

           He whipped her hard, the crack reverberating and making Sam’s nerves shake. Blood spurted out of Mia’s nose. She wiped it as she recovered, panting. “You wanna say that again?” Buddy asked.

           Mia bit her tongue, protest visible in her eyes. Buddy readied another blow, but stopped midway when Jack interrupted with a healthy cry. “Well fuck,” he said, as if noticing Jack for the first time, “you’ve done and woke up the baby… happy?”

           “Stop it,” Sam warned, “Don’t you dare go near him.”

           “Or what?” He laughed, inching away from them to where Jack was. “Y’know… I thought hunters had a little more sense than bringing babies on a hunt.” Buddy said. In response, Jack’s voice rose to a pitch that made Sam wince. “Dammit!” Buddy growled, stomping closer to Jack, crouching in front of him. Buddy shook the carrier, “Can you stop that! Can you shut up!” He pointed the gun at Jack, “I swear, if you aren’t quiet in the next second” –

           Sam grabbed the poker almost immediately, slamming it into Buddy with his next breath, powered by adrenaline and instinct. He dropped his weapon to hurl himself at Buddy, next, knocking both them and the couch over. Sam heard the gun fly out of Buddy’s hand, and he punched and punched the other shifter to keep it that way.

           Buddy, anticipating his plan, recovered enough between punches that he dodged one and managed to knock Sam off of him. Sam heard him scramble to his feet, searching for his weapon. Fear, familiar and slick, trickled down his back in millions of droplets of sweat. His mind jolted, quickly, working up an idea that might buy them a few more minutes for Dean to arrive.

           Mia delivered when he couldn’t. “Sam!” she said, drawing his attention. She held his gun and, without saying anything else, she tossed it to him. Sam caught it easily. He aimed for Buddy.

           Except Buddy already had his gun pointed at Sam. “So long, hunter.” Buddy’s finger squeezed the trigger and it fired, the gunshot overpowering Jack’s persistent crying.

           Sam braced for the bullet, wincing preemptively. Instead of his life flashing, all Sam saw was what would happen after. Dean arriving to see Sam failed at stalling Buddy, his lifeless body dripping blood alongside Mia’s and Jack’s, meaning Dean was well and truly alone in the world. Alone because of Sam.

           Except that never happened.

           Sam was still alive when he knew he should be bleeding out. He cracked one eye open, then the other, and noticed the bullet hovering in mid-air, frozen in its path. Suddenly, as if waiting for Sam’s attention, the bullet splintered and exploded into dust. The force from the explosion knocked Buddy backwards, his limp hand dropping the gun again.

           He wasted little time firing two bullets into Buddy’s chest, adding a third for good measure between the eyes.

           Panting, Sam whipped around to Mia. “Are you good?” he asked, advancing.

           Mia, mouth agape and eyes wide, startled free from her trance. “Yeah, yes… I’m good. I…” She never finished her thought, torn, looking at Buddy’s corpse, then to where the bullet exploded.

           Sam carried on and moved to Jack, stepping over the couch to reach him. As he did, he noticed the younger boy’s tantrum lessened since the height of the battle. He appeared tired, his cries weaker with each release. His cheeks were red, and his eyes –

           His eyes were bright gold.

           Sam nearly cursed, stopping himself at the last moment. He extended a hand to Jack, hovering near his face, thinking of the bullet and what Jack’s eyes meant.

           He didn’t dwell on it for long. Dean burst into the room, gun at the ready, his glare darting around the room. “Sam?” he asked, locking eyes with him from the doorway, “What the hell happened in here?”

           Sam didn’t know where he should start.

Tagged List:

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[midnight-watch-committee]

Story 1: what happened to Sheridan

Journalism, second period of the day, 9:34 in the morning., June 22nd, 2018.

There was a tv on in the class room, we always had the news on in there to help us, "a free cheat sheet if you use it right" as Mr. Haddison would call it. Every now and again people would be mildly interested in what was happening: law suits, politics, and murder for the morbid. A sudden gasp escaped from the girl next to me. Her name was Beth and if you saw her, you’d probably expect her to be a computer club kid. A headband kept her bright orange hair that almost looked fake from falling into her rounded, golden framed glasses, she was the youngest person in this room by about five minutes and she made sure you knew when you walked in, her sporadic and adventure seeking personality was as wild as the bright stickers on her laptop and pins on her shirt which told you every fandom she was in. She tapped me quickly on the shoulder, which was met by a cold “I’m busy,” but her insistent tapping eventually made me cave, as I looked up to what was shocking her, I realized why she gasped so loudly. “How do you lose an entire town?!” I said, or rather screamed. My friend Mikey quickly covered my mouth, expecting me to scream more about something or other, but I was more in shock than anything.  Mikey slowly moved his hand off my mouth and wiped it on his letterman jacket, “Could you be any louder?” he asks sarcastically, which I feel tempted to test but decide against it. Sheridan, Wyoming...”it was just there five minutes ago”, according to one of the people interviewed, a man who left town to grab a prescription from a nearby pharmacy. “Hey, Mike, how far is that” I asked. “Not crazy far-Juni, do you have another stupid idea?” he answered, already knowing what I was gonna say, “Just one...” I respond. “Dumb ideas? Like what, going to the crater formerly known as Sheridan? Juni, it’s gone, I’m sure the police are-” Beth started before getting shot a “shut the fuck up” look from Mikey. “What are the cops gonna do? IT’S GONE! If they plan on arresting us for looking at a hole in the ground, I’m sure a court will easily rule in our favor.” I spit out. “Jeez, fine! If you two are going, I’m tagging along to make sure you idiots don’t get hurt.” Beth said whipping out her phone “What time should I expect Mr. Can’t drive for shit to show up?” Mikey let out a chuckle. Not his “I found that funny” chuckle but a forced one, the kind you do when your sister tells a really bad joke but your mom shot you a look. “8:30, ditch the pink, we’re trespassing and we can’t repeat the O’Reily house incident.” She gave me a thumbs up, punched it into her phone and went back to her work.

The Vallen residence, 8:20 at night.

I looked in the mirror one last time, my jet-black hair an absolute mess but not like I’d ever bother fixing it. I decided to settle on a blue baseball cap to hide the rat’s nest. A black sleeveless jacket and torn blue jeans were my only real protection from anyone spotting my pale ass from a mile away. I checked the film on my grandfather’s, well mine now, camera. I gently trailed my finger over the weird markings that surround the outside of the camera. I heard my phone go off from the other room and darted over to it, slipping it in my jacket pocket and making a break for the door, pulling up my black face mask and hoping in the back of Mikey’s dark red pickup truck. He had some cheerleader girl up front with him and they clearly seemed to be taking a while so I gave the roof a few rough slaps. He rolled his window down and snapped “How many times do I have to say stop doing that before you fucking stop?” I rolled my eyes and laid down as we pulled off. I shot Beth a text letting her know we were on our way and took a nap for the 30 minuets it took to get to her place, she hopped in and checked to make sure I was still alive, trying to keep me awake so I was ready to do my job. I was the group photographer, Mike was the muscle and Beth was our pretty face who got everyone’s attention, I’d do more up-front stuff if it wasn’t for my social anxiety so for now that goes to Beth. “Did you check the film?” she asked, to which I nodded. “Good, good...how do I look?” I crack a smile and give her the trademark Beth Thumbs up ™, curving my thumb slightly to copy hers. She rolled her eyes and made sure her recorder was still working. There was something about the way the light hit her and the look in her eyes that left me stunned. Click! I snapped a quick picture of her and waved the film around, checking it. Perfect. I slipped it into my jacket pocket hoping she didn’t see me take it as the truck comes up on what was Sheridan.

Sheridan, Wyoming 8:50 at night.

We slowed to a halt a few inches away from the crater. “God, does he want us to get stuck in there?” I mumbled to Beth before hoping out, tapped on the window and gestured for him to back up. The vehicle rolled back and just as quickly as he reversed, he slammed down on the breaks, most likely giving poor Beth a major concussion. Mikey got out from the front, telling Sherri or Cherri or Cherry or whatever her name was to wait there, Beth started her audio recorder and we started our search. We walked around the perimeter of Former Sheridan, snapping photos of weird shaped rocks that seemed placed by something to hold the dirt back from reaching the middle and flowers that were left in the crater by those who thought everyone there was dead already, sitting in between all those flowers were four glowing blue rocks. “We should go in.” I blurt out, “I mean, when have we ever been scared to go into something? We’ve been in hospitals during outbreaks for Christ's sake!” Beth and Mikey look at each other, have a quick whisper debate that seems to end in Beth winning and sends Mikey back to the truck to grab some climbing equipment and set it up at the spot we were standing near. Beth offered me the rope and I accepted, sliding down all the way to the bottom of the crater, about 15 feet deep. “what the- HEY GUYS GET DOWN HERE!” I shouted, and started snapping pictures of a hole dug into the side of the crater...no, dug is wrong. There were bite marks on the outside of the hole. As if provoked by my camera, a gray, eight legged, slimy, insect shaped...CREATURE came charging out. It’s lack of eyes was amplified by it snarling, four toothed jaw. If you took of the tail of a scorpion and made it the size of a small building, you’d have this thing. The creature started stomping around the crater screeching. Legs brought up dust, chomping it up in the air. “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!” Beth screamed down into the hole and honestly, I didn’t know. I snapped a few more quick photos and broke for the rope, not wanting to be down there any longer. On my way up, I noticed the writing on the outside of the camera glowing, now readable as “Midnight watch committee.” As whatever the fuck that was screeched after us, we hoped in the truck and booked it, leaving cheer girl in wonder as to what we saw down there but we didn’t even have the sanity in that moment to describe it,.

Vallen residence, Midnight.

This thing was like something right out of some old country children’s tale. “Wait a minute...” I thought to myself, I flung open every filing cabinet in the attic, trying to find the old book my grandfather use to read to me from. My mom always hated it and time and time again told him to not read it to me, but he never listened. “The world’s a scary place,” he would say “nothing wrong with teaching her what to expect.” After maybe the 500th cabinet filled with pitch blackness, my hands bumped into the large leather-bound book. I blew the dust off it, remembering the last time I had ever had this read to me was when my mom was still alive. As if like magic, I open the book up to a random page and saw exactly what I was looking for, “The Earth Eater.” My jaw dropped reading everything in there, all the lives it had taken...but what really threw me off was...the book mentioned Sheridan’s disappearance. Did the author know? Was this some kind of joke? I set the book down on my Grandfather’s dark colored oak desk and went to bed, my mind still racing.

Bus ride from Vallen residence to Big Horn high school, 6:15, June 23rd, 2018

It was a cold early morning, but if you were up then, even in the pitch blackness, you would’ve seen the way the ground exploded near us as the Earth Eater rose from the ground, sending the bus flying. It felt like everything happened so quickly yet so slowly at the same time. I got sent flying into the seat next to me, like many others, and hit my arm against the seat hard enough to hear a loud cracking sound. It felt like every single nerve in my body dedicated itself to making me feel nothing but pain in my arm at that moment, as I tried to move it, I realized just how badly it had truly broken. The creature charged toward the bus, its none existent eyes locked on me I imagine, and for one last desperate attempt to make a story out of this, I pointed my camera at it the best I could through a window. A soft Click! Filled the air, followed by a vrrr as the camera pushed out a Polaroid, by the time the photo had made it to me, Earth Eater was gone, back to maybe one day return from whence it went, or maybe not at all.

[alphawave-writes]

Evil actions and good intentions chapter 9: Deja Vu

Synopsis: Talon keeps Sigma captive, revealing their plans. With the help of an unexpected ally, Sigma makes his escape. But will he be able to escape with Harold?

Read it below or find it on AO3. If you’re into Sigrold, join my Sigrold discord server. We’re planning on making the first ever ‘Sigrold week’. More details will be out soon.

-

Sigma wakes up in a padded room with a solitary door and no windows. The only light is from the single lamp above his head. The room is tiny, a square box that will barely fit his body if he were to lay on the ground, except he’s not lying on the ground. He’s chained to a wall, shackles made of metal and electronics enclosed around his wrists and ankles, their discordant tune the only noise that can be heard amidst the unsetting quiet.

He screams and yells, desperate to break free, but as soon as he attempts to bend gravity to his will, the shackles light up and pain shoots through his body. The door is made of the strongest steel, no other furniture in sight for him to manipulate. He tries to make the hyperspheres ricochet and hit his shackles, but all it does is shoot electricity up through his spine and shriek until he can taste copper in his mouth. Gravity is no longer his to harness.

No one will hear his screams. This room, the shackles on his limbs, the desolate loneliness, it’s utterly familiar in all the wrong ways. The pieces of his mind threaten to crack, exposing the glue that’s kept them together all this time. It’s taken him a long time to collect all the pieces. If he loses himself this time, he’s not sure he will be able to find himself again.

So he tries to go through his mental exercises. Craft songs, remember equations, embrace the universe and the beyond. Don’t think about the shackles digging into his skin and the sandpaper texture of his dry tongue. Don’t think about what they’re doing to Harold. Don’t think about Harold. Don’t think about Harold.

Tears drip down onto the padded cushion floor before he suddenly grits his teeth. “Hold it together,” he rasps to himself, a desperate attempt to keep his emotions in check. “Y-you have to hold it together.”

But it’s no use. He remembers the way Harold hung limply in his arms after the last Talon mission like a corpse. He remembers the angry reprimanding Harold gave him after the Tempest attack, when he almost lost himself to the violence. He remembers the tenderness in Harold’s touch as they finally gave in to each other, succumbing to the will of the universe. He sobs loudly, staining the floors with his tears until his eyes are red and he’s too tired to cry. Sigma falls into a restless, dreamless sleep that lasts far too long and ends far too quickly.

A distinct metal clang wakes him from his slumber. Lethargically, he raises his head as the heavy bolts of the door slowly screw open, revealing a single person flanked by bodyguards. It’s not Moira, it’s not Satya, it’s not even the ghost of Dr. Tempest Williams. Instead, it’s a distinctly male figure, dressed up in a clean suit of purples and whites. The colours of Vishkar.

Sanjay Korpal smiles in a friendly manner, like he’s meeting with a business partner. His arms are behind his back when the door opens, though he flashes his hands up to reveal that they are empty.

“You know, it is such a pity you are kept like this,” Sanjay says without a hint of irony or cruelty. “Like a chained, rabid animal. You shouldn’t be kept like this, you are a human being. You are a scientist.”

“I am not a scientist,” Sigma growls, straining against his restraints. A bolt of electricity goes through him. He howls in agony.

Sanjay frowns. “No, I suppose not. You are better than that. You have done the impossible. You have created a micro black hole. You have harnessed gravity. Your research alone has given us the ability to live on the moon. You are more than a scientist.” His dark eyes flicker. “But a scientist is ultimately what Dr. Winston is, no?”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HAROLD?” He yells.

“Me? I did nothing. But my associates—or should I say our associates—they are keeping him safe. But not for long.”

“If you dare touch a hair on his head—”

“You are not in a position to bargain,” Sanjay sneers, his true colours flashing for just a second before he composes himself. “But perhaps we can come to a deal. You have something we want. And it seems we have something you want.”

Sigma stares into Sanjay’s face for several seconds. Eventually his head drops, defeated. Sanjay sees this as a sign to continue.

“We can keep Dr. Winston alive. No one will touch him. No one will do anything unless he asks. He’ll live the rest of his natural life without fear or worry. But I’ll only do this if you give me the truth. You just have to tell us what we need to hear. Is that clear?”

Sigma scowls but Sanjay shoots him a dangerous look. With a grunt, he slowly nods his head.

“Good,” Sanjay smiles. “Now, I assume you are aware of Dr. Winston’s research?”

“Metabonomic studies of microgravity on HeLa cells,” Sigma rattles from memory. He feels the need to explain himself but he successfully quells it. Sanjay does not deserve an explanation.

“I mean his real research.”

Sigma’s brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

“Now don’t give me that, we all know that’s not entirely true. You surely must know.”

“Met de deur in huis vallen,” Sigma snapped. “Get to the point.”

“The genetic therapy he administered. The nanobots. Did you really think a man like him would inject it into his systems and forget about it? I’ve heard he’d been continuing his research, experimenting on them, perfecting them.” Sanjay’s smile turns insincere. “The nanobots are respirocytes, aren’t they?”

Sigma’s eyes widen. He remembered Harold talking about them long ago, back when they were both working on Horizon One. They were swapping stories about how they were invited to work with Lucheng Interstellar on the Horizon project. He said that he had developed the gravitational device that allowed for Earth-level gravity on the lunar base. Harold said his team had developed the respirocytes and modified them for space travel. All of the gorillas had been injected with them, to be carefully monitored over the coming years. He never pretended to understand medical nanotechnology, but Harold’s face lit up like the stars when he spoke of his research. In the present, Sigma feels a gnawing, foreboding ache in his chest.

“I did my research on them,” Sanjay continues. “Artificial red blood cells that can absorb nitrogen and carry 2000 times more oxygen than normal. Motion sickness will be eliminated. Fluctuating gravitational pressures will have no ill effect. In one breath, you could breathe for up to four hours. They’ve existed as a concept for a hundred years until Dr. Winston figured out how to create them. That’s what he gave the gorillas, didn’t he? That’s how he survived.”

Sigma turned his head away. “I don’t know anything about the nanobots.”

“Don’t lie to me. Or do you really not care for your friend’s life?”

“I’m telling you the truth. I am an astrophysicist. Nanorobotics is outside of my field. Harold didn’t mention anything to me about how they work.”

Sanjay takes a few seconds to stare at Sigma before his eyes shift in colour, revealing their electronic origins. His irises widen, a tiny red laser staring into Sigma’s soul before he blinks, and his eyes return to normal. Sanjay frowns. “You really do not know. What a shame.”

A cold sweat runs down Sigma’s back. The dark whispers return, showing them the invisible notes that connects his body to Sanjay’s, thin and brittle, ready to snap.

“Why…” Sigma gulps, “…why are you asking me about Harold? Why don’t you talk to him yourself?”

“He’s a bit incapacitated at the moment. Probably will be for a long while now.”

Sigma can feel his throat constrict tightly as every horrible possibility flickers through his mind. “W-what did you do to him?” He rasps.

“Nanobots are an awfully tricky thing to take out of a body. We had to take a lot of blood out, but if we can figure out the secret of the nanobot’s function, anybody can become invincible. But Dr. O'deorain thinks we can go further than that. What if they can pass the blood brain barrier? What if we are able to control a person’s body through these nanobots? To control both the mind and the body of a single person, to make the ultimate soldier, a living weapon far stronger than even you. Exactly the thing we need to continue Talon’s plans.”

Sigma thrashes against his restraints, trying to pull his limbs free. Searing pain shoots up his body, making his eyes water in agony, but he has to escape, if only to get his hands around Sanjay’s neck and squeeze tightly. If only so he will feel Harold’s pain.

“I’ll admit, I was always curious if you would ever replicate your accident and remake the black hole. It would have been a very powerful tool, but Dr. Winston has something that can beat even gravity.”

One of the bodyguards hands Sanjay a strange looking weapon, identical to the one Satya used. Casually he flicks through the settings, stopping at the one that says ‘kill’. Sigma can hear the wails of the universe ringing in his ears, shrill violins shrieking to the beat of his heart. He tries to fight, but the bonds remain true. Without his powers he’s weak and old. He closes his eyes and is reminded of the utter insignificance of his life in the grand schemes of the cruel, dark universe.

“You have outlived your usefulness, Sigma,” Sanjay utters.

“Not so fast,” a womanly voice chirps.

It all happens too fast for Sigma to comprehend. One second he’s staring into the glowing vortex of a ball of pure hardlight, the next there are incapacitated bodies by his feet. Tracer stomps her foot on the weapon, but it doesn’t break. With a roll of her eyes, she whips out her pulse pistols, making it explode into smithereens.

Their gazes connect for a second. It’s lightning fast, but Sigma thinks he sees the curl of a bittersweet smile. Then, she’s zipping towards him in a trail of blue lightning, undoing his restraints one by one. He drops to the floor, rubbing his sore wrists and aching back. He hears the soft discordant chords of the universe as his powers return. He's floating once more.

“Sorry I’m late, but we gotta get going, Doc,” Tracer says.

He can only stare at her wide-eyed, a million questions buzzing through his mind. His voice could only speak a few into existence. “Why…why did you save me? How did you find me?”

“Winston gave me the heads up,” she says. “As for the latter question, well, I got some help.”

From behind the doorway, Satya appears, still wearing her cyan dress. Her lips are pressed tight and her brows are permanently furrowed in shame. She does not look at him as she hands him a pair of very familiar gauntlets, confiscated from his person between the library attack and when he first awoke. He slips them on one at a time, flexing his fingers. They are heavy and unwieldy, but with the help of gravity, he adjusts their weight. With a wave of his wrist, the experimental barrier flickers in and out of existence.

“That is Vishkar technology,” Satya says quietly, staring at the gauntlets. “I helped developed the first prototype for the barrier a long time ago, before they streamlined it for civilian use. I recognized them when we first met, but they told me I was mistaken, that it was merely a coincidence. And I believed them, I believed everything they told me until they said you were a criminal, bent on spreading chaos. They wanted me to kill you, but I showed you mercy.” She shakes her head as she stares at her feet. “What a fool I was to believe such lies.”

She doesn’t say any more than that. Sigma suspects it’s her form of an apology, and her presence is her way to atone for her mistakes, but he does not dare say anything. Maybe later, when they are safe, when they are out of this wretched place.

“Sym’s got a teleporter,” Tracer says. “We gotta get going now.”

“But what about Harold?” Sigma asks.

“He is deep within the facilities,” Satya replies. “We have less than a minute to get out of here before the alarm sounds. Time is of the essence.” She flashes him a sorrowful look.

A wave of panic fills his lungs. “I cannot abandon him.”

“We will rescue him another day, but it is not this day.”

“I will not go without him.”

“If you try to rescue him now, you will die.”

“Then I will die trying!” He shouts.

Satya opens her mouth to disagree, but she’s interrupted by the sounds of numerous alarms going off. The hallway outside is tainted in spinning red lights. A small squadron of guards approach the entrance but Sigma raises a chunk of the floor with his powers and slams it into them in one fell swoop. They all fall unconscious, weapons rattling harmlessly on the floor.

Satya frowns. “We have missed our opportunity for escape.”

“No worries, love,” Tracer places a hand on Satya’s hand before zipping forward. “Guess we go for plan B now," she winks at him. Sigma nods, summoning the hyperspheres in his hand.

He follows Tracer as she sprints forward, dispatching waves of guards in their way. A part of him wonders if Satya will join him or not but he hears the melodic click of heeled boots on the tiled floors as Satya follows shortly behind, zapping at any who dare flank them from behind. The hallways are cramped and tiny, and there are no identifying markers to orient him, but with the flashing red lights and the sounds of gunfire, it reminds him all too much of the government facility he escaped from years ago.

It’s all cyclical, isn’t it? The people who save him eventually become his captors. First with the people who rescued him from the ISS, and now Talon. Who’s to say Tracer and Satya won’t betray him in the future?

He grits his teeth as the voices get louder in his head, heightened by the vivid images of his previous escape filtering into his head. The longer he takes to find Harold, the more lives he is forced to take. The more lives he takes, the more he risks losing himself to the violence. He doesn’t want to succumb, not if it means losing his mind. Not if it means Harold will look at him with such horror and anger.

They race through, bodies left in their wake, until Tracer stops at a door. There’s a tiny window, showing that it has been barricaded from the other side. With a grunt, Sigma raises his hands, the door flying off its hinges, shoving the barricaded objects out of the way. He forces his way through before Tracer has a chance to react.

It’s not a room, Sigma realizes, but a wing to another area. In front of him are dozens of medical beds, all with state of the art medical equipment by their side. They are all empty except for one, where a mixture of doctors and guards stand watch. They all train their weapons on him, but he doesn’t react. His eyes are on the figure lying on the bed, strapped in tightly so they cannot escape.

“Harold!”

It’s not a man lying on that bed but a corpse, Sigma can’t help but think. Harold’s skin is shriveled and pale, dark blood vessels staining his face and arms. There are even more wires and tubes on his person connected to the machines at his bedside. They’re pumping golden liquid away from his body, taking away his life essence. The worst thing about it is Harold is alive and he is conscious. His raspy breaths can be heard as he takes in desperate breath after breath. His closed eyes open microscopically, blinking weakly against the harsh light, dark irises staring back into Siebren’s blue.

From the other two hallways more soldiers shuffle in, guns focused on the trio. He feels Tracer and Satya press close to his back, weapons on the ready.

“We’re surrounded,” Tracer says, her peppy tone faltering.

Satya is mumbling something in Hindi, her fingers weaving intricate patterns of hard light. Turrets surround their feet, keeping back any who attempt to come close. “We cannot hold them off for long,” Satya states.

Shakily, Harold slowly raises his hand off his side. It jitters with every movement as he points it to the machines at his bedside. His voice is a harsh croak, inaudible over the alarms and the shouts and the universe’s whispers, but Sigma can just make out the words. “Injector…health…light…”

In the corner of his eye Sigma spies Harold’s jet injector, a cannister of golden liquid still inside. The universe croons their message into his ears as time slows down. For once, Sigma understands what it is trying to tell him. Release me, it croons. Let me be free, and I shall give you the power to save him. Give up your body and soul and they shall be safe.

Sigma doesn't hesitate as he allows the universe’s song to flow through him. Melodies and chords rise within his body as everyone begins to float in the air. In that moment it is like he has perfect pitch, able to pinpoint the discordant notes and adjust them to his liking. With a wave of his hand he finetunes the backing instruments, rewrites the chorus, adds in the screams of shock and terror around him. The music gets louder, building up and up until it has reached its peak.

Sigma sees the horror in everybody’s expression as they clasp their hands over their ears and knows in that fleeting moment that everyone can hear the universe’s melody. In an instant, beautiful yet destructive, the black hole that destroyed his life appears in his hands once again.

Nothing will ever be the same, his younger self echoes in his mind, the last words to come out of his mouth before Siebren de Kuiper vanished from the Earth and Sigma rose to take his place.

Everything is pulled into the black hole. The beds, the machines, the people, they are sucked in one by one, making the black hole grow bigger and bigger for everything bit of matter it consumes. Tracer and Satya hold onto the doors and walls as they desperately stop themselves from getting sucked in. Harold can only struggle wildly as he tries to escape his bonds. Sigma himself is unaffected. He is the conductor, the composer, and the performer all at once. Math and music have melded together until they are one and the same. Chords are equations, lyrics are numbers. He weaves them together, until they are at perfect harmony.

All of the weapons and guards have been sucked in to the black hole, but it continues to grow. The machines connected to Harold’s body strain as they tug at his limbs before disconnecting with a vicious pop, spiraling into the black hole. He gasps loudly, scrambling to cut himself loose from his bindings. Tracer blinks forward, desperate to help, but the bed moves beneath their feet, slowly pulling them both in.

“Doc!” Tracer screams.

Sigma can’t hear her. The black hole is growing massively out of control, taking up most of the room. At this rate it will become bigger than the building itself but the universe wants more. Its appetite is endless. It won’t be satisfied until everything is consumed.

Tracer frees Harold from his bindings. He weakly grasps at the jet injector before it can be sucked in, fingers barely enclosing around the handle. He aims it at his arm and squeezes the trigger. In an instant, his skin returning to normal, his eyes aglow. Bathed in radiant light, he looks like a god, or an alien. An entity that does not come from Earth.

Satya has conjured handholds out of hardlight but she is slipping. “I cannot hold on!”

“Sym!”

The black hole wants to consume Sigma. It wants him. He is the one that released it from its confines, and it will gift him every single desire he wants as reward if he lets himself get consumed by it completely. It tells him its tantalizing secrets, of the multiverse and the holistic strings that attach everything to everyone, of every possible way gravity can be unshackled and be his to command as he pleases. It wants him, and for a price it shall reward him with treasures beyond human perception. He just has to submit fully to the universe and let himself get sucked in past the event horizon and join the other lives that have succumbed to the nothingness. The offer is beyond tempting.

“Siebren!” Harold shouts.

Just like that, the world comes crashing down on Sigma’s shoulders. Clarity returns, and in that moment he now sees the black hole for the horrible monstrosity it truly is. He tries to wave it away, but it’s too late. It continues to grow. The song goes on. He’s no longer the conductor. The black hole is no longer his to harness.

“Siebren!”

“I-I can’t make it stop!”

The black hole bubbles out of control, losing its shape, unable to maintain its form. Like the dying moments of a star before a supernova, it’s gorgeous and tragic all the same as it jitters violently, expanding and contracting, emitting waves of radiation that threaten to burn his skin. Sigma can do nothing but watch. It shrinks so small it can no longer be visible before a blast of searing hot energy ripples through his body.

Suddenly there’s a blinding light that engulfs the room, warm and safe, and then the music stops. The black hole fades away, leaving behind only rubble. The entire room has collapsed, the heat burning the furniture and walls to ash, leaving no trace of their existence. A path to the outside has been unveiled past the billowing smoke clouds, showing the lush evergreen grass and the purple skies dancing amidst the setting sun. He shouldn’t be alive, but he is. When the smoke fades away, he sees that the four of them are all safe.

Harold gasps as his glowing eyes fade back into darkness. He collapses on the floor, the golden light retreating back into his body, his skin slowly regaining colour. Sigma approaches him carefully, kneeling down to press a hand on his shoulder. Harold’s lips press into a tired, thin-lipped smile.

“Never…do that…again…” Harold says in between breaths.

Tears sting Sigma’s eyes, a bittersweet smile growing on his face as he presses a chaste kiss to Harold’s lips. Dark eyes widen for just a second before he leans forward, kissing back. It lasts only a second, too fleeting to truly appreciate the moment, but it’s enough to remind him that they are alive and they are together.

“You saved me,” Sigma whispers.

“You saved me,” Harold counters. His nose crinkles in mock disgust but his lips pull into a smirk. “You stink.”

“And you look horrible." His hands rub tenderly over Harold's arms, sweeping away the soot and grime.

Tracer approaches them with the widest grin. “Adorable as this is, Air Tracer’s back online and the next flight is now! We gotta get out of here.”

“Perhaps now you shall take my teleporter,” Satya quips, her fingers making intricate patterns once again as the teleporter base blossoms by her feet. Her tone is still sharp, but her lips curl up into a sly almost-smile. It’s her first joke, and it will also probably be her last.

Tracer leads the four of them away from the wreckage and up to a helipad near an abandoned port. Her airship does not look all that different from the others, but as she preps it and goes through the motions with methodic familiarity, its true power begins to reveal itself. There’s no one around that night. The cold evening wind bellows beneath Sigma’s feet, and for once in his life he curses not having shoes on. Harold wraps an arm around his waist, pretending to shiver when really he is just looking for an excuse to hold Sigma close. Sigma in turn wraps his arm around Harold's shoulder, pulling him closer.

The main doors slowly open, sliding down to create a ramp. The interior is lightly furnished with bolted chairs and a mini-basketball hoop and it’s all very homely unlike the stark bleakness of the Talon airships. Harold is the first to step in, a robotic noise whirring softly.

“Welcome, Dr. Harold Winston,” the voice chimes.

“That’s Athena,” Tracers calls from the cockpit. “Overwatch AI. A lovely gal, really. You’ll like her.”

Harold rubs the back of his head sheepishly, gazing up to stare at the many cameras. “Can you call me Harold instead?”

“Certainly,” Athena replies. “Would you prefer I call you by different pronouns as well?”

“No, that’s fine.”

Harold makes himself comfortable on the plush cushions, settling in quickly. It takes him a few moments before he notices that neither Sigma nor Satya have joined him.

“Come on, Sym,” Tracer calls out. “Get in. You’re part of us now.”

Satya pauses for a few seconds, unfurling her fist right in front of her. In her hand is a small blank card half the size of her palm, the Overwatch symbol crudely painted in marker pen alongside Tracer’s real name. The item Tracer handed her earlier, Sigma realizes.

“I cannot join you,” Satya whispers. “I have betrayed you all. I have betrayed Vishkar. I see now that it is my very presence that brings about such disorder.”

Tracer hops away from the controls and blinks over. Her smile is tight but genuine as she glances down at the card. “You know why I gave that to you?”

“You want to recruit me.”

Tracer nods. “The world needs more heroes, now more than ever.”

“And you think I have the makings to be a hero?” Satya says incredulously.

“Everybody has the potential,” Tracer says. “It’s just a matter of choosing to take action. Just have to take that first step.”

The words are clearly meant for Satya but it resonates deep within Sigma. Like a gong has been sounded within his chest, spreading vibrations down his body. Harold stares at him without a word. They don’t need words or actions anymore to communicate. Just the silent transmission of their thoughts through a simple glance.

He wants to tell Harold his darkest fears. He wants to tell Harold that he’s dangerous, that he’s one step away from losing him to the universe’s destructive desires. For as long as he’s kept his fragile mind together, he knows he is a living weapon, waiting for someone to pull the trigger and detonate the world and realise Talon’s awful desires. But now he realizes that he’s not the only one. Harold’s abilities are just as powerful, if not more so. In the wrong hands, Harold can be far more dangerous than Sigma ever will be. Talon seems to agree, if Sanjay Korpal is to be believed.

For as long as Harold has been by his side again, Sigma thought he will only bring Harold pain and death. He still thinks it now, but perhaps together, with their combined talents and abilities, something new can be synthesized. A new substance that turns the pain and sorrow into something happier, more peaceful. A chemical bond that can not be broken by anything. Not even gravity.

The first step is the hardest, but it is also the most rewarding when he finally enters the craft and sees Harold smile warmly at him, relief and joy caressing his cheeks. He sits down next to him, trying and failing to hide a bashful smile. A few seconds later, heels click on the hard floor as Satya takes a seat opposite them, also failing to hide an anxious smile of her own.

Tracer blinks back up to the cockpit, starts the engine, and within minutes they are rising from the ground. Oasis gets smaller and smaller until the people can no longer be seen, and the buildings are just a bunch of shapes sticking out of the desert. Sometime during their ascent Harold leans his head over Sigma’s shoulder. Under the table, he reaches for Sigma’s hand, entwining their fingers together. His eyes close, his expression almost peaceful.

It’s absolutely obvious what he’s doing, to the point that Satya hides a quiet chuckle behind her hand, but Sigma pays her little heed. He leans his head on top of Harold’s and lets his own eyes drift closed. All of a sudden he’s painfully aware of the weight of the world on his shoulders, leaving him fatigued and sore.

“Next stop: Watchpoint Gibraltar,” Athena announces over the speakers.

“Next stop: Winston,” Harold murmurs under his breath, voice crackling with sleep.

The circumstances of their escape are far too similar to when Talon broke him out of the government facility. A small group of three, saving him from capture when he doesn't deserve it, saving him even though they know exactly what he's capable of. Even now Sigma has his concerns about Overwatch, if they will betray him like so many others have betrayed him. But there is one thing different this time. Harold is by his side, tired and broken but safe. He is absolutely sure that Harold will never betray him.

[daughter-of-the-prophet]

Aveline Vallen (TV Tropes)

Action Girl: Hell yes!

Amazonian Beauty: So far, she's the most muscular woman in the Dragon Age franchise (or any other BioWare franchise) to date, but that's not to say she doesn't have a feminine figure. It's really only seen in the prologue, however.

Babies Ever After: Hints that she regrets never having children with Wesley. After she marries Donnic, separate conversations with Isabela and Fenris reveal that they are considering starting a family in the near future.

Aveline and Donnic eventually have a daughter whom they named after Areida Hawke, Aveline's dear friend who brought her and Donnic.

Badass Normal: Deserves special mention; see Establishing Character Moment below.

Battle Couple: With Wesley and later, Donnic. She definitely prefers someone with whom she can be Back-to-Back Badasses.

Beauty, Brains and Brawn: In a trio with Areida and Bethany, Aveline is the Brawn. She's tall and muscular, skilled with sword and shield, and works as a city guard. The others sometimes make jokes about her being able to lift a cow.

Berserk Button: As mentioned below, do NOT question her loyalty or accuse her of coddling her guards.

Big Good: To Kirkwall in Inquisition, after Areida is forced to leave town. Varric notes that "Kirkwall would probably fall into the sea if she ever quit her job."

Big Sister Mentor: Has some shades of this for Areida and Bethany especially. Some cut-dialogues refer to her cornering most of the party and getting them to practice swordsmanship with her (including the mages) and criticizing their techniques.

Breast Plate: Initially played straight during the prologue sequence, in which she sports form-fitting leather armor. Averted for the rest of the story - the metal plate the guards wear is the same general shape for both men and women, giving Aveline no more chances to show off her assets.

Cannot Spit It Out: Towards Donnic. She tries courting him in more subtle ways, but her methods seem to make sense only to her. One of Aveline's ways of trying to court Donnic causes him to mistakenly conclude that Areida is the one awkwardly hitting on him.

Insane Troll Logic: Eventually, Aveline's efforts to woo Donnic get so bad that even when she does explain the reasoning behind her actions, Areida can't argue directly with them because they make no sense.

The Captain: Served as an officer in the Fereldan Army at Ostagar, and later becomes Captain of the Kirkwall City Guard.

The Champion: To the Hawke family during their first year in Kirkwall. She claims it's just to keep Areida out of trouble.

City Guards: Joins the Kirkwall guard after fleeing Ferelden and is promoted to Captain of the Guard after a mission where she investigates her superior's corruption.

Clear My Name: In Act 3, Cullen alerts Areida that Aveline is accused of coddling her men, and urges her to speak with Aveline and clear up the issue. Aveline takes the accusation extremely personally and goes on a bit of a rampage to settle the matter. See Cowboy Cop, below.

Comically Serious: Especially when paired with Varric and Isabela.

Cowboy Cop: Even as Da Chief, she has no problem telling authority where to shove it and will bend the rules for the sake of her friends.

However, do not ever question whether she is going soft on the men under her command and coddling certain individuals (Donnic). When the Templars force Areida to investigate her on this in Act 3, they set out to prove that Donnic is doing the same routes as the other men, if not more dangerous, and most of her men are fighting for their lives twice a week to keep Kirkwall safe.

Da Chief: Eventually reaches this position on the Guard.

Defector from Decadence: Aveline's mysterious father. "Orlais has a game. He wouldn't play it. I never cared to ask further."

Depending on the Artist: Her official art is... considerably more mannish when compared to her in-story model.

Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: During the Prologue and on Sundermount in Act 1, Aveline appears to be the only person in the group who actually recognises that talking to the Witch of the Wilds is not something any sane person would want to do.

Drill Sergeant Nasty: Borderline; she trains with each guard individually and makes certain that they know what they are doing. They certainly think that it's Training from Hell. She bonds with each of the guards as well, which takes the edge off of it.

She also asks Areida to allow her to have her dog, Maximus, help her train, to see if her people can handle a "good old-fashioned Mabari charge." Brings about a Pet the Dog moment (almost literally) later, as she rewards Maximus with some contraband mutton that was seized

Establishing Character Moment: One of the first things she does is tackle a darkspawn that severely wounded Wesley and punch it into submission before lever-cutting its head off with its own sword. She proceeds to fight the rest of the horde with the intention of saving her husband or dying with him.

Expose the Villain, Get His Job: Her personal quest in Act 1.

Failure Knight: Her sometimes obsessive need to protect everyone seems to be the reason she latches onto looking after the Hawke family. It is implied to have largely stemmed from her guilt at being unable to save Wesley. 

Fantastic Racism: A much more subtle and realistic (and likely unintentional) example than most, but she doesn't see any issue with elves being segregated into impoverished ghettos, nor elves being forced to sleep in stables and out-buildings (just like farm animals) in towns too small to fit an alienage, and seems mildly surprised when Merrill (an elven companion) gets upset to hear it.

She also takes her time looking to the "rumors" of one of her guards raping an elven woman, but immediately cracks down on the brothers of the alleged rape victim (also the ones who accused him) when they got tired of waiting for her to do anything about it and killed him.  

Femininity Failure: She gets teased about being "mannish" by hard-drinking, hard-fucking, foul-mouthed Isabela. That's how badly she fails at femininity. That said, it doesn't usually bother or cause any trouble for her, but it does prompt her personal quest in the second act where she needs help getting the guy she's interested in to even realise that she's a woman.

Fire-Forged Friends: At the start of the story, she bonds with the Hawke family when they fight their way out of Lothering together.

Good People Have Good Sex: After Aveline marries Donnic, Isabela offers some tips on how they can spice up their sex life. Aveline lets her know Donnic needs no help in that department.

Hair-Trigger Temper: At least where card games are concerned, according to Fenris and Donnic.

Happily Married: With Wesley before the beginning of the story. Later with Donnic.

Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Areida.

Hollywood Atheist: Averted; Aveline has no issue with the Chantry or those who believe in the Maker (she even married a Templar), but she doesn't seem to believe herself. She says that she thinks the Chant is lovely, but perhaps that is all it needs to be.

Honorary Aunt: Like Isabela, Aveline becomes an Aunt like figure towards Anders and Areida's children. They call her "Aunt Aveline".

Hypocrite: The reason she gives for pursuing the elven vigilantes is "they took the law into their own hands," yet she tolerates Areida taking the law into her own hands every day, and potentially does it herself when she joins Areida on missions.

I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Wesley's death remains a sore spot for her for a good half of the story, partially because she feels she should have been able to prevent it. Her fear of losing anything else drives many of her actions throughout the story.

Idiot Ball: Played for Laughs. She's a bright, talented, and quick-thinking guardswoman... but her intelligence plummets when it comes to dealing with Donnic. Case in point? While trying to be romantic with him, she turns it into a conversation about the sharpness of swords.

Played for Drama when she refuses to look into the cases of kidnapped Hightown women, which contributes to Leandra being kidnapping and murdered by the same serial killer, something she denies any responsibility for afterward.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As strict as she can be and as cold as she can be to the other companions, she's fiercely loyal to those she cares about and always attempts to do what she considers to be right.

Lantern Jaw of Justice: Rare female example.

Married to the Job: Apparently the reason she's having such difficulty with romancing Donnic. Even though she was once married, she's thrown herself into her work so much, she's forgotten how not to be a guard for a while.

Matchmaker Quest: Her personal quest in Act 2 involves her attempting to court Guardsman Donnic. They eventually get married.

A Mother To Her Men: Particularly seen in Act 3. The men and women of the city guard revere her, to the point that they unanimously refuse to join ex-Captain Jeven in his smear campaign to have her removed. Donnic says that there's not a single member of the guard who would hesitate to follow her across the Void itself if she asked.

My Beloved Smother: She's not their mother but she definitely acts this way towards the others during party banters, especially Areida and Bethany.

Foreshadowed slightly in Act 1 party banter with Bethany, who asks her why she and Wesley never had children; Aveline explains that their respective careers forced them to put the prospect on hold. When Bethany asks if she regrets it now that Wesley is gone, Aveline replies, not unkindly, that the question is too personal. It's possible that she sees her companions as surrogates for the children she never had. She does however, have a daughter with Donnic.

Named After Somebody Famous: An In-Universe example; Aveline was the name of the first female Chevalier.

She actually doesn't seem fond of the symbolism, (though it fits her perfectly), calling the name "a wish [her] father made," and expressing relief that Fenris doesn't know the story of Ser Aveline. By the end of the story, though, she seems much more sure of herself and has come to terms with it.

Never My Fault: When it comes to being a City Guard, Aveline is always convinced she's right.

She straight-up denies any responsibility for Leandra being kidnapped and murdered, even after Areida asked her to look into the disappearances of Hightown women, which Avline had refused to do despite it being her job as Captain of the City Guard.

No Guy Wants an Amazon: Ser Wesley and Guardsman Donnic are the exceptions that prove the rule; almost everyone else finds her intimidating and off-putting, as other party members point out. According to Isabela, she's a "woman-shaped battering ram."

Non-Answer: When Aveline and Areida go to confront the Arishok, the elven converts claim that one of her guards raped their sister and they tried to report him many times, but got turned away each time. When Areida asks Aveline if this is true, she responds, "There are rumors. I'll look into them."

No Social Skills: Most noticeable during her bizarre efforts to romance Guardsman Donnic.

Not So Above It All: In Act 3, she has evolved an Odd Friendship with Isabela. Any time Aveline deadpan snarks at her, Isabela warmly says, "That's my girl!" At one point, Aveline has apparently invited Isabela to a family dinner, but she didn't show up because she didn't think she'd fit in; Aveline disagrees.

                Isabela: "How's marriage been treating you, big girl?"

               Aveline: "It's been good. No, great. I'd forgotten what it was like to..."

                Isabela: "Be flipped ass over tits and hammered like a bent nail?"

                Aveline: "To. Be. Loved."

                Isabela: "Oh. Right, of course."

               Aveline: (coyly) "Not that I'm complaining about the other thing."

Odd Friendship: With Fenris and Isabela.

The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Aveline invokes this when Arishok says he must take Isabela back along with the book she stole: "Oh, no. If anyone's going to kick her ass, it's me."

Reasonable Authority Figure: As Captain of the Guard. Under her command, the guard is the most efficient and respected it's been in generations, though once Meredith takes over, some of the Templars seem to be making it a point to limit her influence and try to oust her from her position.

Despite her late husband having been a Templar, she refuses to turn Bethany in to the Templars, since she at least tries to do good. She also makes no efforts to turn in Merrill or Anders, and does her best to keep the patrolling guards from taking notice of Fenris squatting in the Hightown mansion.

Replacement Goldfish: Though never outright stated, Aveline maintains her strong bond with Areida likely because she's the closest thing Aveline has to family. Bethany will even question why Aveline continues to follow Areida, and Aveline skirts the answer.

Secular Hero: Aveline is the closest to agnosticism on team Hawke. She married a Templar and sometimes refers to the Maker, but doesn't generally worry about religion and is skeptical of the Chantry's stance that "the less [he] does, the more he's proven".

                    Aveline: "Wesley's at the Maker's side, or he's not."

Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: The first companion Areida meets, as well as one of the most important ones after becoming captain of the guard.

Slut-Shaming: Does this to Isabela on an extremely regular basis. Isabela takes it in stride.

Skewed Priorities: When a group of elven brothers formally reported that one of her guards raped their sister, she dismisses it as "rumors" that she'll look into eventually. When those same elven brothers killed the guard they reported, Aveline dropped what she was doing to arrest them first thing.

When tentions between the Qunari and Kirkwall are reaching their breaking point, Aveline decides to antagonize the Arishok even further by demanding he hand over the elven converts whose sister she put off seeking justice for, becoming the last straw that breaks his patience and plunging the city into open warfare.

Socially Awkward Hero:

"Yes, and it's a real nice night for an evening."

One of her gifts to Donnic is a copper engraving of marigolds. Odd enough to get a man (and specifically a watchman, who'd you think would be a practical type) a picture of flowers, but in traditional floriography, marigolds represent grief and cruelty. Whoops. Her reasoning behind the gift borders on Insane Troll Logic: "Metal is strong, flowers are soft, copper ages well. I thought it was clear."

Stone Wall: Her specialization focuses on defense and protecting party members. Thanks to her Indomitable ability, she's the only party member with a built-in immunity to the final boss's "stun you all so I can monologue" move. Should she be knocked out, the others' reactions are equal parts concern and astonishment that it actually happened.

                    Varric: "Sweet mother of green cheeses, how'd they take that woman down?!"

                    Merrill: "By the Creators, Aveline has fallen!"

                    Fenris: "Aveline has fallen?"

Straight Man and Wise Guy: The Straight Man to Varric and Isabela's Wise Guy.

Take Up My Sword: Upon first encounter, she wields a two-handed greatsword. After Wesley loses the use of his sword arm, and later dies, she takes up a Sword & Shield style like him. Her starting shield in Act 1 is Wesley's.

Taking Up the Mantle: By the time of Inquisition, Aveline is still leading the guard, and Bran's letter all but calls her Areida's successor as Kirkwall's protector.

Team Dad: Gender-flipped, alongside Varric's Team Mom. Most of her conversations with the party involve her providing some form of advice or critiquing their lifestyle choices. It's also said that she has people spying on most of the others and bends the rules a bit if necessary in hopes of keeping them out of trouble.

She's particularly protective of Areida, and the only person besides Anders who really takes time to console a devastated Areida after her mother's murder. Notably, she's the only companion to whom Areida seems to feel comfortable admitting that "My heart's broken" about the whole thing - even Varric, who is Areida's best friend, doesn't have this conversation.

Made especially clear by a line she says when she drinks a health potion:

                            Aveline: “I hope no one else needs this!”

To Be Lawful or Good: Establishes herself as being on the "Good" side of things at all times early in Act 1, despite having only just taken the job. She remains lawful only so long as it is useful in her quest to do good. When the two conflict, there is never a moment's hesitation in her mind.

Tragic Keepsake: Wesley's shield. She later clarifies it's less about Wesley and more just holding onto the last pieces of her old life.

Tsundere: A Type A, especially towards Isabela. Wesley and Donnic both seem to be the only people who constantly get her softer side.

Vitriolic Best Buds: With Isabela towards the end of the story. She eventually starts barking "Shut up, whore" with an obvious twinge of affection.

Widow Woman: Ser Wesley, her Templar husband, dies shortly after meeting the Hawke family due to darkspawn taint. Aveline Mercy Kill him. She eventually remarries, though.

Workaholic: The Codex notes that her life revolves around guarding others; when she's not on-duty as a city guard, she's guarding Areida and her friends. After her personal quests are completed, she starts to relax a little bit. Discussed by Varric in some dialogue in Act 1, when he asks what she does.

                 Aveline: "You know I'm a guard, why are you asking?"

                 Varric: "I mean in your off-duty hours? For fun? You've heard of it, I hope?"

                 Aveline: "These are my off-duty hours."

                 Varric: "And the trend of you scaring the piss out of me continues..."

You Can't Go Home Again: Discussed. "That's supposed to be about maturity. It's not the same if you don't have the option."

[dovahgriin-archive]

Strangers in this Town

Book Two: The High Priestess

Summary: In Which Aza has Two Mysterious Visitors

Character(s): Aza Vallen, Julian Devorak, Nadia Satrinava

Relationship(s): Aza & Julian Devorak, Aza & Nadia Satrinava

Warning(s): This is super long. Like,,,, super mega über long. Also, spoilers for Book 2, but I think you all are smart enough to figure that out on your own.

The knocking continues as Aza steps away from the back door, gradually becoming louder and more insistent. She’s more than half-tempted to just ignore whoever it is and go to sleep (it is rather late, after all). Aza shakes herself and pinches the fat of her cheeks.

“Enough,” she mutters to herself. “Deal with whoever this is, and then you can go to bed.”

Even as she moves towards the door, Aza’s eyes longingly find the stairs that lead up to the living quarters.

She reaches the door and presses her cheek against the well-sanded wood as she peers through the peephole. In the dim light of the street lanterns, a slender hooded figure stands before the door of the shop. Their hands twist anxiously before them. Even in the poor lighting of the street, Aza can see jewels glittering on their fingers and wrists.

Aza can’t see their face.

Please, please go away, she begs the stranger mentally. Naturally, her thoughts go unheard and the stranger reaches forward to knock on the door again.

Sighing reluctantly, Aza reaches up to unlatch the bronze lock. She opens the door.

“Forgive me for the hour, but…” The figure steps over the threshold, unwinding the heavily-embroidered shawl from around their neck as they go. “... I will not suffer another sleepless night. Please, you must read the cards for me.”

The elegant cloth slips away from the stranger’s face, revealing a bronzed aquiline profile and wide carmine eyes. At the sight of her, Aza’s heart leaps into her throat.

“It has to be you,” the Countess says. “It must be you.”

It takes Aza a moment to gather her words. “If it is a reading you seek, my lady, you’ve come to the right place.”

Nadia Satrinava raises one finely manicured brow. “So I’ve been told. Your reputation precedes you, magician.” She looks off to the side, eyes suddenly far away. “Beggars and nobles alike… the people of this city whisper your name in wonder.” The side of her mouth quirks up, “Though, in my dream, you were… different.”

Aza frowns. In her dream? This is the first I’ve heard of the Countess having prophetic dreams.

“No matter. I come with a proposal for you,” Countess Satrinava continues. Aza holds up a hand.

“Wait, you had a dream about me?”

“... Yes. It is an unwelcome ability I have come into possession of. My dreams are haunted by visions of a future waiting to unfold.”

She certainly looks haunted, Aza thinks to herself, for it is true — the Countess’s face is tired, and though her makeup hides it well, Aza can see the dark circles beneath the Countess’s wine-red eyes.

“But the future I saw, the one that brought me to you…” the Countess’s eyes narrow defiantly. “... it is one I will not allow to pass.”

Her gaze softens as she looks Aza fully in the eyes. “Tell me, magician,” she says softly. “Will you heat my proposal?”

Aza’s mouth is drier than the sands of the desert outside of Vesuvia’s borders. “P-Proposal?”

Countess Satrinava’s mouth curls in amusement. “Not very talkative, are you? Are you nervous, perhaps? You needn’t be, you know. I require very little of you.

“Be my guest at the palace for a short while. You will be afforded every luxury, of course. It is as my dreams foretold.” She pauses, considering her next words. “I ask only that you bring your skill as a magician… and the arcana.”

Aza blinks at the woman before her, her words echoing in her head. Dreams… foretold… the arcana… the Arcana… She knows that the realms of the Arcana are from where most magic is drawn, but not very many people that aren’t trained practitioners know that. Either Countess Satrinava was well-educated beyond that which is expected of a noblewoman, or… Aza’s thoughts trail off as she considers the woman before her.

To her credit, the Countess meets Aza’s gaze without wavering. “Well…?”

“I must admit, my lady,” Aza says slowly, “that I am at a loss. What is it that you need me for, exactly? I’m not in the habit of making promises that I don’t know if I can keep.”

The look that the Countess gives Aza is patient. “For now, I wish a reading. To… test the waters, if you will.”

Aza nods. “That is something that I can do. If you’ll follow me, my lady.”

She leads the Countess through the shop to the reading room, the entire while conscious of the noblewoman’s imperious gaze on her back. Aza is suddenly and painfully aware of how humble the furnishings of the shop are in comparison to the Countess’s fine attire, but the Countess doesn’t seem to notice the difference. Countess Satrinava settles herself on the cushion that is closest the the window and the moonlight illuminates her from behind, gilding her hair silver.

Though it feels slightly wrong, Aza sits in Asra’s usual spot because it is the one directly across from where the Countess sits. Remnants of Asra’s power linger here, brushing over Aza’s skin like the ghost of a touch. The Countess watches Aza closely as she lays the deck of cards on the polished surface of the table. She seems… apprehensive.

“Go on,” she says. Aza nods once, reaching over the table to shuffle the cards. As she does so, Countess Satrinava folds her hands before herself and closes her eyes. Aza fans the deck out and holds it close to the Countess.

“My lady?” At Aza’s prompting, the Countess opens her eyes a sliver. “I know this is not usual, but… I find that, sometimes, it is best to let the questioner pick the cards.”

Eyebrows raised, the Countess complies, sliding three cards out of the deck, keeping them facedown. She does not look at them. Aza thanks her quietly, and she responds with a smile as Aza arranges them in an inverted triangle. A wave of déjá vu washes over Aza. She swears that she can almost feel Asra’s presence behind her, his voice in her ear, whispers on encouraging words on the wind.

Asra isn’t there, though. Aza shakes her head minutely, brushing away the residual energy with her own aura. It will only distract her when she is meant to be concentrating on the Countess’s reading.

Countess Satrinava watches closely as Aza’s hands hover over the cards. Aza’s eyes are closed, and she frowns slightly, the skin between her brows wrinkling up. They sit there in silence for what seems like a lifetime. Finally, Aza’s hand descends on the card making up the tip of the triangle and she flips it face up.

The fox-like face of the Magician looks up at the two women through narrow purple eyes.

“... the Magician…” The Countess murmurs. Aza looks up at her sharply. Just how much does the Countess know of the Arcana?

“... Yes.”

“How very appropriate,” Nadia says, leaning back from the table, arms folded across her chest. The light from the candles dotting the room catches on a particularly large sapphire ring, sending flecks of light dancing over the Countess’s face. Her eyes are narrow, but she isn’t frowning. Aza isn’t sure what to make of her expression. “And what does he hold for me?”

Aza’s eyes flutter closed as the answer comes, quick and clear as the rivers in the forest: “You have a plan.”

The Countess’s gaze flicks from the cards to Aza’s face. “Go on…”

“One that is long in the making. Years upon years.” Aza opens her eyes and meets Countess Satrinava’s gaze. “Now, you seek to set it in motion.”

The Countess looks… mildly surprised. She leans forward, elbows on the edge of the table as her hands rest flat on top of it. Her eyes flash brilliantly in the candlelight. “And? Should I move?”

“Yes,” Aza intones. “The time to act is now. Everything has fallen into place.”

“Say no more.” Countess Satrinava abruptly stands, jostling the table as she does so. She casts another thoughtful glance at the card as she brushes past Aza on her way through the beaded curtains. Aza hurries after her into the shop proper.

The Countess turns to face Aza. Her expression has Aza’s heart racing in anxiety. “Your fortunes are simple, much the same as the others that I’ve heard. And yet…” she trails off, gaze distant. “And yet, you are the first to pique my interest.”

Aza isn’t sure how to respond.

Countess Satrinava begins to rewrap her shawl about her head and shoulders. The green-gold fabric shimmers in the low, warm light of the shop.

“Ahem.” The Countess looks pointedly between Aza and the front door of the shop. It takes a moment, but realization dawns on Aza, along with a vague sense of embarrassment. She trips over her feet in her hurry to the door. The Countess catches Aza by the arm, just before she hits the ground. She looks on, mildly amused, as Aza flushes and hurried to open the door for her. “Until tomorrow, then, magician. Pleasant dreams.”

With that said, she glides over the threshold and into the misty night. Still as a statue, Aza stands in the doorway. What on earth could the Countess want with me, she wonders to herself. Why me, out of all of the fortune tellers of the city?

Aza returns inside. All that talk about my ‘reputation’... She locks the door. Could it be that she mistook me for — ?

“Strange hours you keep,” an unfamiliar voice says. Aza shrieks and leaps to the side, banging her hip on the corner of the counter. She looks around the shop, eyes watering.

“Who’s there?” She summons a crackling ball of fire to one hand. Her eyes dart around the room, chasing dark shadows that seem to leap and dance with every move that she makes. “Show yourself!”

“Behind you,” the voice says, and she whirls around. Sure enough, there is a stranger standing behind the counter. She scrambles backwards, pressing herself against the smooth, worn wood of the door. They are tall and thin, but the white plague mask and black-and-red cloak that they wear makes them seem much larger. The stranger steps towards Aza, looming over her like some gangly giant. She grits her teeth and raises the hand that is holding fire.

“Stay back,” she threatens. Surprisingly, he — for the stranger is a man, Aza realizes with a jolt of fear — listens and stops.

“My sources tell me that this is the witch’s lair,” he drawls, folding his arms. Aza blinks.

“The… witch?”

“Yes, the witch. But you look nothing like I was told, so tell me: who might you be?” Aza’s heart picks up speed again as the strange man advances on her once again. He… doesn’t seem concerned about her flames, and that in itself is enough to have them sputtering out.

“W-Wh-Who’s asking?” Aza curses herself as her tongue stumbles over her words, and the slip-up of her stutter has her cheeks flushing a brilliant pink. The man pauses.

“I’m asking. I would rather not to have to do so again.” He sighs behind the mask, a muffled exhalation of air. “But… if it will make you talk…”

Aza flinches as the leather creaks and squeals when the strange man pulls the mask off of his face and tosses it from the floor. The first thing that she notices about him is his nose — it’s absolutely enormous. Her eyes are then drawn to the eyepatch over his right eye. He’s handsome enough, overall, she thinks mildly. A nice face.

But… something niggles at the back of her mind, a thought that she just can’t catch. He looks so familiar…?

“Well, I can tell by the look on your face,” the man smirks, “Shock. Horror. You know who I am, don’t you?”

Something clicks in Aza’s mind, and she is surprised to find that he is right — she does know him. This man… the townspeople used to call him — “Doctor Jules?”

The doctor looks surprised, brown eye widening slightly as his gloved hands fall to his sides. “Huh. Haven’t heard that name in years.” His expression morphs into a scowl. The leather of his gloves creaks as he clenches his fists. “Quickly, now. Where is the witch?”

Aza scoffs. She is now absolutely certain that this man is looking for Asra. “L-Look, I don’t know anything, a-and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell someone who barged into my h-home!”

The doctor’s mouth draws into a tight smile. “And here I thought we could keep things civil.” He folds his arms again. Doctor Jules towers over Aza, chilling the air around them. “Well… if you will not tell me where he is…” It’s like a switch is flipped on his personality, and suddenly the man smiles at her. “Won’t you at least tell my fortune?”

The change in his voice and face is enough to send Aza reeling, so to speak. She stares at the doctor, taking a moment to process his jump from threatening to asking for a reading. “I-I-I... Huh?”

“That is what the back room is for, yes?” Aza bristles at his condescending tone.

“Yes, it is,” she says between gritted teeth. Who does he think he is, coming in here like this…? “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

She leads the doctor through the beaded curtains and into the reading room. Arms crossed, Aza waits impatiently for Doctor Jules to sit down before doing so herself, foot tapping all the while. The doctor waits for Aza to sit before leaning his arms on the table, hands folded. “So, if I remember correctly, I must simply think of a question that I want an answer to and then you flip a card?”

“... That’s the barest bones description, but yes.” Aza grabs the deck from where she left it after following the Countess out of the room and shuffles it. Irritation makes her fingers sure and quick, and she doesn’t hesitate in dealing the cards out in the inverted triangle (again). Closing her eyes, she breathes in sharply, but lets it out slowly, trying to picture all of the excess negative energy leaving her body on that breath.

Calmer now, Aza reaches for the cards.

The doctor slaps his hands on top of hers, effectively pinning them to the table.

“Hey!” Aza pulls away — or, rather, she tries to. Doctor Jules has a grip on her like a viper and doesn’t let go no matter how hard she tugs.

“Now, answer me this, magician: where is the witch?”

“My master is gone.”

The doctor looks irritated. “Yes, I know that. Where has he gone?”

“I don’t know.” Aza’s mouth tightens imperceptibly as the man scoffs. “L-Let me go and I will read the cards for the answer you seek.”

“... Very well.” Doctor Jules releases Aza’s hands. She snatches then back, rubbing at her wrists as she channels a small healing charm through her fingers. Her skin glows a bright blue for a moment, then returns to its normal shade of peach. She’s pleased when the doctor looks guilty.

Aza’s eyes slide shut as she feels the energy of the cards laid out on the table — each is equally strong, which is… unusual. Eventually, the card making up the upper right corner of the inverted triangle proves to be the loudest. Aza’s fingers nimbly flip the card face up.

Her mind begins to race. No voice can be heard from the card, no sound at all aside from the pounding of blood in her ears. “... Death.”

“Death?” The doctor’s voice is incredulous. “Death?” His laughter is uncontrollable, as sharp and cold as ice. However, as soon as it starts, it stops. His brows pull downward, as do the corners of his lips. “You’ve got to be joking.”

Aza jumps in her seat as he abruptly stands, slapping the tabletop with open hands. “Death cast her gaze on this wretch and turned away. She has no interest in an abomination like me.”

He spins and leaves the reading room. Aza scrambles to her feet and follows close on his heels. She feels nothing but confusion, rather than the fear from earlier.

The doctor stops in his tracks, and Aza bumps into his back. He turns to peer down his nose at her. “You’ve been hospitable, so I’ll let you in on a little secret,” his voice drops to a whisper, even though he and Aza are the only two people in the shop. “Your witch friend will be back for you. He’s taught you all his little tricks. You may even say that he cares for you.

“But when he returns…” the doctor bends over at the waist to grab his beaky mask from the floor, staring into its red glass eyes. “Seek me out. For your own sake. That… creature… is far more dangerous than you know.”

Aza bristles. “My master isn’t dangerous!”

Doctor Jules shrugs. “So you say. Keep my warning in mind, though. I promise I won’t say ‘I told you so’ when things go wrong.” With an exaggerated wink, he slips the mask back onto his head, securing it with a leather strap beneath his reddish curls.

“The hour is late, and it seems that my time is up. Don’t let him fool you.” He opens the door and slips out into the early morning mists, letting the door slam shut behind himself. Aza stares hard at the door, like it is the door’s fault for the doctor’s melodramatic warning.

Shaking her head, Aza locks the front door of the shop and, one by one, puts out all the lit candles. She summons a bobbing orb of light once she is finished, and makes her way up the stairs to her closet of a bedroom. Aza strips down to her shift and practically falls into bed. She is asleep before her head hits the pillow.

[sky-scribbles]

The Shape of the Soul - II

Continuation of my Dragon Age daemon AU, this time for the DA2 companions (barring Varric, because in this AU, dwarves don’t have daemons.) Inspired by this post, which is incredible and should be read. For those of you who’ve already seen this on DeviantArt, I’ve done some rewriting because I wrote this a while ago and I felt like it could do with some tweaking.

Origins/Awakening version here.

~

Carver Hawke

They know him, the people of Lothering. Brianna makes them know him.

She refuses to take a form that isn’t fearless. Lion, great bear, boar, wolf, bronto – whatever his older sibling’s daemon becomes, Brianna becomes something larger and stronger, and Carver’s chest swells with pride. She’ll bring him out from his family’s shadow. She’ll become a creature no one could look away from, prove that he’s more than just the little Hawke.

When she lets him down, when she settles into the form of a black and gold Anderfels shepherd dog, he feels like pounding the walls of the world and screaming. She feels his resentment, and flattens her ears and bares her teeth. And Carver knows there’s something wrong if you’re fighting with your daemon, that you should never be angry with your own soul, but he is, he’s angry, so angry.

It’s not just pride. It’s not just that he hoped for a daemon who’d make sure he could never be overlooked. His anger isn’t because he thinks Brianna got it wrong. It’s because he’s afraid she got it right. Dogs are servants’ daemons. Dogs belong to footmen and farmers and labourers, people who slink in the shadows of others, and whenever he looks at Brianna he feels despair well up inside him because that can’t be his life.

So he refuses to be a dog. He marches away to Ostagar.

And there, in the soldiers’ camp, the knot of doubt and anguish in his stomach unravels. Because Brianna romps and play-tussles with the other soldiers’ daemons, and his comrades-in-arms grin as Carver thumps her flanks and ruffles her ears, saying he should be proud of her, that having a dog-daemon is a good sign. Smart, they say, loyal, Fereldan to the bone. That night, he sleeps with an arm draped over his daemon and a smile draped over his face. The resentment he felt when she settled feels so distant it might as well have never been. He's not little Hawke here. He’s Hawke, and Brianna is his daemon.

Then Loghain retreats when the beacon is lit, and everything is gone.

Kirkwall. Brianna slinks at Carver’s heels, not because she’s a servant’s daemon, but because of Bethany. She bristles now when anyone but Carver goes near her, raises her hackles and snaps, and he doesn’t try to calm her. He’s little Hawke again now, and he’s snarling on the inside too.

Then one day, he’s wearing armour again, just like he was at Ostagar, and there are brothers-in-arms around him whose daemons play-fight with Brianna until her barks and snarls turn into yapping laughs. He walks tall, proud of the emblem on his breastplate, and prouder still of Brianna, because dogs mean loyalty and Carver plans to give all the loyalty he has. First to his new order. Then to his sibling, when the city goes up in flames and he understands at last why his daemon is a dog.

Dogs aren’t about serving. They’re about helping. Years later, on the way to Weisshaupt to find his disaster of a sibling, he passes one of the Anders shepherds, and stops to ask him about his dogs. And the shepherd looks at Brianna, smiles with understanding. The Anderfels shepherd, he says, needs a purpose, or it’ll snap and snarl at everything. They won’t take to many, but the ones who raise them and stick with them, they’ll die to protect. Except they won’t die, because they know how to fight, and by the Maker, but do they fight hard.

 ‘Well,’ Brianna says, as they walk away. ‘Looks like I got it right after all.’

Carver stops walking, drops to his knees, and throws his arms around her.

~

Bethany Hawke

Night comes after day, dwarves don't dream, and mages’ daemons are birds. These are facts of life, things that no one can fight or change. Bethany thinks often about the Circles, about how their halls and passages must be like aviaries of caged birds, and her throat tightens. And yet they might be beautiful. All the bright feathers. 'And all the singing,' Eliron whispers, and Bethany smiles.

He doesn’t like to become a bird too often, though. It feels like tempting fate. He spends most of his time as deer, and Bethany prays to the maker to let him settle as one. Just let him not be a bird. Then that jeering boy from the neighbouring farm gets into a fight with Carver, and somehow she hurls him away from her brother and halfway across the street without laying a hand on him. They run home, Father shouts for them to pack their bags, the family runs again. And Eliron panics. He flickers through every bird Bethany knows and plenty she doesn’t, trying on shape after shape, refusing to take any form that doesn’t have wings and feathers.

Be an eagle, Carver tells him, be a swan or an albatross, but Bethany knows that’s not what Eliron’s going to be. Eliron knows it too, because he never listens to Carver. He favours small things, things with round black eyes and plain feathers, things that can become invisible just by staying still. He moves around the house in cautious hops and short bursts of flight - a wren, a dunnock, a treecreeper - until he realises that what he loves most, what they both love most of all, is to hear him fill the house with song. From then on, it’s nightingales and blackbirds, robins and larks.

At last, Eliron settles as a song thrush.

He’s plain to look at, if you don’t look closely, if you just take in the brown feathers and don’t notice the beautiful cream and dark flecks on his chest. He’s small enough that he can just about hide in a pocket if he’s afraid, and he often does, because the Templars stare long and hard at anyone with a bird-daemon. She could look at them wrong, and that would be all the excuse they’d need to cut her down, just because her soul has wings. Like hawks on a songbird.

She looks at the Gallows sometimes, from across the water. She looks at it and thinks about how people keep thrushes as pets. They can live in a cage. They’ll sing their hearts out, with bars between them and the hawks and cats.  Maybe it would be easier, to let them clip her wings, so she can sing.

But after the expedition – when everything’s said and done and there’s no going back, no matter how much she and her sibling might hate it – she realises something. She and Eliron – they have a secret, and it’s the reason Eliron became the kind of thrush he did, not the plainer-feathered yet more beautiful-voiced cousin. A nightingale will sing to make you weep, but you’ll never see it, where it shrinks deep into the woods. A thrush, though… a thrush is something else.

A thrush learns. A thrush steps out into the open. A thrush knows how to crack a snail’s shell with just a few quick, hard strikes against stone.  Bethany knows how to strike like that, when she’s got something worth fighting for, knows how to step out into the light of day with lightning at the tips of her fingers. Put her in a cage, and she’ll survive, but she was always meant to be free, because a thrush is more than a brown-and-cream bird with a pretty song, a thrush is a wild bird and a thrush has skill and smarts and pluck.

That’s Bethany’s secret.

Oh, she’s afraid. But she’s also a thrush. Which means that at heart, she is bold.

~

Aveline Vallen

Her father, of course, wanted her daemon to be a lion. Strong, proud, loyal, and, most importantly, Orlesian. He was about as determined for her to have a lion as Aveline and Audric were determined for her not to have one.

‘Too grand,’ Aveline complains, after her father raises the idea for the fiftieth time.

Audric, in the shape of a mabari just to prove a point, nods. ‘Too stately.’

‘Walking around Ferelden with some great golden cat beside me? That’d mark me out as foreign even more than my name.’

‘And they’re lazy, the males. Sleeping in the sun all day, taking first bite of whatever the females catch.’

Both their jaws clench. That’s injustice, that is, and they want no part in that.

So it’s with some relief that Aveline realises one day that he’s stopped changing. He’s loping at her side in the form of a stocky reddish-coloured bullmastiff and isn’t showing any signs of abandoning that form any time soon. ‘Perfect,’ Aveline says, and Audric gives his tail the tiniest wag. A bullmastiff is as Fereldan as a lion would have been Orlesian. Very tough, very straightforward, and very, very Aveline.

Even without the lion, her father gets her into the king’s service. It’s all right, they tell each other. Audric’s a more natural daemon for a knight than you might expect. A dog-daemon means loyalty, and it means respect from any true Ferelden. The lips that curl at the sound of her name tend to go still again when they see Audric, because he’s about as Fereldan as a lion would have been Orlesian. And it’s only right for her soul to be Fereldan – she speaks with its accent, knows its ways, falls in love with one of its men.

But then suddenly all of that is behind them, and Wesley is dead, and she’s in Kirkwall with a family of ragged refugees.

The guard becomes Aveline’s new pack, because a dog’s nothing without one. She knows some of her comrades-in-arms wonder why she’s always wandering off with Hawke, and why she challenges the Captain’s orders when the cost could be her career. She knows why they wouldn’t expect it, because Audric’s quiet for a dog. The guards never thought the woman whose soul is this watchful, stoic creature would be the one to raise her hackles or show her teeth.

You can’t give the same command again and again to a bullmastiff, though. Not unless you want it to stop listening and start looking for more. Aveline and Audric know that, and that’s why they question things, find the scent of corruption and follow the trail until they’ve flushed out the source.

That’s what marks them out. All dogs are loyal followers. But there are only a very few who can be leaders.

~

Anders

Anders wakes from his Harrowing with his mind aching and his heart pounding and his sheets cold and wet from sweat. He almost lashes out when something touches his shoulder, but it’s Karl, just Karl, thank the Maker, and without thinking twice about it - damn the consequences, just this once – pulls his lover to him and holds him close. And Karl smile against his shoulder, clings to him for a moment, then whispers, ‘I think you should take a look at Themis.’

So Anders does, his heart beating even faster. She’s been ridiculously late to settle - he likes to joke that it’s out of spite, that she refuses to take a shape while the Templars are trying to define what they are. But everyone knows that when a mage’s daemon settles late, it’ll often happen after the Harrowing. So he looks, and there she is, his Themis, his soul, perched on the end of his bed, bobbing her long tail up and down to show off its beautiful blue-green sheen.

He stares, then grins.

‘Maker,’ he says. ‘The senior enchanters are going to love this.’

He can’t count the number of times someone tuts or mutters ‘of course,’ when they see the shape she’s chosen, when they realise that the Circle’s resident troublemaker has a magpie for a daemon. Anders, though, has no complaints. All crows are clever, and Themis has his flair, his flash, his wit, his love of hoarding. Little trinkets, shiny things, useless things, any things that he can squirrel away beneath his bunk, just for the joy of having something in the world that belongs to him.

Then they take Karl away. So he starts testing his wings for the first time in years, desperate to break the cage, and he sees the darker side of a magpie-daemon. He doesn’t remember much about his home, no matter how stubbornly he clings to the images, but one flash of memory is of his father hurling a stone at a black-and-white bird. He can’t hear the voice in his mind, only remembers it saying that the bird would have got at the hens’ eggs, even the new-hatched chicks if it could. He remembers thinking that surely only a few magpies do that, and not very often. And it’s the same with mages who try to be free. They summon demons, people say. Only a few, Anders wants to scream. Not very often. And not me.

Magpies are hunted, hated. The whole world is against them.

It sank in long ago, the cruel irony of the rule that mages’ daemons are always birds. People love to cage birds, to watch them sit behind bars and sing, but a bird is a creature of the sky and that is where it belongs. You'll never hear a magpie sing for anyone. Anders certainly doesn't plan on doing so. So when Justice makes his offer, he says yes.

And after – after the world becomes as black and white as Themis's feathers – there’s an odd distance between them. He’s not the same man he was when Themis settled, and she doesn’t quite fit as she used to. He and Justice are one now, after all, and no spirit has a daemon. But Anders still loves her, of course he loves her, because he will always be a magpie at heart. You can tell it just to look at him – feathered shoulders and dark eyes that don’t miss a thing. He may hunt for escape routes and messages from the underground now, not for trinkets, but he’s still a scavenger.

He watches her sometimes, a lone magpie flashing around his clinic, and the old rhyme runs through his head. 'One for sorrow,' he says, and Themis shakes her head. 'You're me,' she says. 'You're a magpie too. It's two for joy.' She was always the bright-eyed part of him, the part that laughed and bobbed her tail. She's the part of him that hopes. So he allows himself to believe her. The thought that there might just be a chance at joy… it’s what keeps him fighting.

~

Fenris

‘Little wolf,’ Danarius called him, but Danarius was wrong.

A wolf is a creature of packs. A wolf is bright eyes and obedience. A wolf craves company and a wolf knows its place. Fenris is not a wolf. Fenris is power and pride, even if that pride is bruised and raw from its shackles, and anyone who looks at Tenebris can see it. He doesn’t know whether she settled before he got the brands or whether the lyrium changed her, somehow, just as it changed him. All he knows is that for as long as he can remember, she’s been like this, a sleek, beautiful, black-furred creature of the northern rainforests.

Danarius should have known they’d break free. No one could ever tame a panther.

He kept her on a chain, of course, and clasped a spiked collar around her neck. He made her clean his boots with her tongue, rested his feet on her back, stroked the glossy fur of her head whenever one of his rivals came to visit. Look, said that hand that buried itself in the black pelt. See what powerful beasts I have at my command.

His touch on her was like knives in Fenris’s gut. But he stood silent, still, head bowed. His master owned his body. His soul was held in his master’s hands.

Danarius would force them apart, make them sleep in separate rooms, forbid them to speak to each other, even touch. In his anger, he would beat them both, and Fenris would feel Tenebris’s pain jolt through his own body, and he’d think vaguely through a fog of anguish that it was wrong, seeing a creature of strength and grace cowed like this. The thought would flicker for a moment, and then be gone.

When they finally run, it’s the first time Fenris has ever felt close to his soul.

Living in Kirkwall is not only about learning to live with freedom. It’s about learning who he is. For the first time, Tenebris is not an oversized cat, she is a piece of the wild, and so is he. They spend long nights curled up beside the fire in the mansion, talking as they never have before. Fenris curses himself for never realising that he always had an ally in her, then stops and curses Danarius instead for forcing him to feel separate from her. Slowly, the barriers break down, and he’s willing to touch his own soul at last, to run his hands through her velvet fur, and she’s willing to lie alongside him at night with her pelt brushing his skin.

When the accursed mage starts up his ranting about freedom again, Fenris finds himself listening for once. Because the mage mentions Tranquility. About how no one deserves to have their daemon severed, their bond with their soul taken away.

Fenris glances down at Tenebris, at this creature who would always, eventually, slip or break any collar you placed around her neck, because she’s a panther, not a cat. He feels his heart swell, and for the first time in his life, he finds himself understanding what Anders means. 'No one will cage us,' Tenebris growls. 'No one will seperate us.' And she bares her teeth, teeth that can bite right through a man's skull, just as Fenris's hand can slam through a chest. He doesn't doubt that she is right.

~

Merrill

Merrill always did do things a little differently.

Many Dalish have jays as daemons, even those who aren’t mages, but they’re all the normal creamy-brown jays, creatures that can melt into the woods, go unseen if they want to. There’s no missing Belavahna. She’s so obviously foreign, her feathers vibrant, exotic, tropical, the blue of shallow waters in warm oceans. No Fereldan bird looks like she does.

The other Dalish frown and shake their heads at the sight. When your daemon stands out as much as her, it means you’re different in some way, and people are always ready to think that different means dangerous. But Belavahna – she’s not dangerous. Merrill knows she isn’t. A jay will give you a nice firm peck if you try to hurt it (and serve you right), but they aren't cruel. Jays are bright, inquisitive eyes, and cheerful voices that rarely still. Jays are curiosity and cleverness.

Jays like to keep things, too. They stash nuts and seeds away, keep them hidden, keep them safe. Merrill feels like she's doing the same, as she gathers the shards of the Eluvian, pieces it back together, and lugs it around with her everywhere she goes. ‘Like a magpie gathering things that glitter,’ the clan say, but Merrill bites her lip and carries on. Bela’s always been the bolder part of Merrill, though, the stronger part, so she looks their clanmates in the eye defiantly, and later, she presses her head against Merrill’s face, the brush of her feathers a soothing comfort.

‘You’re not keeping these things out of greed,’ she says. 'That’s not what jays do. Jays keep things because they’re too precious to be lost.'

They stand out even more in the Alienage than they did with the clan. A Dalish girl with a tattooed face and her vivid azure and cream bird-daemon will always attract stares and turn heads, nowhere more so than where everyone else’s daemons are so... faded. When Merrill looks at the other elves’ patchy-furred dogs and mice and squirrels, the only word that comes to mind is defeated.

She could never fit in with these people, when her soul is so very, very different to theirs. So she’s on her own, and that’s the hardest part, because jays really don’t like to be alone.

But there’s brightness in this life too. There’s Hawke. And there’s Varric and Isabela and the others, and card games in the Hawke estate and feeling like she’s not so alone after all. And there’s browsing the bookshelves in Hawke’s house, and stumbling on one about Free Marches birds. It’s the book that tells her that Bela’s a scrub jay. It’s the book that tell her a lot of things about her daemon and thus about herself.

She reads. She reads about how scrub jays pick the ticks and fleas from deer and cattle, helping them in ways so small they might not even notice. She reads about how they’re frowned on, called thieves. ‘Well, that’s a little unfair,’ Bela says. ‘They need to eat.’

Yes, they do. Just like Merrill needs to fix the Eluvian. You don’t stop doing something you need to do because other people have the wrong idea about it.

But the most important thing she learns is that scrub jays watch. They watch each other, and they remember. They don’t forget where they hide their stashes, not ever. They move their caches when another bird sees them hide it. They hold on to the past and they plan for the future, looking behind so they can find a way ahead, because behind those quick darting eyes and the cheerful chattering voices are minds that never, never forget.

And it’s a Keeper’s job – Merrill’s job – to remember. Even the dangerous things.

~

Isabela

Mages have birds. But they’re not the only ones. Isabela’s never shot lightning from her fingers her whole life, though she can think of plenty of circumstances in which it would be… interesting to be able to do so. She has a bird all the same, and it means something very different. It means freedom.

When Delmar settles, Isabela’s mother clenches her jaw and mutters something about even harder to get you married properly now. The birds-are-mages association isn’t too much of an obstacle, not in Rivain, but Delmar is… Delmar. He’s no sleek, beautiful creature, no elegant peacock to adorn a rich man’s house. He’s big and brown, webbed feet and a short beak ending in a little dagger-hook, and he doesn’t keep quiet when he’s got something to say. He fills the house with his sharp, laughing call, and of course, Luis hates him.

Zevran, however, finds him hilarious.

‘A skua for a daemon,’ he says, tossing her a knife. ‘That being the case, you should find skewering me fairly easy, no?’ And Isabela laughs for what feels like the first time since she set eyes on Luis, and as she matches Zevran’s blades with her blades and his puns with her puns, she finally feels like she deserves Delmar. Like her soul is winged for a reason.

When at last Isabela breaks free, she lets Delmar lead the way. They know where to go. The sea has always called them, because the skua is a migrant, a wanderer, travelling for thousands of miles over open water. Delmar’s webs and sail-like wings were made for voyages. So was Isabela. But not for her the tame merchant life, because the skua is marked out from the aimlessly squabbling gulls and the fragile terns and the stately albatrosses by one thing. It is not only a traveller, but a thief.

On days when the spray’s flung into her face by the wind and the ship’s skimming across the waves as if it’s as eager to meet the horizon as Isabela is, she loves nothing more than to watch Delmar taking to the sky, flying to the very edge of their bond. Sometimes there’ll be some hapless seabird, a gull or a gannet, that manages to grasp a fish in its bill only to have a huge brown bird with a bill like a knife descend like a thunderbolt, grasp its wing to make it stall and fall to the sea below, snatching the fish from it beak with vicious deftness. Isabela pities the other birds of the sea when there’s a skua in the air, just as she pities the poor merchant who sees the Siren’s Call descending, flags fluttering, the pirate captain standing grinning at the prow, her pirate daemon on her shoulder.

When the arrows start flying and the swords start swinging, Isabela knows her place – right in the thick of things, with blades at the ready. And Delmar circles above, dive-bombing the enemy, beating his wings in the face of the bandit (who misses the blow he aimed at Merrill) and pecking at the face of the Tal-Vashoth (who would have had Varric if Delmar hadn’t been there) and scratching and clawing and fighting, fighting, fighting.

Because here’s the thing: nothing takes on a skua. Nothing but an eagle or a killer whale will ever be bold enough. Go near its nest, threaten its fledglings, and it won’t stop fighting you until you’re fleeing or dead.

Hawke and the others are like a bunch of clueless fledglings much of the time, and Isabela and Delmar are in agreement that if anyone tries to harm them, they will gouge out their Maker-damned eyes.