#《 I know I have the reputation of making every character I touch into a sap but I'd try not to do that with Dale 》

[tuesdayscanons]

If I WERE to add Dale as a muse, these would be headcanons I'd implement:

Dale uses his gold teeth and boots to ground himself in reality, even if he doesn't consciously think about it as such. If his anxiety attacks got severe enough (or his other grounding methods magically disappeared somehow), he'd call out for Dev out of pure desperation. He wouldn't WANT his son to see him in that state, but when he's that anxious, his first priority would be to find SOME proof that he's not still a little boy in Lemonade Hell and Dev is definitive proof.

He also has abandonment issues he doesn't want to talk about. In his mind, he's not neglecting Dev because the Au-Pairs are always watching him.

Dale's messed up parenting comes from a lack of good examples (Vicky was awful and Doug probably was too if he let Vicky hold him hostage for seven years) and insecurity. He thinks that Dev would think he's "less cool" if he was vulnerable with him and "playing hard to get" would make Dev want to be around him more. What Dale doesn't get is that he's playing so hard to get that Dev might as well not have a dad.

I subscribe to the "Dev is a clone" theory (who would push a baby out and let someone name them DEVELOPMENT DIMMADOME). Dale probably made up stories about Dev's "mom" to make himself seem less like a lonely loser, but the stories are VERY inconsistent and he conveniently lost all photographic and video evidence of the mom in a fire that never happened.

Dale NEEDS those sales because of Trauma. Vicky was almost definitely physically abusive to him during Lemonade Hell and Doug was probably a hardass too. If he isn't constantly on top of his game, his life is going to fall apart and he'd be a failure.

Honestly, I feel like he overcompensates for what Doug did to him in general? Dale had to live in rags and lose his childhood to a lemonade scheme his father refused to save him from without magical intervention? Well, Dev gets to live in luxury and not have to lift a finger even if that means he never sees Dale because he's too busy trying to sustain their current level of opulence.

You can tell if Dale is having a rough mental health time if he doesn't slick his hair back. Curly Hair Dale is a Vulnerable Dale.

[virmillion]

Love is a Four Letter Word

Summary: Everyone has magic, and it’s really nothing special at all. Just another skill, sort of like a sixth sense. Roman is not particularly fond of his brand of magic, and sets off to find Thomas—the one person rumored to not have any magic at all.

Ships: platonic logince (more like acquaintances tbh)

Words: 12,758

Warnings: implied major character death, Less Than Happy backstories, some bullying, unhappy ending, let me know if there’s anything else needing tagging

Check it out on ao3!

    Roman shoulders his bag up higher, nodding a farewell to everybody in one swift motion without directly acknowledging any of them. He glances over the crumpled piece of paper one last time, reassuring himself that he knows what he’s doing. Past the end of the line is a man free of magic by the name of Thomas. Sticking the page back in his pocket, Roman triple-checks that he has more than enough money for a train ride that long. At the very least, it should be enough to get him well past the reach of anyone in this city.

    Everybody falls over themselves to bid him farewell as he makes the trek down to the train station, trying to offer absent smiles to anyone drawing near enough to see his expression. Their words all sound the same after an incredibly short while, all impersonal pleas for him to stay, to help.

    “Roman, please hang around, I need your magic to lock down my boyfriend!”

    “Roman, can you use some of that energy to bring up the positivity for after you’re gone?”

    “Roman, would you bloom this flower early so I can impress my wife?”

    “Roman, I need you to funnel me some confidence for my interview tomorrow!”

    It only becomes more obvious with every plea that chases him further from the center of town that these people only kept him around to boost their own spirits—always at the expense of his own happiness, but no one ever asks about that. Not when they can get manufactured love for free. Sure, it saps Roman’s energy to use his magic, but doing so is the only way he can feel wanted anymore, and isn’t that enough to justify exhausting his supply for these people? No, he doesn’t know their names, their faces, their histories, but at least they keep him around.

    Roman has been waiting for weeks to board a train heading in this direction, all the way to the end of the line. He passes the engineer a fistful of bills, requesting to ride the train as far as it’ll go. The engineer nods him on, seemingly unsurprised by the destination. “Passenger cars are that way. Bit of a bumpy ride near the end, though.”

    “Where would we be without some good old ominous foreshadowing?” Roman mutters to himself, slipping through the cars and tamping down the bubbles of joy trying to stir in his stomach. He’s already wearing an oversized turtleneck to hide his face, so there’s certainly no need to broadcast his reputation as the resident magicker of love to the whole train.

    None of the cars he sees are empty, but the third to last one is about as close as he suspects he’ll get. Just one passenger, who’s busy fiddling with a pile of shiny silver shards in his lap. They share a brief nod, acknowledging each other’s presence the way only two complete strangers can, after which Roman allows the neck of his shirt to slip just a little lower down his chin. The guy doesn’t seem like the type to jump up and fawn over Roman for a little extra cheer boosting his day, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Roman has seen many a person desperate for his help simply for the sake of an easier day, completely ignoring how much it saps his own energy. Hopefully this trip will solve all of that.

    Roman continues on to the third to last seat—three is his lucky number—and exhales as quietly as he can manage, resting his head against the glass and watching the incessant crowds waving from the station. He doesn’t recognize a single person among them.

    It’s pretty obvious that they’re searching for a sign of him through the tinted glass, hoping to siphon off just a little more love before he goes, and Roman wonders whether his resolve will hold out long enough to avoid that. He almost wants to leap through the window and into their adoring arms, to feel them welcome him back home, even if he knows it will help absolutely anyone except himself. Better not to, given what happened the last time he gave too much. Roman is terrified of ever giving too much again. He feels himself on the verge of breaking this time, and he might’ve just let himself give in, were it not for the train engine rumbling to life and knocking his head against the window.

    Roman allows himself a soft, agitated ow under his breath, wincing as he presses his palm to his skull. By the time the pain wears off, the station is shakily bouncing off into the distance. He doesn’t allow himself to watch as it disappears.

    The steady rocking of the train drags him into a fitful sleep, promising no rest behind his closed eyelids. His dreams are messy, just distant flashes of memories, of things he should’ve done, should’ve said, things he wishes he hadn’t and the letter R swirling in in dizzying circles around his head, hammering his brain like so many wasps forced through a long winter with minimal warmth and food. Amidst his short bouts of wakefulness, he tries to ignore the pounding headache on the rise, instead watching the rolling hills of lively green give way to dirt and mud, then to hundreds of thousands of barren tree stumps, all melting together in a mix of nothingness that envelopes his dreams in a cushion of hollow green love.

    When he wakes, Roman shouts the name ricocheting inside his head, then immediately claps a hand over his mouth. He holds it firmly in place with the other, then glances at a beanpole of a man hovering to his left.

    “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

    “It’s fine,” beanpole interrupts. The guy that was messing with the silver stuff when Roman first boarded. Beanpole jerks his chin toward the window, then offers a hand to Roman. “Train’s down. Everybody off.”

    Roman absently takes his hand, looking back at the window. Depot town. Not the most clever name, to be sure, but he’s got nothing against this place. Well, one thing, but it’s not a big thing. Well, it’s a pretty big thing. Well, it’s actually the only thing Roman can hold against a place, but it’s fine. He’s fine. It’s the worst possible place this train could have broken down, but it’s fine and he’s fine and everything’s fine, so stop asking.

    “Name’s Logan,” beanpole continues, leading Roman to the front of the train. “Guess you slept through the announcement, since you took so long to hear me asking you to get up. They hit some problem in the engine or something, and they’re enlisting anyone that can offer specialized magic to fix it.”

    “That’s, um, I don’t think I can help you there. My name’s Roman, by the way.”

    “Pleasure. I wasn’t asking for your help, merely informing you of the situation. At which stop were you intending to depart?”

    “I don’t know its name, but whatever the last one is.”

    Logan stops at the last step leading out of the train, turning around to squint at Roman’s face—well, as best he can, what with the turtleneck in the way. “End of the line guy, hm?”

    “Something like that.” Roman shuffles off the train behind Logan, glancing around the town. Well, the area just before the town—they pretty much broke down right outside civilization, not to mention that the designated train station is well near the opposite end of the town. Certainly not ideal. “Did they say what was wrong with the train?”

    “Just that it’s down. Something with the machinery. I’ll figure it out.”

    “Why you?”

    Logan whips his head around—sharper this time, almost indignant. “Why not me? Why anyone else but me?”

    Roman pulls his lips between his teeth and looks away, his face flushing bright red under the scrutiny of such an imposing figure. “Never mind.”

    Logan sighs and pulls off his glasses—there’s an odd green glint along the lens, something Roman hadn’t noticed before. He watches Logan hold them aloft with one hand, lifting his other as if to present them to an enraptured audience. With a simple flick of his fingers, the glasses wobble themselves into the air, hovering a few inches above Logan’s open palm.

    As the glasses levitate on their own, listing just a touch to the right, Logan whirls his hands around them, pinching and pulling as if he were trying to knot a length of string without overlapping the loops. Slowly but surely, the sleek frames stretch and pull at each other, separating into hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny pieces sparking with bright blues and fiery purples. The sparks flicker off, and Roman flinches away from one on instinct—even showy magic can scar.

    There’s a soft pop, like someone blowing a sharp puff of air into a closed pair of hands, and the glasses click back together, almost identical to when Logan began his little charade. The only thing is that now, well, they look ever so slightly different. The green of the lenses is much more prominent, almost a pastel tone that nearly blocks out Logan’s eyes when he replaces them on his face.

    “Neat party trick,” Roman says finally, uncertain how to react to Logan’s flat manner of demonstrating his magic. Most people only tend to use their magic when they need it or when they’re hassling Roman for favors, not to impress some stranger beside a broken down train.

    “It’s not a party trick,” Logan says, rolling his eyes. “I manipulate any technology I’ve taken the time to sit down and understand, which includes those that I’ve built.” He adjusts his glasses, as if it wasn’t obvious enough that that’s what he was talking about. “What I just did, crossing these wires, fusing those pins, what you so callously called a party trick? I switched around the core function. I can now effectively see any major malfunction that may not be immediately apparent to untrained eyes.”

    Roman instinctively crosses his arms over his body, not wanting to know what major malfunctions might lie under his thin cotton shirt.

    “Not like that, that’s a different setting. This is more for inorganic creations, like the train engine.” Logan gestures to his left, surprising Roman with how quickly they’d arrived at the front. “Remember what I was saying about specialized magic?”

    “Yeah?”

    “I’m the specialized magic. Thanks for the entertainment. It shouldn’t be long before the train is up and running again, though I wouldn’t hang too close by. Don’t want any techno flares flying off at the wrong moment.” Logan flashes a grin as he holds up a finger, letting a burst of sparks shower from the tip like fireworks. Roman takes the hint, quickly backing up to join the small group huddled a decent distance from the tracks. Not too many people staying on this far down the line.

    He watches as Logan kneels beside the engineer at the base of the train, the pair quietly mumbling to each other as Logan waves his slender fingers around a large sheet of metal. In a flash, it smoothly glides off and hovers in the air over Logan’s head, easily poised to slice through skin at a moment’s notice. Logan doesn’t seem to care. He only leans in further, picking at some of the pieces inside the train, none of which Roman can see through Logan’s body. Quickly bored with watching Logan’s relatively still back, Roman glances around at the other stranded passengers.

    A few talk amongst themselves, debating whether it’d be worth it to just walk the rest of the way to town and grab a drink while they wait for the specialized magickers to do their thing. Others lean forward over an invisible barrier, desperate to see what kinds of tricks the magickers can pull off with such a large and detailed engine, but clearly hesitant to get too close. There’s a lone mother standing off to the side, desperation in her eyes as she tries to maintain her composure while soothing her wailing baby. A few of the passengers that were discussing getting drinks shoot her nasty looks, but these, of course, do nothing to silence the distressed child.

    “You told yourself you wouldn’t do this anymore,” Roman mumbles under his breath, more of a soft chastising than a reminder of a promise destined to be broken the moment it was made. He focuses in on the sound of the mother’s soft voice, amplifying it in his head until her hushed tones, her reassuring coos, her indescribable love flows like a serene river through a spring of endless flowers in his mind, growing and expanding and opening the world into the hope and joy and life that supports the love flowing through it all.

    Roman takes this energy, feels it course around his heart, doing cheerful little loop-de-loops and excited hops that lift the corners of his lips, and he sighs softly, picturing his breath floating on the breeze, buffeted by the whispered gossip of the cherry blossom petals dancing across the landscape. He imagines his breath taking life, a pure wave of bright blue that almost blends in with the picturesque sky above, drifting over the heads of the grumbling passengers, teasing at the ends of the mother’s hair and lifting the tips as if there were fairies playing hide and seek on her shoulders. The mother’s voice takes on a new strength, bolstered by a laugh with no source as she bounces the baby and smiles in relief at its face, watching those rosy cheeks puff up with a big breath as the baby inhales the delightful air and releases a bright, burbling laugh, an elated giggles that echoes back into the wind, returning Roman’s joy to the air and spreading a thin layer over the world with the rebound of its happiness.

    Roman smiles to himself, feeling the muted sparks of magic intertwine with the spirits of the passengers, all of whom seem to exhale just a little bit in tandem with the baby, suddenly filled with an inexplicable and untraceable sense of rightness. Something in their lifted attitudes allows Roman to forget just how much energy that one sapped out of him.

    He glances back to the engine, where he can almost see Logan’s stiff posture relaxing as a display like an explosion of colors shoots out from his hands, whipping his hair up into a quiff for just a moment before it settles back into its usual stern state. Logan sits back on his haunches and cocks his head to the side, pointing at something as he speaks lowly with the engineer.

    Specialized magic, indeed.

    “Ahem, your, ah, your attention please, esteemed passengers!” the engineer calls, rising to all his four foot eleven glory. Roman turns to face him along with everyone else. “We have gotten the train back, ah, back in working order, it seems, but we want to, erm, we are going to run a quick diagnostic check to ensure the problem will not, eh, reappear.” Roman is pretty sure he catches Logan rolling his eyes at that, but the tint of his green lenses makes it too hard to be certain. “It will probably take us, erm, at least a couple of hours, so I suggest you all, ah, head over to Depot town and see all the attractions they have to offer and enjoy!” This is met with far fewer grumbles than might be expected, and Roman tries not to preen at the knowledge that his magic played some part in that. “I hear they have, eh, an excellent selection of pubs!”

    Roman gnaws at the inside of his cheek, watching most of the passengers turn toward the town. One of them lags behind to walk beside the mother, and they both share a hearty laugh when the baby does whatever baby thing it is that they find so funny. He looks to the engineer, who is profusely shaking Logan’s hand, while Logan looks just a little bit bewildered as he adjusts his glasses.

    Once Logan finally frees himself from the engineer’s grip, he ambles over to Roman, who busies himself looking anywhere but at those green glasses. “Y’know,” Logan says, removing the frames and scrubbing at them with the underside of his shirt, “I am pretty good at what I do. I’ve fixed many a mechanical issue, simply by applying my knowledge regarding the technology at work behind the problem. What I do not understand is how a train engine, the exact model of which I have never personally seen before, suddenly put itself back into working order with me only needing to lift three fingers in the process.” Logan cocks his head to the side and peers at Roman, a strangely personal expression without the glasses to deflect his gaze. “It usually takes at least five.”

    “Magic’s funny that way,” Roman says with an uncomfortable laugh.

    Logan lingers on Roman’s face a moment longer, just beyond what could be called reasonable, before he straightens and looks toward the town. “I suppose it is. Let me buy you a drink, and we’ll discuss what else is so funny about magic.” Roman swallows thickly and nods, watching Logan take a few steps toward the town as he begins whirling his fingers around his glasses again. It’s not until Logan gets a solid fifteen feet away that Roman realizes he’s supposed to walk with him, and he trips over himself to catch up.

    “You ever been to Depot town before?” Logan asks, holding his glasses over his head and squinting through the lens at the sun.

    “Once or twice,” Roman says. Try a hundred times.

    “Interesting.” Logan puts his glasses back on and turns to Roman, quirking his mouth to the side. “I don’t know if you could tell based on the mechanical manipulations, but I’ve just reworked the lenses to allow me to see when someone isn’t being entirely honest with me.”

    “Oh, is that—I, um—okay, I did come here a lot with my family when I was little,” Roman admits.

    “That so?” Logan chuckles softly and shakes his head. “Well, if I may be so candid in return—” He drops his voice to a whisper, forcing Roman to strain to hear it. “These aren’t truth-seeing lenses. I just know when someone’s a bad liar.”

    “I am a great liar!” Roman protests.

    “That so?” Roman is quickly getting tired of this refrain. He wonders how many more times he’ll have to hear it. “I suppose you’ll have to show me around town, then. I certainly don’t know which pub is the best.”

    “Definitely not that one.” Roman waves a hand toward the bar nearest to the front entrance of the small town, where all the other passengers are flooding in like a line of ants. “They put it up to attract tourists like us, but the good stuff is way in the back, like a little secret for the locals.”

    “Makes sense.”

    With that, they weave their way through the town, careful not to trip over outcroppings of metal gears and wooden planks lining the dirt paths. Roman points out certain buildings as they pass them, returning excited waves from people who know him well enough not to question why he’s here without his family in tow.

    “So over there’s the mill—they bring all the best raw wood in there, and the top magickers get their pick of the lot, since they’re usually sworn to funnel about ten percent of the work it brings them back into the town’s funds. Hey, Sigma, how goes it?” Roman nods to someone sitting in front of one of the only shops in town, lazily floating a steady stream of water from one pot to another. They wave back at Roman, the distraction big enough to shatter the rainbow of water over their head, the flow crashing down and soaking their hair.

    “Stop doing that!” they shout, shaking their head and sending droplets flying.

    “How else will you learn to focus?” Roman retorts with a laugh. The water charmer makes a motion like a conductor cutting off an orchestra, easily drawing all of the water into one big ball just beside their ear. A wicked grin crawls onto their face.

    “Run,” Roman says softly, nudging Logan’s shoulder. As that smile grows, he says it more insistently, picking up the pace and urging Logan to “run, technerd, run!”

    Logan complies easily, his long legs allowing him to keep up with Roman as they sprint away, dodging the drops of water that come hurtling for their heads.

    “Sigma,” Roman huffs, “has never been,” huff, “one for,” huff, “practical jokes,” huff huff huff.

    “It might help if you didn’t trick them into drenching themselves,” Logan points out, not struggling for his own breath in the slightest.

    “Did I ask you?”

    “You didn’t not ask me.”

    “Well, I’m not un-didn’t asking you now.”

    “Glad we’re on the same page.”

    Roman forces his feet to slow down as they approach a pathetic looking building near the outer limits of the town, where there’s hardly anything but homes and patches of dirt with a little more life than the other patches of dirt. He leans hard into the front door, ramming his shoulder into it a few solid times before it flies open and he goes sprawling across the floor.

    “I believe I’m about two pages ahead of you now,” Logan says, bending down to offer him a hand. He helps Roman to his feet, and Roman can’t help but wonder whether that will be a recurring theme with this guy.

    “Roman!” an angry voice yells from behind the bar. “I thought I told you to stay away!”

    “Hey-ho-de-low, Jackie,” Roman says smoothly—well, as smoothly as anyone can say something so ridiculous. “What if I said I brought a peace offering? A technerd to fix that juke of yours?”

    A sturdy little lady who just about tops out at Roman’s chin rounds the corner, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “I didn’t ask for no techie guy in my shop, either. Where’d you hide your family this time, huh? Where’s that boy y’had on your arm? Where’re the fancy stories and lies about why you didn’t bring your brother back around?”

    “Your juke has been broken for ages,” Roman says, neatly dodging the other questions. “Let me let you let him fix it.”

    “I never agreed to any such thing,” Logan sighs, but he grins at Jackie anyway. She returns the smile—an odd move, in Roman’s opinion. She never smiles at people she hasn’t met before. Although, despite her temper, Jackie always was a charmer. Maybe she just doesn’t like Roman. Of course, that’s an absurd theory, but it’s the only one he’s been able to come up with. Maybe Roman just isn’t that smart.

    He moves for his usual seat in the corner, pressed up against the window with one wobbly stool and one wicker chair. He goes for the stool. To the sound of Logan and Jackie discussing the jukebox’s latest malfunction, Roman spins the stool round and round, until it won’t turn any way but right, and rests his chin on the windowsill.

    Right out there, in the middle of that large ring of messy tire tracks dug artlessly into the mud, he allows his thoughts to wallow in their own emptiness, swirling up eddies of the forgotten carelessness of childhood hidden in the green grasses, the whole mess struggling to grow against the world of dirt trying to choke them out.

    Roman sprinted across the open field, baring his teeth to the wind and imagining someone was using the sun as a camera to capture his every movement. He let out a whoop over his shoulder and yelled, “I’m eating bugs!”

    “No you aren’t!” a voice behind him whined. “Stop eating the bugs!”

    “I’m gonna eat all the bugs!” Roman insisted. Quick as a whip, he hit the dirt and dragged his hands through it, smearing the colors over his teeth. He spun around and grinned, feeling the mud squelch under his knees. “Look at all these yummy bugs!”

    “You’re so gross,” Remy informed him, tripping over his feet as he stumbled to a stop beside Roman. “You didn’t even eat them, liar!”

    “Did so!”

    “Did not!”

    “Did so!”

    “Did not! I can still see them all up on your teeth!”

    “Nuh-uh!” Roman didn’t even flinch as he ran his tongue over his lips, wiping off the mug and flashing his not-very-pearly whites. “See? Ate ’em all! Told you so!”

    “Guh-ross!” Remy shouted, planting his hands on Roman’s shoulders. He shoved him backwards, cackling as his brother’s back made a spectacular splashing sound as it collided with the mud.

    “You’re gross,” Roman retorted, burrowing his short fingernails in the dirt. Before Remy could dodge it, Roman tossed up the chunks of earth, laughing without a care in the world as they splattered across Remy’s face. “Told you so! Told you so!”

    “Boys!” a sharp voice yelled from the building at the far side of the mud ring. Roman and Remy both froze, taking in each other’s filthy faces.

    “Bet she yells at you,” Roman muttered, getting to his feet without bothering to dust off his pants. No use trying to hide it now, anyway.

    “Bet she doesn’t,” Remy said in a stunning imitation of Roman’s voice. “Older siblings always take the blame.”

    “Not if I’m really good at crying.”

    “Not if I cry first!”

    “You wouldn’t dare.”

    Remy only grinned, putting on a burst of speed as he ran for his mother. Roman shook his head and laughed, sprinting to catch up, and if he stuck out a leg to trip his brother on the way and take the lead, well, the past is the past, what’re you gonna do about it?

    “—his peace, he doesn’t get much of it,” a familiar voice says, floating over the cotton candy skies and ripping Roman out of his sugar-sweet memories. He blinks and shakes his head, trying to ignore how much the green has faded from the grass outside.

    “Sorry, what?” He looks up at Jackie and Logan, the latter of whom is staring at him with confusion. Not nearly as bad as the former, whose eyes betray naught but pity. “I’m fine.”

    “Didn’t ask, but I guess I’m glad to hear it,” Logan says, settling himself on the wicker chair.

    “Drinks for you boys?” Jackie asks. Roman hates the way she softens the edge of her voice when she looks at him. She never used to put on that tone when he still brought Remy around. Granted, it’s kind of his fault that can’t happen anymore—by which he means it’s entirely his fault, which means it’s also his fault that she’s taking that tone, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it, does it?

    Roman’s lips feel chapped. “Just a couple waters would be—”

    “Your hardest ciders, please,” Logan interrupts. He waves off Roman’s protests, continuing, “I’m buying, remember? No worries.”

    Roman nods, forcing his eyes not to stray toward the window. There’s a reason he hasn’t been back here in years. “Thanks.”

    “Now, do you think you might want to tell me what your deal is with this place?”

    “Not really.” Roman briefly considers pulling on some of the upbeat music pouring from the jukebox, wrapping it around Logan’s head and forcing some semblance of tranquility into his mind, but no, bad idea. It was a mistake to cheer up that baby earlier, a taste of what he knows he can’t have. He swore off of messing with emotions a long time ago, back when there was nothing he could do to keep himself in check. No more.

    “Think this might help loosen your nerves a little,” Logan says, pushing a mug of cider across the table. Roman hadn’t even noticed Jackie setting it down. He takes a tentative sip, all too aware of the way the other patrons along the bar are very pointedly not looking at him. Having a reputation to precede you isn’t always a good thing.

    “Fine, I’ll go first,” Logan says. He takes a long swig from his own drink before plunking it down on the table, ignoring how some of the foam splashes out onto the wood. Roman traces his eyes along the grain of the surface, remembering when his dad let him sit in on the magicking process of converting a useless tree stump into functional furniture. That always was his signature move, wasn’t it? Magicking life into things that were long dead. Well, most things. Even his dad wasn’t one to magic life into things that never had any business being alive in the first place.

    “The town where I live—well, used to live—was incredibly strict about when and how we could use magic.” Logan stares into his mug, and Roman has to wonder whether he hears the words leaving his mouth. “They didn’t like that I could disassemble things at will and put them back together according to my tastes, thought I might get carried away and start taking apart people.”

    “That doesn’t—”

    “Make sense? Sure it does. Remember how I said I can manipulate any technology I take the time to sit down and understand? If you think about it, people are just a different kind of technology, and I was studying to be a surgeon, and, well, one suspicion led to another, and that obviously made some people uncomfortable, so I left. And I left again. And I left again, and again, and every single town I went to was exactly like the last, all nice and welcoming until it came out that I could do more than just basic reparations on junky radios.” Logan furrows his brows, glaring harder at the ripples in his mug. “Well, huh. Didn’t mean to say that last part.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “I wasn’t kidding when I said I can manipulate any technology I understand.”

    “Right, that’s how you—”

    “Fixed the train and did my studies, yes, but more than that. I can do that to almost anything, even intangible things, if given the right parameters.” Logan clenches his fist, and Roman almost thinks he sees the frames on his face flicker like a flame. “I don’t like talking about it, but you’ve obviously got some stuff blocking your system, and since you clearly helped me out with the train—no matter how much you try to deny it—I’d be willing to return the favor, but only if you’ll consent to it.”

    Roman tries to laugh off the notion that he had anything to do with the train, but Logan isn’t buying it. “Don’t kid yourself, obviously that train didn’t just fix the engine on its own. We’ve been over this. You don’t have to tell me what your magic is or anything like that, I get it if you’re one of those ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ types, but have you ever turned on a garden hose to full blast and stepped on the line about halfway down?”

    “I—er, yeah, why?”

    “That’s you. You’ve got some personal nonsense blocking the main flow in your system, and if you don’t release it soon, it’ll explode on its own, and it’ll do a lot more damage than if you let it leak out slowly right now.” Logan leans in with an earnest look on his face, much more sincere than anything Roman had come to expect from him so far. “I’m trying to help you here, Roman. You need to release it now, or you will regret it later.”

    Roman takes a long pull from his mug, wishing he was talking to the mother and baby from the train rather than this oddly perceptive stranger. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

    Logan blows out a large breath, puffing up his cheeks and looking past Roman at the ring of mud outside. “I can take apart your psychology, physically and metaphorically speaking. You’re holding something in, and you need to let it out.”

    “I don’t need to do anything of the sort,” Roman snaps, watching the liquid slosh around in his mug. “Nor do I appreciate your trying to say as much.”

    “I merely wanted to make the offer,” Logan relents, raising his hands in surrender. “You are free to refuse my services, if it so please you, in which case I will make no further advances.”

    “Somehow, I don’t believe you,” Roman mutters, looking up as the main doors swing open. Great. Just who he wanted to see.

    “Heard the old love magicker rolled into town!” a gruff voice jeers. Sigma peers out from behind a man who has to be almost seven feet tall and two hundred stone. They mouth an apology to Roman, who just stares blankly back.

    “Just get lost, Trev, would you?” he sighs, pointedly not making eye contact as the pair crosses the room in a few long strides to leer down at him.

    “Aw, that don’t sound like much fun, does it, Sigma?” Sigma stays silent, only looking closely at Roman’s mug. He glances down to see the ripples taking the vague shapes of letters—probably some half-hearted apology—so he lifts the cup and turns it over, letting the contents splatter onto the floor.

    “Hey!” Jackie yells, but she doesn’t sound too upset—at least, not upset enough to do something about it. She merely hangs back and watches the scene unfold. After all, no one’s ever helped before, so why should she lift a finger now?

    “Hear you skipped town to keep your magicky love a secret,” Trevor continues, slamming his hands down on the table. “Little boy got too popular with his little love spells, came crying home to Mom and Dad—or, wait, you can’t do that, can you? Don’t got no one to cry to anymore, do you?”

    “Shut up, Trev,” Roman whispers, hoping the agitation in his voice will mask the way his words wobble like dictionaries balanced on cooked noodles.

    “Wittle baby gonna cwy to the pawents he don’t have!” Trevor whines in a shrill voice. Roman rests his hand on his cheek, all too aware of Logan’s stiff silence across from him. What good is having a silent observer around if they won’t do anything?

    “That’s not your information to share,” Roman mutters, wishing Sigma would defend him and knowing full well they won’t.

    “Well, somebody’s gotta tell our newcomer here about your deal, don’t they? Guess it falls to me, since you don’t wanna go clarifying it yourself. Forgive me if I decide to embellish some of the details, you know how I am with the dramatics.”

    “Shut up,” Roman says again, wishing his voice were stronger than it is.

    “Roman,” Logan says. Yes, very helpful addition, thank you for your groundbreaking contributions to this conversation. “Roman,” he repeats, more insistent this time. Roman glances across the table to see Logan removing his glasses, waving his hands in that familiar way again.

    “Oh, the glasses are off now! Wittle Roman got a wittle techno dork to help him?” Trevor cackles, folding his impossibly oversized arms and giving Logan a once over. Seriously, his biceps are like sausages on steroids. “Just stay out of this, kid. It’s for your own good. Nothing worthwhile ever comes out of hanging around this guy, y’got that?”

    “I don’t know that I’d say nothing,” Logan replies coolly, swirling his fingers faster now. Roman watches, not sure whether to be horrified or amazed as the frames split apart into tiny spears, their tips sharp enough to pierce metal. The flurry of miniature blades organizes itself into a sheet of steel, poised directly in front of Trevor’s face. Logan slows down his fingers, keeping the pieces in a careful rotation mere inches from Trevor’s eyes.

    “Woah, okay, let’s just take it easy here,” Trevor says nervously and, as Roman is happy to note, with some degree of fear in his voice.

    “I don’t know what you mean,” Logan says with a sickeningly sweet smile. “I’m simply demonstrating my magic for my friend here, while maintaining a casual discussion with a fellow patron of this fine establishment. Trev, was it?”

    “I, uh, I didn’t—”

    “Neither did I, but here we are.” Logan jerks his head to the side, hard enough that Roman is genuinely concerned he might snap his neck, and the needles rearrange into the silhouette of an arrow that rises to Trevor’s forehead. Something in Roman’s gut twists at the achingly familiar sight. “Anything else you’d like to share with the group, or should you like to be excused?”

    Trevor makes a sound similar to that of a kicked puppy before bolting for the door, leaving Sigma shaking beside the table. One pointed glance from Logan, and they’re gone.

    “Wh—you didn’t—I mean, I would’ve—you could’ve—” Roman splutters, watching Logan calmly reassemble the shards into normal frames on his face.

    “I did, you wouldn’t have, and neither would I,” Logan says. “Now, you are naturally under no obligation to explain what all that was about, but I would recommend filling me in, if it so pleases you. I do think I’ve earned it by now.”

    “Can’t argue with that,” Roman admits. “No matter how much I want to. So there’s this guy—”

    “Isn’t there always?”

    Roman pouts. “There’s rumors of this guy, Thomas, who doesn’t have any magic.”

    Logan seems taken aback by this, and Roman finds a considerable amount of satisfaction in having silenced him. “People have had magic for thousands of years, even in just trace amounts. Surely he’s got some semblance of it.”

    “Doesn’t sound like it.” Roman shrugs, trying to decide how to proceed without bringing up the reason he even started looking for Thomas. “Anyway, he lives out near the end of the lines, of any train there is. I’ve never seen a station that reaches farther than this train’s last stop, and I want to find him.”

    “Why?”

    “I want to know what it’s like to be free of the magic.” Roman clenches his fist against his thigh, feeling the mud rings outside burning a hole in his back. “I want to know if he can pass it on.”

    “You want to take his inability to do magic? Sounds kind of antithetical, no?”

    “Well, yeah, but I just—I need to know if it’s true. I need to know if there’s an escape.”

    “An escape from what?”

    “From magic, from magickers, from all of it, I don’t know. I don’t want to deal with it anymore, with any of it. I just want to be done.”

    “What kind of magic could you possibly have been stuck with that’s bad enough to hate it so much?”

    “Hate? I don’t think it’s physically possible to hate my magic, actually.”

    Logan twists his mouth to the side and considers Roman for a long moment. “Did it ever occur to you that this Thomas—whether or not he actually does exist—lives so far out of reach because he doesn’t want to be found?”

    “It has crossed my mind,” Roman admits. “I just want to be done with my magic. I don’t want to mess up again.”

    There’s another commotion from near the door—friendly faces, this time, but they sort of remind Roman of starving raccoons. They peer around the room before their eyes come to rest on Roman’s face, and from the way they almost seem to salivate at the sight of him, he knows exactly what they want. He wants no part of it.

    “Roman, won’t you please fix my relationship—”

    “Roman, my grandmother is sick, can you pull some sunshine—”

    “Roman, I love your magic, is that enough to fuel me with—”

    “Roman!”

    “Roman!”

    “Roman, I love the idea of you—”

    “Roman!”

    “Roman!”

    “Roman, I haven’t seen your parents in a while, is it true that you—”

    “Roman, where’s Remy these days, did you scare him off? I thought it was just a rumor that your love—”

    “Roman!”

    “Roman!”

    “Roman!”

    “Roman, what happens when you run out of—”

    “Roman, can I have some of—”

    “Roman, I love your—”

    “Roman!”

    Roman feels sick. He hides his head in his hands, propping his elbows on his knees and wishing his stomach would stop turning as their words bounce around his skull, Roman Roman Roman Remy Roman Remy Remy Roman Remy Roman messed everything up and everyone knows it and Remy knows it and it’s too late for Remy so it’s too late for you, Roman, what ever will you do with all the love you can’t have when no one will give you more?

    “Right, that’s enough of that,” Logan says suddenly, swiping Roman’s wrists out from under him. He jolts up, feeling a sharp pain in his shoulder as Logan yanks him to his feet. “Let’s go.”

    Logan ushers Roman out the door, leaving some coins and bills on the counter for Jackie and ignoring the shocked looks from the other patrons of the bar, all of whom quickly trade their surprise for awe as they realize this really is that Roman, right there in front of them.

    “Logan, I—”

    “Don’t need to tell me anything that you don’t want to. Keep moving.”

    Roman bites his lip, numbly leading the way back to the station, where the train is slowly pulling up to the appropriate departure area. All in working order, then. No more engine problems.

    He moves to step on board, only hesitating when he no longer hears Logan’s feet behind him. “Aren’t you coming?”

    “Nah,” Logan says, looking back at the station. “Jackie was telling me about a bunch of things that need reparations around here, and it’s a neat little town. Think I might hang around a while, try to fix it up for them. Maybe get to work on repairing some of these people’s attitudes, too.

    “I—” Roman falters, uncertain what he could possibly say to Logan after all that just went down. “It’s love, I think.” Logan says nothing, doesn’t even nod for Roman to go on, but he does anyway. “I take different types of love and put them into different places and forms as it’s needed, and I did it wrong this one time, just one time, just one mistake, a big one, and, well—” Roman glances at the engineer, who impatiently waves for him to hurry up and get on board already. “I burned the only bridges that I had, and it was my fault, and I can’t take it back. That’s what all that was about, because Trevor and Sigma and Jackie and, well, everyone—they all got caught up in the fallout. Trevor’s the one holding the biggest grudge, I think, since he was such good friends with—um, well, y’know, with one of those bridges. I—”

    “That will more than suffice,” Logan interrupts, gesturing for Roman to board the train. “You needn’t bare your soul to the first stranger that shows you any semblance of decency, you know.” With that, the door slips shut, barring Logan from having to see Roman’s confused expression.

    Roman wanders down to the car he arrived on, collapsing on the third seat and wondering where all the sudden candor came from. Didn’t Trevor’s magic have something to do with compelling honesty? Although, Roman could’ve sworn Trevor condemned magickers after what happened last time things got out of control. Maybe he just had a special passion for condemning Roman, and that one mistake was the nail in the coffin that Roman built for himself.

    He glances down at the cushion of the seat, shifting uncomfortably against an odd lump as he belatedly realizes that this was where Logan was sitting when he first boarded the train. He fumbles around with a blind hand beneath him, feeling for the source of the discomfort as the train sputters to life, sending him lurching forward. At the same moment as his head slams into the next seat, something dislodges from the cushion beneath him. His hands fumble through the air to catch it, carefully clasping around the figure and hugging it to his chest. Once his balance adjusts to the steady rocking of the train, he opens his hands and peers into them, tilting his head to the side in confusion.

    A little 3D heart, vaguely pixelated with all the different pieces of metal and plastic lacing together to create its surface. Roman squints at the thing, turning it under the weak light of the train’s overheads, but there’s no note, no pull tab, no secret compartment, no nothing. Just a heart, and everything Roman is left to interpret from finding it. Did Logan know?

    Maybe Roman’s reputation precedes him more than he realized.

----------

    “End of the line,” a voice announces over the train speakers. Roman slowly rouses, blinking as his eyes come into focus on the little heart still clutched in his hands. He stuffs it in his pocket, careful not to tear the fabric on the sharper edges, and moves for the exit door. On his way, he tosses a flippant wave toward the ceiling, just in case there’s security cameras watching him go or something. A little politeness can go a long way.

    He stumbles out into a cool, dark night, populated only by the densest of shadows. The sole clue that the train station is even designed to be used beyond as a set piece in a creepy picture is the dilapidated set of tracks that end just past the edge of the building, and even those on their own are a pretty flimsy sign. Once the train finishes looping around the track to reposition itself for the return to the inner cities, Roman plops himself down in the middle of the rails and lies on his back to stare at the sky.

    As if the travel time weren’t a big enough hint that he’s farther from home than ever before, the stars above look completely different, almost unrecognizable compared to those rare nights in Depot town, much less back home.

    Home. Roman turns the word over and over in his head, his thoughts dancing around that saying. How did it go again? Home is where the heart is?

    Roman gives a hollow laugh in cheers to that, feeling the outline of the metal heart in his pocket. Hearts, as in love, which is something he never earned enough to make a home with. Foolish of him to try, really. A breathing mannequin in princely makeup, designed to give love, to spread hope and joy, but never to dare try receiving it. He’s not that kind of magicker, something of which he’s all too aware. Everybody seems to know that better than him.

    He runs his hands over the dirt beneath him, feeling how solidly it molds around the cold metal tracks, and wonders whether Remy would appreciate the texture. Always did have a thing for mud and dirt, he did. Mom hated it to no end, which just made it that much funnier that Remy couldn’t go ten minutes without another smudge of brown across his cheek.

    Roman allows himself to smile at that, trying to ignore the stirring in his chest at the memory of Remy’s toothy grin, how excited he was to show off the latest bruise or scratch to Roman, how his face would light up when Roman joined in on the fun.

    All of it gone in an instant, because Roman was too selfish to acknowledge the part of it that Remy actually cared about. The part that everyone cares about, much more than they ever cared about the person behind it. Not that anyone asked. Not that anyone ever asks.

    He rolls onto his side and curls up in a ball and waits for the night to pass.

    “This you?” a voice demands. Roman blinks blearily, wondering how long he’d been asleep. Not very, if the stars shining proud overhead are any indication. Unless it’s the opposite, and he’s been asleep for days. It’s anybody’s guess, really. “Hey, wake up! This you?”

    He reaches up toward the sound of someone shaking a paper in his face, rubbing at his eyes and trying to make out the contents of the page amidst the darkness. A wanted sign, with strikingly accurate details about his magic, his past, and a picture of his face that’s unnervingly spot on, but—

    “Why did they make my forehead so big?” Roman whines, dropping the page and glancing around for whoever handed it to him. A hand snatches the paper back, and a pair of eyes appears inches away from his own.

    “Look, I’m not exactly an artist magicker, but I did my best,” that same voice mutters from beneath the eyes. “Let’s just head over to the station, okay? You squinting like a bat in sunshine looks really stupid.”

    “Your face looks really stupid,” Roman mutters, walking toward the station anyway. He’s been in weirder situations. Mostly because people get too much enjoyment from toeing the line with pestering him about his magic, but still.

    “You don’t know how my face looks, but I can assure you it’s worlds better than yours.”

    “I look amazing!” Roman’s protest echoes on the hollow breeze of the night, but the voice doesn’t return a snide remark this time. He continues on, seemingly alone, to the lamely flickering light at the station, half expecting someone to jump out and shout at him.

    Beneath the sole light bulb, Roman waits for the owner of the voice to reappear and join him on the bench. No one shows up, so he starts talking to the stars instead. “How did you get that information about my magic, and about my family?”

    “I think it’s pretty generous of you to call them your family,” the voice says from somewhere over his left shoulder. Roman turns to trace it, but the sound shifts to the shadows beneath his shoes. “You refusing to share information doesn’t mean no one else is allowed to know it. Especially if they know which shadows to shine a light on.”

    “Doesn’t give you the right to go spreading it around with a crappy wanted poster.”

    “Who said I made more than just the one copy?” The paper reappears in the shadows just past the reach of the station light, and accompanied by the sound of fingers snapping, it disintegrates. “I know what should and shouldn’t be shared. Give me some credit.”

    “How am I supposed to do that if I can’t even see you?”

    “Right, because seeing is believing. I always seem to forget that. Almost like it isn’t true.” Another snap, and those eyes materialize where the paper shattered. They stare at him like a feral cat, poised to attack. “Now have I earned your credit? Does your seeing me count as believing?”

    “Pfft. Hardly.”

    “How about now?” Another snap, and Roman finds himself on the edge of Depot town, watching everyone shutter their windows for the night, watching Jackie kick out the last few lingering drunks, watching Logan in deep conversation with Trevor as Sigma keeps a ball of water hovering over them.

    “How did you do that?” Roman demands, whirling around with his fists raised.

    “Right, because it’s so easy to fight a voice.” There’s an obvious tint of mockery this time, and Roman starts punching at the air. He feels ridiculous, but he doesn’t have it in him to care. “Hey now, no need to be so rude.” Another snap.

Back at the end of the line.

“How are you doing that?”

“You tell me. I’m just bending the shadows. You’re the one connected to the locations and the times.”

“I—what?”

Another snap. Back to Depot town, but it’s different than before. It’s daytime, for one thing, but artificially so. The moon still hangs among the stars, but they wear torn veils of sunshine and clouds, the rips in the fabric shining a spotlight on the mud ring, Roman follows the lines of pure white to the center and walks closer, not entirely certain why.

“No fair!” Remy’s voice echoes across the field. The boy stumbles over his feet, rushing to catch up to another silhouette while trying to hold up the cardboard box around his waist. The crude scribbles along the side try to make it look like a car, but they aren’t the most effective of artistic statements.

“Take me back,” Roman says coldly, desperately trying to tear his eyes away from the scene. But he can’t.

“No, I really think we should watch this play out,” the voice replies.

“I’m gonna beat you!” Roman’s voice shouts, but it’s not this Roman, not now, not quite. His lips move in time with the words, but nothing more than a strangled squeak escapes his throat. Other Roman, the littler Roman, is taunting Remy. What Roman wouldn’t give to hold them both back in the safety of this moment, for just a few seconds, to yank them out and hide them at the end of the line until the awful moment has passed. But he can’t.

As it is, he can only watch as the boys chase each other around the mud ring, bashing into each other with their cardboard boxes and making vroom vroom noises as they go.

“Sneak attack!” little Roman yells in time with Roman mouthing the same words. Little Roman drops his car and produces a long stick from within, grinning triumphantly. The fury of the moon masquerading as a sun burns down on it, and Roman can almost see smoke curling out of the tip, dark and grey and angry.

“Take me back,” Roman pleads, more desperate this time. He can feel the tremors of his voice all the way down to his feet, shaking the ground and sending his knees wobbling.

“Just another minute,” the voice says, completely unfazed. “Don’t forget, we’re only here because you brought it up. I’d happily return to the station if you would let yourself abandon this whole charade.” Roman feels something inside himself shatter as he watches the leaves spiral upward around the boys.

“That’s cheating!” Remy complains, watching little Roman fling his arms to the side. Roman can almost taste the negative pulls of love rising in his own body, and he hates it so, so much, the way the heat of the sun burns in his throat as his smaller self absorbs it, combining it with the dewy sweetness of the grass, the richness of the life in the mud, before it filters over his fingers, twice as bad now that Roman feels it both in his own hands and in his smaller self’s hands. He can feel it eating away at his skin as little Roman sends the emotions blasting into Remy’s chest, knocking the stick sword aside as if it were even less than the mere twig it already is.

“Please take me back.”

“Almost there.”

Roman can hardly stand to watch, yet he can’t force himself to look away, as the wind whips harder, faster, tearing the beautiful pink petals dancing in the air to shreds as they zero in on Remy. Roman falls to his knees, pleading with his younger self not to do it, but it’s far too late, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Say you love me!” little Roman demands, his voice forcing Roman’s jaw to move in time with the words. It might almost be a sweet sentiment, were it not for the millions of shreds of leaves hovering over his head like an arrow, poised directly above Remy’s heart, the moon in the sky using the stars as the bow waiting to release it.

“I—I—” Remy splutters, shaking his head. “This isn’t funny anymore, Roman, I don’t like this game anymore.”

“Say you love me!” little Roman insists, and the words are like a stab to Roman’s heart as he hears how awful, how hopelessly desperate and venomous they sound. They taste like poison as they spill from his own lips.

“Roman, please, I don’t—”

“Just say it before I go completely empty!” little Roman howls. With every quiver of his voice, the leaves over his head split again and again, more and more pieces of the love little Roman is desperate to give, more and more pieces of the love Roman has long since learned he cannot receive. Not unless someone gives it to him freely. No one ever has. Roman learned that the hard way, and here he is taking the same lesson again. He can’t look away.

Remy is frozen, a wild panic in his eyes as he searches for an escape from the sharpening arrow. A wilder look falls over little Roman’s face as he grows desperate, the lines etched in his skin wearing deeper, tearing claw marks over the surface that spawn into scars on Roman’s face. “Please, Remy, I need you to say it!”

“Roman, I don’t—”

“Roman!” an achingly familiar voice shouts from the door of the house nearby. Both Romans whip their heads around to see their mother racing barefoot through the mud, her shoes abandoned at the door. In a flash, she’s at Remy’s side, knocking little Roman out of the way and gathering the smaller boy up in her arms. She shoots little Roman a look of pure disgust, and it’s enough to curdle two stomachs at once, across the span of several years. “What were you thinking?”

“I—I don’t know, I just—” Little Roman’s lower lip wobbles dangerously, and Roman feels his own resolve shaking. His mind does everything it can to ignore the way the arrow overhead is spinning now, slowly breaking up into several smaller daggers. They shake and sink, trying to collapse, but they can’t. “I just wanted him to say he—”

“What, that he cares about you enough to let you force him to give you the magic back?” Though she’s not talking directly to him, not this him, not now him, Roman feels his heart shattering at the hatred in his mother’s voice. “Did it never occur to you that we don’t say it because it hurts too much? Just because you can give that love freely, it doesn’t mean we can, and it certainly doesn’t mean we’re obligated to.”

Roman lifts a hand to warn his mother, watching aghast as the leaves pick themselves back up, a sharper arrow than either of the ones before, aimed squarely at her heart, all the love in the world that little Roman could possibly muster, now a weapon Roman wishes he could turn away. She doesn’t hear him.

The arrow splits in two, one for mother, one for brother, and for a split second, Roman makes eye contact with Remy. The desperation in his face is enough to turn Roman’s heart to stone.

The arrows fall.

Roman’s world shatters.

A snap. The end of the line. “Well, that sure was an exciting little encore, wasn’t it?”

“You son of a—” Roman hisses, building up all the power of the moon back to its natural state, the knowledge of how many lovers use that little sphere as a landmark for their affection, a perspective around which to dance, amidst all the small creatures of the night and the life of the grass tipped in dew and the hum of creation buzzing down the train tracks, whipping it into a storm and bringing it down in tandem with his hands to smash the source of the voice into the ground, flatten and pound and hammer it until it has no chance of escaping, and when it’s all said and done, Roman pants heavily, bent over his knees and letting the energy of the twisted thing he calls love drain out of him.

“You certainly know how to put on a show, I’ll give you that,” the voice says from over his shoulder. Roman feels his body pulling in the energy again of its own accord, but the voice continues on unabated. “Have you considered that I’m just a figment of your imagination, a cursed fragment of your own mind? A shadow among shadows to remind you of all you’ve thrown away?”

“A shadow among shadows,” Roman repeats. He laughs, an empty sound that rings as dull as a cracked bell. In an instant, he pulls in all he can from every painstaking detail of each brick propping up the station building, funneling it into the sky and willing it to tear a hole directly through the secondhand sunshine dripping from the moon. “Any guess where I got the idea for that exciting little encore?” There’s a flash of brilliant light and a bang of sound, and a silhouette appears for a split second in Roman’s peripheral vision.

His whips around and seizes it, wrapping his hands around its throat and squeezing, squeezing, hating the image of the arrow that glows behind his eyelids like stolen sunshine whenever he blinks.

The silhouette still has those achingly empty eyes, which are hazily focused at best—they look over Roman’s shoulder, watching something take shape behind him. Roman glances back, stunned into silence when he sees that oh-so-familiar shape of the arrow of leaves. He swallows around a lump in his throat and slackens his hands, watching the leaves collapse to the ground as harmless debris. With every inch his hands relax, the leaves scatter weaker and weaker into the breeze, normal pieces of nature and not awful tools for something that only a heretic would call love.

The silhouette rocks to its knees and coughs, hacking up every ounce of air as it rubs gentle circles into its neck, and Roman scrabbles to get away from it. Even in the aftermath of that flash, he can still make out those eyes, still almost see the reflection of Remy hiding behind them.

“Like I said, putting on a show,” the voice says, sounding all kinds of broken and tattered. “What was it you called your magic again? Love? That’s a laugh, really, I can’t believe you’d call that love.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, but I do, don’t I? We both saw that little scene of yours. I’m not the one that made that happen. It’s your own connection to the world through the twisted thing you call ‘magic’ that brought you there. You’re the one who was so desperate for love, he would throw away his family’s lives for the chance to get it.”

“Shut up. You don’t know anything.”

“And yet here we are, me knowing all this information about you, and you knowing nothing about me. Do you think I didn’t notice all those times you pleaded for someone to love you before? Do you think those dark nights in empty alleys on your own were really so private? You’ve just been waiting for someone to say they love you, and I’m here to break the news that it’s never gonna happen, so you might as well accept it now.”

The silhouette lurches closer, a smattering of purple appearing around his neck. They pulse in time with Roman’s heart, a feeling like fire lighting up on his hands. He wipes them on his pants, trying to separate the bruises from what he doesn’t want to believe he tried to do. Grabbing him by the front of his shirt, the silhouette pulls him up to his feet with impossibly strong hands, pressing their faces together even as Roman tries to resist, tries to ignore the faint details masked almost completely by the shadows surrounding its features.

“What was it you wanted to hear again?” it asks. “Love, was it?” There’s an agonizing ache behind the voice as a clear face takes shape over top of the blank silhouette, an awful recreation of his mother’s face, undercut by the same purple bruises. When it opens its mouth, it has her honeysuckle tone, and Roman feels his stomach turn. “Oh, Roman, darling dearest, I love you.” It shifts, cycling through an impossible list of features and expressions before settling on something gut-wrenchingly similar to his father’s face. “Hey, kid. I love you, you know that?” Another shift, this time to a face that Roman doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to picture, hates it hates it hates it let me go—

“Look at me, Roman,” Remy’s voice says, now aged well beyond any years it had the chance to experience. Roman can’t make himself look, but he feels matching bruises appear on his own throat with every second he ignores the face. Selfish, disgustingly selfish how he forces himself to look just to make the pain stop, but when he meets those eyes, he sees everything all at once—the arrow, the fall, the love that tore apart his mother, his father, ripping through Remy all at once as if it weren’t love but hate, hate, hate hate hate coursing through Roman’s veins as he meets the eyes that have no right being on this bastardization of Remy’s face and hears those awful terrible words echoing through his body, shaking him to his core. “I fzzt you.” Remy raises an eyebrow, trying again. “I fzzt you.” He smiles, an awful toothy expression. “Seems even you can’t imagine him saying it. Think I like this face best.” Remy leers at Roman, eyes wide enough to show the burning white on all sides. “I hate you.” Remy cocks his head to the side and grins, dropping Roman to the cold metal tracks and vanishing.

The voice does not come back.

Roman hates how relieved he is to drown in the silence. He’s starting to think finding Thomas might not be worth all this trouble, and that realization is enough to crumble the last of Roman’s dwindling spirit.

The shadows fold in around Roman as he buries his face between his knees and feels his body shake, his skin prickling as if it were being stabbed by millions of tiny arrows.

And he lies there.

And

He

Lies

There.

“Well, this simply won’t do,” a new voice, a warmer voice, a softer voice says. Roman doesn’t move, doesn’t even open his eyes. “I see that shadow boy got to you first. Can’t imagine what dark corners of your mind he brought to light to get you like this. I know you can hear me, but you don’t have to say anything. I’m going to pick you up now, okay? Lift one finger if you can hear me and don’t want me to do that.” Roman doesn’t move. “Okay, I’m picking you up now. Please stop me if you’re uncomfortable.” With that, Roman feels a sturdy set of arms wrap around him, lifting him carefully into the air.

Then, oddly, the arms seem to expand, growing more arms like branches on a tree trunk, completely enveloping Roman in a soft blanket of tentative warmth. He stubbornly keeps his eyes shut, still feeling all those tiny arrows, still hearing the echoes of that cold voice in his head, still seeing Remy’s eyes stare out as his whispered those damning words.

He loses track of how many times they play over in his head, I hate you I love you I hate you I hate hate hate hate hate you Roman I hate you, simply letting them wash over his soul because he doesn’t know what else to do with them. They must reach a breaking point eventually, because he falls back into himself in time to feel the blanket retracting, returning to a normal pair of arms, gently laying him down on what feels like a mattress. Roman stares at the backs of his eyelids,, wondering whether they’ll force him to start talking soon.

I hate you, Roman.

Surely it wouldn’t have been possibly for the voice to replicate it so perfectly without hearing Remy say the words himself. Right?

“Now, you’re under no obligation to talk about what happened if you don’t want to. Trust me, I know how thorough that shadow boy is about people who find themselves out here.” The return of the kind voice is jarring in comparison to the cold anger flickering in Roman’s head, the reassurance in this tone almost enough to convince Roman to open his eyes. Almost.

“I’m sure you had some idea of what you were doing if you made it this far,” the voice continues, “so you’re probably here because you heard about that Thomas character.” At this, Roman’s eyes fly open. The voice laughs softly. “Thought so. Nice to see you’re alive, at least.”

Now having no choice but to keep his eyes open, Roman sits up and surveys the area. A greenhouse, it looks like, incredibly humid with the sun beating in—when did it turn to daytime?—through the concentrated glass and reflecting off innumerable green leaves and yellow flowers and brown dirt. The person owning the voice almost blends into it all, his skin a dark tan and his fingers stained green, his hair a sandy blond and his bare feet covered in scrapes and dried mud.

“Name’s Patton. Pleasure,” he says, extending a hand to Roman. Roman stares at it, uncomprehending. “That shadow boy,” Patton tuts. “Never does know when to quit, does he?”

“Can you blame me?” the colder voice asks. “This one’s a downright monster.” Roman leaps to his feet, brandishing his fists like the arrows he so hates, searching for the source of the voice and hearing a low growl escape his lips. “Whoa, Patton, you see? Call off the dog, yeah?”

“What have I told you about harassing our guests?” Patton chastises. “Go on, get out. You’re only permitted around here at night, and you’ve lost even those privileges for the next couple days.” Watching Patton converse with the distant voice is a silly enough sight to relax Roman, who lowers his fists and settles back down on the mattress. “Now, onto you. How can I help you? A name would be beneficial to me, at least.”

“Uh, Roman. I, um, I came here to find Thomas.”

“Roman,” Patton repeats carefully, chewing on the second syllable. Something twists in Roman’s gut at the sound. “That so? Yes, yes, we’ve established the reason you came here, but in order to help you, you need to tell me why you wanted to find Thomas.”

“I want to know how he did it. How he escaped having magic.”

“I would hardly call it ‘escaped.’”

“So he does exist, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, where is he, if he does exist? I want to get rid of my magic, and if you can’t help me, I’d like to get going sooner than later.”

Patton cocks his head toward the more crowded section of the greenhouse, folding his arms and squinting at Roman through mud-splattered glasses. “He’s in the back, but I don’t think you’re going to like what you find.”

“I don’t think I asked you.”

“I don’t think you didn’t ask me,” Patton mutters, stepping aside as Roman darts past him. Roman barely remembers to keep his feet under himself as he barrels for the back of the room. Nothing in the world could prepare him for how sharply his heart stops.

“It’s a statue,” he whispers, staring in confusion at the cold marble figure. “He’s just a statue?”

“Just a statue,” Patton confirms, appearing behind him. “Just an idea of a person, for people like you who want to believe in that idea. But I know you didn’t really come here to get rid of your magic because of some fairy tale idea, did you?”

“Yes, I did,” Roman murmurs, staring at the statue, at the complete lack of life in its eyes. It was a lie, wasn’t it? It was always a lie, he never really had a chance. “I came here to get rid of it, all of it.” Something hot and wicked coils up in his chest.

“That so?” Patton rests a hand on Roman’s shoulder, ignoring how he flinches at the touch. Actually, he squeezes harder, holding Roman still. “And why is it that I don’t believe you, hm?” His nails dig in deeper. “Maybe it’s what you’re doing to my plants.”

Roman glances around to see all the petals and leaves and branches wilting, browning, slowly dying, their colors filtering through the air and into his lungs as he starts gasping for breath.

“My strongest love has always been for nature,” Patton continues, his grip almost too much to bear. “I pour my heart and soul into my plants, into growing life from the ground and letting it blossom into the air, and I think that’s pretty evident right about now.”

Roman hardly hears the words, still taking in more color, more light, more life, more love from Patton, feeling the room squeeze out its very essence into his body as he pulls and pulls and pulls, his gaze drifting back to the statue, to the dead silence behind those eyes.

“Go on,” Patton murmurs, an impossibly loud noise amidst the silence Roman has created in the room. “Fill an empty husk with love and see what happens.”

Roman can’t exhale, taking in more and more and more air and colors and life and love, his lungs well past full as he swallows more breaths than he can take and he’s choking on all the love in the room, all the energy Patton is funneling into his plants which are spitting it right back out into Roman’s throat and then he sees Remy in his head and looks closer at the statue’s eyes and it hurts, oh God it hurts, and he’s coughing and sputtering and releasing the colors and the life and the love in broken breaths, barely noticing as his body collapses beneath him, not strong enough to hold up his throbbing head, emptying himself of all the colors and the life and the love in his heart that he’s always given, the thing that hurt the worst when he took it for himself, all spilling out in a rush like a slash across the chest and filtering into the statue and flowing around it, the petals of the smallest flowers floating up and dancing around its head like a wreath as Roman exhales and exhales and blessedly exhales and when he’s finally empty of it all and there’s no more love left to give, Roman wonders whether this is what the love he’s always yearned for feels like.

Patton nudges Roman’s still form with his toe, wincing at the way the skin squishes like mud. “That went better than I expected it to, given how much you had to pull at the shadows.” He looks up at the statue, at the flowers slowing their rotations around its head, each coming to rest along the shoulders. His foot strikes something solid.

“Oh, now that’s interesting.” He reaches down and feels around in Roman’s pocket, producing a little metal heart from within the fabric. “We’ll call it an offering.” He lays it at the statue’s feet, and if he were a sentimental man, he might comment on how for the briefest of moments, a spark of life flashes behind the statue’s eyes before it falls dead and silent once more. In the instant after the light disappears from the face, his plants turn a brighter green, growing a solid few inches in mere seconds. “Change the name and restart the rumors.”

“On it,” the voice says. A very familiar wanted sign materializes behind Patton. By nightfall, word had traveled all the way back past Depot town and to the inner cities and into deaf ears that have already forgotten the person who could spin the sunshine into hope. Past the end of the line is a man free of magic by the name of Roman.

In the darkest corner of a neat little pub tucked away in Depot town, beside a jukebox slowly breaking apart its inner machinery, a man disassembles his glasses. He watches the pieces swirl around his head like a crown as he crumples the paper into a ball and stuffs it in his pocket. “Jackie, I’m heading out again. Got a train to catch.”

Tag List:

@sakurahayasaki @erlenmeyertrash @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch @milomeepit @leesacrakon @virgilmood @mollycassmith @zerogettie @five-hour-anxiety @ashrain5 @allthemetalsoftherainbow @faacethefacts @rileyfirstname @sassy-in-glasses @virgil-has-a-houseplant @redundant-statements-for-400 @zennyo @extremistwateragenda @breloomings @jamthefan @narniasfinestavengingsociopath @crownswriter123 @rosesandstuff @dedaartist @unring-this-bell

[tenyatrash]

Day 2: A House on Fire

This is my entry for Day 2 of the BNHA Noir Week 2019. Tumblr hates my ao3 links so let’s try this instead. @bnha-noir-week Heist, Fatale, Detective

In which Fuyumi and Touya take back control of the narrative. This one didn't exactly meet the prompt as much as I would like, but it's as close as I could get and I like it too much to orphan it, so here's some noir-lite. Come for the twins pulling off a heist, stay for the fatale/detective pair up. 

Ships: BG Fuyumi Todoroki/Ryuko Tatsuma

Characters: Fuyumi, Touya, and Enji Todoroki + Ryuko Tatsuma

Rating: Teen (Some lang, references to past abuse)

Word Count: 2925

It was a hot one, a scorcher of a day that’s left a memory of fire radiating off the pavement even now, hours after the sun disappeared. Slithering heat and muggy night air swirl into a heavy fog that tries to paint the city white and pure, but it fails. Nothing can hide these sins.

This world vibrates with a sickness that skitters just below the surface, coating everything in bitter bile, destroying everyone, one way or another. Some are destroyed by simple violence, quick knives in the dark. They’re the lucky ones, if anyone can be called lucky here. Everyone else? They sit and stew as the corruption eats away at them like rust.

There’s a pair of prowlers on the town tonight, eyes and hearts hardened to cut out a spreading cancer. It’s a night of reckoning for a family name that shoulda been put down long ago.

Pine needles crunch underfoot, sap oozing into the dirt path that marks the road to so many memories, all of them as dark as the oppressive and moonless night. Fuyumi pushes back her bangs and picks her way across the garden that she was never allowed to enjoy, to the house of the Father she was never allowed to escape. She’d smile in bitter triumph, if she remembered how.

There’s a hand at her back now, burning too hot, fingers tapping a steady beat against her spine.

“Pick up the pace, will ya? Pops ain’t gonna be away forever, and yous the one who said no violence.”

Fuyumi looks over to her twin. He’s a scary looking one, alright. The kinda mug folks on the up-and-up cross the street to avoid, the kinda heel soft chippies would gossip ‘bout, bed, and then hide like some kinda dirty secret. Meanwhile, the same skirts are always falling over themselves after the sonofabitch that did it. Just more proof that this world is rotten.

They’ve all got scars of Enji’s ambition, his are just on the outside, is all. Enji got smarter after that, or maybe Touya was just the bravest of them. Either way, dear ol’ Dad learned to keep his abuse strictly need-to-know after that. Learned to hurt, to control, to destroy, all without leaving a mark. Not that anyone would bother to investigate anyway.

Not when every two-bit political wannabe and too-blind copper saw him as some kinda hero.

Fuyumi slides the door open. Just like Pops to not check after his own home security. To assume no one would challenge him, least o’ all here in his pretty little estate. It’s the same arrogance that bred them, after all. Lord, they’re going to enjoy watching the place light up, all pretty blue flames and falling ash.

Touya is eager to start, fingers already caressing awards and photos, skin shivering as they smoke and char. It’s all a lie and God does it feel good to let it burn. A happy family, a heroic life-- filthy deceit that mocks them with every pose and word of commendation. He’s a hero, huh? That what you think, Mr. Mayor, Sir? Then why don’t you try living with him.

Try being a child under that roof.

The two twins slide through the house like shadows, feet still remembering all the steps, remembering which boards creak and which doors groan. They had to learn early, how to hide. How to be silent and unseen. All that training, all that pain, and for what?

To make them big goddamn heroes?

Nah. Turns out, he’d been training them for this heist their whole lives. He mighta been able to catch ‘em, to stop ‘em, to contain ‘em...if he’d cared enough to notice, that is. As it is though, he’s just going to have to say goodbye to all this shiny scratch and all the dreams he had for this name.

Touya’s got his predisposition for fire, and Fuyumi’s got matches, accelerant, and a dream.

First stop is the study. It’s all mahogany slabs and stiff stools, designed so everyone but the kingpin himself can experience stress and smallness and pain. What kinda way is that to do business, much less raise kids? What kinda notes do you give your interior designer when building a room like that? ‘See pal, I wanna room that screams gangster, but you know, classy and legit and all. Wanna keep everyone on their toes.”

Sheesh. They could make a fortune on the book rights alone, if this was any kinda just world. As it is though, Fuyumi knows they’d get buried by law hounds and dirty money the second they so much as pitched the idea. Reputation and respect are the only currency Enji trades in, and if you threaten that, he comes down on you like the fires of hell.

Just ask Touya. Or Ma.

They fiddle with the safe, bad memories making ‘em antsy to get this job done and dusted. Neither knows the code. Not like Enji would trust ‘em with it. After all, they were barely worthy of taking his name, much less accessing his secrets. Lady Luck loves making a fool outta a fella though, and it’s not long before the too-weak twins have their hands on secrets Pops would have done anything to hide.

Fool set the combination as the date his poor “masterpiece” Shouto started manifesting his gifts to the world. It was the third set of numbers they tried. Once this place was ash and his legacy was crushed, Fuyumi hoped she’d have the chance to lean in, real close, and let him know just how his empire came crumbling down.

Let him know that it all came down to his own damn failing. His played-out narcissism and twisted family pride.

They sort through documents and trinkets. It’s all here. Sheathes of paper on the special training they all had to endure, notes from doctors that expressed concern, before blood money overwhelmed their morals, even a dowry arrangement that looks damn sure like a bill of sale.

Touya is more than a little amazed. It’s like Christmas, but happy for once. “What kind of no-good scoundrel does shit like this, then keeps records?”

Fuyumi frowns down at the papers in her hands. She should be pleased. It’s what they’ve been after this whole time, right? But all these names...she wasn’t prepared for that. She might be playing at being a hood tonight, but she’s lived her life more or less on the right side of the law, more or less with faith in people.

And now there’s this. A whole damned mountain of names, of people who knew something sick and twisted was brewing in this house, and who did absolutely nothing to stop it. Hell, even Ma’s parents were in on it, selling her off like a broodmare. Something twists in her gut and all the sudden, she thinks she understands why Touya comes home sometimes, smelling like gunpowder and copper blood.

He sees red, but she feels ice. Ice creeping up her veins and into her heart, that small and abused thing that beats with love, that never seems to learn better. Never protects itself. They all knew. They all knew and they did nothing. Long as the image stayed shiny like the coins that passed hands, they were happy to send them all to the slaughter.

At some point, Touya starts rubbing circles across her palms, gently prying away the documents from her death grip. He helps bring her back to reality, to the job they’ve got to do. She’s not a helpless little girl anymore, and he’s not a throwaway kid. Damn but it’s chilly in here.

There’s no way to heal a festering wound like this one, but at least they can get even. Can show the whole world exactly what they’ve been complicit in. And Fuyumi’s not just interested in taking down Enji. No, she wants them all. Every single patsy and punk who let themselves be bought.

It all clicks in place. That’s why he kept the evidence. Insurance. Pops was never going to go down alone. No, if he got caught, he’d take the whole damn place with him. Fuyumi has no problem making that last request come true.

She wants them to burn too.

They move on, mirror images splitting in two to check the rest of the house. It’s just as impersonal as they remember, with more shadows than furniture and more blood than memories. When he squints into the cloaking night, Touya can swear he can still see the scorch marks from his last training session out in the yard.

Fuyumi touches his arm. They start the fire in two places. Touya begins in the dojo, letting steam and tears lift off his body like all those unanswered prayers, body convulsing as he watches the sparring mats and training dummies that engulfed his childhood be engulfed by flames. Fuyumi begins in Enji’s bedroom, getting drunk on the smell of gasoline as she douses the bed and lets the barren room be swallowed up.

She does it for Mother, who laid on that bed until her body and mind were broken by a man she never loved. She does it for Touya, who destroyed his body and fractured his mind trying to meet standards that he could never reach. She does it for Natsuo, who was called worthless from the start. She does it for Shouto, the masterpiece who never asked for any of this, who spent so long in a gilded cage that he forgot how to feel. And most of all, she does it for herself.

For the girl who did the best she could, who was never enough. Who wasted years trying to tiptoe around a dragon, who blamed herself every time the world descended into flames. For the woman she is, and the woman she could have been.

She spends an eternity looking into the licking flames before Touya, who has more experience in these kinds of things, pulls her out of the room and out of the shuttered home. They leave the lot, no glance spared back until they reach a high hill a few blocks away, at a distance Touya declares safe.

They don’t sit. They stand and they stare and they watch the harsh beauty of orange and blue flames dancing across the collapsing roof and black smoke rising above the murky white fog that still blanketed the lower-lying parts of the city.

They don’t feel the release they had hoped for, but they feel a type of validation, and that’s enough. At least for tonight, their once-home is just as ugly as hellish outside as inside. A four-alarm fire that can’t be ignored. No one gets to turn away. Not tonight.

---

It’s morning, when Ryuko finally makes it home from the clubhouse, just long enough to grab a shower and a bite to eat. Her shift had been held over last night. Whole damn city was losing its mind over that fire especially when some loose-lipped recruit let it slip that the whole thing was cut-and-dry arson.

Ryuko shakes her head and steps into the shower, rivulets of water washing her skin clean but doing nothing to unlock the dark swirls of smoke that clung to her hair and pores. She shudders at the memory of Old Man Todoroki himself, all claws and fire and vitriol as he pushed through the wreckage of his ancestral home. Man damn near started a whole new inferno when he opened the scorched safe and found it empty.

Detective Tatsuma had been sent over, boot-licking superiors and ashen-faced patrol boys offering her as a sacrifice to his anger.

“Come on, you’re shackled to his baby girl. Makes sense you’d be the one to interview him-”

Ryuko had resisted the urge to fill them in on just how much Enji and Fuyumi would hate that characterization, but had trooped forward anyway, too tired to fight for rationality. It’s a losing battle anyway, and it ends up not mattering, at all.

Enji claims the safe was always empty. Nothing is missing. He’s lying like a cheap suit. It doesn’t matter. His word is law, after all.

Ryuko closes her notebook, nods her head, and feigns deference as the hero stomps off, no doubt eager to take out his rage on whatever poor chump is planning on breaking the law today. Once her towering Father-in-Law leaves, she peeks into the safe herself.

It’s bare, that true, but not totally empty. Sitting in the middle of safe like some kinda proposal is a single metal staple. Looks surgical. Ryuko takes note of it before slamming the door shut.

If Enji doesn’t care about who robbed and ravaged him, why should she? Sure, she’ll go through the motions, maybe even catch the doers. But she’s not going to kill herself. Not on a case like this, a one without a real victim.

The shower ends. The house still reeks like smoke and something squirms against the back of her mind as she steps into their bedroom and leans down to press a kiss into Fuyumi’s tousled hair.

Lord love her, but she looks like death warmed over. Ryuko feels a stab of regret. That was Fuyumi’s home, and Ryuko hadn’t been there to deal with whatever emotions hearing about it burn must have elicited. Fuyumi’s never been that forthcoming about her family, and Ryuko has never pressed. Didn’t want to seem like a fame groupie. But surely, there’d been memories there, tokens that Fuyumi might have wanted to take with her. And now some nameless, faceless thug had ripped that away from her.

She’ll make it up to her. She’ll find the arsonist, maybe even find answers. It’s the least she can do.

---

Out in the boonies, Touya’s got one last bit of trash to take out, one last crusade before he can maybe put all this filth behind him. He knew Endeavour would take the bait. Had to, with all he had to lose. He wouldn’t drag Fuyumi into this darkness. Sure, she was mad. And she has just as much right as he. But he’s already lost, his soul already in tatters. He doesn’t mind adding another mark to his debts.

He hears Pops before he sees him, skin simmering and crackling like a bull under a sweltering sun. His ears got trained a long time ago, to recognize that sound and flee from it, but he’s not a kid anymore. Whatever innocence he had was burned to nothing on the floor of that house, under the heel of his no-good progenitor. He stands tall yet disrespectful, scarred hands jammed into soot-stained jeans, a smirk chasing away the tiredness and fear of his eyes.

“Yo, Endeavor. Long time no see.”

There’s a roar. Charming.

The man who was once Touya laughs darkly as hands close around his throat. Well, this isn’t exactly how he saw this going, but he’s nothing if not adaptable.

“You sure that’s your move, Sir?”

Enji realizes there’s no loot bag. No scraps or scrips. He releases the boy who was once his son.

“What’s your game, boy?”

Dabi smiles all lazy and languid. What is his game? Ha, it’s hard to even remember. Oh, right. He’s at a crossroads now.

He could kill the man. Fuyumi would forgive him, and maybe he’d finally be free. His mind flickers forward, already seeing the State Funeral and hearing the cloying speeches of sycophants and snakes. His jaw tenses, metal scraping and clinking with every roll of his neck. Nah, he don’t wanna see that, not at all. A sight like that, no telling what it would do to a man. Nasty things, probably.

He feels his sanity start to slip, just a bit, like a pickpocket's just rifled through his head. He needs to get clear of this, and as good as it would feel to smother those flames once and for all, he can’t let him die a hero.

There’s some things that are just beyond bearing.

That leaves him with his second option. A more….poetic type thing. An execution of public sentiment, if not of the man himself. He ruffles a hand through sooty hair and smiles and Enji glowers at him.

“My game? Gee, I guess...I just wanna rob the house. Prove it can’t always win.”

“Talk sense, or don’t talk at all.”

Touya flicks a spent cigarette into a grimy barrel, still slick with the oil that powers this city, that keeps all these poor bastards rolling to and fro, as if anything really matters. As if they’re good people. As if they’re in control. He hops up on to a railing and starts to teeter before giving a false salute and dropping down to the street below.

“You’ll see.”

Enji stares at the spot for a long time, not sure if he’s more concerned or calmed by the lack of body. He doesn’t trust Touya, how could he? But a body is a hard thing to explain. It’s one thing to have a son who ran away, maybe to Europe, maybe to love. It’s another thing entirely for the corpse of a known hardened triggerman to fall at your steps. To look so much like you.

Enji’s still staring when the newspaper inquiries start to come.

They want to know about the fire, and the safe, and the strange articles and evidence that are hitting papers and precincts all over the city.

He grinds the phone into dust.

[medea10]

Medea Rambles - The HATE on...

You’d think I would have other shit to talk about. In fact, I was planning on making a ramble on Jussie Smollett or finally post that review of Angels of Death. But then something came out on Friday.

Ohhhhhh, Jussie Smollett and Angels of Death can wait.

*cracks knuckles*

The second I saw that thumbnail, I knew I was going to be shattered. I knew that this list was going to upset me more than you could ever know. And me being the curious little idiot, I had to click on this clickbait and watch it.

I innocently thought that maybe, just maybe...HE would be spared and not mentioned.

Or if HE was mentioned, it would be in the higher numbers or an honorable mention.

And don’t get me wrong, a lot of these were characters that deserved every hatred in the world. Especially this bitch!

But I knew, I knew HE was further up.

Press on.

OH COME ON!

HE is better than this annoying little twat!

Come on WatchMojo, just hurry up and get this over with. My heart can’t take no more of this pain.

OH FUCK ME GUY!

You guys can’t still, after twenty years, be heartbroken over you-know-who leaving the show and having him be replaced for like 30+ episodes.

Please let it be some other poor sap be at #1.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T DO THIS TO...

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

THERE IT IS! AHHHHHH! AHHHHH!

A;AJKDJ;K;JKLAF;;IEAWEHIAEF;HAF;HKLD

A;JKLDF;JKLDFAHEHWE;HIO;HA;HDH;A

AIEJG[EAIIERHIEJAIJHIEHIEHIAJ

FUCKING FUCK YOU WATCHMOJO! JUST FUCK YOU! FUCK THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR THIS! FUCK YOU ALL WITH A RUSTY, WOODEN SPOON! AND WHEN YOU’RE DONE WITH THAT...

AKLE;JKRJKTRJSIGJIAJRJA;J

*inhales and exhales*

Okay, now that I got that out...

First of all, sorry for that outburst. I mean no ill-will towards the good folks at WatchMojo or the folks who vote for the entries. It’s just that when my favorite character gets attacked, I kinda turn into a monster ready to rip your head off.

If you do not know me, know this. I am a fan of Tracey on Pokemon. I am one of the big and notorious ones at that. I also am aware that I am in the severe, severe, severe, SEVERE minority in this. And divide that into a different digit because I was a fan of Tracey from second fucking one!

That’s right. I’m not one of those Johnny Come-Lately or Born Agains that gave him a second chance years later and came out to say, “You know what, Tracey wasn’t so bad. I actually like him.”

Yeah, where the fuck were you all those years he was getting shit on? NO, I’M NOT SORRY FOR THAT! For years he’s been given the reputation of him being less than nothing. Because he replaced Brock after 80 something episodes. Saying that Tracey has NO CHARACTER AT ALL outside of a sketchbook compared to Brock’s rainbow of charisma. 

Why? Because he doesn’t hit on every piece of ass that walks his way?

Why? Because Brock’s backstory was touching and this guy has nothing?

Why? Because Brock looks SO FUCKING STYLISH while this guy looks generic’s watered down idiot cousin?

Why? Because Brock makes insightful comments to help Ash he’s seen as the second coming of the Buddha, while when Tracey does it, he’s seen as a wannabe to Brock’s greatness?

Well excuse me while I bow down to your all-mighty God of Brock. I didn’t realize I was in the presence of Jesus “Tap Dancing” Christ. I thought I was watching a show about a 10 year old catching monsters in a ball. I didn’t realize Brock was that big a deal. Excuse me while I wipe his ass with the world’s most delicate toilet paper!

WOW, I’m really shoving sarcasm down every orifice.

It’s true that Tracey was not the most developed character. In fact, he was only created because Japan thought western audiences would find Brock offensive due to his appearance. So they created an “Anglo-Saxon” character meant to look less-offending because the 1990s were weird. But once they realized the audience didn’t care about Brock’s appearance and that there was no controversy, they pulled Tracey faster than you can say, “They kicked me in the pokeballs.”

I mean, the Orange Islands were only 36 episodes long (give or take). They could have given us a little more with Tracey’s character to get the attention of wayward audience members. But what we got wasn’t all bad. We got a pretty decent episode with him and another Pokemon Watcher. And even the episode where he catches Scyther. And of course I was enthralled at the fact that he was an artist. But that wasn’t enough to get kids to like him and was sent to Oak’s lab to stay there.

Well, you crybabies got Brock back! They made sure of that! We wound up with like 300 more episodes of the same old song and dance. You happy now? You satisfied that your precious, little Brock is back? HUH? YOU HAPPY? ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW? HUH?! YOU HAPPY THAT HE CAN HIT ON EVERY WOMAN EVERY WEEK FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS?!

Yeah, I think you can tell how “happy” I was that Brock returned in time for Ash and Misty going to Johto. Because I got not only Johto, but all of Hoenn, the Battle Frontier in Kanto, and the entire region of Sinnoh to watch Brock be his “Brocky” self. And trust me, we didn’t get much character development with him until he was close to leaving the show.

Seriously, Tracey gets hate for giving us a break from the running gag of Brock hitting on women? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Brock. I just got tired of his antics...really fast. In some ways, I am happy Tracey didn’t wear out his welcome (with me). Other people say he wore out his welcome the second he was shown. But I’m glad we were given some time with him (even if it was a small amount) so that we don’t get tired of him.

I’ve spent 19 years trying to defend Tracey’s existence. He doesn’t deserve the hate just because he replaced Brock for a short amount of time. He doesn’t have to be like Brock. Tracey is his own person and I thought he was a breath of fresh air. And let’s face it, the Orange Islands was a fun arc. Plus it gave Ash an actual victory. Yeah, you probably forgot that too!

And even when Brock wore out his welcome and left, fans still had to find fault with the other secondary male leads. Cilan seen as annoying as a Nickelback song, Clemont was seen as a reject from The Big Bang Theory if that ever got an animated series, and Kiawe...well...no, Kiawe is awesome. And on the contrary, I found all three of these boys better than Brock. But that’s my opinion.

Sometimes a little change doesn’t hurt. Tracey’s change didn’t hurt the Pokemon anime. Fuck no, it didn’t! It gave us some pretty interesting gym leaders and battles (which were later “improved upon” with Alola), an astonishing six-on-six match for Ash, and even introduced us to double battles. That’s right, we got double battles here first! Screw you! We got a whole new experience in the pokemon world with this new travel companion. Which is more than what I can say about most of the other entries on that top 10 list. Characters like Shimotsuki, Pan, and Near were introduced and the anime took a turn for the weird or the worst. Seriously, how could Pan be better than Tracey? Dragon Ball GT happened!

I’ll never understand this world.

But yeah, this is just me unleashing a load of pint-up rage that’s been building. I know Tracey will continue to get hate on lists such as this because the people who vote on this stopped watching Pokemon mid-Johto and can’t count past the number 10. There are worse characters to hate on. Lay off Tracey!

This has been Medea, calling every Tracey-hater a cunt since 2000.

[sprnklersplashes]

Across My Memory (1/?)

The Evil Queen cannot be stopped. After 23 years she breaks the peace and happiness that the Enchanted Forest had seen and returns to do what she vowed to do long ago; cast the Dark Curse. With only her memories intact, Princess Emma must step up and fight for her kingdom and their happy endings, as well as her own. But with the Evil Queen watching, the slightest misstep could have catastrophic consequences. For the first time, Emma fights a battle alone.

A cursed!Captain Duckling/Charming family AU, including several other characters and relationships.

Words for this chapter: 5,593

As she rolled out of bed, Jenny cursed every god she could possibly think of. When her bare feet hit the lilo she bit back a shriek as cold jabbed at her feet and sent the sensation through her legs, and the frigid morning air did not help. She stumbled in the almost complete darkness in her t-shirt before her hands managed to find her sweat pants and she pulled them on, all the while her alarm clock played its infernal tune of “beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep”, drilling into her head.

“Shut up!” she snapped, slamming her fist on it to turn the damn thing off. “Jonathan?” Jenny opened her door and marched down the hall with the intention of pounding on her brother’s door, only to hear his voice coming from the kitchen.

“I’m up!” Jenny ran the short distance to the kitchen to see her 15-year-old brother sitting on the kitchen table, bowl of cereal in hand and school uniform on. On, not at, despite the many lectures she had given him about how he should definitely not put his ass where they eat. “Chill.”

“Don’t tell me to chill,” she sighed but there was nothing behind her words. After a few seconds of silence, he slid off the table. “Good boy. I’ll go get dressed.”

“I’ll put on your coffee,” he called back. Despite everything, her lack of sleep, the impending long day ahead of her, which would no doubt bring asshole customers, she smiled. She had her brother around to do angelic things like this, so how bad could it be?

                                                          *****

Killian’s hand squeezed Emma’s softly, his thumb running over her knuckles and Emma allowed a small giggle to escape her lips. She hated clichés, always did and always would, but she did feel if she was any happier she would burst.

Her family stood behind her. She knew her father was crying, sap that he was. But she was her father’s girl after all. Her mother was managing to keep herself composed, which Emma saw as a minor miracle. She half expected her mother to burst into tears before she even reached the altar. Then there was her little brother. She had talked her mother into allowing Robert to wear dress much more casually for her wedding, knowing that he would feel much more comfortable in his shirt and breeches than any kind of princely garments.

Then there was her son. Her amazing, beautiful son sat closest to the alter, his hands clasped together so tightly his poor knuckles would be turning white as he beamed at her. He was trying so hard to hide how bored he was. And she loved him for it.

“If you’d like to recite your vows?” the priest asked.

“Emma,” Killian began. His voice trembled, and Emma tightened her grip on his hand. “When we met I was a broken, desperate man who only cared about getting my revenge, however bloody that path would be. But then we met, and you took me on that quest to save your parents and everything changed. You inspired me and showed me that goodness still exists in a soul even when it’s shrouded in darkness, you just have to fight for it. You showed me how to fight, like you did. You are the bravest and kindest person I have met, and I pledge the rest of my days to holding you and helping you as you progress to ruling this land, and to never for one second make you feel as though you are any less than perfection.”

Emma couldn’t stop a tear rolling down her face and Killian lifted his hand to gently wipe it away. She felt like she was perfection in that moment, with her subjects gathered around her, her family watching her and Killian pledging his love to her.

“Killian. I was raised on stories of true love and those epic romances. But the thing is I never thought it was in the cards for me. I thought that being a Princess stopped me from getting that. Then I almost knew some sort of love and then I lost it and I lost all hope. But then I met you and everything changed. You’ve seen all of me, the good, the bad, the inbetween, and you loved all of it. You make me feel like, no matter what gets thrown at me, I can overcome it. I want you to be my partner in everything I do, for the rest of our lives.”

“Do you, Killian Jones, take this woman to be your wife, and promise to love, honour and obey her until death do you part?”

“I do.”

“Do you, Princess Emma, take this man to be your husband, and promise to love, honour and obey her until death do you part?”

“I do.” Every fibre in Emma’s body felt like it would burst. If she could, she’d take this single moment and hold onto it. She saw herself in ten years, being worried and confused with the duties of being Queen, and just allowing this one memory to calm her.

Just before her and Killian’s lips could touch, the doors to the ballroom flew open.

Emma had never seen the woman who came in, but she didn’t need to. Her reputation preceded her. Despite falling from grace, she still walked with the arrogance of a false queen. Dressed in black from head to toe, Emma remembered that her mother told her it was “her colour, it matched her soul”. Age had taken its toll on her; her raven hair had begun to turn grey.

She was the one who haunted Emma’s dreams as a young girl and she had prayed she would never see her. She took comfort in the fact that her parents had banished her to the depths of the wilderness, where she would live out her days in misery and pain.

“The Evil Queen!” Grumpy exclaimed, sending a gasp rippling throughout the crowd. As she approached the altar, Emma could see the resemblance to her portrait that her mother insisted on keeping. Except where she looked softer, kinder in the pictures, what was before her looked like a statue come to life. There was nothing to her features, no warmth or humanity. Just a smirk that promised destruction.

“How dare you show your face here!” her father roared as he unsheathed his sword and marched towards her. A flick of the Queen’s wrist and red magic ran through him, freezing him in place.

“Father, no!” Emma shouted, running from the alter to her father. She sighed in relief when she felt a pulse underneath her fingertips.

“Calm down dear, he’s not dead.” The Queen stepped forwards and forcefully grabbed her chin.

“I’d thank you to keep your paws off my wife,” Killian snarled, grasping the handle of his sword.

“I won’t harm her. Or any of you pathetic little creatures. My visit is social.” The Queen dropped her chin and turned to address the crowd. “For I bring a gift for the newlyweds. My gift to you is this happy, joyful day. For tomorrow, I finish what I promised twenty-three years ago. I cast my curse.”

“You can’t,” Emma said through gritted teeth. Of all the nightmares, the idea of the Dark Curse haunted her the most. Being trapped in a different mind, far from her family, trapped in an endless, miserable day. “My parents told me they stripped you of your magic, you can’t cast this curse.”

“Magic, my dear, can be taken. Just like your parents took mine, I took magic from another. Enough to cast my curse and doom you and the rest of your family to the misery you deserve. On the day of your darling son’s seventh birthday, everything you have will be mine.”

“Not on my watch, Your Highness,” her mother shouted, causing Emma to flinch. Snow pushed her way through the crowd with her father’s sword in her hand. “The only one who deserves misery is you!”

She swung at the Queen, but in a puff of black smoke, she was gone. The sword sliced the thin air.

                                                              *****

“You’re late,” Granny called as Jenny slid in the door. “Nine means nine, girl. Not nine oh five.”

“I know, Ms Lucas, and I’m so sorry,” she sighed. “Thing is, Jonathan’s bus was late, and I don’t like to leave until I see him get on the bus and then I ran here as fast as I could….” She stopped when she saw Mrs Lucas smile.

“You’re lucky I have a soft spot for you and that brother of yours, Jenny Bird.” Jenny allowed herself to smile as Mrs Lucas patted her on the shoulder. “Now come on, lasagne won’t defrost itself.”

If there was a God, Jenny would thank them over and over for Mrs Lucas for giving her this job no questions asked. Granny’s, the diner she ran with her granddaughter Ruby, was always her and Jonathan’s favourite childhood spot. She remembered her parents taking them every Friday and splitting ice cream sundaes with them. Chocolate for her and her dad, strawberry for her mom and Jonathan.

Then there was the car crash. No more parents, no more ice cream sundaes, no more Friday night trips to Granny’s. Just a confused and sad eight-year-old and a terrified sixteen-year-old with no money and no means of providing for him. Granny had come to her after delivering another casserole one night and whispered to her that if she wanted, she could take a part time job at her place. Job meant money, and money meant paying the rent, getting food, they bought themselves and most importantly, it meant Mayor Mills might not ship Jonathan off to a foster home like she threatened to do every time she saw them together.

It didn’t mean she enjoyed it. It was long hours, stressful work, especially at the lunch rush, ungrateful customers, few tips. But it gave her money and put the day in. So, she couldn’t complain.

Emma went about her day, serving and cleaning tables, washing dishes, handing out to go orders. When she started she had been awful, mixing up orders, missing customers, forgetting to clean a table but now she ran through it like a professional. As if she was born to clean tables.

“All right, Leroy, enjoy your burger,” she said with just the right amount of sarcasm in her voice as she handed Leroy a to-go bag.

“Don’t tell me what to do, sister,” he scoffed. Of all the customers, Leroy had to be her least favourite.

Second least favourite she thought as the bell jingled and the Mayor entered, her son in tow.

“Hello Madam Mayor,” she greeted with a warm smile on her face, doing everything but drop to her knees and beg “please see me as a good and responsible guardian for my brother.” Regina cast a quick glance at her, nose wrinkled. Jenny wondered why she chose to take her son to eat in a place she clearly saw as beneath her.

“Indeed, Miss Bird. Still working here?”

“Just haven’t found my true calling yet,” Emma chirped, while wondering if shoving the steak knife through her skull would be worth it.

“I hope for your brother’s sake you find it soon,” she said, the conversation quickly becoming a lecture. “Do you know how much a year at the University of Maine would cost for him?”

“Madam Mayor, he’s 16. I think it’s a little early to be thinking colleges,” she answered, laughing nervously.

“Is it?” She placed a hand on the back of Henry’s head. “The minute Henry was taken home, I started investing in college fund. I want him to be able to attend the school of his choice. You and Jonathan haven’t had that conversation, I assume?”

“No ma’am,” Jenny sighed. “We haven’t.”

“Let me give you some facts, Miss Bird. One year at the University of Maine would cost you over $24,000. And that’s here. What if he wants to go somewhere else? I doubt you will be able to scrape up half that money if you are stuck here for the next two years.” Jenny curled her hand into a fist. “But a nice foster family, a well-off foster family, they could send him anywhere he wants to go.”

“He doesn’t need a foster family,” Jenny argued. “He has me.”

“You?” the Mayor scoffed. “A high school drop out with no qualifications, no prospects, no future?”

“I’m taking night classes to get myself back on track,” she told her. The Mayor’s eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell into an ‘oh’ of surprise.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Mr Elliot from the high school is teaching me literature. He says I could pass and maybe if I apply myself and take more classes get my diploma. Maybe even go to college myself.”

“Indeed. Well I suppose that is nice to hear.” The Mayor shook her head, her lips pressed into a hard line. “Who knows? Perhaps you’ll surprise us all. Now onto my order, I’ll take a black tea.”

“No problem, Mayor Mills.” Jenny’s eyes fell on Henry’s small face, eyes glued to the jar of lollipops on the counter. “And if you want, little man can have a lollipop. They’re on the house.” Henry burst into a smile and he jumped slightly, tongue poking out already.

“I do hope you don’t feed Jonathan like that,” the Mayor sighed, eyeing the lollipops as if they were slugs that had slithered over her shoes. “Sugar is the enemy of child growth.” Henry tugged on his mother’s hand, silently pleading with her. “But I suppose one can’t hurt.”

Minutes later, Regina was seated at the table at the window, sipping on her tea while Henry made small talk with her.

“Poor kid,” she muttered so that only Ruby could hear. Ruby’s eyes flicked up from her phone momentarily to watch the scene.

“Can’t imagine it’s easy, living with her,” she agreed.

“Like some sort of backwards Annie,” Jenny sighed. She couldn’t explain it, but she had always had a soft spot for Henry. The Mayor said that she had adopted when he was weeks old after the birth mother put up a closed adoption. In the Mayor’s words, she had ‘wanted nothing to do with him’ and never missed an opportunity to talk about how much she had saved him.

If you asked Jenny, she would say it seemed the Mayor didn’t want much to do with her son either. She would see them out together, with him almost stumbling over himself to keep up with her long strides, and she didn’t care to look back. His tiny fingers fidgeted at his side or in his coat pocket while a black leather handbag hung from her perfectly manicured hands. She would glance around the street with ice in her eyes and he would look like a lost puppy at every candy store and toy shop and friend they passed.

Part of Jenny wished she could take the kid off the Mayor and let him live with her and Jonathan.

Henry glanced up at her and she poked out her tongue. When he did the same, she wanted nothing more than to lift him out of there and never turn back.

                                                               ******

“Calm down, my love,” Killian pleaded with her as she stormed into her chambers, tearing off the crown of flowers she had chosen instead of a veil.

“I can’t calm down, Killian,” she told him. “Not when the Evil Queen is going to take back everything that she wants. She’s going to tear us all apart forever.”

“Emma.” He took her face in his hand and pressed a kiss to her golden hair. “Nothing in the world could separate us.”

“He’s right,” her father said as he came in with her mother. “Nothing can tear this family apart.”

“Where’s Henry?” she asked.

“In his room with your brother,” Snow said.

“Is he okay?”

“As well as can be expected. He’s shaken up, he’s scared, but he’s okay.”

Emma rubbed her forehead and started pacing.

“Henry turns seven in two months. Less than that. What do we do?” she asked, more to herself than anyone else.

“Emma, calm yourself,” her father begged. “We defeated the Evil Queen before, we can do it again.”

“And how long did that take?” she asked. “You had years of war and fighting and even then, you barely even survived. We don’t have that!”

“We don’t have a way to stop her,” her mother agreed. “But we might have found a way to keep you safe. The wardrobe.”

Emma’s stomach clenched. She knew the stories of course, that her parents planned to put her in a wardrobe and she would come back to break the curse and save them. It never came to pass, of course. But she would grow up alone, unloved, unwanted. Believing her parents hated her. That was the worst curse Regina could have ever cast.

“I-I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t go and leave you behind. Leave Robert and Henry behind-”

“Emma, it is your destiny,” her father insisted. “You are the first child of our True Love.” Tears welled in his eyes as he cupped her face. “I wish to the gods it didn’t have to end like this. I want you to stay here, in this realm, and rule your kingdom as it was meant to be.”

“This is only a precaution,” Snow whispered. “She may not even cast her curse.” David smiled and reached out for his wife. “We defeated her once and we will surely do so again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Mama,” Emma said, smiling softly. She took her mother’s hand and let her lead her down the hall to her old nursery.                                                                *****

“Mr Elliot.” Elliot looked up to see the Mayor standing in his classroom door. The kids had long cleared out by then; he was staying behind to catch up on some extra marking.

“Madam Mayor,” he greeted. “What can I do for you?” She stalked into his classroom, eyeing the chairs and desks with disdain. “Here, take my seat.” He got up and stood awkwardly across from her as she settled in his leather chair.

“I’m here because I have heard you have been teaching Jenny Bird,” she said calmly. “Is this true?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, puffing his chest out. “And she is doing fantastically, Miss Mills. And who knows, maybe when she gets more time, maybe when her brother moves out, she can take even more classes, and she-”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard all about her plans for a diploma and college,” she sighed, waving her hand dismissively. “Mr Elliot, do you really believe that that is in Miss Bird’s best interests?”

“How could it not be?” he chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, she’s such a bright young girl, and her education was cut short. I only want to see her succeed in life. She deserves as much of a chance as anyone else.”

“And what about Jonathan?”

“Jonathan?” he repeated dumbly.

“Yes, Jonathan Bird, her younger brother,” the Mayor went on.

“I know who Jonathan Bird is, I just don’t understand what he has to do with his sister and her studies,” Elliot said. “He is as bright as his sister, although I daresay he could learn a thing or two about drive from her.”

“Yes, he is bright. And he needs to stay on track to success. And what he does not need is his sister, and guardian, distracted by commitments like this.” Elliot took in a deep breath and counted to five,

“Mayor Mills, I’m sure Jenny can manage just fine, as she has been for the past seven years since she lost her parents.” He perched himself on the edge of the desk. “Look, since she lost her parents, she has had nothing. She’s had to work to support herself and her brother, as well as raising him since she was still a kid herself. She needs this.”

“Well that’s my point isn’t it?” she snapped. “I am a mother, and I work. I don’t take time off from raising my son to do pointless activities, no matter how much I may want to. And how do you think not having his sister around for the better part of the day will affect Jonathan?”

“Mayor Mills, it is two hours, twice a week,” he pleaded. “I can cut back, but really, it’s barely taking a dent in her life.”

“Yes, you can cut back,” she said. “Stop the lessons altogether. Let her raise her brother in peace, instead of filling her head with this nonsense about colleges. And then, when her brother has grown, you can start again, maybe.”

“Mayor Mills, please,” he sighed. “Don’t do this. These lessons mean the world to her, to take them away would break her heart.”

“And build her character,” she replied, standing up from the seat. “Do it, Mr Elliot, if you have either of the Bird children’s best interests at heart.”

“And if I refuse?” Elliot’s voice was much smaller than he had intended it to be. The Mayor’s mouth quirked into a smile and she took one calculated step towards him.

“How do you think social services will react when they hear a 15-year-old boy’s legal guardian has been leaving him to have private meetings with one of his teachers?” She held up a hand to silence him before he could protest. “You know how persuasive I can be. Or have you forgotten how you got this job? Stop the lessons. And I know you know better than to mention my name.”

The Mayor strolled casually out of his classroom, dusting off her jacket as she went.

                                                          ******

Emma felt Killian’s arms wrap around her as he steadied her. She was strong, she knew she was, but the sight that greeted them in the nursery was too much for her to handle.

The wardrobe, the one that was meant to be their salvation, or at least a tiny glimmer of hope, had been burned to ashes.

Her knees gave out and Killian tightened his grip on her, swaying slightly and stroking her hair. It was basic instinct to him now. She heard him mutter “no” under his breath, saw him look to her parents in horror.

“This can’t be happening,” Emma choked out. “How can she have gotten in here? How can she have known about the wardrobe?”

“I thought you all put an enchantment on the lock to stop anyone who wasn’t of your blood from coming in,” Killian said. The enchantment was put on when the Queen was first banished. The magic even prevented Emma herself from being able to enter the room until she was a teenager. “A precaution” was what her parents had called it. “Nothing more” they had said. “The Queen will never come back.”

Emma could have laughed. Instead she settled for burying her face in her now-husband’s chest and choking back a sob.

“Tell me there is a way out of this,” she sighed.

“We’ll find a way, we always do,” her mother insisted. Emma shook her head. The sick feeling in her stomach worsened, threatening to bring up her breakfast.

“I need a moment,” she mumbled and stormed out of the room. Faintly, she heard Killian move to follow her only to be stopped by her father. Emma pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle her cries.

“Always a shame to see a bride crying on her wedding day,” a familiar voice remarked.

“Merlin!” Emma exclaimed as she saw her former tutor, apparently having appeared out of nothing and leaning against the wall opposite her. “Don’t you ever knock?”

“I could but where’s the fun in that?” he smirked.

“Merlin, the Queen is back,” Emma began. “She’ll cast her curse and we have two months to figure out how to stop her.”

“I know, Emma, I know,” he said. “I have something-”

“You do? What is it? Tell me!” Laughing slightly, Merlin placed his hands on her shoulders.

“I think this may be something your parents would like to hear as well.” He offered her his arm and she gave a weak smile. She let him lead her back into the nursery.

“Merlin!” Snow greeted with a smile, the kind of smile that said she knew everything would be all right. Emma envied her mother’s optimism.

“I heard about the Evil Queen. And I think I have a solution,” he said.

“You can stop the curse from being cast?” Killian asked. Merlin looked at him. Merlin was the closest thing Emma had to an older brother, and so when she first began seeing Killian, Merlin gave him the same treatment as her father had. The two had come to some form of alliance, even though Killian had remarked that Merlin was one of the few things in this realm that could scare him.

“No. No one can. But I have these.” Merlin opened his hand and showed them two black stones.

“Memory magic?” Emma asked, remembering learning about pebbles that could store memories from Elsa when she visited Arendelle. “How will this help us?”

“The curse will strip us of all our memories of who we once were,” he explained. “Think of these as back-ups. We can store our memories in here and find them when we’re under.” He took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, these are the only two we can take.”

“Can’t we get more from Arendelle?” Emma asked.

“These are the only ones that will work in the Land Without Magic,” he told her. “So now we choose which two get to keep their memories.”

“Emma,” Killian said immediately. “Emma should keep hers.”

“He’s right,” her father agreed. “You were the original Saviour and you have the most control over your magic. You need to keep yours.” Merlin chucked one pebble through the air and Emma caught it.

“Now that just leaves this one.” Merlin looked from Snow, to David, to Hook. “Who should join her?”

“You should,” Emma said. Merlin pretended to be shocked, but the way he smiled told her otherwise. She smiled back. “I’ll need you if things go south. You’re the only other one with magic and the wisest man we know.”

“Wisest person,” he corrected her. “Just to clarify. But I accept. Sleep with that stone under your pillow tonight and it will absorb your memories. Then have it on you when the curse hits.”

“Then I’ll remember who I am?”

“Not quite. You’ll only be able to access your memories when you need them most. When your cursed life is the darkest.”

                                                            *****

The moment the clock struck four, Jenny ran to clock out, hurriedly lifting her jacket from the rack.

“You’re in a rush today,” Granny remarked. “Home isn’t going anywhere you know.”

“I have a lesson today,” she explained. “With Mr Elliot. And he’ll kill me if I’m late.” After bidding farewell to Granny and Ruby, she ran out the door and to her house to grab her backpack before running to the high school, slowing down only when she called Jonathan.

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “I’ll do my homework and watch bad TV.”

“Okay. I’ll be back at six to make dinner so stay out of the cookie jar,” she ordered. She smiled when she heard him sigh on the other end. “Love you.”

“Love you too, sis.” He hung up just as she reached the steps of the high school.

Dropping out had been one of the hardest and most brutal decisions she had ever made. She didn’t care if it made her sound weird, Jenny adored school. She didn’t even mind getting up so early, she had loads of friends, she got on with teachers, she aced every class, she loved learning. It was amazing for her.

Then her parents died, Regina insisted she get a job or Jonathan would have to be sent away and she dropped out of high school. She and her friends drifted further and further apart until they eventually stopped talking to each other. The only learning she got was from documentaries on YouTube or library books, until the damn library closed down. Teachers regarded her with a friendly wave in the streets or a nod, but nothing else. She had gone from golden girl to outcast in all of six months.

So, when Mr Elliot, whom she had always adored, contacted her and asked about English literature classes, how could she refuse?

Jenny took the stairs two at a time until she reached Mr Elliot’s classroom. She found him leaning on the desk, his fingers tapping on the wood.

“Hey, Mr Elliot,” she greeted, sitting at a desk and pulling her books out of her bag. “You’re going to be so proud of me, I had a bunch of new thoughts over the last chapter and I thought we could start by-”

“Jenny,” he interrupted. “We need to talk.” Jenny frowned. He was never this sombre. Even at his most serious, he managed to have a smile.

“What is it?” she asked, trying to shake the uneasiness off.

“Jenny, I think it may be for the best if we stop the lessons.” He may as well have hit her.

“Stop?” she croaked out. “Why? Am I failing?”

“No, no of course not,” he said. “It’s just, with all your other commitments, your job, Jonathan, you can’t afford any distractions.”

“I’m not distracted,” she shouted before taking a deep breath and trying to compose herself. “I’m not. I work hard all the time, I cook every meal for Jonathan, I get him to bed on time, I do his laundry. Mr Elliot, I can balance myself here.”

“But how long can you do that, Jenny? How long before we start taking longer with our lessons? And Jonathan’s waiting at home with no dinner-”

“He’s sixteen he can cook for himself!” Emma exclaimed. Hot tears blurred her vision. “He’s not helpless.”

“I know that Jenny. But social services won’t. What if they do decide to check up on you and find you have been leaving him alone, without supervision? What will they do then?” Jenny gripped the desk so tightly her knuckles turned white, desperate for something to ground her. “And it’s taking up my time too. I have exams to grade, serious exams, and I can’t give them the attention they need if I’m teaching you. Jenny, I think you know this is for the best.”

“I don’t think that,” she mumbled pathetically. “I don’t. But if that’s what you think then fine.”

She lifted her bag and stormed out of the classroom, not even bothering to pick up her books as she left.

                                                           *****

“Jen?” Jonathan asked when she came in. “You’re home early, did Mr Elliot cancel?”

“You could say that,” she spat. She avoided his eyes as she ran to her bedroom. Her brother would not see her cry.

Once in the safety of her own room, she let the tears come. With her face buried in her pillow, sobs wrecked her body, choking on them. Her pillow grew so wet she couldn’t lie on it anymore, flinging it to the other side of the room and pressing her face onto the mattress instead.

She didn’t want to admit it, but she needed those classes. Between raising Jonathan and working she never got a chance to be herself except for those classes with Mr Elliot. Pouring over a novel, picking it apart and taking every detail, expanding on every metaphor, travelling with the characters, laughing, crying, gasping, receiving endless praise from Mr Elliot for her efforts. That had been an oasis for her.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a purple pebble sitting on her bed. It must have been under her pillow the whole time. She had no idea how it had got there.

Her head throbbed, even more so when she sat up. She lifted the rock in her hand. It was smooth as glass and cold, which was welcome to her hot skin. If she didn’t know better, she’d have said it sparkled.

“Can you grant wishes?” she asked it, another sob bubbling up in her throat. “I could use a wish right now.”

A tear slipped from her face and landed on the pebble.

The Enchanted Forest, her castle, ballgowns and swordfights, open seas and green fields, picnics with her family, laughing in the forest, chasing her brother, a kiss under the stars, her mother’s laugh, her father’s hug, her son’s kisses and her lover’s passion, lessons in the woods, in her room, leather bound books with ancient pages, a white dress and a crown of flowers and a dark cloud, promises, farewells, “I love you”s and goodbyes.

Emma, not Jenny, Emma, that was her name, dropped the rock. It had gone back to black, the way it had looked when Merlin gave it to her.

Merlin. Mr Elliot.

The curse.

Two lives, two sets of memories, waged war in her mind. Jenny, the waitress, the girl next door, the girl with two much on her plate, and Emma, the princess, the one with magic, the heir to the throne, the girl who read magic books when her mother thought she slept. Jenny was the dream, Emma was the reality. Jenny was her cursed self.

“Holy crap,” Emma sighed.

[katsitting]

1) when it happened to you enough you learn to pick up on it + Harry? (if you feel like doing it of course ^^)

Rating: T

Warning: Depression, Mentions of Character death, Grief, Mindfuck

AN: I never know what I am doing. I hope you like this either way c:

Harry wanted to be surprised. Truly, he did.

The sky above his head was growing darker by the second, the pleasant breeze growing chillier the longer he remained outside of Hogwart’s walls. It was nothing new, the winter was always colder than those he had experienced in his younger years in Little Whinging. It was like the touch of death, as if the season itself wanted to sap up all the warmth a human body could harness.

It was cold enough that he shouldn’t have been outside at all, that he should have headed back inside because that was the reasonable thing to do. Harry was all too aware that it was the logical thing, but he also knew that he simply could not just leave things as they were. He couldn’t just ignore the reason he was even out there in the first place.

So Harry stayed, fingers on the verge of frostbite. They were stiff, nearly numb with how frigid the air was as it fanned across his cheeks, but he didn’t bring his hands nearer to his face to breathe some warmth into his palms.

Not when he was…potentially losing his mind.

Harry shivered when a passing breeze kissed along the nape of his nape, unable to resist the involuntary reactions the conditions seemed to evoke in him. It was another reminder of just how helpless he was in the grand scheme of things, he couldn’t fight nature even if he was magic nor could he fight the figure just beyond him, swaying in the dark like the light of a burning candle.

He wanted nothing more than to leave and abandon this, but he didn’t have the luxury of choice. He couldn’t simply turn his back and forget that the figure just an arm’s length away didn’t exist at all. It was not possible. It was certainly not an option.

At least, never for him.

Harry could no more leave the bright blue sky fading into deep purples and blues than he could change the past. He was no actor, he was powerless to change the outcome of things once they’ve unfolded. It was what it was, and now, in this moment, Harry was merely an observer to the scene unfolding before his eyes. Always watching, always waiting, that’s what Harry was sure of. He never did anything and–

“Harry…”

Harry tried not to flinch at the sound of his name, he tried to remain strong, to cling to the tenacity that he so often manifested when presented in a shite situation. He breathed in deeply through his lungs, catching how the faint hiss broke the thick silence that had settled between him…and the monster.

It was always this way. It was always his name first and foremost. The sound of it coming from such a weak and faint voice like a nail on a chalkboard. Weak, always so weak, but always enough to sent Harry in a frenzy.

Always enough to tear out emotions Harry didn’t want to feel.

Harry took another deep breath and clenched his fingers into tight fits. He felt each groove of his stubby nails cutting into the skin, how it brought some feeling back to otherwise numb fingers as he tried to settle the chaos that only this…creature could bring.

Harry thought of Sirius then, dragging the man’s laughter from out beyond the dark. Perhaps, if he pretended that Sirius was there with him now, with his curious black eyes and his sheepish smile urging him to speak, he could find the courage to keep going. He could turn his back, abandon the monster that stood several meters away in the tall, wet grass. He could find the strength that he needed to simply leave, to urge his trembling–when had they started shaking?–arms to clasp onto his wand and flee.

But there was nowhere for Harry to run, there was nowhere to hide. There was no Sirius to fall back to, there was no laughter when Sirius had done something particularly sneaky. There was none of that mischievous gleam that would flash in Sirius’s eyes when sharing stories of his days with the Marauders.

There was none of that now. Sirius was dead, taking with him every opportunity Harry could have had for a family.

Harry bit his lip, narrowing his eyes into a glare to stave off the burning in the corner of his eyes. This was too much, too suddenly. He shouldn’t have gone outside at all, he should never had followed the call of that familiar voice. He should have pretended the monster didn’t exist.

But how did one run when the creature was in one’s head? How did one swim up for air when the ocean was already drowning his lungs?

Harry watched the shadows melt around the monster’s shape, red eyes made more pronounced by the deepening of the sky and the oppressive darkness of the man’s robes. Harry could not help but think of how closely the creature resembled the grim reaper, of just how perfectly the title suited him in that instance. The monster was one with the black of the falling sun, the clouds hiding the purples and oranges of the horizon.

It was all too fitting. It would only make sense that he, a monster that scratched and clawed from out of a cauldron would be home with the very darkness that birthed him.

Vol–The monster, the nightmare, and the ghost–looked perfectly at home beneath the dying sun, and Harry wanted to laugh incredulously at just how fucked up this all was.

They were both silent for what Harry felt was an eternity. The sound of his name spoken from between those poisonous lips ringing in the back of his mind as Harry considered his options in that moment. He knew that the monster was not really there; knew that there was nothing Harry could really do in that moment to dispel the hallucination until it had run its course. It was best to simply wait it out alone until it left, until Vol–the monster– faded from existence. He couldn’t simply head back to his dorm when he could still hear and see it as if it were alive and breathing.

His friends would ask him what he was staring at, they would ask him why he was lost in thought while in the middle of a conversation. It would lead to too many questions Harry was not prepared to answer, so Harry dug his feet into the ground in spite of his desire to flee.

Harry had to bear through this. It was never a good idea to interact with others when the hallucinations commenced. People already thought him unstable, the Daily Prophet doing little for his reputation even after the monster had exposed himself…

Harry clenched his jaw when the creature did not speak, when its red eyes trapped his own in an uncomfortable vice. Emerald and red. Poison and death. The color of the spell that stole the breath from his god father’s lungs and the monster that had whispered in his head to take his revenge.

Harry fought of the nausea the memory brought, the churning in his belly immediately stamped down in favor of speaking into the seemingly empty field.

He was already going crazy, what did it matter now that he was speaking to a ghost?

“Why won’t you just go away?” Harry asked, ignoring the discomfort that always came with speaking to air because the monster was not real. At least, he wasn’t to everyone else. He was a shadow, always lurking in between the spaces of his spine like blood dripping from open wounds. He was there, always there, but Harry knew the monster wasn’t real, knew that it was just the product of a distraught mind. Dumbledore had said as much, Madame Pomfrey had suggested the same as well.

They had said that Harry was simply tired, that the trauma he had experienced would permanently scar him. The imprint of Voldemort’s influence on his mind would never leave, even after he expelled him from out of his head. Yes, Harry understood it all but it didn’t stop the bile from burning up the back of his throat.

None of those explanations could cleanse the stain that only this monster could leave on his skin, that he had left in his head when he ripped his way through it back at the Ministry. Harry could feel the memory of his mind like a fine line cutting through smooth glass, like a crack in the dam that was almost near full capacity, its waters trickling from over the top.

Harry was barely holding himself together, but still, he held on for the sake of his friends, for the sake of this war that was brewing. This image was not real, it wasn’t Vol–the monster. Harry hated that he had to keep reminding himself of this fact.

The man was silent, and Harry felt annoyance flicker in the back of his mind, like a ripple in a placid lake. It was the first time in weeks he had felt anything other than viscous apathy and dread, the disruption almost enough to startle him. It was new, an explosion of emotion he had not expected at all to swell in his chest.

Harry forced his hand to his chest, smoothing cold fingers against the soft fabric of his T-shirt. He could feel his heart racing from between his rib cage, could almost sense it on his fingertips like the echoes of a loud scream.

Harry was alive, and he was there. Harry was feeling and he wasn’t sure what to make of it now. Not after spending so long drowning in absolute nothingness and terror; the abyss a cavern that devoured all his hopes before they even formed.

It was…nice to feel something other than nothing, even if was an unpleasant emotion. Annoyance felt nice tingling along his bones, felt better than the cold clawing at his fingertips…

Emboldened by the monster’s lack of response, Harry spoke again, the words thick on his tongue like molasses. It felt different than the almost thoughtless way that he would speak to his professors, his friends, and anyone that wanted a word from him. It was a conscious effort, a desire to speak that he had forgotten of in the nothingness.

It felt foreign, yet familiar. Harry felt more himself than he probably had since he had begun seeing the monster in his head. Harry clung to the small fragment of emotion, dreading that the faint heat would disappear as quickly as it had come.

All the better to fight down the nightmares, my dear…

“Isn’t it enough that I can feel you in my head when I dream? That I can see through your eyes when you crush the lives of others? Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Harry demanded, dropping his arm from his chest to point accusingly at the product of all his misery, of the manifestation of every nightmare he had ever had, and would soon have once the hallucination ran its course.

There was absolute silence before Harry felt the nape of his neck prickle, a static-like sound whirring to life in the second it took Harry to realize that the man had begun to laugh. It was a half-second, a blip in an expansive universe, before that static he had assumed he’d been hearing melted into a hiss, the shhh clearer as the seconds elapsed.

And then, the hiss became a choking sound. It was as if the monster was too weak for mirth, was too fragile for the explosion of amusement in that moment. Harry was almost tempted to step closer to capture the sound, to be sure that yes, the monster was in fact laughing and that its laughter grew clearer with each passing breath.

Harry stamped down the urge as soon as it came, killing the curiosity before it even came to pass. Even when Harry felt as though he was listening to the monster’s laugher from behind an enclosed room, the sound faint and muffled even when it rang in Harry’s mind.

Harry’s stomach dropped when the choking laughter grew louder, when the hitch of air was no longer a weak whisper but a more discernable chuckle. It grew louder and louder, the fuzziness between the vowels now so clear that Harry could hear the precise moments the monster took in air to laugh richly at him.

Harry had never felt more horrified in his life, his stomach twisting as though real snakes were writhing in his belly, desperate for escape. It was certainly a long time since he had felt this terrified these past few weeks, even with a slight tinge of dread buzzing right beneath his skin.

“…Harry…” The monster said, and Harry took a step back, too spooked to do anything else. He hadn’t anticipated that, had not expected the words to sound as…clear as they had in that moment. It was as if the monster were no longer on the other side of the wall, but standing inside the room with him. As if instead of pressing his ear into dense concrete in the hopes of capturing at least a whisper or a murmur of a conversation, he had had those very secrets uttered into his ear.

“It will never be enough. You can hide behind your headmaster’s coattails, you can hide behind your invisibility cloak when your friends turn the corner, but you can never truly escape yourself. You can never escape me.”

Harry pressed his hands into his ears, no longer wanting to listen. He refused to listen. He couldn’t, and he knew that he shouldn’t listen at all to what the monster had to say. He pressed his hands so hard against his ears that they began to ring, an ache forming now at either side of his head that he dutifully ignored.

He isn’t there. He isn’t there. He isn’t–

“It is your fault that Sirius is dead, that he fell through the veil, never to be seen again.” The voice purred, and Harry released a sob. The words cutting too deep, too close to the grief he’d been shoving to the back to his mind. He didn’t know when he had turned his eyes away, when he had ripped his gaze from the vibrant red to stare at the ground. Harry’s knees shook with the violent urge to collapse, with the oppressive weight of Vol–the monster’s words in his head.

Harry tried to ignore it, but not even the sound of his blood rushing through his ears could drown out the sound. None of it was barrier enough for the words, his hands were useless to overcome the voice.

“It was because of you that Bellatrix stamped out his life. How foolish of you to fall for my little trap, to let your emotions sway you and lead all those fools straight to me–”

“Shut up!” Harry shouted, but the voice continued on, undeterred.

“Does the truth hurt, Harry? Does the fact that you’re no different than I sicken you?” It said, and Harry’s legs collapsed beneath him, his knees smashing into the unforgiving ground. Harry grunted, a throbbing pain shooting up from his knee caps to the tops of his thighs. He could feel the pain pulse in time with the rapid beating of his heart, could feel the sting of a twig tearing through the thick black of his trousers to break skin.

Harry could feel the pain like a glass vase shattering in a silent hallway, but he did nothing. He was completely thrown, the disturbance tilting the world on its axis. He did not move from where he had collapsed, not when he could now see Sirius behind his eyes as he fell into the veil, eyes dimmed with death. The image was permanently etched into the back of his eyes, and Harry felt, for the first time in weeks, tears stream down his cheeks.

This grief never felt so oppressive.

“You may not have lifted your wand, your may not have uttered the words. But you were an accessory, you were the catalyst. They say I am a monster, but you, Harry, you are death.”

Harry felt himself shatter, felt the second his arms dropped from his head to lay uselessly at his sides. He had lost all the strength to keep them up, had lost the will to press them against his ears. Nothing that he did could possibly stop the monster from whispering in his head.

It was a poison, the words the creature said. The utterances, the disgusting truth of each of the accusations. The creature never lied in all the time it had appeared.

Never any lies, always truths meant to tear me down.

Harry wished all of it was a lie, that all of what it said was a filthy, stinking lie. It was easier to fight it, to resist if all it said were untrue, if all it did was cut through skin and bone with the sharp press of its tongue. But no, the wound only tore at the corners because all of it was true. The break in the skin only bled as copiously as it did because all of it was Harry’s fault.

Harry was the monster in his own head.

“Admit it. There is no worse fate than meeting you.”

Harry swallowed thickly, throat tight as the image of Sirius melted away to give way to cold, surprised eyes on a face Harry had once called handsome…A face Harry knew he would never see again.

“Poor poor Cedric. So young, and now he is nothing but fodder for the worms to consume…”

Harry felt his stomach protest, but he contained the screams that wanted to spill out. He wasn’t sure it would be the only thing he’d expel if he didn’t somehow contain himself.

“When will you learn, when will you see that I am not a mere figment of your imagination?” Voldemort–because this was Voldemort, not just a monster hidden in the dark–asked, and Harry squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, ignoring the hot tears streaming down his cheeks before finding the courage to look at the black specter again.

Harry’s eyes caught the man’s vivid red, and felt true, visceral panic swell in his chest like an overinflated balloon. It did not stop him from saying what he needed to say, what’d been wanting to say since the hallucination started.  Even when he felt as though something had been lodged in his throat.

“You…are not real. You are grief and anger. You are chaos and pain. You are the fear I refuse to face when I close my eyes.” Harry whispered, watching how the red seemed to flash a brighter crimson, as if pleased.

“When it happens to you enough…when these nightmares keep coming…you just learn to pick up on it. You just know when it is real and when it isn’t. And in a way, you are real. About as real as this hollow feeling in the center of my chest.”

Harry drew on, watching how the shadow cocked its head to one side. It was a curious gesture, but Harry paid it no mind. He needed to get this out of his chest or Harry was certain he’d choke.

It wasn’t real. Voldemort was not here and was not real.

“You are just a dark thought. It is why I can only see your eyes, why I can only hear your voice when I am most distressed and hurt.”

The shadow was silent, and Harry swallowed. He hated this, hated him.

But there was no one he hated more than himself, than his powerlessness and this inability to save all those that he loved.

“I…made you.”

That was the scariest thing of all. The most sickening thing to admit. It was a truth that weighed more heavily on his conscience than all the guilt of avoiding his friends and refusing to face the grief eating him away from the inside.

Harry had made him. Voldemort was there because Harry wanted him to be. He wasn’t an it or a monster. He was Voldemort as Harry imagined him. He was the form all of Harry’s unacknowledged emotions took, had chosen to take.

Funny how, in the end, he was always led back to Voldemort in the end.

“And is that not enough, Harry? I may be in your head, I may be the shape your filthy emotions chose to become, but that does not mean that I am not real…”

Harry remained silent, even as the sun completely fell from the horizon, plunging them both in absolute darkness. The cold an oppressive weight in the dark, its presence as absolute as the red of Voldemort’s irises.

“…Harry, Harry, Harry, you silly boy. Neglect me, and I can assure you that it will be the last thing you will ever do.”

Harry wanted to laugh because of course. That would be what Voldemort would say, in the end.

[tonystarktogo]

If you have time could you write an ace Tony fic? It would mean a lot as I am asexual and almost never get any representation anywhere and it tends to make me feel more lonely. :( Anyways, thank you in advance.

To be honest you had me at ‘ace Tony’, anon :) You really can’t expect me to resist that. Seriously, I adore writing ace characters (like half the main characters in my non-fanfic works are ace, just because I can).

Since you didn’t specify on anything regarding the plot I just went with a short scene from one of my many not-ready-to-be-posted headcanon ‘verses. I hope it works for you and that this ficlet will make you feel a little better! Also I turned it into a Valentine’s story because I keep seeing these cute Valentine’s cards on my dash.

[Set in a College AU following the tale of Player!Bucky and Asexual!Tony trying to make it work. Today’s edition: Valentine’s Day. Including slight misunderstandings, declarations of love affection, fluff, and Bucky’s potty mouth.]

‘You know I’m ace, right?’ isn’t the reaction Bucky’s been hoping for, but it’s also not a door slammed shut in his face, so he counts it as a win.

Tony squints suspiciously at the roses in Bucky’s arms—yellow and red ones because those are his favourite colours, and Bucky is nothing if not a huge sap, apparently—and Bucky has no doubt the flowers will end up cut open on a lab table, to be thoroughly tested for any unsavourily additions, before the day is over.

He probably shouldn’t smile fondly at the cruel fate lying in these poor flowers’ future. He definitely shouldn’t.

Damn it. Nat’s right, he’s got it bad.

“Unless ace stands for ‘allergic to roses’ I fail to see your point.” Bucky smiles and hopefully holds the bouquet out for Tony to take. Because continuing to cling to them like a toddler to a plushy might look a little silly.

Tony refuses to take them though, crosses his arms in front of his chest instead and scowls up at Bucky. Which is not adorable, that would just be ridiculous.

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” Tony hisses, voice suspiciously high and fingers restlessly fiddling with the soft fabric of his sweater. “And you want to give me roses?” It sounds more like an accusation than a question. He’s visibly agitated, and Bucky wants to reach out and smooth out the furrowed lines on his forehead, except he isn’t so sure his touch would be welcomed right now.

“Yeah.” There’s no point in denying the obvious. And okay, maybe he’s a bit nervous about asking Tony out. A tiny little bit.

“I’m not sleeping with you!” Tony blurts before Bucky has the chance to say anything else—which, in all the scenarios he’s played through in his head multiple times, was admittedly not a reaction he’d anticipated—and promptly slams the door shut.

Bucky blinks in confusion, not entirely sure what just happened. 

But before he has time to come up with a reasonable reaction—like picking the cheap lock or fleeing for his life from Natasha’s inevitable wrath when she finds out he has messed up already—the door slowly opens again, revealing a sheepish Tony who’s chewing nervously on his bottom lip.

“You’re not actually here to proposition to me, are you?” he asks, well, mumbles, uncomfortably.

It feels a bit like a slap in the face, to think that after three months of friendship and steadfast support of Tony’s sexuality he’s still immediately jumping to the conclusion that what Bucky wants is sex. To be fair, that’s what Bucky did want, back when he approached the out-of-place looking genius at Clint’s party. But that had been a different situation altogether, it wasn’t like he’d known Tony back then, and—unlike certain fuckheads he could think of—he knew how to take a ‘no’.

Bucky doesn’t let those thoughts show on his face though. For one they would make Tony, who has a bad track-record of making other people comfortable at his own expense, feel horrible, and Bucky is self-aware enough to know that his assumption isn’t unjustified. Neither Tony’s exes nor Bucky’s reputation are of any help in that regard. For another the mere fact that Tony isn’t running, or at least has come back to get a clear answer on what his intentions are, is proof of how far they’ve come.

Tony might not trust him blindly the way he trusts Rhodes, but he does trust him, wants to believe in the best in Bucky, and that makes the stupidly warm, fuzzy feelings in his chest soar. It also makes him want to do a Charlie’s angel roll out of the nearest window because he is not equipped to deal with all this emotional bullshit, just ask Steve.

Bucky ruthlessly squashes that urge and meets Tony’s eyes instead. “I’m not asking you to sleep with me, if that’s what you mean,” he says and he means it.

“Then what do you want?” Tony asks helplessly, like he can’t fathom what else there is, what he could possibly offer anyone. And that, that just isn’t right. That uncertainty doesn’t suit Tony, who’s usually as unapologetically, in-your-face ace as possible, at all.

“I want you to go on a date with me,” Bucky replies, proud of how steady his voice sounds. The flowers he’s still holding also do a great job of hiding the trembling in his hands. “I want to text you silly emoji combinations all the time to show you I’m thinking of you. I want you to call me at the crack of dawn and tell me about whatever brilliant idea you’ve just come up with. I want to see you wear my hoodies every day, and tell you how amazing you look, and trace the lines of your blush, and kiss you on the forehead, and watch you argue with Steve about superheroes, and get tackled to the ground when I get back from the grocery store, and call you pet names that make my friends roll their eyes at our backs.”

And okay, Bucky did not mean to say that latter part out loud. It’s his turn to avert his eyes now, not that that’s what he’s doing, absolutely not. It’s just, the roses are really very pretty to look at and he’s just enjoying the view and fighting the urge to bury his flushed face in them, alright?

Only when Tony clears his throat does he dare to look up again. The blank face greeting him isn’t what you’d call encouraging though and Bucky can feel his stomach dropping what feels like straight through the floor and down another two levels.

“So, just one date then?” Tony asks airily and it takes Bucky a long moment to process the amusement hidden in those dry words and slight twitch of Tony’s lips.

Turns out it’s really hard to calling your crush out on purposefully being a little shit when he has just metaphorically freed you from the crushing weight of a panicked circle of ‘What if I’ve just ruined everything, I never should’ve-’ trails of thought. Bucky feels light-headed with relief and happiness, and really, it’s all he can do to retort with a cheeky “Maybe two” and a ridiculously wide, sappy smile.

“Two? Someone’s very sure of himself,” Tony teases.

It’s the irresistible combination of the challenging smirk and the contradicting softness in his eyes though that dissolves the last of Bucky’s nerves, allows him to regain his footing again. Because this is familiar territory, this he can do in his sleep.

“Oh, believe me, I’m gonna pull out all the stops, you won’t stand a chance,” Bucky grins back, his usual confidence quickly returning now that he knows Tony is willing to give him a chance.

“You’re setting the bar real high when you talk like that, you know that, right?” Tony counters, but Bucky just shrugs, appearing not at all bothered.

“Should the date be a bust—which it won’t be—I still got a back-up plan for after.” He winks obnoxiously.

“Oh?” Tony is trying and failing to hide his curiosity, and Bucky is unspeakably glad that the intrigue seems to outweigh the wariness.

“Yep,” Bucky barrels on, voice deepening on its own accord, “Because after our amazing, movie-scene-worthy date, I’ll shamelessly seduce you into coming over to my place, and you know what we’re gonna do there?” He leans in until he is close enough to whisper the answer right into Tony’s ear. “We’re gonna watch the fourth season of Leverage and eat stracciatella ice straight out of the box.”

“And Nat says your dirty talk’s terrible,” Tony laughs delightedly when he pulls back. Then he pauses. “Wait. Straccia- How did you know my favourite-”

“Remember our first meeting?” Because Bucky certainly does.

Apparently so does Tony, if the way he lights up is any indication. “You remember that?” He sounds awed, which is a silly question, it’s not like Bucky could ever forget. But he only gets half-way through a “’Course I do, doll,” before he has an arm full of excited genius, bright smile and teary-eyes included, peppering feather-light kisses all over Bucky’s face.

“Be my valentine?” he asks breathlessly and Bucky can’t help but laugh, because it’s such a Tony thing to go and steal his line.

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” he jokes back, which leads to Tony rolling his eyes with a huff, which leads to Bucky trying to ruffle his hair, which leads to Tony losing his hold on Bucky, which leads to the both of them toppling over like the uncoordinated, lovesick fools they are.

In the end the flowers look a little worse for wear, but Bucky really, really doesn’t mind. And neither does Tony, if the way he keeps them on his bedside table for weeks (and rescues them from the garbage can Rhodey sneakily throws them into twice) is any indication.  

I’m a little nervous about this one, so any encouragement would be welcome! (Yes, this is me shamelessly begging for validation, you’ve read that right.) In any case I hope you liked it and you have a great day!

@Anon who wrote this ask: If it helps, you can tell me what fandoms you’re in and I’ll make you a rec list for any fics that deal with ace characters I remember. It’s true that there aren’t many of them out there, but over the years I’ve found some real gems you might enjoy. (Please, tell me you’re in the TVD fandom, cause there is an amazing fic in there, and BBC Sherlock has a few- ok I stop now.) Just let me know :)