#( tails on the other hand would get it now and again. too busy inventing sometimes. or doing up the tornado )

[melpcmene]

As someone who constantly keeps pins and needles in their foot. I know for a fact that Sonic has never felt such a thing in his life. His feet/legs do not get numb. Because he's running, always moving. ( Plus he stretches! He keeps in shape all the time. ) And he may freak out one day when he does get it. ( Especially if somewhere along the line, Sonic gets trapped by Eggman for like six months. Oh, I hope that doesn't happen at all! )

[anonymousfiction211]

Caught

Summary: You lived in the palace and were good friends with Loki. You were fired and hadn’t seen Loki in years. When are back at the palace you encounter him.  Words: 2.937 words Warning: Smut, a little bit of physical violence A/N: Thank you for reading the story! Still trying to figure out a writing style. If you have any tips or tricks feel free to contact me :) 

You grew up in the palace and was training to become a cook. You became good friends with Loki, always getting into trouble together. When you were teenagers, you invented a game. To his annoyance you had bested him every time. You would take turns ‘stealing’ an item from the other person. The trick was not to get caught, because if you got caught you would have to pay a prize. Sometimes it was cleaning the other person’s room, serving the other or go down to the market to buy something. Loki was sometimes successful in stealing from you, but he had never caught you. Since Loki was extremely smart, you were proud that he never had. Something you loved to rub in his face, every opportunity you got. You were close and the game was all in good fun. You had to admit that through the game, you had developed a crush on Loki. His brother had once told you that he liked you, but since he was quite intoxicated at the time, you didn’t dare to believe it.

The rules of the game were simple. One chose the item that needed to be stolen and the other would try and steal it. Both of you had to be in the palace and Loki couldn’t use his magic. The last time you played you had caught him red handed, trying to steal your favourite book. He thought he was being smart, he had got your room key from one of your servants and planned his heist while you were busy in the kitchen. But when your servant came clean that she had given the key away, you rushed to your room. Immediately you tackled him, which left you two tangled on the ground. When he admitted defeat, he asked what he had to do. You couldn’t help it. The feeling of his body against yours, your lips almost touching, so you kissed him. He had kissed you back and when you broke the kiss, you swore you saw him blush. You felt yourself blushing hard and didn’t dare to look him in the eye. He couldn’t look you in the eye either. You scrambled to get up. When you two stood across each other he whispered ‘my ring’ and left. The day after you were summoned before Odin telling you that your services were no longer needed. A guard walked you to your room, you gathered some possessions and had to leave without delay. You always wondered if Loki or the kiss had anything to do with your sudden departure. You never got the chance to ask him that or steal his ring.

After living a few years away from the palace you were, surprisingly, hired again. You were nervous to be back there. You had heard tails of Loki trying to conquer Midgard and failing. He was serving a sentence, but due to him helping his brother he was given more room and was now restricted to the palace grounds. The first time you saw him again was when you were walking in the opposite direction of the hallway. He looked you up and down as you approached. You froze, afraid of how he might react after all these years. You also couldn’t help but notice he had grown to be a very attractive man. He didn’t show any reaction, he treated you like you were a mere stranger. He walked past you without saying a word. No reaction was even worse. You had to supress the tears that were forming in your eyes. When you couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore, you got angry. You didn’t know if it was the best plan, but you spend the rest of the morning coming up with a plan to steal his ring. You stole the key from a guard, while he was distracted with a sudden fire (which you may or may not have started). After that you asked around and heard that Loki had a meeting with his father. So, when he was 15 minutes into the meeting you snuck into his room and started to look for the ring.

His room hadn’t changed much. He still left the doors of his balcony open, the bed was still way too large and there were papers and books everywhere. You startled when the front door and balcony doors slammed shut. You turned around but didn’t see anyone. You figured it was the wind, but felt uneasy. You started to think that this was indeed a bad idea, maybe he simply had forgotten you and truly didn’t recognize you. It had been many years after all. So, you walked towards the front door to open it. The door didn’t budge. You were starting to panic as you walked towards the balcony doors. They didn’t open either, you realized you were trapped. You heard the front door open and close. You turned around to see Loki, he looked angry. He holds up his hand with his ring on his index finger ‘looking for this?’ he growled. For a moment you were scared, but then realized that he had recognized you. ‘So, you do remember me!’ you said angrily.

‘Remember you? OF COURSE I REMEMBER YOU!’  he shouted back at you. The anger in his voice took you aback. ‘Then why do you act like you don’t know me?’ you asked him. With a few large paces he was right in front of you. He grabbed your throat and pushed you hard against the balcony doors. You were gasping for air and he tightened his grip. He didn’t break eye contact with you. Right before you would pass out he loosened his grip, to let you breathe. When you took a few deep breaths, he tightened his grip again, it made breathing hard but not impossible. ‘YOU LEFT!’ he spit out. The venom in his voice when he said ‘you’ felt like a slap in the face. He hates me, you thought. ‘If you didn’t want me to leave you should have stopped your father from firing me’ you said back. Tears were starting to stream down your cheeks. Your voice was hoarse from his grip and the volume had dropped below that off a whisper. He let go of your throat and stared at you. His eyes narrowed ‘you quit’ he said. You furrowed your brows ‘I didn’t quit, why do you think that?’. You felt his eyes pierce through your soul. Loki was never one to show emotion, but if you paid attention his eyes always gave him away. You saw his emotion change quickly from disbelief, to hurt, realization and then his eyes filled with anger.

‘Loki, why did you think I quit?’ you asked again. ‘That was what I have been told’ he suddenly turned around and walked towards the front door. He stood still right before he turned the door handle ‘since I won, you will stay here’. You hesitated, you were shocked how much he had changed over the years. ‘For how long?’ you asked. ‘As long as I want’ he growled back. He then went through the door and you heard it lock behind him. Not knowing what to do in his room you decided to lay down on his bed. You grabbed a book and started to read, but couldn’t concentrate. You had no idea what was going on. After a long time of waiting, you finally fell asleep.

After a few hours you woke when you felt the bed dip. You opened your eyes to see it had become night, though you had no idea what the time was. You felt a hand on your hip traveling up your upper back, pulling you close. ‘Loki what is going on?’ you heard yourself ask with a trembling voice. ‘Oh, the usual, finding out that Odin lied. You were fired, because someone saw us kiss and he was arranging a marriage at the time, which fell through of course.’ You noticed he tried to sound sarcastic, but his voice sounded wounded and hoarse. You knew he had been yelling for a long time. ‘I thought you had me fired, because you regretted kissing me back’ you whispered to him. You felt him pull you closer ‘I have many regrets, but kissing you is not one of them. Why did you think I would ask you to steal my ring?’ he said. ‘Because that was the game?’ you asked. ‘I was going to ask you if I could court you and if you would wear it, when you would try to steal it’. There was a long silence. You felt yourself relax, as this was the Loki you had known so well. ‘Would you have said yes if I had asked you?’ he whispered. Still trying to process the turn of events you knew one thing for sure, you had missed him terribly all these years.

You turned around to face him and gave him a short kiss on his lips. When you pulled back you felt his hand from your back traveling to your neck. He held you in place as he kissed you. The kiss was gentle and soft. His lips moved slow and felt amazing against yours. He turned you so he was laying on top of you, resting most of his weight on one of his arms. He moved his hand from your neck to you throat to move down to your chest. You couldn’t help but flinch when his hand stroked you throat. He stopped kissing you and looked at you ‘I’m so sorry’ he whispered. ‘I promise to make it up to you and never hurt you again’. Before you could say anything his lips were kissing your throat. It tickled which made you giggle, you felt him smile against your skin. His lips travelled back upwards towards you lips. He kissed you again, you felt his tongue against your lips, asking to be let in. You opened your mouth as his tongue slowly slid in. While his tongue started to explore your mouth, his hand moved downwards to your breast. He began to stroke your breast, softly squeezing your nipple as it became hard. You started to moan in his mouth. He began to kiss you more eagerly and put more of his weight on you. Your hands started to move up and down slowly on his back. You let one hand slip under his shirt to feel his soft skin against your hand. You stroked his back, feeling his muscles move under your touch. He stopped kissing you and moved off you. He sat on his knees next to you and pulled off his shirt. You popped up on your elbows, laying slightly more upwards. When his shirt was off he didn’t move ‘Are you sure you want this?’ he asked you. ‘yes’ you said softly.

He smiled as he bends down to start kissing you again. He became more eager and roamed the back of your dress trying to find the clasp. When he couldn’t find it, you heard him growl frustrated. He then put his hands on the end of your V-neck and ripped it right through the middle. You gasped feeling the cool air on you skin. ‘I’ll buy you a new one’ he whispered as he started to kiss your throat softly traveling downwards. ‘If I knew you didn’t wear anything underneath your dresses, I would have done this much sooner’ he panted. You laughed at that and put your hands in his hair. He was kissing your breasts, circling your hard nipples with his tongue. His hand started to caress your side and you felt your hips buckle towards him. You grew hot in your centre from his tongue and touch. He opened your legs with his knee, putting pressure on your clit. You had to restrain yourself from riding his leg, since he was still wearing his pants. He noticed and shimmered his pants away, so he too was naked. ‘Don’t hold back, I want to feel how wet I’m making you’ he said huskily. You started to ride his thigh, he would alternate the pressure on your clit, driving you crazy. You grabbed his hair and pulled him towards you, needing his lips on yours. His tongue slipped immediately in your mouth slowly circling around your tongue. You felt his legs straddling yours and his hand traveling towards your clit. He started to rub slow circles on your clit making you gasp and moan in his mouth.

You put one of your hands on his ass, stroking and squeezing it. Your put your other hand on his cock. It was bigger than you had expected and was already extremely hard. You started to slowly caress the side. When you grabbed his cock in your hand Loki began to ride your hand. He started to grunt and moan. He stopped rubbing your clit and put his arm next to your head. He broke the kiss and opened your legs with his other hand. He aligned himself with your entrance. You pumped his cock a few more times before guiding it inside you. You both moaned at the feeling of him entering you. When he was inside you, your hands went to his shoulders on his back. He put his other arm next to your head and started to slowly move. He pumped in and out of you. The feeling of his cock filling you up was amazing. You hooked your legs around his waist, urging him to go faster. Loki began to ride you faster, kissing and biting your neck. You began moaning his name which made him smirk ‘I will never grow tired of you moaning my name’ he said to you. You felt your orgasm build up and tightened your grip around his waist. He laid his head against your forehead and you heard him grunt. You could feel his breath on your face as he was pumping in and out of you relentless. You felt your walls clench and your legs began to shake. ‘That’s it, come for me’ he said. You screamed his name loudly when you came. He worked you through your orgasm and started to pump slower.

Suddenly his arms were behind your back and he flipped the two of you over. He was laying on his back and you were on top of him. This position made his cock deepen inside you, touching your still sensitive spot within. ‘Ride me’ he said. He put his hands on your hips and you followed their motion. You began to ride him as deep and as fast as you could. Loki moaned and you leaned down to kiss his chest. You travelled upwards and kissed his lips. You broke the kiss to sit upwards and slowed your movement. You rode him slowly while he was moaning beneath you. He put a hand on your thigh and the other one on your clit. ‘I want to feel you come, one more time’ he moaned. He put pressure with his finger on your clit, but didn’t move. Wanting more friction, you began to ride him faster, which made your clit move against his finger, chasing your own high. You felt Loki tense and knew he was close. You slid a hand behind you, starting to stroke his balls. He put more pressure and your clit, and you came hard on his cock. That send him over the edge as you felt his cock twitch inside you. You felt his cum fill you up. He had made a fist with his other hand and bit on it hard to keep him from screaming.

When both of you had caught your breath, you slipped of him. He grabbed your hips, so you still startled his lap. His sat upwards and kissed you. His lips moved slow against yours. After a minute he broke the kiss. He let you go to clean yourself up in his bathroom. When you got back to his bed he handed you one of his shirts and a boxer. ‘Will you stay?’ he asked. You nodded and put the clothes on. He took your hand and guided you towards his bed. He laid on his back and laid you down so your head was on his chest. Your hand was on his waist and his hand was playing with your hair. Unsure if you should ask ‘What will happen now?’. Loki chuckled ‘Well, it took a few hours to convince Odin, but I would very much like to honour of courting you. If you want me to, of course’ he said. ‘I would like that very much, what made him change his mind?’ you asked him. He then told you about his long intense conversation. ‘Basically, he thinks I will behave myself if you are by my side. Like, not setting things on fire, though he would not believe that I had nothing to do with that’ he chuckled. You gave him an innocent look, which made him laugh. You started to stroke his chest, moving downwards to tease him a bit. You felt him harden when you were stroking the tip of his cock. He began to shift in his position, not being able to hold still and breath faster. ‘Darling…’ he said warningly. You then kissed him and whispered in his ear ‘the shirt I’m wearing’. He moved fast and was on top of you in the blink of an eye. His hands were under your shirt, fondling your breast ‘excellent choice’ he smirked.

[crystalbahamut]

pounds of flesh

FFXIV Write Day 3: Scale

Summary: The Exarch is familiar with tactics used to dodge those most dangerous of creatures (Healers) and offers you his assistance.

Author’s note: Am currently ignoring the fact that there’s no faucet in the Pendant room (that I could find) because that seems inconvenient for such an otherwise nice kitchenette. The prompt started me off with the idea of scaling a staircase feeling on par with scaling a mountain but it sort of veered off from there. I really loved this prompt though; there are so many ways to take it.

Warnings: Shadowbringers spoilers, unspecified WoL, non-healing WoL (kind of), 2nd person pov, WoL/Exarch, overworking oneself on purpose

Words: 1,876

 ---

You might have gotten a little bit…carried away today. Triffids, hoptraps, wargs, and more; you had carried out a number of quests to reduce the threats posed to those traveling the roads of Lakeland, and that wasn’t even counting the morning spent in Rak’tika helping out the Night’s Blessed with some of their chores. You don’t mind– it’s nice to be helpful, good, necessary even– but now that everything aches and some of the cuts have opened up again you wonder if maybe you took it a little far. All you wanted to do was make sure you slept well tonight, but even taking the intercity aetheryte was too much to ask of your energy stores. You have scaled cliffs and mountains, but right now the thought of scaling the steps to your room is making you want to find a place the guards don’t patrol and just lay on the ground. It’s a good thing the manager is on break right now, or you’d have to field some uncomfortable questions about why you’re just standing around, staring.

“There you are.”

You flinch. Mayhap the manager would have been the lesser of two well-intentioned evils, considering the Exarch sounds…not exactly smug, but knowing. You stand taller and clear your throat. “Evening Exarch,” you say. “Did you need something?”

“Not precisely, though I am wont to worry when you stay out so late,” he says and steps towards you.

That…you almost turn around for that. He worries? You shake your head; of course he worries, you are (supposedly) the one hope for the world’s survival. ‘Tis nothing more than prudence. “Nothing to worry about; I’m quite fine.”

“Oh?” You can hear the smile in his voice as he comes around your side, and you quickly look away. “Should I be flattered that you seem to be emulating me?”

You scowl and pull the head covering down farther. How in the world does he see anything like this? “You didn’t invent hooded robes, Exarch.”

“No, I did not,” he chuckles. “However I have not seen you wearing one, until now.”

“Mayhap I simply felt like it.”

“Mayhap you did,” he says. “Or mayhap you are trying to hide a head wound incurred when a lake viper used its tail to swat you into a tree.”

You don’t have a good comeback for that. “You know, nobody likes a know it all,” you grumble and try to sink into your shoulders. One of these days you are going to break that damn magic mirror of his.

“My dear warrior,” he sighs as though indulging you in a whim. “What would it take for you to accompany me to Spagyrics?”

You turn to give him a look of incredulity and then realize that probably isn’t very effective. However he sighs and says, “I see.”

“Do you?” you ask. “I can’t see anything like this; I don’t know how you do it.”

He doesn’t take the bait, unfortunately. “Would you allow me to see to your wounds then?”

“I can heal myself.”

“If you could, you already would have.” He puts a gentle hand on your shoulder, though right on a sore spot that twinges, and you try not to wince. “I would just like some assurance you are well enough. If you are uncomfortable with me, I can fetch one of the Scio-”

“You,” you say immediately and take his arm. You pull back the hood to see with your good eye and find his mouth partly opened in surprise. “I trust you.” Also, if Alisaie or Y’shtola see you in this state, they will put you out of their misery. But you meant what you said. You do trust him.

“Thank you,” he says earnestly, as though he’s honored, and the wondrous tone of his voice is enough to give you the energy to make it up the stairs and to your room.

“I don’t think I’ve seen someone manage to limp so successfully on both legs before,” the Exarch says and goes to the cupboard where the first aid kit lives.

“It’s not that bad– though I’m going to warn you that I’m a bit dirty so it probably looks worse than it is,” you say and pull off the robe. Gently, as everywhere it touches seems to throb with new pain, or maybe the fatigue is getting to you. While he’s turned around you quickly (ow) change into some shorts and a tank top and sit on the bench by the door.

When he turns around the Exarch actually stops in his tracks. “Wicked white,” he says and sighs. “If Chessamile saw you like this…”

“The Warrior of Darkness would be ended by the wrath of a bypassed healer.” You put a finger to your lips. “But surely now my trusty accomplice will help me.”

He smiles again, though he looks like he’s trying to wrangle it back into a disapproving frown. “Extortion now, is it?” he asks as he starts filling a bowl with water.

“I think your offer belied the feelings of one used to dodging chirurgeons,” you say and give yourself a quick check to make sure anything that needs treating is visible. Thankfully your torso just endured some bruising; it’s your limbs that took the brunt of everything. And your head, you’re reminded as you try to gingerly scrape off some of the dried blood and accidentally reopen the wound, making fresh blood course back down over your eye. “Oops.”

“Perhaps I have, but even my own injuries pale in comparison. I can see why any healer would have their hands full with you,” the Exarch says as he comes over to take your hand, shove some cloth in it, and force you press it hard against the cut. “Pray just hold that there for now.”

Now that you’re able to relax and do nothing, exhaustion courses through your bones and you do as he bids if only because anything else is far too much effort. You struggle to stay awake as he pulls over a chair, the medical kit, and the bowl of water, and blink yourself back to consciousness when he sits down.

“Are there any sprains?” he asks as he looks over the injuries.

“My right ankle feels a bit funny, and I think I pulled something in my left thigh, but mostly I’m just scraped up,” you say. He dabs some of the scratches with the clean water and it’s uncomfortable but not unbearable. You almost start to fall asleep with his gentle ministrations.

But when he presses a new, slightly damp cloth to those scrapes, the stinging wakes you right up. “Thal’s balls!” you hiss and resist the urge to rip his hands away. On the plus side, your head has stopped bleeding again; now it only throbs as you set the bloodied cloth aside and try to quell the nausea caused by pain.

“I apologize,” he murmurs and dabs it more gently. It’s not a good feeling but you can bear it a little easier now that you know it’s coming. He clears his throat. “What were you working on so frenetically today?”

“Huh?” You think about the question. “Oh– nothing much really; I was just taking a few jobs here and there.”

“Are you in need of gil?” he asks and lifts his head. Presumably to look at you. “Surely some of these jobs could have waited another day?”

You take the washcloth and wring it out before you start cleaning your other leg, and then your arms. It will help him get through this easier. And it also makes it so you don’t have to look at him now. “They could have. But I wanted them done.”

“Because you plan to take the day for yourself tomorrow?”

“Perhaps,” you say. “Perhaps this is how I want to spend my days.”

“Working yourself to the bone when you already do so much?” He finishes wrapping your ankle and grabs your hand. He says your name gently, without reproach. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong.” You shut your eyes. “Sometimes…I just want to sleep. That’s all.”

“I see,” he says and doesn’t press for more. If this were Alphinaud you wouldn’t be able to escape without some awkward attempt at platitudes on his end, or Urianger, who would try to make suggestions while also nearly putting you to sleep with one of his lectures, but the Exarch keeps tending to you with hands that are gentler than they have any right to be.

When he starts treating the cut on your head it’s a good excuse to close your eyes, but even without some supposed excuse you don’t think you would do any differently. He’s so…gentle. Healers, even the kindest ones, are all business– as they should be, as they’re always the ones that have to make sure everyone is fighting fit for the next catastrophe. But the Exarch touches you so tenderly, like he wants to put you back together piece by piece, with soothing motions and soft brushes of skin, and crystal that’s warmer than it looks, and it’s all you can do to keep from falling apart in his capable hands.

“One moment, my warrior,” he murmurs and you realize you’re halfway to sleep by the fact that you can’t seem to open your eyes when he leaves, but it doesn’t bother you overmuch. When he comes back and nudges you to stand, you manage to do so, but you still don’t open your eyes even as you shuffle over to the bed with his help. You sit on sheets– the cover has been pulled back already, you realize with delayed thoughts as the Exarch tucks you in. You’ll be mortified in the morning, but for now…

“I pray sweet dreams find you tonight, my warrior.”

You think you imagine the gentle kiss placed upon your brow, but in case this isn’t some lovely dream and he is still around to hear it, you whisper, “Thank you.”

 The next morning finds you sore and a little stiff, but you can recognize that you’re better off than you would have been otherwise.

You also find a collection of medicinal-looking mixtures all lined up in bottles in a neat little row on the table. And, when you go over to investigate, a note from the Exarch.

 My dear warrior,

Though it is not a happy thought, there are many in Norvrandt who share your desire for uninterrupted sleep, as well as your difficulties attaining it. These elixirs each have their own cards describing ingredients and dosage; if you find one to your liking, it would be a simple matter of requesting more, and I should be delighted to do so.

Also, if you ever find the climb to your room to be too arduous, perhaps the smaller staircase leading to the tower itself would be less of a strain. Once inside, there are easier ways to get around that I would be happy to show you.

With fondest wishes,

The Crystal Exarch

 You smile and fold the letter back up. An easier way to the Ocular, hm? You’d like to see that. Perhaps now is a good time to stretch your legs and make the climb.

[anistarrose]

Summary: Winters running the Mystery Shack are difficult, but two unexpected guests improve Stan’s day.

Characters: Stan Pines, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Ford Pines

Relationships: Mabel Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines

Happy Holidays, @halogalopaghost! I'm your Secret Santa, here to mash together a couple different prompts through the power of time travel (and Mabel)!

***

It doesn’t take Stan many years to learn that winter’s no good for the rural Oregon tourist business.

Granted, he can hardly blame the tourists — he has to drive on Gravity Falls roads himself, much to his disgust. Between the paved, plowed streets that always turn slick with ice where you least expect them, and the winding gravel roads that you might as well ignore when road and wilderness alike are under identical four-inch blankets of snow, he knows no gallery of fake haunted paintings or taxidermied coyote’s ass is worth the trip in these conditions.

He’s on his third winter in town, now — not counting the first, worst one he arrived at the tail end of — and if there’s a right way to run a business this time of year, he hasn’t found it yet. He always scrapes together just enough to pay his bills, thanks the occasional local who wanders over to purchase a seasonally appropriate if overpriced snow globe — but he’s lucky if he breaks even in December, and knows January through March are a lost cause before they begin. He’ll make it back within the next year, sometimes even before summer ends, but it stings to know he’s about to fail at his one goal for the next three to four months straight, and there’s nothing he can do to change it.

It might sting less if he had another way to spend these winters — if he had a good reason to formally close the Shack for a few months, like an experienced business owner making a grounded and responsible decision. But he can’t even search for Ford’s journals in this weather — he’s learned from his mistakes, his countless brushes with frostbite, throughout those cold, desperate months in the wake of the portal shutting down.

He’s useless right now, and worse, this season’s shaping up to be the bleakest yet. His usually-scammable neighbors have already lined their shelves with winter knicknacks from Mystery Shack visits past, and the bulk of Stan’s meager sales have come from shivering out-of-towners who’ve never tried to take a Pacific Northwest road trip in December before, and probably won’t be keen to try again.

What seasonal merchandise hasn’t he sold yet? Bumper stickers for miscellaneous holidays, maybe — but neither timely bumper stickers nor the usual selection of tchotchkes will convince people to visit the Shack in the first place, under these road conditions. He can’t even walk around selling merch door to door, for the same reason he can’t look for the other journals — he’d freeze to death, presuming he could make it through the snowdrifts to somewhere worth visiting in the first place. Even with snow chains on the Stanmobile’s tires and a bucket of salt in her trunk, grocery runs alone are perilous enough.

Damn it, Ford, he thinks, why couldn’t you have gone missing in Florida?

He could always do what he does best and lie, maybe — send out word that there’s free hot chocolate or something with every purchase at the Mystery Shack, and hope that people hand over their hard-earned cash before they pick up on the false advertising. He might draw in some local customers that way, and even if he loses their trust for the next few months, they always seem to forget about his cons eventually — as if he never scammed them, and they’ve never so much as heard the words caveat emptor.

He’s just about to dial the local paper’s number on the phone, hoping to flatter Toby into letting him run another ad for free, when he hears a telltale knock at the gift shop door. The bell atop that door doesn’t ring, which means that despite the hostile winds and snow they braved to get here, his visitors are still out loitering on the porch — or so Stan thinks for a moment, before it dawns on him that he doesn’t even remember unlocking the door this morning. He’d just been that pessimistic about even seeing a customer.

“Hello?” someone calls — a fairly young voice, probably approaching the tail end of puberty. “Are you there, uh…Mr. Mystery?”

“On my way!” Stan shouts, throwing on his fez and bolting for the door. His neighbors in Gravity Falls might forget and forgive a lot, but he doesn’t want to risk the wrath of a parent whose teenage kid froze to death on the local grifter’s doorstep, so he unlocks and flings open the door as fast as he can. “Welcome, travelers! Prepare to be baffled and bemused by our mind-boggling boreal mysteries, here at this last refuge at the edge of the Arctic we like to call the Cryptid Cabin!”

His visitor — no, his two visitors — both blink slowly, proving to at least be baffled, if nothing else. Both are bundled up in what Stan assumes to be several sheep worth of wool garments, lovingly knitted into sweaters, hats, and scarves.

“But you call this place the Mystery Shack,” the girl speaks up, and the boy nods.

“Yeah, and we’re nowhere near the Arctic! This is Oregon, not Alaska!”

Stan groans — the only customers he might see all week, and of course they’re teenagers. “Look, punks, business is slow these days! I’ve had a lot of time to think about a seasonal rebranding, and not a lot of chances to workshop it, alright?”

The teens’ expressions instantly soften, and the girl exclaims: “Well, you can workshop it with us!” She grabs the other kid — her brother? — by the hand, and pulls him into the gift shop.

Maybe Stan’s judged them too quickly — he’s still not thrilled to have strangers pitying him, of course, but he’ll take it over strangers mocking him any day of the week.

“Dang, you’re right,” the boy comments once inside, and face-to-face with shelves of untouched merchandise. “It really is empty in here in the winter.”

With little light coming in from the windows, and a flickering bulb overhead that will soon need replacing, the often-bustling room is now dim and eerie — aside from the junk food wrappers on the floor, which Stan hastily kicks under his desk.

“Look at all the lonely snowglobes in need of homes!” the girl pipes up, swiping a glass-encased antelabbit off the shelf and giving it a hearty shake. “Good thing I’m here to adopt this lucky little guy — how much is he?”

Stan takes a second to run the numbers — the maximum amount of money a teen would have on hand, versus what Stan needs to charge to make a profit — and replies: “Twenty-nine ninety-nine and nothing more. We don’t do sales tax here, ‘less you’re a cop.”

“Bet there’s a lot of other taxes you don’t do, either,” the boy snorts, rummaging through a shelf of hats until he unearths one with the old Murder Hut logo on it. “Aha! Now here’s a collector’s item!”

“Oh, did you come here before the rebrand and forget to grab a souvenir?” Stan asks. He doesn’t remember these two, but it’s been a couple years since he painted over the last Murder Hut sign — and they do seem pretty familiar with the building, not to mention Stan’s whole… business model.

“Oh, uh, that’s a funny story, actually! Real funny!” the boy stammers with a whole lot more trepidation than the topic should’ve warranted, and looks to his sister for help.

Sure enough, she steps in. “We lived here for a while — in Gravity Falls, I mean! Not here in the Shack, obviously — wouldn’t that be ridiculous, if we lived in your house for months without you knowing? Could you imagine —”

“That is to say, we still visit sometimes!” the boy supplies. His eyes are a whole lot more fixated on the snowglobes than with anything in Stan’s general direction. “You probably don’t remember us — we weren’t in town for very long, or anything…”

Stan sighs. They’re lying, obviously — but hey, there’s no cops in the Mystery Shack, and he doesn’t have a dog in whatever fight compelled the duo to spew this bullshit. He’ll keep an eye on the cash register, of course, but these kids are tolerable company when they’re not being suspicious as hell — so if they want to invent a bad cover story for a low-stakes tourist trap visit, more power to them.

“Well, the hat’s vintage, so that’ll be double price. Twenty bucks,” he announces matter-of-factly, and the boy groans — but there’s a smile behind it, like he’d expected this and now he’s just playing along. If there’s one thing Stan’s willing to believe, it’s that these kids have been to the Mystery Shack before.

“You’re a highway robber, old man, and I’m the coward who’s gonna let you get away with it,” the boy declares, and Stan can’t help but laugh. The kid reaches under several layers of sweaters to pull out a wallet, with a blue pine tree embroidered on, and miscellaneous charms of fantasy characters hanging off a chain on the side. Stan doesn’t recognize any of them, but they still tug at his heartstrings, because he can tell they’re the exact kind of nerdy references Ford would love.

He does take note of the pine tree design, though — it’s generic enough that slapping it on some shirts and hats wouldn’t quite be plagiarism, and in Stan’s eyes, those are always the best souvenir designs.

The kids put their money forward, hovering awkwardly as Stan rings up their items — the girl busies herself attacking a loose string on her brother’s scarf, nimble fingers tying it back in its approximate place, while the boy twiddles his thumbs and stares at the snowy, gray scene out the window. At the moment, only light flurries fill the air, but tomorrow night promises a blizzard… and Stan, grump with a soft side that he is, can’t help but hope that if these kids are really on vacation, then they aren’t planning to drive anywhere tonight.

With it being winter, and him running the business that he does, he doesn’t have much charity to give — but, if he’s going to play along with his customers’ little lie, then he should probably at least bring up the topic.

“You’re not hittin’ the road any time soon, are you?” He makes eye contact only with the green illustrated presidents in his hands, so not to come across as overly invested. “Weather forecast says tonight’s gonna be a doozy.”

“Aww, you’re worried about us?” the girl coos, because apparently both parties here are damn good at picking up on each other’s lies. “That’s so sweet — but you don’t have to be! Our great uncle’s waiting for us in town, and he’ll… well, let’s just say he’s planning to bring us back home before the blizzard hits.”

“He’s, uh — he lived here back in the seventies, so he knows what he’s doing,” the boy adds. “On the roads, that is. Mostly.”

“Well, you two take care,” Stan tells them, hastily adding on: “So you can come back when the weather isn’t terrible and buy more keychains, that is.”

“Oh, we will.” The boy grins, sharing a conspiratorial glance with his sister. “Maybe don’t count on it being next year — or the year after that, even — but you can count on it.”

“Well, uh…” Stan stops himself, resisting the impulse to divulge things he really shouldn’t. “You just shouldn’t count on me running this place forever. Be sure to get your novelty cryptid pins while they’re hot, y’know.”

He’s never really wondered what he’ll do with the Shack when he gets Ford back — and yes, he has to believe that statement deserves a when, not an if — but he figures the Shack’s fate will depend more on Ford’s own whims. If reality lands somewhere between the nightmares of Ford wanting him gone and the fantasies of finally sailing around the world, if Ford doesn’t hate him but still wants to spend more time with Important Science Experiments than with his brother, then Stan could see himself returning to a mediocre life in his moderately successful tourist trap… but with the search for the journals still coming up empty, Stan can only try not to think about the future, and accept that he’ll just cross — or burn — that bridge when he comes to it.

“Okay, Mr. Mystery,” the girl suddenly declares with a tone that frankly reminds Stan of his mother, “you look like you could use a pick-me-up!”

“What?” It’s starting to freak Stan out how well she can read him, and there’s no telling whether it’s just a sharp intuition, or something significantly more Gravity Falls-y. “If I look tired, kid, it’s because it’s December in Oregon, I haven’t seen the sun in a week, and I am tired. Only pick-me-up I need is for you to get out of my hair, and let me go back into hibernation like nature intended.”

“Okay, but counterpoint: you hear us out,” the boy insists. “We’ve got a little something up our sleeve to really light up your winter —” He winks at his sister. “Don’t we?”

“You bet we do!” She pulls a bag of marshmallows out of not her sleeve, but her backpack, and grins. “Prepare to be amazed and astounded by the natural wonders of this town, and also the miracle that is processed sugar and gelatin!”

“Are you imitating my sales pitches?” Stan asks, dumbfounded. “And do you carry those on you at all times?”

“In winter in Gravity Falls, I do!” the girl replies, already heading for the exit with her brother. “C’mon! If this doesn’t put a smile on your face, nothing will!”

“We all know you’ve got time to spare, Stan,” the boy adds, cracking open the door. “Get a move on!”

“Spare time doesn’t mean I’ve got spare limbs to lose to frostbite,” Stan grumbles, but follows them anyway. There’s something captivating about these little punks — not so much this mysterious phenomenon they’re trying to sell him on, as if they could really out-charlatan Mr. Mystery himself, but rather the way they’re not put off by his frigid facade. They see right through him, showering him in alternating kindness and acerbic wit.

Stan can’t help but wonder if their uncle’s kind of like him — tired, bitter, and pretending to be indifferent, but secretly soft on the inside, like a marshmallow that’s burnt on the surface but melted within. It would explain why they’re so good at calling him on his shit — but then again, Stan and this mystery guy can’t be too alike, because if Stan had a niece and nephew like these two, he’s sure he’d be living his life a whole lot differently.

He exits the Shack, and all his questions are immediately replaced with new ones when he sees the teens just hurling marshmallows towards the edge of the woods. The wind’s in their favor, so some of those sugary little fuckers fly far.

“Okay, so I’ve already got a couple concerns,” Stan tells them, shivering. “First off, what the hell?”

“It might take a couple minutes before one shows up,” the girl admits, as if it’s a totally reasonable stand-alone explanation for whatever the hell’s going on here. With about a third of the marshmallows now blending into the snow on Stan’s lawn, she and her brother stop with the throwing, though they still hold onto the bag. “Our grunkle theorized that they move slower in winter, to save energy — oh wait, never mind! Here comes one now!”

“Sorry, what? And where?” Stan squints out into the woods, terrified to lay his eyes upon a woodland monster these kids just lured to his doorstep — but all he sees, at first, are a few wisps of smoke dispersing in the wind above the trees. He’s not even convinced it’s smoke, really, because these aren’t the right conditions for a fire — but to his surprise, he glimpses an orange light within the woods, glowing steadily brighter until the trees and bushes around it are all casting faint shadows.

When it steps into the clearing, Stan realizes he has seen something like it before, albeit only from the overcautious distance he tries to keep from all anomalies. It’s an otherwise normal campfire perched on wooden, spiderlike legs, and it melts a path in the snow as it trots forwards, then lowers itself to the ground to absorb the first of a dozen marshmallows.

It lets out a satisfied little sound — a low, steady crackle that sounds almost like a purr — then scampers up to the next morsel of food to repeat the process.

“It’s called a Scampfire!” the girl explains, beaming. “There’s a bunch of them out in the woods, and they’ll always wander over if you leave out enough campfire food — especially sugary stuff! Isn’t that cute?”

“Our great uncle figured out this amazing trick when he used to live here, and he passed it down to us!” the boy adds, practically bouncing up and down in place. “If you leave them a trail of food, they’ll follow you around until you run out — which means they can clear your driveway, warm your hands, even save your car if you drive into a snowbank! Or help you make s’mores, of course.”

“Our grunkle says he even skipped paying his heating bill a couple winters,” the girl adds with a grin, “but I dunno if we can recommend that in good conscience.”

As the scampfire draws a closer, continuing to purr as it consumes more of the sugary trail, the boy slaps a handful of marshmallows into Stan’s palm. “Give it a try!”

Stan’s not thrilled about bringing a fire onto the wooden porch attached to his wooden house, even as cute as said fire is, so instead he tosses his ammunition at something much more disposable — the golf cart, since if this one croaks, he can always just steal another from the insufferable rich family up on the hill. His aim isn’t great — he blames his cold fingers — but exactly one marshmallow lands right in the cart’s driver seat.

The scampfire breaks course from its path towards the Shack, clearing a path through the snow before it crawls into the cart, absorbing the final morsel and curling up atop crossed legs. Nothing explodes, and in fact, a few of the icicles on the awning start to melt, dripping water into the patch of bare muddy ground surrounding the cart.

“Huh,” Stan mutters. Dozens of harebrained schemes flash before his eyes — if he could find a slingshot, or even better, some kind of cannon to mount on the cart’s front hood, then he’s sure that with practice, he could entice some scampfires to clear a path through any snowdrift…

But no matter his exact solution, it’s a way to get into town consistently. He can finally go door-to-door selling knickknacks, instead of sitting in the gift shop every day and hoping some poor soul would get bored enough to brave the roads and visit. He can actually work out a way to line his pockets even in the winter, instead of constantly waking up from nightmares about getting foreclosed on —

“See? They get food, and we don’t freeze — classic mutualistic symbiotic relationship!” the boy declares, and his sister gently socks him in the arm.

“Nerd!”

“Hey, you knew that too! We’re in the same biology class!”

It’s familiar, but the kind of familiarity that Stan doesn’t treasure anymore. It’s more like the kind that he hides in the basement or in boarded-up rooms whenever he can, and grins and bears with a heavy heart when he can’t, like every time he looks in the mirror or hears someone call him Stanford. He comes so close to asking these teens if they’re twins, because he figures the answer can’t be worse than wondering — but the question dies in his throat, and he tells himself it’s for the best.

“Is your uncle who invented this trick the same one who’s waiting in town for you?” he asks instead.

“Yep!” replies the girl. “He probably won’t get worried about us for like, ten or fifteen more minutes, though — I’m sure he’s got his nose buried deep in a book right now.”

“Do me a favor and let him know he’s a lifesaver,” Stan says. “Also tell him I’m glad he moved out, because he sounds a little too smart to fall for the fake monster wares that I peddle.”

The kids exchange a look that Stan can’t even hope to comprehend, though he’s damn sure it’s worth a thousand words to the two of them. Twins or not, he’s getting an “inseparable” kind of vibe from these two, that’s for sure.

“I’m not sure he’d like the Shack at first,” the brother muses, “but I’ve got a hunch it would grow on him.”

“He does like cryptids — sometimes even fake ones!” the sister chimes in. “Oh, shoot — we still need to grab a souvenir for him! I knew we were forgetting something!”

“Huh.” Stan throws a few more marshmallows in the direction of the woods, and the scampfire stumbles off the cart before trotting along on its merry way back to the forest. “I can get you something, no problem — I don’t call this place a gift shop for nothing, y’know. But for the love of Paul Bunyan, let’s talk about it inside.”

He’s not great at mental math, but he doesn’t have to be to know he owes a lot to these teens and the mysterious uncle he might never meet. Hell, even forgetting the business perspective — he can actually look for the journals in winter without risking frostbite, if he gets one of his fiery neighbors to tag along. Even if he finds nothing, even if he only winds up with more failures to contend with, he’d rather rule out locations than be useless to Ford for months at a time.

None of this weird family that he might never see again, these three benevolent strangers that he can only put two faces to, could possibly know how much they’ve just changed for him — and he can’t tell them, as much as his oversized heart promises he can trust these snarky kids who remind him so much of himself. But he does owe them, so when he reenters the gift shop, he goes straight for a seldom-opened and never-advertised box of knickknacks that he has no intention of charging them for. It’s got the dimensions of only about two side-by-side shoeboxes, so he lifts it onto the counter with hardly a grunt, and opens it up.

“Got lots of goodies in here — mostly stuff that I made or, ahem, acquired in bulk, so they never quite sold out by the time everyone and their mother in town had already bought their own. Take a gander.”

He knows that gander will reveal some Murder Hut-branded shirts with the words written on in marker, plastic six-sided dice with a different cryptids pictured on each side, cheap whistles purported to attract Bigfoot, cheap flashlights once advertised for attracting Mothman, exactly three cool rocks that Stan found in the woods… and the pièce de résistance, a little wooden Mystery Shack-shaped music box, which chirps out a pleasant tune when Stan flips up the roof. That last one’s a rare knickknack that Stan really put effort into personally crafting, back at the height of last winter’s monotony, through cannibalizing parts of premade music boxes and sticking them into brand-new shapes — but he couldn’t sell them for enough to be worth the cost of making more, and could never sell this last one at all.

“Oh, wow!” the girl gasps, clearly delighted. “How can I even choose between —”

“No, take it all. It’s on the house — but don’t you dare tell anyone about this, you hear me? I’ll know if you blab, ‘cause people will start asking me if they can get free crap, too, and I don’t wanna hear a word of that nonsense.”

“Free stuff at the Mystery Shack?” The boy narrows his eyes. “Are you feeling okay, old man?”

“Kid, stuff only goes in the Free Bullshit Box when I can’t sell it anyway.” Stan crosses his arms with a huff, even though he’s technically telling the truth. “The only catch is take it before I change my mind.”

A sudden spark of recognition in the brother’s eyes morphs into a grin on his face, and he nods. “Oh, we will. Don’t worry.”

“I think our grunkle will love this! Especially the dice,” the sister adds. “Hey, maybe we could give all this to him piece by piece for Hanukkah! There’s enough here for a new surprise every night!”

“Whoa, there is! Man, the look on his face the first time we bring out a Bigfoot whistle is gonna be great —” The boys eyes dart to the watch on his wrist, and he coughs into his hand. “But we should probably get a move on, huh? Don’t want to get caught in, y’know, the blizzard tonight.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Stan returns the lid and hands the box over. “You, uh, need a ride back to town? ‘Cause being a man of mystery and all, I know this neat trick to clear a whole road with just a bag full of marshmallows —”

The kids both start cackling, so hard that the box almost escapes the girl’s hands, and Stan laughs with them — not because he thought his joke was that funny, but because the kids’ laughter is absolutely priceless. The isolation’s definitely getting to his head and his heart, but he’ll take whatever reprieve he can get.

“I think we’ll manage on our own,” the boy finally wheezes out, “but thanks for the offer, Mr. Mystery. Thanks for everything, really.”

“See you later!” his sister adds as they leave. “Don’t let the feral gnomes bite!”

“You take care, too,” Stan replies, not nearly as loud — but he figures that the kids can read his lips. They can read so much about him, and know so much about the town, that he’s honestly a hair’s breadth away from assuming they’re two more anomalies from the woods themselves, just in more recognizable shapes than most…

Though if Stan’s honestly considering that theory, then more of Ford must’ve rubbed off on him than he likes to think about — which is to say, it’s a good a reason as any to stop thinking about it. What or whoever they were, the duo were actually pretty tolerable for teenagers, and Stan’s pretty sure they didn’t put a curse or whatever magic mumbo jumbo on him — because if they could manage that, they could definitely tell some less conspicuous lies, right?

He kinda likes the idea of one goddamn supernatural force in this town that’s actually benevolent, actually watching his back when his mood’s at its bleakest, and coming to his rescue with — no, he’s dropping that train of thought. No baseless hoping, just letting himself down easy before he gets up.

It does occur to him, several minutes after the gift shop door swings closed, that Hanukkah has already come and gone this year. Which probably just means the kids are prepared to hide that box for another twelve months… but maybe, when Stan finds the other journals, he’ll double-check for entries on helpful teenage cryptids who can’t lie. Just to be sure.

***

Mabel, Dipper, and Ford barrel into the living room so suddenly that Stan almost drops his mug of hot chocolate. They’re all covered in a ridiculous amount of snow, considering how briefly they were just outside, and Ford looks awfully delighted for someone whose glasses are someone whose glasses have just turned opaque with fog.

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel shouts. The cardboard box in her arms has seen better days, but she’s cradling it like an infant. “You’ll never guess when we just were!”

Dipper points a gloved finger in the air. “You mean, when we just — oh wait, did you already —”

“Yeah, I beat you to it this time!” Mabel pumps her fist. “Anyways, Grunkle Stan — you’ll never guess who we just visited!”

[dammithawke]

I haven't seen SPoP, but... Adora finds a laser pointer (for the writing prompt thing)

[Tell me what you think, comment on Ao3!]

It was Bow’s, originally. He claimed he invented it so he could help teach his dads to aim easier with their fledgling archery skills. He mentioned it to Adora, once or twice, said it might be useful for council meetings or game nights, though Adora wasn’t entirely sure how a flashlight would be helpful.

When he showed it to her, she gave him a skeptical look. They sat alone in one of Bright Moon’s libraries, Melog in Adora’s lap. For once, the cat had no interest in joining Catra in her evening nap, preferring to get as much attention from their friend’s Favorite as they could. Sometimes, a cat just needed some extra attention.

“Would anyone even be able to see the light?” She asked, carefully picking up the little tube Bow was showing her, as if it was precious porcelain or a bomb that might blow up in her hand.

“Oh, definitely. Push the button.” He insisted. She frowned and started lifting it up to look down the shaft, only for Bow to jump forward and wrestle her arm down. “Wait! Don’t point it at your eyes.”

She gave him an even more doubtful look, but finally pointed it at the wall. The dot was surprisingly bright and small, a little red speck that traced where Adora pointed it.

Melog’s purring stopped, their eyes trained on the spot. A moment later, they were no longer in Adora’s lap, pouncing after the speck. She snorted, pointing the laser at Bow’s shoes; Melog made a chittering noise and pounced, trying to catch the dot under their paws.

Laughter filled the library for a while as Bow and Adora took turns entertaining the cat with it. Half an hour later, Adora grinned at her friend as she asked to borrow the pointer for the evening. 

---

It wasn’t until after dinner that Adora could get Catra alone. Even with the peace brought on by the end of the war, it didn’t leave them with an abundance of alone time. They’d excused themselves after dessert and very nearly raced each other back to their room, Adora barely catching Catra by the waist as they skidded to a stop at their door. They were snickering as Adora fumbled with the doorknob, Catra tugging teasingly at the collar of Adora’s shirt with impatience. As soon as it was open, Adora tugged Catra around in front of her to shove her in, a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Well, aren’t you pushy tonight.” Catra smirked and pulled Adora in by the front of her shirt. Before Adora could answer, Catra’s lips were on her throat, nipping along her jaw. Adora let one of her hands skim along Catra’s hip, up her back.

It was an easy distraction, really.

Catra was far too preoccupied with pushing Adora’s jacket out of the way to notice Adora’s free hand slipping into one of her pockets, just out of sight. She really just had to get the angle right, keeping her hand low and out of the way, peeking out just enough that the little red dot was somewhere Catra could see.

For a long moment, she was far too busy pulling Adora closer, her lips trailing over her partner’s now-bare shoulder to notice much of anything at all. But then she froze.

Adora grinned.

“Adora… Don’t move.” 

Catra’s hands disappeared from where they had been tugging at Adora’s clothes and pulling her closer, as did the woman herself. She stepped toward the opposite wall, eyes fixed on the small red dot. Adora could hear the softest of growls escaping her girlfriend’s now snarled lips, her tail whipping around at attention.

Catra pounced. The dot flicked a few feet away, farther down the wall. Her ears pressed flat as she pounced again. Once again, the dot eluded her.

Only when Catra heard Adora’s snorting laughter did she turn back to look at the princess, realization slowly dawning on her face.

“You little-”

Adora barely had time to let out a cackle as Catra dashed after her, a new chase beginning. Oh, this was going to be her new favorite game.

[riotwritesthings]

The Curious Witch and the Cursed Wolf

Chapter 3: A Name and A Feeling | AO3

Art by the wonderful and adorable @gayspacesprinkles​

Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Title: The Curious Witch and the Cursed Wolf (Chapter 3) Collaborator(s): Riot @buckybarnesbingo​ Square Filled: B4, warm and fuzzy feelings @starkbucksbingo​ Square Filled: N4, “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” Ship/Main Pairing: WinterIron Rating: T Major Tags/Warnings: fantasy AU, witch!Tony, wolf!Bucky, fairytale vibes, Non-graphic injury Summary: Once upon a time there was a man, and a wolf. They both went into the forest looking for different things, and instead they found each other. Word Count: 1,697

~~~

Once upon a time there was a man, soaring through the air, weaving through the trees, laughing, lighter than he’d ever felt in more ways than one.

“I’m doing it, I’m flying! Look look!”

Tony, the wolf says in his strange voice, like a whisper in the back of Tony’s mind, like it’s being spoken warm and low directly in his ear.

“Are you looking?!” Tony demands as he circles the clearing, picking up speed.

Don’t fly into a tree, the wolf tells him, but Tony is too busy crashing into a tree and hitting the ground to respond.

“Owww,” he whines and then squeaks when the wolf’s cold nose presses to the back of his neck.

Conjuring a broom for himself hadn’t been hard, once he’d simply told himself that he could, and getting it off the ground hadn’t been hard either. Just like the stories.

It turned out that steering was the hard part.

At least he’d thought to conjure himself up some new clothes too, hadn't scraped himself up too badly on the tree bark.

“You can, but we’re in a forest, I was going to say,” the ball of light says with a huff, and Tony just laughs.

He has magic. He can do so many things, now. He'll be able to make things so much better.

"That was awesome!" Tony says gleefully as he pushes himself upright again, laughing and pushing the wolf away when he continues sniffing at Tony with obvious concern.

"Oh no, you're an idiot," the ball of light says, with a sighing sound like a soft breeze. "And you're probably going to die."

Tony is going to protest, because he's not, he's just excited, but the wolf beats him to it with a low growl.

He was doin' okay right up 'til the end, the wolf says.

The ball of light screams, flashing brighter for a second.

"Y-you can talk?" She demands in a squeaking voice, bobbing up higher into the air.

"He's been talking the whole time," Tony says, wrinkling his nose in confusion.

Only to you, says the wolf, and Tony can see the amusement beneath the stormy blue of his eyes.

"He can talk," the light says again.

"Is that not normal?" Tony asks, still more confused than anything. "I mean, I'm a witch, apparently."

"No," the ball of light says with feeling as she floats hesitantly closer.

You're a talkin' firefly, the wolf points out, baring his fangs and then snapping them when the light floats a little too close.

"He's not wrong," Tony says helpfully. The wolf lets out another soft huff of breath, his tail thumping once against the ground, and Tony smiles.

“I’m not a firefly,” the light protests, wings shaking with agitation. “My name is Pepper.”

“Hi,” Tony says. “I’m Tony, and this is a wolf.”

The wolf makes a sound that Tony is pretty sure is a laugh, tail thumping against the ground as Pepper makes an annoyed sound.

“Are you—" she trails off, circling the wolf, and Tony steps closer because he doesn't care if the wolf isn't 'normal.'

Tony isn't normal, never has been, and maybe all he knows is that the wolf has been through more than enough but that's plenty. So Pepper dips down towards the wolf again Tony bats at her with a glare.

"He's under a curse,” she says, floating up above their heads again. "A strong one."

"Oh," Tony says, even though it really shouldn't be a surprise at this point. “Do you know—“

”Look, I'm a messenger, I’m not here to answer a million questions," Pepper says, sounding huffy. “I have more messages to deliver, and I'm late because I had to chase you down for so long."

"Wait—" Tony says, because he does have a million more questions, but she’s already floating away, still grumbling to herself.

Tony watches her go, the wolf still seated huge and solid and wild beside him. When Tony looks over at him the wolf lets his tongue loll out in an expression that Tony is pretty sure is a smile.

"So, cursed huh?" Tony asks, and the wolf tips its head to the side for a moment before nodding slowly. “Do, um... do you have a name?”

Don’t know, says the wolf, ears drooping a little.

Tony can’t let that stand, has to do something.

“Well you need a name,” he declares. “So we’ll just have to give you one. What do you want it to be?”

The wolf shifts, still a little unsteady on three legs, and droops a little further.

“Well, you probably don’t want me picking out a name for you,” Tony says with a sheepish grin. “You’ll end up with something like Buttercup.”

The wolf lets out a sharp huff of breath.

Bucky, he finally says. I think... it used to be Bucky.

“That’s a terrible name,” Tony says gleefully, “I love it. I’m going to call you Buckaroo, and Bucky-bear, and—“

Don’t, Bucky says with a flash of his teeth.

Tony just laughs. Bucky leans over and nudges his huge head into Tony’s chest, knocking him over in the dirt again.

He pushes himself upright and Bucky is smiling at him again, eyes bright. He continues watching Tony, like he’s waiting for something, head cocked slightly to the side.

“It probably won’t be long until you’re walking as good as new,” Tony says slowly, because he doesn’t want to say goodbye. “I guess, you probably have somewhere you need to be—“

Bucky whines again, such a deep and sorrowful sound, drops his chin down to rest on his front paw and stares up at Tony with big sad eyes.

“Or!” Tony says quickly, heart jumping. “Or, you, if you wanted to come with me...”

Bucky’s tail wags aggressively, and Tony smiles. The stone in his chest glows bright enough to shine through his shirt, like it’s connected directly to the warmth spreading through his heart.

“I’ll get better at flying,” Tony says quickly, “So I won’t hold you back, your stride has to be huge—“

No flyin’ in the trees, Bucky interrupts, and then huffs when Tony pouts.

Bucky pushes himself to his feet, gives himself a great shake like he’s shaking off water, and Tony watches in awe as half of his size melts away. Until Bucky’s head is barely even with his shoulder, much smaller but no less fearsome.

Ready, Bucky says, smiling again, white fangs no less intimidating now that they’re smaller.

Tony smiles back, collects all his things, and they go.

 ~~~

They walk deeper into the forest, and Tony tells stories of all the things he’s seen so far, all the people he’s met and the ideas he’s had, all the new ideas that he has now.

There are so many inventions he can build now that he can summon the parts he needs. So many people he can help back in his old village, that he can heal, and maybe they’ll actually listen to him this time. Maybe they’ll let him help.

Bucky listens, asks questions, lets Tony grab onto him for balance when he gets distracted talking with his hands and tips over a tree root.

Bucky says that he doesn’t remember much, only running, being hunted. Tony doesn’t ask any questions.

As the trees grow even taller around them though Bucky slowly says that sometimes, he remembers more. What it was like to have a home, a life, but it’s faded, barely more than a dream now.

Tony doesn’t know what to say so he reaches out instead, runs his fingers through Bucky’s thick fur a couple times. Bucky’s steps lighten, ears and tail perking up again, and Tony smiles.

It’s nice, not to be alone.

Night falls early, this deep in the forest. The thick leaves blot out all light from the stars, and the darkness is deep and cool around them.

"Do you think I can manage an all-night magical fire to keep us warm?" Tony asks once they find a place to spend the night, safe between an outcropping of rock and the roots of an ancient oak tree. "Or should I just magic us up some blankets?"

He does want to try the fire, but he also wants to not burn them both to a crisp overnight.

Blankets, Bucky scoffs and gives him a look that Tony quickly figured out is his version of a teasing grin, stops sniffing at the ground to push himself to his feet and then stretches, stretches, stretches himself out huge again. Until he once again stands taller than Tony's head, huge and fearsome.

Then he drops down to the ground again, makes himself comfortable and gives Tony an expectant look. He huffs in fake annoyance when Tony flops out on top of him, but Tony isn’t buying it.

Tony wiggles and shifts until he can prop his crossed arms and chin on top of Bucky’s massive head, grinning down at him. Snuggling into Bucky thick fur and soaking up all his warmth.

Why aren’t you afraid of me? Bucky asks, his usually quiet voice even softer.

"Why would I be?" Tony asks, frowning a little.

All he's seen of Bucky so far has been pain, and fear, a hesitant reaching out and a warm soul beneath it all. The way he'd jumped in front of Tony when Pepper first showed up.

Nothing that Tony should be scared of.

He pushes his fingers into Bucky's fur, scratches behind his ear, and smiles again when Bucky's eyes fall closed.

"Why aren't you afraid of me?" Tony has to know, because he'd seen the way Bucky had gone tense at the word witch. He'd seen the wound that took Bucky's leg, seared and torn as if by some incredible force and heat. Something unnatural and terrible.

He'd really expected Bucky to leave.

You're... different, Bucky says slowly, so warm. Safe. Good.

Tony presses his smile into Bucky's fur, cheeks warm.

"Well, since neither of us have anything to be afraid of, maybe we should stick together,” Tony says. "You know, for safety."

For safety, Bucky agrees, and presses his head up harder into Tony's hand.

[erensnubs]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑴𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒀𝒐𝒖

Colt Grice x F! Reader Dystopian AU

Chapter 2

Word Count: 1.6k

"[NAME]! AHHHH YOU'RE HERE!!" Hange screamed across the room. Your head was turning all around the bright, marble like room as you tried to find the familiar auburn head.

You whipped your head around after talking to Dr. Pyxis.

Dr. Pyxis smiled at you as he acknowledged Hange's presence and walked away. Hange was running, their hair flying with Moblit behind her muttering "sorry" and "excuse us" to the victims of their running.

They flung their arms over your shoulders and squeezed ever so tightly. Your breath hitched and reluctantly patted Hange's arms.

"My god! How have you been? You look stressed. Is Levi bothering you too much? You know you could just stay at HQ! You can live with me and it's cheaper!!" Hange muttered, burying your body into theirs.

You try to pry yourself from Hange's grasp, but they keep holding on.

"You know Levi never tells me anything right? I mean we've known each other for a while through us, I mean for God's sakes we dated! And then you're so busy writing up papers and meeting with people so it's just like I-"

Moblit grabs Hange's shoulders and pushes them away from you. He audibly sighed and buried his face with his hands.

You couldn't help but chuckle at the stark contrasts of their faces as they looked at each other.

"Hange I'm doing fine alright? And Levi's coming to the after party there's nothing wrong with him. By the way, you look ravishing," you said pretentiously with a little smirk.

Hange's face lit up, "Oh [Name], you are getting flirty. But yes thank you for the compliment."

Hange started sliding back and forth on the polished floor, posing in their velvet red suit, the coat tails swishing behind them. Their hair was down and curled at the ends, with the ends fringed with a brighter red from previous hair dyes. Hange's eyes and lips were tinted red, her overall theme and it looked messy, and rushed. Exactly the way you liked it.

Moblit smiled tiredly at you and you patted him on the back, "Moblit how are you besides sighing so much?"

"Oh fine, I just don't know how I'm going to survive this ball and the after party. I spent a good 5 hours of our evening last night, experimenting with some new tools for missions," he said nervously.

"Oh Moblit, don't stress yourself out so much. Your inventions and experiments are insightful and they truly contribute to the research. Take a break sometime," you say reassuringly, as you lecture him.

"That's exactly what I told him! I caught him doing experiments when I told him not to!" Hange said. "Lighten up for once Moblit!"

You nodded, "I agree. This ball isn't a job, it's a break for people who work their asses off like you to help save us."

"I guess…. But heyyy… aren't you and Erwin acting as dates when you're actually just pushing an agenda?" He inquired playfully.

You smirk at him, "The ball is my work time, the after party is when I loosen up."

Hange spoke up, "Speaking of which, CAN SOMEONE GET ME SOME ALCOHOL FOR ALL 3 OF US. 2 FOR ME AND 2 FOR THEM!"

You grabbed Hange by the shoulder and laughed into it, "I swear Hange you are so scary to be in public with."

They looked at you with a questioning gaze, "Well how the hell am I supposed to get wine when all the waiters and people are over there where all the rich people are? They'll come to me, not the other way around."

A dark-haired boy with green-blue eyes trudged over to Hange. Eren Yeager. Stupid little shit, you had to teach him for a while when you were training soldiers but a passionate one. Beside him was Armin Artlet, the blonde boy who was arguably one of the smartest children you've ever met.

"Here you go. The other waiters just told us to bring these to you," Eren murmured.

"Hey speak up, Yeager," you tell him.

"He-"

You looked at him again, "I'm just playing kid come here and give me a hug,"

He looked at you surprisingly and passed the glasses of champagne to Moblit and Hange before tightening his arms around you.

Eren and particularly his classmates were the only teenagers you have ever liked in your life. They were smart, determined, and knew how to goof off, and have fun. You developed a sort of parenting attitude towards them, as you watched them rise in the ranks.

Armin hesitantly wrapped your arms around you, but you pulled him closer and kissed the tops of their foreheads.

"My god how the hell did you grow? You're up to my neck now Yeager and Artlert too! What are they feeding you", you say sipping your champagne flute.

"The same thing they've been serving since we went to training camp," Eren said, snickering.

You raised your eyebrows at them, "So how's life going for you? Don't you have your special Survey Corps dance thing coming up soon? You guys excited for that?"

"Not me," Armin said reluctantly. "I don't have a date."

Eren started laughing at him, "Pffft… lame."

Armin threw a dirty look at him, "Oh shut the fuck up, you don't either."

You cross your arms and look at both of them, "The government parties aren’t all about relationships you know. It's about hanging out with your friends as well. If you really feel bad about it just go in a group together."

Armin spoke up, his mood lightening immediately, "Did you go in a group? Are you all still friends?"

You waved your hand nonchalantly, "My 1st time I didn't go, I snuck over to the underground area in the city I lived in and watched street racing with some friends. Got in trouble of course, but I got lots of money from bets. The next 2 times I did go with friends but the last time I went with-"

"Oh, we shouldn't have brought that up Dr. [Name]," Eren said apologetically.

"Oh no no no, don't feel bad I can't just keep my fiance's memory buried." You gulped at the choice of words but went on.

"He would have loved to share these stories with you. But for now, you should be hanging out with your other friends not with an old person like me. And try drinking a little," you smiled with a hint of sadness that was quickly upturned while you flashed your teeth.

Eren interjected, "You're not THAT old Dr."

"Sweetheart I am old all right. Now go I think Mikasa is waiting for you," you shoo them along with your hands and usher them back to the middle. The two boys quickly walked away back to their friends. You sighed and looked around you and realized Moblit and Hange were out of sight and Erwin was nowhere to be seen.

"[Name]."

"Oh my god, Erwin! You can't just sneak up on me like that!" You say as the blonde was literally looming over from behind you.

"Sorry but I was wondering how the papers are going. I was chatting with Mr. Zachary over there and he said he would love to sign our papers," Erwin tilted his head to the old man with the white beard and glasses.

"Doesn't he monitor the 3 parts of the government?" You asked Erwin.

He nodded, "Having him on our side would help us out a lot. Any progress for you?"

"Dr. Pyxis said he would sign. I just have to convince Nick and Nile," you rolled your eyes.

Nick believed that all the funding should go to the military police, to help protect the citizens. You have argued and counterattacked that one day there might be no people to protect, no military police to defend because the funding was put all into one place.

"AT LEAST PART OF THE FUNDING SHOULD BE PUT FOR OUR MISSIONS!" You yell at Nile.

Nile rolled his eyes, "Sorry to say this but the public might not agree. They don't care about your little missions."

"Well the PUBLIC Nile, is full of cowards who want to be protected by another set of cowards because the goddamn government doesn't know that the best place to put their money is in the Scout Regiment. They're the ones that's actually doing something," you say.

You stepped forward, "The public doesn't have an MD. The public has not spent a good chunk of their lives researching this. The public is not head of the government's esteemed research section. The public doesn't have knowledge that I do.

"Really cowards? What are you some self-righteous wannabe?"

"Oh shut the fuck up, Nile. All of you in this room are fucking cowards. People's lives have been lost just because we didn't have enough supplies and food for a group of 100 soldiers," you say and left the room.

That was 2 weeks ago and Hange and Erwin were present, and that's when you 3 decided to convince everybody to sign these papers.

Erwin nodded,"You can take a break for now, Nick and Nile are chatting up with some women."

You nodded at Erwin and parted ways. You grabbed a piece of dessert from the long dining table and leaned your back against the wall and drank more champagne. You lifted your head and tried to think of ways to convince them.

Nick was a religious man, and was one of the people who believed that the Warning was a sign from God. Maybe you could throw in a little religion, say that the money could help find out of it is really God. For Nile, just threaten the man. He was a coward at heart so that would be easy. But what if he backed out on the papers? Didn't actually mean it? What would you do then?

You hummed to yourself the possibilities, not even noticing the man standing in front of you.

"Uh, hey? You seem lost in thought."

Prev/next

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

Shooting Stars

Written for the @bingokisses prompt “Deep Kiss” but taken in a different direction, here’s a little glimpse of our favorite angel and demon back in the early days of Creation. Also available on AO3.

The Starmakers swept across the void of space, trailing the fundamental elements of the universe behind them. Already, the depths of the firmament were a rainbow canvas of sulfur and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen. Now they parted, swirling the elements into infant stars, blowing perfectly spherical bubbles to serve as incubators for each. Everything was precisely ordered, every line and curve exactly according to strict instruction.

At the edge of the nebula-to-be, a smaller figure skittered and fluttered, looking for a way to enter – a dark, unformed shape, sometimes a small dark ball, other times a long ribbon, always with a faint red glow seeping out here and there, hinting at future brilliance. He tried again, sidling into an unwatched corner, only to be immediately blocked by the blinding white light of another Guardian.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” she said with a flare of winglight.

“Where am I supposed to be?” he countered, already looking for a way around.

“You know perfectly well,” the Guardian chided, pushing him gently back towards the safety of Heaven. “Unassigned angels are to wait until their tasks are ready.”

“But what am I supposed to do while I wait?”

“You aren’t supposed to do anything. That’s the point of waiting.”

“Don’t like it. All I do is sit and my mind gets all buzzy with too many thoughts and it’s boring. That’s one of my inventions, by the way, boredom. You see what happens when you leave us alone?” He darted around again, trying to slip past. “Much better to let us go help where we can, isn’t it?”

The Guardian’s light flickered slightly. “You can’t help. You don’t know how.”

“They can teach me! Can’t be that hard. And they’re not doing anything I can’t do, are they?”

Another uncertain flicker. “No. The Starmakers are far too busy to explain things to an interloper. It is best if you wait for your assigned task.” Then, in a softer voice, the Guardian suggested, “Perhaps you can meditate on the glories of Creation while you wait?”

“Nnnnh,” the angel groaned, turning as if to head back. “You know,” he said slowly, “wouldn’t it be easier to meditate on the glories from up close? So that I can properly contemplate them. See the details.” He flitted this way and that, form wavering almost hypnotically. “It wouldn’t be disruptive, just me sitting there. Wouldn’t be in the way at all. Surely there wouldn’t be anything wrong with just…a quick look around, would there?”

The Guardian considered this, thinking so hard the brilliant white light became quite dim indeed. Finally, with a sigh, her widest set of wings folded back. “You may look around, but touch nothing, and speak to no one.”

“You got it, boss.” And in a swirl of red-tinted darkness, the angel vanished into the depths of space.

The true majesty of a nebula could never be appreciated by mortal eyes. But to an angel – even a young, unassigned one – it glowed across seven dimensions, the subtle shades of blue and green giving way to wild blooms of gold and silver. A stellar cradle lay just ahead and he skimmed across it, trailing a wing tip just a bit to watch the colors swirl.

There – at the center – the newborn star, glowing a dark red just like him. He fluttered over to investigate, folding himself into an unobtrusive sphere, watching the way atoms collided until—

“You shouldn’t be here.”

He turned to find a pale white figure, dim, almost as misty and insubstantial as the nebula being created around them, flashing three pairs of wings in pretended authority. There wasn’t even a visible halo on this one.

“Neither should you.” He turned back to the star just in time to see a dark cool spot form on its surface. Amazing. “Have you seen this?”

“No, I most certainly have not! And I am meant to be here, I’m a Guardian.”

“You are?” The angel flitted down to hover in front of the other, hanging in the aether. “No you aren’t, you’re unassigned, same as me. I can tell.”

“Well.” The so-called Guardian flickered in embarrassment. “I am a Guardian, but the place I’m meant to guard hasn’t been Created yet. But I still have the, er, the authority to stop you.”

“Do you?” The angel stretched himself out, a long streamer of darkness looping lazily around the Guardian of Nowhere. “Stop me from what, though? Have I broken any rules? Have I damaged anything?”

“No, but – but that’s not the point.” Pale white wings parted enough to show two hands, nervously gesturing. “There are rules, and the rules say you’re not supposed to be here. If we went around making exceptions…”

“We might actually have fun once in a while?” He bent around to smile at the Guardian upside-down. “I invented fun, by the way, or I’m about to. It’s much better than boredom.”

“I don’t know what these words mean. You’re talking nonsense.” The Guardian folded hands and wings and tried to look stern. It was a complete failure. “Fine. What is fun? How does it work?”

“Hmmmm. I think…I run, and you try to catch me. And if you do, I’ll leave or whatever else you want. But you have to catch me.”

“I already caught you!”

“Did you?” And with a twist and a flick of his long tail, the angel was gone.

He skimmed low over an incubator bubble, causing the gas to boil and roil in his wake.

He zigzagged through a cluster of infant stars, sending them tumbling into new orbits, casting ripples of X-rays all around.

A dark cloud of dust loomed ahead and he shot through it, stretching it longer and longer into a column, before finally dropping out the bottom – or the top – turning around to find the white light of the Guardian right behind.

“Told you you’d never catch me!”

“I am going slow so I don’t upset anything, you – you scoundrel!”

“I like that. Scoundrel.” He ran a circle around the Guardian. “Bet I can make it all the way to that one on the end and back before you can. Ready? Go!” And off he shot, a dark comet hurtling recklessly through the perfectly ordered cosmos, one bright star unshakably on his tail.

Older stars sat here and there, setting off jets of gas where he brushed them, creating their own ripples through the blues and purples around them. A few of them looked ready to burst completely, but the angel didn’t have time to investigate now. He glanced back again and again and still the Guardian kept on his tail, zipping this way and that, trying to find some way to block him. But the angel just coiled and looped, slipping out of whatever trap the other tried to set. He laughed, and while he hadn’t invented laughter, he thought he might try to take credit anyway.

There, ahead, the last bright red ball of gas. The angel circled around it almost lazily – one, two, three times – but when he looked back there was no sign of the Guardian.

“Hello?” He pulled himself back into a smaller shape, searching with more care. “Are you still here?” The angel drifted back the way he’d come. The next incubator bubble had been stretched out by his motion, cloud upon cloud towering eternally into the distance. “I’ll go slower if you like, it’s only fun if—”

“Got you!” A dim white figure burst out from behind the young star within, crashing into the angel, tangling them both up in a flurry of wings and limbs, plummeting down, down deeper into space.

“That’s cheating, you bastard! We’re supposed to be racing!”

“You never said that. You said I had to catch you, and I did.” The Guardian wiggled, his whole form softer than the clouds of the nebula. “And now you’re in my clutches. You are in so much trouble.”

“Am I?” Once again, the angel elongated himself, becoming a ribbon of darkness, but this time the Guardian was ready for him, clutching tight, growing taller and taller to better grasp his prisoner. He was very strong, and in the end, they would up wrapped around each other, spinning through space, and now the Guardian was laughing just as hard as the angel.

“Fine, you got me. Fair cop.” The angel beat his wings one last time – mostly just for the show of it – then settled down in defeat. “What are you going to do to me now?”

“Hmm. This.”

It was a little blossom of warmth, just where the Guardian’s hand rested on the angel. A tiny spark of joy and peace and happiness and a few other emotions that the angel didn’t have names for yet, but would happily get to know better. Everything the Guardian was feeling in that moment, crystalized into a gem of emotion, just there at the edge of the angel’s being.

He pulled it in, pushed it down into the deepest depths of himself, hiding it in swirls of darkness where it would be safe no matter what. Then, shyly, he brushed the tip of a wing across one of the Guardian’s and formed a crystal of his own, filled with the awe he felt at the nebula forming around them, the exhilaration of the chase, and the strange fluttery emotion he had never suspected could exist before. The Guardian accepted it without a word.

Before the angel could think of another question, four brilliantly glowing shapes appeared around them. “What are you two doing here?”

Two were the pure white of Guardians; another the blue and green and gold of a Starmaker; and the last the brilliant violet light of the Archangel Gabriel. The angel quickly untangled himself, contracting to his simple dark shape, trying to look contrite. “I asked! The Guardian at the edge of the nebula said—”

“She had no authority to allow you in here! Look what you did!”

All behind them, the perfect uniformity of the nebula had been stretched and distorted. Some sections puffed into enormous billows; others stretched into pillars and columns; over there, a small black cloud stood out starkly against a brilliant red-white background; three different clusters of stars had been sent to spin around each other in entirely new formations, closer than ever intended.

“Oops,” the angel offered.

“What is your name?” Gabriel demanded.

The angel shrugged. “Don’t have one. Not assigned yet.” Somewhere deep inside, he had thoughts on that subject, but now was not the time to bring them up.

“Your supervisor will be informed, nonetheless. And as for you—" The Archangel turned to the Guardian beside him, who cowered back, shivering and flickering.

“Ugh,” the angel cut in quickly. “Can I leave before you start praising him? I don’t need to hear that.”

“Praising…?” Gabriel asked in confusion.

“Yes! This – this little bastard caught me. Saw what I was doing in the nebula, chased me out, and held me until you got here. Totally ruined my fun. Did I tell you about fun? I just invented it—”

“Enough. Is this true?”

“Ah.” The Guardian of Nowhere glanced around nervously. “Yes, that’s – generally what happened, I think. It was all so quick…”

“Fine. You—” Gabriel waved to the Starmaker. “Escort this troublemaker back to where he belongs. And figure out how long it will take to repair this damage.”

The angel looked once more at the Guardian of Nowhere, and flashed his wings in a friendly salute. He didn’t think the Guardian would respond, but no – there it was, a deliberate flutter, too quick for the others to notice. Then he was off, following the Starmaker back towards more familiar grounds.

Behind him, the Archangel’s faint voice: “Excellent work. What is your name?”

“Ah. Aziraphale, Guardian of…”

“You know,” the Starmaker said, resting a hand on his shadowy form, “I think I might like it as it is. Not as ordered as we’d wanted, but there is a beauty to it. Perhaps this, too, was part of the Plan.”

The angel wasn’t sure what he thought of that, but there was a more important question to consider: “Can I tell people I helped build it?”

“If you like.”

“Then yes.” He stroked the tiny crystal of happy emotions that glowed like a star hidden deep in the shadows of his chest. “Yes, I think it should stay exactly like this.”

[ngame989]

“Drive” - TGG SVTFOE Fanfic Collection Ch. 8

Writing: @ngame989​

Art: @toxicpsychox​

Editing: @ubercelloczar​​, @toxicpsychox​, @seddm​

Alternate fic links - FFnet, AO3

Summary: It's back to school for Marco, and Star is left to face the specter of real world responsibility once more - with a bit of help from the adorable antics of Mariposa.

Comic Page

Masterpost

Finally, a new chapter! This one took a long time to put together in a way I was satisfied with, so sorry as always for the delay. Writing is a bit of a secondary hobby for me, and while I absolutely love Starco and love making this series, the actual act of putting words to a page is rather draining for me. I'd love to promise more or faster updates, and if the right creative inspirations strike that is still what I'd love to happen, but it's gonna come at whatever pace it comes at. If that means I'm here for years to come, so be it. See below for the text, hope you enjoy!

“Alright, next up is Wilhelm… Wund? Want? Wouldn’t? Marco, this name is weird.” Star waved the flash card around in the air.

“Wundt, but the Ws both sound like Vs. It’s German.”

“German… that’s the place where that guy who was basically mustache Mina came from, right?” Marco froze in his tracks as his eyes widened in complete incredulity. Star uncurled from the ball she was in on their bed and sat up, hair and nightgown all astray as she tilted her head to the side in befuddlement. “What, did I say something wrong?”

“No, that’s- it’s just- that’s one way to put it. Don’t worry about it.” No way he was touching that subject with a mile-long pole.

She crossed her arms proudly. “See, I did remember something from school, then! OK, so Wundt, what’d he do?”

“What didn’t he do? He basically invented psychology! Before him, everyone just kind of thought about thinking, but he was the first one to really study it with any sort of scientific method.” The first week of school had been going fairly well, Marco thought, but it was certainly busy. Maybe it was the fact that this was his first classroom education in two whole years, but it was way faster paced than anything he remembered. All the reading he’d done to prepare before the school year started helped, sure, but it was a sizable effort to keep on top of everything.

“Mhmm, I see.” Star tentatively raised her hand, nodding thoughtfully to his every word. “Tell me about his glasses.”

“What?”

“The glasses? For seeing someone’s problems really clearly? Come on, Marco, it wasn’t that hard to figure out. I bet they were ginormous.”

A few giggles escaped his lips and Star puffed her cheeks up in indignation. “No, Star, that’s not how glasses work. They just sorta- they make you look smarter, I guess?”

Star stuck her tongue out and pinched her fingers together to form two circles, aiming her hands carefully to position them over Marco’s eyes. “Nope, you seem just as smart without them. Anyway, let’s see here, next up is Pavlov.”

“Oh, you’ll love him. He studied stuff with his dogs.”

As if on cue, some of the laser puppies scrambled out from under the bed, jumping into Star and Marco’s arms. Star’s shout of “PUPPIES!” sounded like background noise behind the licking and panting invading his personal space, but it was a welcome change. With how big their yard was now, their pets were often gone for so long at a time that Marco felt like he barely saw them anymore, but they had a way of showing up randomly at oddly convenient times. Despite being laserless since magic had been destroyed, whatever dog breed the wand had concocted seemed to stay just as small and cute forever. Barko Diaz stayed in Marco’s arms while Star cuddled the rest and cooed over them one by one. “Anyway, his dogs drooled whenever food was placed in their mouths; that’s just the natural response. But Pavlov noticed that if he just held the food in front of them before feeding it to them, after a while they’d start to drool whenever they saw the food. That’s how he invented the name conditional reflex.”

“I, Star Butterfly, officially vote for puppy guy as the best- Sajak, hahaha, stop it!” The dogs pounced on her face and she fell backwards onto the sheets. “Marco, help! I’m being swallowed by a fur-ocious tidal wave! Get your jammies on and join the fun!”

Marco rolled his eyes as he pulled off his shirt and pants. Top drawer… nothing. Middle? Nope. Still only in his underwear, he quickly rummaged through both their sets of drawers in search of his usual blue pajamas to no avail. A frustrated groan rumbled in his throat as he bent over to check underneath the drawers.

“That’s it, mama like,” he could hear Star murmuring. He quickly glanced behind him to find… Star sitting up, his pajamas in hand. “Staaaaar,” his voice and brain both exasperatedly grumbled. Though he’d figured out that his own sense of sexuality was grounded in emotional intimacy more than anything, they’d still become quite comfortable with each other and themselves physically; normally he wouldn’t complain in the slightest about the attention, but he still had a job to do.

“Ooooone more second,” she drawled out while her half-lidded baby blues roamed his body.

“Alright, Star, let’s just pick one more card, OK? I need to make sure I’m ready for tomorrow.”

“Fiiiiine. The last one is… Freud. I’m probably saying that wrong, too. Wait a second, Janna talked about him once, after I told her about that psychology stuff we did years ago. She said he’d be really good at figuring out my mom issu-”

“Not the same thing. Come on, Janna…” Marco grumbled. Leave it to Janna to give the worst possible introduction to academic psychology. “Alright, that’s enough of that,” he stated decisively and snatched all the index cards out from under paws and tails before crawling onto the edge of the bed.

“Yay! Now scooty that booty, you cutie patootie!” Star gently cleared the space between them and the puppies all left the room except for Marco Jr. It wasn’t the best dog name, but it was at least better than it would’ve been for his sibling.

He propped himself up on his elbow and fluffed his pillow. “I’m honored to do my duty.”

“Hehe, you said doodie.” Before he’d even fully settled into his usual spot, Star had already climbed halfway on top of him and settled her head on his chest, prompting him to embrace her. Marco smiled and planted a soft, lingering kiss on her neck. Sometimes it was too warm, too cramped, and she’d strangle his limbs hard enough that it took him 10 extra minutes to stand up in the morning; despite all that, he couldn’t be happier to snuggle every night away.

“I-I know it’s been crazy this past week, so thanks for helping with this, even though you hate school.”

“Hey, I don’t hate it. I just don’t like classes, tests, homework, and having to ask to use the bathroom...” She paused and blinked a few times. “OK, maybe I do hate school.”

“If it makes you feel any better, in college you can just go whenever you need to.”

“You know, that actually kinda does. Anyway, learning can be fun, and you’re a good teacher. Keep it up and in a few years maybe I’ll have a secondhand degree,” she snickered. Her fingers started to fidget with his hands while her toes tangled themselves up in his pant legs. “Sorry I was so distracted. I guess it’s finally sinking in that you’re gonna be doing this for years and years and now I’m the one with no clue what I want to do. Sucks a little bit to think about.”

“Doesn’t mean we’re not still gonna be a team, but it- yeah, that kinda does suck. Maybe we can try looking through some more options, if you want? I know you didn’t like any programs at the college, but I’m sure there’s all kinds of jobs or volunteer work around town. We could-”

She squirmed in his grasp, tilting her head downwards and away from his. “Marco… I don’t know, I just really don’t think I’m even in a place where I can just point at something and say, ‘yep, that sounds like a great job to sign up for!’ Maybe I’m just not ready for that yet.”

It always saddened him when she had this little faith in herself because he knew firsthand how capable she was of the most amazing things. Whatever he could do to help get her self-confidence back and live up to her potential, he would. He brought his hand closer to her face, stroking her cheek gently - though not before clumsily misjudging distance and poking her in the mouth, which elicited a snort of laughter. “OK, whatever feels right. Besides, it’s not like I know what I want to do with my entire life right now either. We’ll figure it out whenever you’re ready. In the meantime, there’s a new season of Dude’s Food Feuds and a plate of nachos with our names on it this weekend! “Plus, I heard Mom and Dad say they might spend part of this weekend at Eclipsa’s…” he trailed off, nuzzling into her neck and pulling her closer.

She twisted herself to look at him as best as she could. “Oh yeah?” Her eyebrows wiggled  suggestively.

“Yeaaaaaaahn.” His attempt to continue being flirty was foiled by a giant yawn, indicating once and for all that it was time to sleep, and her laugh at his expense was stifled by her own yawn indicating she was in the same position. “Let’s get some shuteye, I’ve got another early morning tomorrow. Night, Star.”

“Night, Marco.” After a good-night peck Star turned herself around and they resumed their embrace. Less than a minute later, slumber claimed him.

***

“Dangit, Tom, again? You’ve gotta be free to chill at some point!” Angie folded the corner of the poetry collection she was perusing and looked up at Star who had her phone sprawled across their couch. “But I wouldn’t even mind doing kingdom junk. It’s better than another day on the couch by myself!” With her free hand, Star absentmindedly dangled around a spare doll of Marco in the princess outfit, which a starry-eyed Mariposa was stumbling around on the floor trying to catch. “So I’m not ‘physically capable of sticking my arms into lava tar’, I don’t see what that has to do with-” Even from the other end of the phone, Angie could still pick up on the mounting frustration in the demon prince’s tone. Star suddenly sharply inhaled and took a moment before responding. “Sure, maaaaybe it would have something to do with clearing a toxic hellgae infestation from the depths of the lava tar pits. Ugh, fine, you’re right. Can I at least see you next week, then?” Only a split second went by before Star sat up suddenly. “JANNA? Hello? Dangit,” she groaned while tossing her phone to the other end of the couch.

“Is everything alright, Star?”

Star crossed her arms and huffed. “Tom’s super busy with Underworld stuff, and I guess Janna’s there too for some reason even though humans really shouldn’t be able to handle any of it. Ponyhead has some kinda interview with some production company or something, Eclipsa and my parents are on vacation, and even Ferguson and Alfonzo are too busy to hang out!” She flopped facedown into one of the cushions; her final cry of “stupid school” was barely intelligible.

Mariposa giggled and yanked the doll from Star’s now-limp hand. “Mago! Mago!” Mariposa babbled while waddling around. Her little foot got caught on the fabric of the doll’s dress, and like a tiny giant she slowly toppled to the ground. Angie moved to help her daughter, who let go of the doll to grasp for her mother’s hand. “Mama!” It had been only a few weeks since Mariposa began to put together words with any regularity, and she’d already taken a fierce liking to calling for her parents and brother.

“Mariposa, I’m trying to be grumpy here and that’s really hard when the cutest thing in the universe is talking about the other cutest thing in the universe, and that includes the entire Puppybunny Dimension!”

Suddenly, an idea came to Angie. “Why don’t you come with me to the community college and help watch Mariposa? I’ve missed spending time with her this week but I couldn’t take care of her all day, plus it’d be good to get her out of the house.”

“Marco said he was really busy today, though,” Star pouted.

“Well, then I guess it’ll just have to be a girls’ day. What do you say, Mariposa? Do you want to go with mommy and Star to school?”

She clapped her hands cheerfully. “Gool!”

“Who am I kidding, I can’t say no to you,” Star cooed, pinching the toddler’s cheeks. “So when are we going?”

“I have office hours in an hour, so the sooner the better. Come out to the car whenever you’re ready.”

“Just gotta get my purse!” Star bounded across the living room and up the stairs quickly enough that her voice trailed off even at full volume. Angie smirked as she went about gathering her usual toddler travel supplies. While all the reasons she’d given for their trip today were true, she had an ulterior motive. It was pretty obvious that Star was in a funk from life catching up to them, and a change of pace never hurt. Well, that, and Star drives everyone a bit crazy with nothing to do at home. Seriously, who knew one girl could spill so many gallons of pancake batter all over the counter in a day?

Once she had everything, she headed out to the faithful family minivan and strapped Mariposa into her carseat, tossing in her small satchel for work and the much larger bag of baby supplies. Right as she finished, she heard the front door shut and lock behind her as Star made her way to the car. “Can I take Mariposa around the college today? Marco’s baby carrier fits like a glove.” Star quickly strapped it on, tightened it, and did a little twirl before taking it back off and climbing into the backseat.

While Angie was driving, she barely had any ability to check how the girls were doing in the backseat - there’d been so much construction on the Earthni road system that she could never trust the routes she was used to - but there were little glimpses of Mariposa being enthralled with Star’s playful antics. Star’s classic yellow smiling star purse swung like a pendulum for Mariposa to catch and they both cheered when she finally succeeded. Before she even knew it, they arrived at the Echo Creek Commewnity College, which had expanded dramatically in both size and architectural diversity as a result of the Cleaving. Most places in town (and throughout the world, so she’d heard) had merged in ways that left individual communities intact, but for whatever reason the college campus had become completely intertwined with a Mewman campground. It was certainly more of a spectacle than the once-modest town college and did wonders for getting both halves of the Earthni community involved.

Star marveled at the seamlessly blended hybrid buildings and scenery while Mariposa did much the same with her own thumbs. Nondescript brick buildings mingled with medieval wood and stone and the occasional ornate decorations, which is why the quad had a marble dragon standing proud among the trees. “Woah, is that a cornball and football field at the same time?”

“That’s a good question. Honestly, I’m still not used to all the changes myself,” Angie laughed. “A few months ago I tried to use the swamp water machine for my coffee. I had lily pads in my teeth for days.” While they were walking, Mariposa had become noticeably fixated on Star. Her dress, her hair, her hands, anything that was available to gawk at and grasp was fair game.

“She’s such a wonderful little tot, isn’t she?” Angie asked as they stepped into the cool air of Bonner Hall. She walked slowly towards her office while Star flitted around poking at every plant in the hallway.

“Yeah. So much calmer than Meteora. Remember the birthday incident?” Angie lightly chuckled in response; how could anyone not remember that? It wasn’t every day that a one year old just spontaneously grew a full head of hair and then got her tail hopelessly caught in it at another one year old’s birthday party.

Once they’d arrived at her office, she pulled out her key and opened the door to invite Star in. “Bienvenue! I’m teaching Intro to French Literature this semester, so I’ve got this whole theme going on.” Quotes and pictures of authors hung all around the room alongside some images of major landmarks and a little French flag sat on her desk next to a miniature statue of the Eiffel Tower. Angie helped Star unstrap Mariposa and set her down on the floor where she began waddling and crawling around.

Star sat on the edge of Angie’s desk kicking her feet back and forth, careful to avoid the toddler. “Soooooooo… what’s the plan for today?”

“You’re more than welcome to stick around but if office hours get too hectic it may get pretty cramped in here.” She’d have liked to do more with a larger space, but given how infrequently other community college faculty even got offices to themselves it was a blessing to even have this. “Although I have to teach later so you won’t be able to get back into this room if you leave after that.”

“Marco’s not free until, like, 6, so…” She trailed off dejectedly. The vibrant enthusiasm that Star normally exuded was still lacking. Hmm, this might be more serious than I thought.

Angie gently laid a hand on Star’s shoulder until those big blue eyes finally met her own. “Star, honey, it’ll be fine. I know it can be hard not being able to spend all your time with someone anymore.”

The headband on Star’s head shifted and almost fell off from how hard she was tugging and frazzling her own hair absentmindedly, “It’s not that… well, it’s not just that. Everyone else is starting their big life dreams now, you know? Marco wants to be a psycho therapist or something, Tom’s actually kinda happy about being a prince for once, and even Janna seems like she’s figuring it out in her weird Jannaniganish way! I have no idea what I want to do! Even went through a big ole’ list of ideas with Marco and they all just seemed blegh.” Star threw her hands up in frustration before curling back into herself more than before. “And I want to find something too, you know? Ugh, where’s Mr. Candle when you need him...”

The words resonated very strongly with Angie but it was difficult to put into words. She backed away from Star, her gaze darting around the room until she had a realization. “Have I ever told you the story about my summer in France?”

“Don’t think so.”

“When I was about your age, I wanted to get away for a while, so I packed up all my things and went to France for a whole summer. The food, the music, the history… everything was better there. For months after I came home I tried desperately to hold on to all of that after it was over, and I still cherish that experience, but it was just a fun handful of weeks that I spent someplace else and it was better that I just dealt with the fact that it was over. But,” she forcefully interjected when Star raised an eyebrow in protest at the seemingly antithetical point being made, “I know now that it’s not a universally ideal handling of such events. All the excitement of the last few years made me think about that… people might sort these things out for themselves in very different ways.”

“Like how Jackie literally spent a summer in France too, but she and Chlóe are still together long distance.”

“Mhmm, I could see that.”

“Or how Ponyhead started wearing a prosthetic tail for a while after staying with Seahorse’s family.”

“Hang on, what-”

“Don’t ask.” Never a dull moment.

“Or what about when-”

Alright, I’ll just have to get to the point myself. “I was mainly thinking about Marco, Star. I told him this same story before he left for Mewni, and honestly, I didn’t know how important it was to him. But he grew into such a confident and capable young man there and I couldn’t be prouder.” Angie softly took both of Star’s cheeks into her hands. “Star, you’re a wonderful, caring, smart young woman. So what if you’re not following every step at the same time as your friends? Everyone goes through these sorts of crises at some point or another, but what’s important is that you take the time to make the decision that’s right for you.” Star’s gaze sunk to the ground while the gears in her mind were so obviously turning that they might as well have been visible and Angie gave her some space in turn. “So, with all that said, what are you thinking now?”

Star crossed her arms and furrowed her brow. “Even if I’m not rushing to figure everything out, I don’t want to just do nothing until I magically find my lifelong dream. And I know Marco and I aren’t gonna literally live the same lives; heck, I don’t want to do all his school junk anyway, but… whatever I end up doing, I still want it to be together. That’s why I left for Earth,” she finished with her voice dropping to a solemn whisper.

“Didn’t he do the exact same thing? You don’t need me to tell you that you two are something absolutely special. I may not know what all is going through his head, what mother of a teenage boy does, but I know he’d do anything for you, Star.”

Nodding more to herself than to Angie, Star took a deep breath before speaking. “Thanks, Mrs. Diaz.”

“You can call me Angie, if you’d like. Or Angelica, or maybe ‘The Coolest Mom in Town.’ I’m not picky,” she said with a smirk.

After a short pause, Star hopped off the desk and wrapped Angie in a bear hug so deceptively strong that it knocked the wind out of her, but she still managed to reciprocate. “Thanks… Angie.” A rumbling sound interrupted the moment. “Heh, well, seems like I’m also thinking about lunch.”

“That’s an excellent idea. Why don’t we-” The digital clock on the desk caught her attention. “Dammit, office hours already started a few minutes ago. Don’t think I’ll have time for a while. But there’s plenty of places around here to eat, and a few of them are actually good!” she chuckled. Just as she mentally ran through some places in the student union, a thought struck her. “Say, Star… there’s a lot of clubs and events and such that are open to non-students too. Maybe it’d be worth looking into some of them? It’d be something to do, you and Marco would be closer, and I could even drive you some days if you needed. Why don’t you take Mariposa with you and explore for a while? She seems pretty restless today.”

Taking a few deep breaths to center herself, Star nodded her head. “Yeah, that’s a good idea! Heck, it’d be good just to know my way around for any time I visit Marco anyway.” She bent down and beckoned for Mariposa, who’d been ogling a bronze baguette for some time now. Once the carrier was locked and loaded with a docile toddler and some of her supplies once more, Star skipped out of the office. Angie’s time alone, however, was cut short when a student skidded in and immediately started nervously rambling about homework questions and grading policies and the works of François Villon. Back to teacher mode. Angie afforded herself one last glance through the door at her young daughter gleefully riding along with the girl who might as well be her other daughter. Rafael had mentioned to Angie on more than a few occasions that Star and Marco reminded him of themselves in their youth, and Angie had agreed at the time but now she wasn’t so sure. Her teenage - and even young adult - years with Rafael, while wonderful, had been filled with many bouts of uncertainty and it’d taken them many, many years to get it right once and for all.

But Star and Marco? As far as she was concerned, they already had.

***

Boring classroom… Boring classroom… Boring restroom… Hey, wait a minute, is that a cornshake machine? A few minutes, a few dollars, and one cornshake (plus a sippy kid size) later, Star found herself not much better than she’d been when she set off an hour ago, but the surprisingly high quality of the vended drink did bolster her spirits. She resisted the urge to call Marco because it’d be waaaay more fun to surprise him later. And also because he might still be in class, that too. A tall rock creature walked in front of her, interrupting her thoughts, and she saw a nervous expression on his face as he feebly tried not to disrupt foot traffic too much. Looking around, she was a bit surprised to see just how much the cultures of her own world had been brought to the forefront and blended in despite humans comprising the majority of people she’d seen on campus. Some people who she guessed were Mewmans by their dress glanced back for a bit longer than most but otherwise went about their day without a fuss. Two guys, one human and one Septarian, were laughing and holding hands on a bench. All in all the atmosphere reminded her of high school, but was freer in a way that didn’t discomfort her as much as she’d anticipated.

A few of the passersby looked her way as she wandered, and one or two even said hi to her - not that uncommon, given that it was public knowledge that she and Marco were responsible for the Cleaving, though Eclipsa had tactfully phrased it as a consequence of the two working together to destroy magic - but it was just as likely that Mariposa was the one attracting attention for a multitude of reasons. She knew she shouldn’t have expected it, but part of her was disappointed that after going through four whole bustling buildings she hadn’t run into Marco, or even anyone she knew. Glum and tired, she was about to abandon her pursuits when a huge bulletin board around the corner caught her eye. As she jogged over to it, her hopes came true: it was a giant wall advertising all the clubs and events on campus for the start of the year.

Her eyes roved the board up and down, left and right scanning for anything that seemed interesting or had some sort of meeting today. There were some fliers that Star dismissed right away, including a woodworking workshop series, a community choir, a sketchy-looking “how to date a demon” seminar. The last one might have at least been good for a laugh, but it had a note scribbled on it that attendance was maxed out already. She noted some sort of upcoming school dance for all local teens, but it was months away and the poster was uninspiring since the theme was still listed as TBD. It made sense that most extracurricular activities didn’t happen in the middle of a school day, but she still frowned at how few options seemed available and potentially interesting. Once she’d perused the entire wall and selected those that were, she set out on her mission to find her purpose.

“You ready, Mariposa?”

“Gool!”

Chess Club

“Rook to G3.” Star’s opponent, whose nametag said Fred, positioned the black castle piece ahead of most of his pack.

“King to-” Her tongue stuck out as she concentrated on the board layout instructions, trying to find her place. “King to E3!”

“Um, first of all, the king piece is not allowed to move more than one square at a time. Second, since it is the most important piece, the singular goal of the game is to keep yours alive while defeating the enemy’s. Therefore it is ludicrously ill-advised to position your king into such immediate danger, and in most cases would automatically lose you the match” Star’s opponent responded matter-of-factly.

Star scratched her head in puzzlement, replacing the piece. “Why is the king so slow? My dad was literally a king and he can run at highway speeds.”

“Perhaps the Mewman traditions are different, but the Earthly ways of the monarchy are enshrined in a-

“Alright, whatever. Then I have my Queen ride the horse into combat! No, wait, can it be a warnicorn instead?” She ripped off a corner of the scoring sheet and deftly curled it into a cone before placing it on the top of the plastic figure with a satisfied grin.

“Although an intriguing concept, there is no precedent in the ancient tradition of the sport for-” Mariposa interrupted her tirade by kicking the edge of the table, which knocked over Fred’s black king. See, now this was the sort of thing she could see herself getting into!

“Checkmate!” Star shouted with a wide grin, one decidedly not mirrored by her opponent or any of the onlookers.

Cornball Tryouts

“Well, Mariposa, that was a bust. But cornball is a Mewni thing, so I’m gonna super nail it this time!” Star set Mariposa down and removed her from the baby carrier. “Stay right here, you little angel,” she cooed before jogging over to the group of hopefuls discussing strategy. “Hiya everyone!”

One of the girls who resembled a fox waved in welcome. “Sup, I’m Bleck, I was the Monster Cornball League’s ace stickler for a few years.”

“And I’m Jason, I was Mewni Cornball Alliance’s forward maizeman.”

Star shook both their hands. Did something seem familiar about them? “I’m-”

“Star Butterfly, we know,” Bleck responded. “You set up that integrated game on Mewni. Sorry about that, by the way. We were the captains and it, um, kinda got out of hand.” Ah, so that’s why Star recognized them.

“Yeah, that was our bad.” Jason rubbed the back of his neck shamefully with one hand with his other on Bleck’s shoulder. “I’ll be honest, this whole ‘monsters and Mewmans and Earth Mewmans all together’ thing is still new to me, but don’t wanna let some petty grudges get in the way of some good old fashioned cornball. These Earthers are crazy competitive, we’ll need the best team we can to have a chance of even making regionals.

“Speaking of which,” another Mewman spoke up warily. “Does anyone know anything about that new teenage husker that already made captain? CB Nation says she’s already poised to be hotter than Jispy Jenkins.”

“I heard she’s the reason the Cassidy bros quit moat guarding.”

“Well I heard she averaged 50 shucks per game in her rookie season.”

A hush fell over the group; as much as Star loved the sport she never really followed it, but it was still clear just how good this mystery player was.

“I think that’s her…” one of the monsters said, pointing at a shadow emerging from the clubhouse. “Oh corn, hold me!” He fainted on the spot.

“Star? Star!!!!!!!!” It was hard to make out details against the glaring sunlight, but there was a webbed hand waving at her. Wait, was that-

“KATRINA!” Star dashed as fast as her legs could carry her to meet her friend who was doing the same. Katrina scooped her up in a big slimy hug. “You’re so big now!” The girl was now taller than Star, with a stocky build, but her big sparkly eyes still had every bit of youthful wonder that she remembered. Given how much of a powerhouse Buff Frog was, Star could only imagine the athletic potential his kids could have.

“Yeah, I’m starting ECCC this year! I got a full ride scholarship as team captain! Sorry I haven’t been talking to you as much lately… I’ve been so busy working towards this, it’s a dream come true!” Katrina set her down and glanced over towards the sidelines. “Is that Mariposa over there! Hi, baby! Wow, humans age really slowly. You and Marco better not take too long getting your own kid, Auntie Katrina still wants to still be spry enough to play with ‘em.”

Star’s face heated up. “I- Katrina, you- We aren’t-” She stammered incoherently. This was going to take some getting used to.

“C’mon, Star, I’m kiddiiiiiing. I’m already four, I’m not a kid anymore. Anyway, are you here for the team? That’s so cool! You’re always so great at everything, you’ll definitely make the team.” She finally turned to the rest of the attendees to begin the session. “Alright, welcome to the ECCC cornball tryouts, I’m really happy you’re all here! Let’s go over some logistics. Practice is five days a week in the evenings until the league begins on Dartuk 30. That’s the 26th of September for all the Earth people here. We’ll have two regular matches each week and will be travelling most weekends. If we want to show who the real cornballers are, I’m going to need your complete dedication to this squad! School’s important too, but otherwise this will be your life while you’re on my team, so let’s talk drills-”

With each passing sentence, Star’s anxiously fidgeted more and more. It was… intense, more than she’d ever expected. She was ecstatic that Katrina was finding so much success and joy doing this and felt her heart swell with pride as the crowd hooted and hollered in support, but was this really what she wanted most for herself? While Star was zoned out, Katrina had apparently wrapped up her speech and everyone else had already dispersed. Katrina took Star’s hands and shook them up and down excitedly. “Are you as pumped as I am?”

“Yeeeeeeaaaaaah…” Star hesitantly cheered, casting a nervous glance back at Mariposa who now was booping Star’s purse repeatedly with her nose. “About that…”

Driver’s Ed

Maybe I should just learn to drive so I can visit Marco myself, Star pouted. “I could get us a pair of matching cool car driver sunglasses, so we can be rad Earth style,” Star whispered to Mariposa while Miss Skullnick (who was apparently working at the college now, and was human again) finished going over her slides.

“And that’s the introduction for this seminar series on automobile safety. Any questions?”

Star raised her hand and Skullnick sighed heavily before calling on her. “Is there a way I can start driving next week?”

“Get out!”

***

“Today sucked,” Star gloomily groaned. She was curled up sideways on a bench in one of the open quads while Mariposa was using her stomach as a pillow for her late afternoon nap, tuckered out after a recent diaper change. “I mean, it was so cool to see Katrina again, and in a weird way I almost missed Skullzy too, but I’m still completely stuck. But hey, at least I got to spend a day with you.” Star gently stroked Mariposa’s soft brown hair. Now that she thought about it, getting to spend hours a day with the adorable tot was one of the only consistently rewarding parts of the past week, it seemed. Even Meteora’s shenanigans were heartwarming in their own way, namely one that involved way more property damage. Her eyelids drooped shut, heavy with the weight of everything on her mind.

She couldn’t have been out for more than a minute when a child’s voice startled her. “Hello? Are you sleeping?” Was that Mariposa? No, it couldn’t have been, her mind concluded as she exited her half-conscious delirium. A small monster child, no older than the human equivalent of four or five with some features of an elephant, tugged on the sleeve of her dress with tears in his eyes. “I’m scared.”

Star rubbed her eyes and gathered everything into one corner of the bench so she could make room for the child. “What’s wrong, little guy? I’m Star.”

“My- my name’s Trevor but Mom and Dad call me Trev. I was playing on the slides but then everyone was gone,” Trevor began sobbing pitifully.

“OK, it’s OK. Let’s take a deeeeeeep breath, OK? Like this.” She inhaled as much air as she could, puffing up her cheeks and chest before blowing all of it out with an exaggerated flair. The boy nodded and took a small breath. “Again!” Star repeated, and he followed, back and forth until he had calmed down and was grinning at her absurdly over-the-top routine. “Feeling better?”

“A little.”

“How about we play a game? I’ll say one word, and you say whatever word comes to your mind. Ready?” He sniffled once, but nodded.

“Candy.”

“Tasty.”

“Dancing.”

“Fun.”

“Snuffleupagus.”

He cracked up a bit at that and she grinned back at him. “Silly.”

“School.”

“Sad.”

“Why does that make you sad?”

“My brother’s busy at school here all day now, so he has daycare watch me instead. My group was at the playground and Felipe bet I couldn’t go on the big slide so I did but I got stuck and when I got out, everyone was gone.”

“You poor thing,” Star responded. “I know how you feel. Tell ya what, let’s go try to find them together!”

“Can- can we stay here?” Her heart broke at how obviously terrified he was of the situation and the prospect of any more unfamiliarity wasn’t something he was ready to deal with at all.

“For a little bit, but then we really should get you back to the daycare.”

“OK,” he said somberly. “Who’s that?” He pointed at Mariposa who was crawling in circles around the bench.

“Oh, this is Mariposa! She’s my boyfriend’s sister.”

“What’s a boyfriend?”

Of all the conversations Star thought she might have today, this was far from one of them. “It’s like… boyfriend and girlfriend are like what a mom and dad are before they become a mom and dad.”

“My Uncle Matt is Mom’s brother but Dad calls him brother too. Does that mean she’s your sister too?”

Star met Mariposa’s eyes for a moment. It was weird to think about, but… was Trevor even wrong? She’d been living with the Diazes for almost all of Mariposa’s life, after all. There wasn’t a clear definitive answer in Star’s mind, but she needed one to sate the boy’s unending curiosity. “Yeah, I guess she is.”

“Cool! My big brother’s awesome. I miss when we used to play all the time. You’re really cool, too.”

“Thanks. I know change can be scary, but I’m sure your brother misses you a lot too. Sometimes big kids and grown-ups have to do grown-up things for a while, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love being your brother.”

A few voices echoed in the distance; once they were close enough for Star to make out the words, she realized they were calling Trevor’s name. “Over here!” she shouted back in their general direction. A large elephant monster with ripped jeans and ear piercings ran as fast as he could and gave Trevor a tight hug. “Hey, Trev, buddy, where’d you go? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“It’s OK, Star took care of me.” It came out muffled from how his face was still buried in his brother’s arms.

“Woah, wait- Star? Like, the Rebel Princess Star Butterfly?”

“That’s me. Or was me,” she shrugged.

“I was your biggest fan for years! Remember the cave hideout? Don’t think I introduced myself then, I’m Geoff.”

“Oooooh yeah, you were with the ‘alternative monsters’! How have you been?”

“Pretty dope. Once that wicked Cleaving thing happened, we found a bunch of humans just like us! Being alternative is just, like, normal now. They even sell clothes with all the holes in them already so you don’t have to do any work! It’s nice to just get to be myself now, and I don’t think I’d ever get to do that without everything you did. You’re the best, Star. And thanks for taking care of lil’ Trev here. C’mon, buddy, let’s get you home.”

Trevor hopped up on his brother’s shoulders for a piggy back ride and waved. “Bye, Star! Bye Mariposa!”

“You must be a miracle worker with the kids,” the human man who had run up with Geoff finally spoke up. He had a thick beard and glasses and wore a red flannel shirt and jeans. “I’m Antonio, by the way, I run the ECCC Child Care Center. We just call it the Six Cs.”

“Nice to meet you,” Star responded. “I just did what anyone would, really.”

“No, you definitely made Trevor’s week. He just joined on Monday and he cries almost all the time from missing his family. We see that a lot, but it’s definitely hitting him harder than most, going from being at home all the time to being with a bunch of strangers for hours a day.”

Star unconsciously turned away and rubbed her arm. “Yeah, I… I know the feeling.” She shook it off and turned back towards him. “So, what happened with Trevor?”

“One of the girls got a splinter on the playground. Everyone was busy trying to keep her calm when we left the playground that we skipped headcount. I called Geoff right away, he was very understanding. It’s no excuse, but we’re way too short on people right now with all the new students.” His attention suddenly pivoted to Mariposa who was reaching up to grab at the fabric of his shirt. “This is Angie Diaz’s kid, no? May I?”

“Yeah,” Star dumbfoundedly responded after a moment’s hesitation. “You know her?”

Antonio hefted Mariposa up like she weighed nothing and gently rocked Mariposa back and forth in his burly arms. “Her older son, Marco, used to come here every now and then. Heard through the grapevine not too long ago that she had another kid, I asked if she’d be coming to the Six Cs but she said she already had someone at home. I take it I’m talking to her?”

Star’s eyes widened. Angie had said that? She was the only one who didn’t have plans most days, so… it had to be her. “Marco’s my boyfriend. I was their foreign exchange student for a year, then he came to live with me on Mewni for a year, and then… well, you’ve probably heard about how the Cleaving happened.”

“Afraid not, I don’t keep up with the news much these days. I just try to take care of all the kiddos as best I can, doesn’t much matter to me what goes on with the world. So what brings you to this humble campus?”

“Well, Marco’s going to school here now and I don’t have much else to do, so... yeah.”

“Ah.” His deep voice was laden with sympathy, and with that one word Star felt like he immediately understood her turmoil. “Well, if you’re ever looking for something to do, we could use someone like you on the team.”

“Really?”

“You’ve clearly got a big heart and a keen eye for how to take care of the younguns, that’s more than enough in my eyes. This one’s been staring at you almost since we started talking, she clearly trusts you more than you may know.” Huh, he was right; even while being rocked gently into slumber, Mariposa’s warm brown gaze remained firmly on Star’s face. “Well, I should get back to the staff. No rush if you’re unsure, but you can come with me to meet the crew before they leave for the night if you want.” He set Mariposa back down on the bench while Star reassembled the baby carrier and got Mariposa settled back in.

Star couldn’t say she was any clearer now on a life goal, but maybe that wasn’t what she needed right now. Looking back on the day and week thus far, even the most exceptionally crummy day in recent memory could be salvaged by Mariposa alone, so why should she be worried about more of that? Though she hadn’t really thought of herself as Mariposa’s caretaker until just a few minutes ago, her breath hitched with pride at the notion.

When she finally answered Antonio’s question, it was the least unsure she’d felt in a while.

***

Done. Finally. Marco swiftly stuffed his assignments into the binder in his backpack and hustled out the door of the student union. Cramming all his homework into one day had drained him, but it was worth it so he and Star could have the whole weekend to themselves. He liked all the things about school that Star hated, sure, but his life had changed so much and so many times that he worried he wasn’t even cut out for it anymore. ‘B’ on the pop quiz, really Diaz? The rational part of his brain knew it was fine, but the Marco of old was disappointed. He’d aced the questions he’d studied with Star, at least, so maybe the Marco of old wasn’t the one to follow.

Nachos, ever the talented dragoncycle, had founded a part-time rideshare service in the town and was busy tonight, so Marco navigated his way to his mom’s office for a ride home. “Hey Mom, hey Star, h- wait, Star?”

“Marcomarcomarcomarcomarco!” Star excitedly leapt into his arms with a barrage of cheek kisses and a crushing embrace.

“Missed you too, Star,” he chuckled, kissing her on the forehead in return before backing away to take off his backpack and slump into a chair. “What are you doing here?”

She sat sideways in his lap, hooking her arms around his neck. “Surprising you, goofhead!”

He closed his eyes for a moment and drank in her affection, letting it wash away his fatigue. “Well, color me surprised. Really glad you’re here.”

“Long day? Did you defeat the quizzards?”

“Yeah, and for the third time, it was just a regular quiz and not evil mystical quizzards giving me riddles. Besides, don’t they have a game show now?”

“Totally, totally, totally… I knew that.”

“I just kinda miss you, Star. It hasn’t been the same going all day without seeing you. I guess the last few years have made me realize I don’t want to be wherever you aren’t.”

“So cheesy,” Star cooed while pinching his cheek. His mom and Star exchanged excited glances. “But don’t worry about that anymore, Diaz, because I’ll be here now too!”

“Hubbawha?” Marco blurted out.

“Star’s going to volunteer for the Six Cs and take care of Mariposa there.”

She stood up and walked over to Mariposa, poking her nose just as she came out of a nap. “Yep, and they said I can make a schedule around yours so we can dragonpool to school and have lunch together or whatever! Plus I get to spend time with my other favorite person in the whole wide world.”

Mariposa fully opened her eyes and stared vacantly at Star for a second before smiling wide. “Ta.”

Star stopped in her tracks. “Wait, is she saying-”

“Tar. Tar. Tar!” Mariposa bobbed up and down on the desk, clearly as overjoyed about her words as everyone else was. Tears welled up in Star’s sapphire eyes as she leaned down to gently snuggle Mariposa. Marco walked over to join her and caught his mom absolutely beaming with as much pride as he’d ever seen her have. The wholesome moment was interrupted as his little sister, not content to stop, kept rambling on. “Tar! Mago! Tago! Tago!”

“Not you too!” Star sputtered out, still choked with emotion, and Marco couldn’t help but laugh.

And later that evening, after the four had gotten dinner and piled into the Diaz van for the trip home, Marco looked over to see that Star had fallen asleep on the other side of Mariposa’s carseat. He took her hand in his, yawning as he realized a nap wasn’t such a bad idea. Just before succumbing to the day, he swore he heard a soft, squeaky murmuring from the toddler next to him.

“Sihtah.”

[straynstay]

Jisung - Hybrid AU!

the morning was quite pleasant at the park where you were having a picnic by yourself

well, you were actually just eating half of a sandwich sitting under a tree, resting your back on its trunk when all of a sudden a young boy wearing light jeans, a white shirt and a greenish checkered shirt on top passed by, running to the other side of the park

he was really fast, but you noticed that he was a hybrid

his owners are probably taking him for a walk or something

you finished your sandwich and decided to breathe nature in for a little longer

only the wind was making a sound when ruffling the leaves and that was all you could ask for

a day off was indeed needed, you thought

you closed your eyes taking a deep breath and exhaling loudly

“hi” you opened your eyes to see brown ones staring into yours inches away from your face

obviously you screamed your lungs out

“no, no, I’m a good hybrid, I’m not gonna hurt you, don’t be scared”

“are you crazy? this is not how you approach people!” you got up cleaning your jeans

it was the same hybrid that passed by running earlier and now that you were close you realized he was a squirrel hybrid

he had light brown hair that matched the fur on his cute ears, as well as his long fluffy tail

he was the first hybrid squirrel you’ve seen, you had no idea they were this adorable

“I’m sorry, I’m just trying to find my mom and dad, we’ve been playing hide and seek for hours now, but I’m tired and I wanna go home. Have you seen them around?”

the hybrid began describing in detail his owners

well, you did see them leaving a looong time ago and they didn’t look like they were missing their pet

oh no, please don’t let this be what you’re thinking…

“hm, I…” you got your stuff from the floor “I can help you look for them if you want to” you offered

“oh, thank you very much, I don’t know many places around because I’m not allowed to go out, but today they said was a special day and I got so excited to be outside after years that I think I lost them” the hybrid rambled, making your heart ache

how could they abandon him like this? they have no soul

you began walking side by side with the hybrid that introduced himself as Han Jisung, proudly showing his collar tag

he was quite a chatter, probably because he was excited to interact with other people besides his terrible owners

ugh, if you find them you’ll be saying some harsh truths to them

“I guess I won” Jisung smiled after you’ve been walking for almost forty minutes

“what?”

“we were playing hide and seek, I guess I won cause they haven’t found me yet” Jisung smiled again and you could only feel bad for him

was he really this innocent?

“how about we eat something? are you hungry?”

“mom says I can’t accept food from strangers” you were taken aback

“and I’m a stranger? wow, thanks” you looked away “guess she didn’t warn you about accepting help from strangers too”

“please, don’t be mad, I’m sorry” Jisung stood in front of you, forcing you to stop “I said it without thinking, you’re not a complete stranger, but I still don’t know you very well, but you’re a kind stranger so I guess I can trust you won’t try to poison me”

you blinked a couple of times before any answer could be formulated in your head

he was crazy, hyperactive, but with soft eyes and the cutest smile ever

why would anyone abandon a hybrid like Jisung?

“I feel like eating burgers” you stated

“mom and dad are strict when it comes to food, I can’t eat much, specially fast food” Jisung said looking down

“are mom and dad around?” you raised an eyebrow

“n-no…” Jisung pouted “but they might know, and I might get in trouble”

“alright, it’s up to you, I’m buying anyways, if you don’t wanna eat, throw it away” you began walking again towards the fast food cart near the lake

while you were busy buying food for both of you, a bunny hybrid sneakily approached Jisung, who stayed behind

“you’re lucky to find another owner so soon” the bunny said

“no, no, she’s helping me find my mom and dad, that’s all” Jisung shook his head

“really? your owners are gone, they’ve thrown you away, that’s what they do here at this park, you know? they discard us as if we’re some sort of an unwanted weight in their lives”

“no, they haven’t thrown me away!” Jisung got mad

“I’m sorry it happened to you, but you’ll have to face the truth sometime, hopefully she’ll still be around when you do, otherwise the hybrid catchers will take you, and trust me, you don’t wanna go to the pound” the bunny hybrid was called by his owner

“I have to go, but if I could give you one advice I’d tell you to do anything to go home with her, she seems like she’ll take care of you better than your ‘mom and dad’” the bunny hybrid mocked the way Jisung spoke about his owners previously

he left, and Jisung was confused

he didn’t want to believe the hybrid’s words, but what if he was telling the truth?

but Jisung couldn’t lose his faith, he had to believe his mom and dad would come back for him before the day was over, right?

“here it is, let’s eat over there” you were carrying the bags with your drinks and burgers

“okay” Jisung followed you silently until you reached a bench

you both sat down, and you pushed his food to his side, beginning to eat your burger eagerly

walking aimlessly made you hungry, so you were stuffing your face like there would be no tomorrow

“burgers are the best invention of mankind” you said closing your eyes, enjoying the flavors exploding in your mouth

“I think it’s us, hybrids” Jisung replied eating only a french frie, but then he took another one, and another, and another, and soon he was almost swallowing the entire burger too

“this is really good” he said with his mouth full

“so you agree with me?”

“no, I still think we’re better than burgers” Jisung chuckled

“I can’t say, I don’t own a hybrid” you shrugged

“w-would you like to… you know… o-own one?” you cleaned your lips with the napkin before looking at Jisung

why was he stuttering all of a sudden?

“I don’t know, I don’t have enough money to buy one, so…” you shrugged again

“you can always adopt, right? there are pounds that take care of unwanted hybrids”

“take care, yeah” you scoffed “they don’t treat hybrids well in those places”

Jisung almost finished his drink in one go

“besides, I don’t think I can afford living with a hybrid. I live in a single room, I’m barely home, and I eat take outs almost every day. I don’t think that’s suitable for a special pet like you guys”

Jisung drank the rest of the soda and nodded quietly

he was acting strange, maybe he was tired?

“wanna take a break?” you asked

“no, no, let’s go, I wanna find my mom and dad so I can go home soon” Jisung got up and you threw away the remainings of your snacks

“I’m tired” Jisung spoke for the first time after walking around for about three hours

he sat down on a bench under a tree and buried his face on his hands

oh, God… this isn’t going anywhere, maybe you should just tell him the truth, you’re both wasting time

you sat by his side, placing a hand on his shoulder and mustering up enough courage to break his little heart

“they’re not coming back, are they?” Jisung spoke first, raising his head to look at you

his eyes were already blurred by tears, making him look even more innocent and helpless

you could only nod, watching him coming undone in front of you

you gently placed his head on your lap and let him burst his eyes out on your jeans while you petted his hair

needless to say, you got pretty much emotional witnessing this

cruel human beings shouldn’t be able to buy a pet hybrid

what’s gonna happen to Jisung now? you know that abandoned hybrids are taken to a pound and you also know he won’t be treated right over there

ugh, why is life so hard? why are you feeling terrible if this tragic situation isn’t even your fault?

you can’t afford the lifestyle of a hybrid, you’re barely affording a life for yourself, but isn’t turning your back on him now just as cruel as what his owners did?

“why would they leave me here?” Jisung sobbed on your thigh “I know I talk a lot, and that I’m too much trouble cause I can’t stay still, but I was behaving like a good boy should” Jisung cried more and your tears fell as well

“it’s not your fault, hun, don’t be like this” you played with his hair while humming whatever song was on your mind

“please, take me home” Jisung said after a while under your soft touch

“I would, but I don’t know your address”

“I meant your home” his brown eyes, so sad and helpless, made your heart break in two “please, take care of me. Please!” he grabbed your hand and placed on his cheek, crying again

it was impossible to deny this heartfelt request

how could you say no to an abandoned hybrid that was begging for your help?

“don’t let them take me to the pound, please keep me, don’t leave me here alone” Jisung kept pleading, holding your hand on his face hidden on your thigh, making you cry even more

“this is crazy, Jisung I…” you wiped your tears with your other hand “oh, gosh, alright, I’ll take care of you. I don’t know how, but I’ll do it, you don’t need to cry anymore, only happy tears from now on, huh?” you nudged him

Jisung got up quickly, almost hitting you in the nose, and stared at you inches away from your face, just like when he first approached you earlier today

“thank you” he whispered, more tears running down his face, but his eyes were now relieved “thank you” he kissed your hands and kneeled in front of you

“I promise I won’t be a burden, I won’t eat or talk much, I can sleep on the floor, I know how to do the basic chores to help you, and I’ll be a good boy, I promise” Jisung sobbed

“oh, hun, don’t say such things, please” you took his face on your hands, making him look at your eyes “I just want you to be you, okay?” you gave him a gentle smile

“okay” Jisung nodded, reaching behind his neck to unclasp his collar, letting it fall on the grass

Jisung was now starting a new life with you

[antagonisms]

a self-para, and parting gift, for my second-favourite korean 

trigger warnings for: allusions to domestic and child abuse

general warnings for: evan being a dick

i.

“This is her, right?”

Evan’s gaze flits to Connor’s phone screen. There’s a photo of a woman sitting cross legged on a piano stool, back turned against the keys.

“Yeah,” Evan tells him. “That’s my mom.”

“You look alike,” Connor says.

Evan laughs. “I know.” And it’s a nice thing, half the time, that he can look at the mirror and not see Rina’s husband instead. Lord knows he doesn’t want to be reminded of a pain that’s been buried. Still, there’s some pain seeing Rina’s face reflected, too — when the distance between past and present elongates, even the best memories turn bitter.

This is what they discovered about Rina Watanabe: She abandoned her ex-husband’s surname. She runs a semi-popular music store slash studio and still teaches basic piano to little kids. She abandoned the rolling mountains of Blackrock for the sepia-toned city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is apparently a real place that people live in and not just a state Eisenhower invented to add more stars to the flag. It’s also nine hours away from Montana by bus. 

This is what Evan discovered about Connor Park: He cares enough to take him there. 

He also knows Evan well enough to offer the window seat. Knows Evan well enough to inch away even if the seats are small and the bus is already pretty cramped. He knows Evan well enough not to say anything when Evan’s eyes, still lingering on his mother’s photo, turn downcast with the rest of his expression.

Of course, he reminds himself, Connor’s been through the same shit, so he has the decency not to pity him.  

The rest of the bus ride is quiet. Behind the window, Wyoming’s rolling fields blur into long yellow lines. The mountains get smaller and bluer with distance. Connor’s listening to music on his phone. His fists are balled into his lap, and his expression is tight in a way that makes Evan suspect that he’s less focused on whatever he’s listening and more focused on a question running through his mind, like he wants to ask Evan something but doesn’t know where to start.

Evan realizes he wants to ask Connor things too. Wants to keep his mind away from his absent mother and the hole she left — wants to ask about the similar-shaped hole Connor might have, what’s the system like, do you remember your mom, how long have you and your brother been fighting, do you remember being a kid?

Instead he taps at his ear, gestures for Connor to pull an earphone out. When Connor does, Evan asks, “What are you listening to?”

Connor hands over the other earphone. “Do you wanna hear it?”

Evan takes it. It’s a Frank Ocean song, likely from Evan’s lost years, because it’s not anything he’s heard before. Still, the mellowness is familiar enough that a wave of wistfulness settles on his chest. There’s nothing out the window but vast space, so Evan looks at Connor, and right on that beat Frank Ocean croons, it’s quite alright to hate me now. 

Maybe all Connor wants is for Evan to have the closure he and Noah never got. It’s too late to tell him that it’s not worth the effort — Evan’s not worth the effort — and what kind of person does this, anyway? What kind of person exhausts themselves to make sure another person doesn’t feel the pain that they’d felt? Evan furrows his brows. He imagines Connor, five years old, sat on a swing set waiting for a mother that wouldn’t come back. He imagines himself, twelve years old, staring at a window and waiting for a car that would never return.

The same story, different endings. Evan gets his heart broken and keeps the pieces to himself. Connor gets his heart broken and offers the pieces to other people. The comparison fucking stings. For a fleeting moment, he considers berating himself for being so goddamn selfish, but then he tells himself that, you know what, maybe it was neither of their fucking faults. There are versions of themselves that could have been kinder had they simply been afforded the privilege of being loved. A version of Evan where he isn’t too guarded. A version of Connor where he isn’t too insecure.

He imagines them then, as children, their hearts full and whole and unbroken. Evan’s much taller at six years old than Connor is at five, so when Connor sits at the swings his legs are still too short to kick himself up high enough. It’s the make-believe Evan that stands behind the swing, grabs it by the chains, and pulls. When he lets go, Connor soars.

Right on time, Frank Ocean sings, we’ll never be those kids again. 

ii. 

In the music store in Wyoming, there’s a small child. Her face looks like Evan’s. A near splitting image of his eight-year-old self. Evan watches her run up to the woman leaning by the cash register, gives her a kiss on the cheek and says, I’ll see you at home, Mom. 

Then his eyes find the woman at the counter. Evan knows that posture. Relaxed shoulders, elbows propped on a surface behind her, back leaning, entirely graceless and casual. She waves goodbye to her child as her mouth splits into a smile, a fondness Evan doesn’t realize is familiar until his heart sinks to his chest.

Mom.

Evan takes a breath. 

Connor faces him. Evan can feel the concern in his eyes even without looking. “You don’t have to do this now,” he says, and he’s right, because they’re both still exhausted from the bus ride. “There’s still time tomorrow.”

Evan shakes his head. “I’m good.”

Hands slide into his pockets. He doesn’t break his gaze from the woman, who has yet to notice him, too busy throwing her head back in laughter as she gets lost in her conversation with the man at the counter. She looks happy. Happier than she ever was at home. If any painful feeling arises from that, Evan keeps it buried.

He drags his feet toward her. His heart feels heavy. This is a bad idea, he thinks, but he doesn’t stop walking until Rina turns her head and stops at the sight of him.

Her eyes widen. Her mouth opens, then closed. She looks at him the same way most people in Blackrock do, at least after the lost years. Like the can’t tell if the man they’re looking at is anything more than a ghost.

Evan wills himself to smile at her. “Hey.”

She smiles back, startled and painfully forced. “Can I help you?”

“Mom.” His voice drifts with the softest sort of desperation. “It’s me.” 

She blinks. Her gaze won’t meet his. There’s shame evident in her eyes — which, if he were crueler, might make him feel better about all this, but now all it does is stab a knifelike pain through his chest. 

Her lips press into a thin line. If he remembers her correctly — and he probably doesn’t — it means she’s fumbling her mind for words. Her eyes finally meet his, and when her mouth opens, the words are slow to come out. 

“Do you,” she asks, “want to talk outside?”

Now, it’s Evan’s turns to pause. “Sure.”

Connor’s standing by one of the drum sets, one finger tracing the circumference of a cymbal. He stops when he catches Evan’s gaze. Evan mouths, I’ll be right back and waits for Connor’s nod before following Rina out the door.

Outside, Rina fishes a pack of Marlboros from her pocket. She leans against the wall and plucks a light out of the box. Head turning to him, she says, “Do you smoke?”

Evan purses his lip. “Kind of.”

She hands him the cigarette in her hand and picks out another for herself. It’s silent, mostly, when she takes out her lighter and sets the tail end aflame. Evan doesn’t ask her to light his. It seems that she, too, forgets to offer.

She takes a drag. A long one. Only when she huffs the smoke out does she face him again. “You’ve grown.”

“I mean,” Evan says. “It’s been a while.”

Rina sighs. Evan can’t tell where the frustration is directed: herself, or him. Her brows crease and form a worry line. “I’m sorry — I just. I thought you were—”

Evan cuts her off. “I’m here now. The girl in the store earlier. Is she your—”

“She’s my daughter.” Even if guilt drips through her voice, the words are a gut punch.

He’s been playing the same made up story in his head since he was twelve. Sometimes she comes up in his dreams. It starts without awkwardness. They speak about everything and nothing until the conversation’s strong enough to carry the heavy shit — the questions he couldn’t ask and the answers she failed to give. At twenty-seven, his mind rewrites the story. First, she’ll asks, where have you been, and whatever flippant excuse he might give for his disappearance won’t matter, because she’ll throw her arms around him and say that she missed him, say that she’s sorry she ever left him behind.

But she doesn’t ask him where he’s been. She asks, “Why did you come here?”

And here’s where he starts to regret asking for a light. Grief wells at his chest, pushing his heart to his throat. I had some questions I wanted to ask you, he should say, but his impatience gets the best of him, pushing the words out too soon. “Did you—” And he shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t ask questions he doesn’t want to know the answers to. “When I disappeared, did you — did you look for me?”

Rina looks down.

She folds her arms. It makes her posture look more closed, like she’s putting space between them. “I tried. I tried very hard, for a year.” Rina wraps her arms tighter around herself. Her head hangs low. “I just — I had my obligations here, so I had to—”

“You gave up hope,” Evan says.

She tilts her head up slightly, to face him. There’s very little resentment in his eyes, but she still seems to shrink under his gaze. “But you’re alright now, aren’t you?”

It’s tempting to snort at that question. Six years, Evan things. Nobody had seen him for six years. “I’m getting by,” he says, voice flat. “Dad’s dead. You probably already knew, though.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

The laugh he tears out of his throat is small and dark. “Come on. Don’t lie. We both wanted him gone.”

And maybe his expression’s gotten darker, because his mother’s shrinking deeper and deeper inside of herself. “It must have been hard, still.”

“It was harder when he was alive.” Evan steadies his voice. He knows he doesn’t need to say more than this. But the anger wrenches at his chest, and the bitterness leaks through his words. “You know, everything he did to you, he did to me.”

Her face is all heartbreak and shame. Not the strong-willed mother he once knew. Or maybe she was just louder in the house because she needed to be. He used to think neither of them gained anything from living in that shitty manor, but maybe, in the cruelest sense, it was a learning experience. Rina learned to fight back, and when she couldn’t, she learned to run. Evan learned to take a hit.

“I’m sorry.”

Evan scoffs. “I mean, it’s cool.” His voice is a calm and wretched sound. “Did you know bones get stronger after you break them? They have to adapt after the fracture. Become more resilient to stress. I think I feel invincible now. You can put me in Guinness records for world’s best pain tolerance.”

He imagines himself, on a swing set, waiting. Hang on. That’s not right. He imagines himself, at a piano, waiting. He imagines this small girl, at a piano, Rina holding her small hands, guiding her fingers along the keys. He imagines this girl, a bruise on her neck in the shape of a man’s hand. Wait. That isn’t right either.

He imagines himself, twelve years old, sitting shotgun at Rina’s car, watching Montana blur past them. Rina turns the radio up and tells him to sing with her, so he does; he sings and stares at the road ahead and smiles bright even if — or maybe because — he has no idea where they’re headed. He imagines a life where she saves him. He imagines a life where neither of them have to heal.

“I’d understand it,” she finally says. “If you hated me.”

Evan’s face falls. “I never hated you.” He drags a sigh out of his throat. “I just — I don’t know. I guess I just wished you loved me.”

iii.

He’s fine. It’s not a big deal. It’s not like he didn’t expect this. Did he get his hopes up a little? Maybe. But it’s not something he can’t survive. That’s what he’s good at, right? Surviving. He survived broken bones, a broken home, a broken life. He can survive a broken heart.

Connor shuts the door of the motel room and leans against the wall. Good. He knows when to keep his distance. But Connor opens his mouth, because of course he has to say something, and immediately, Evan thinks, this is going to get ugly.

“If you need me—”

Evan says, “I don’t need you.”

“—I’m here.”

This is going to get ugly. 

“Thanks,” Evan says. 

Connor looks so small like this. When Evan meets his eyes, Connor’s gaze flits away. Maybe that pisses him off. Things are fine, right? So Connor should be a better friend and act like things are fucking fine.

But maybe Evan wants Connor to open his mouth again, say something stupid, cross a line. Don’t take it personally. His anger’s just a ticking time bomb and it just so happens that Connor’s within the blast zone. 

“It was hard too. When me and Noah found out that our—”

Evan laughs. “How’s that hard? It’s not like you actually knew her.”

“Our mom,” Connor continues, and Evan can tell that it’s getting harder for him to stop himself from getting angry. “She had a new family, too. I’m just trying to say that I get it.”

Evan’s mouth splits into a wry smile. “Projecting. That’s always fun, isn’t it?”

“Evan,” Connor warns.

“Maybe that’s why you brought me here. Couldn’t fix your fucked family relationships, so maybe fixing mine’s enough of a compensation.” Evan puts a hand on his chest. “Your thoughtfulness knows no bounds. Thank you, Connor.”

Connor narrows his eyes. There’s a flicker of something dangerous in his gaze. “You asked me to take you here.” 

“I said thank you, didn’t I? I think it’s real nice of you to keep putting in so much effort as if it’s ever done anyone any good.” Evan’s mouth curls into a sneer. “Persistence. I like that in a man.”

Connor frowns. “I’m gonna take a smoke outside. Don’t talk to me until you’re done throwing a tantrum.”

“Oh, nice.” A wry laugh leaves Evan’s lips. “Connor Park’s walking away from someone. Isn’t it usually the other way around?”

That gets Connor to flinch. 

His eyes meet Evan’s. “Look, I get that you’re hurting, but don’t you dare take it out on me.” A sigh leaves his throat, frustrated. “All I fucking wanted was to do something nice for you.”

“I’m not,” Evan strains to say, “hurting.”

“Like I said.” Connor’s gaze doesn’t break from his. “I get it. I’ve been there.”

“You really think we’re the same, huh?” Evan folds his arms. Under Connor’s stare, his body feels very close to shattering. Still, he keeps his voice tight. “You don’t know me. You don’t know half of what I’ve been through.”

“Can you stop acting like you’re the only person who’s gone through shit?” Connor snaps, with a fire that almost gets Evan to smile. “Look, fine. I don’t know what happened to you. But I know—”

“What do you know?”

“—that you like to lash out when you’re upset.”

“Go on,” Evan says, sharp and venomous. “I’d like to know more.”

There’s a glint of cautiousness in Connor’s eyes. For a fleeting second, Evan expects silence, suspects that Connor is afraid of saying the wrong thing, as he always is. Connor opens his mouth anyway. “You’re pushing me away so you can prove that I don’t really understand you. Because you don’t want to be helped. Because you want to hurt yourself. Or Because—”

Connor pauses. His eyes meet the ground. Evan’s voice goes tight. “Because what, Connor?”

A breath escapes him. Connor finally tears his gaze away. “You don’t want people taking care of you. Because then they’ll have the power to hurt you.”

Jesus. Connor Park is so fucking smart. 

“Or maybe I just don’t want you taking care of me,” Evan snaps. “I’m starting to think that maybe you like that I’m damaged.”

“Why the fuck would I like that?”

Evan started this fight; he’s not about to lose it, not even when his legs feel weak and his heart wants to leap out of his throat. “Why else?” he asks, but it’s not really a question. “Can’t solve your own problems? Why not throw yourself into someone else’s. You think that if you save me you can save yourself from having a nonexistent sense of fucking self-esteem. But guess what? I’m not you fucking project, Connor. So stop trying to fix me because I’m not fucking broken.”

Connor’s face falls. He looks more hurt than angry. “I don’t,” he says, “think you’re broken.”

Evan knees collapse from underneath him. 

His hands ball into fists at his lap. His eyes fall shut when he lowers his head, body keeling forward, mouth falling open as his heart dredges from his throat a scream that comes out soundless. His lip quivers. Small, unwanted dew drops form at the corners of his eyes and spill into the floor.

There are versions of themselves that could have been kinder to one another had their lives been kinder to them. “We deserved better,” he says, because it’s a lot easier to say than I’m sorry. It’s true, anyway. His mind runs through the same sentence, again and again and again — we deserved better. We deserved better. We deserved better. 

Or maybe he’s very close to proving that he’s capable of being crueler than his past. It’s just Connor that deserves better. Deserves more than an absent mother the set of transient homes she’d doomed him to, deserves better than a friend who gives him a verbal beating for — what? Doing exactly what Evan asked?

Guilt, useless and cloying, floods at Evan’s chest, punishing him for wanting comfort. Evan’s never been good at asking for help. Connor’s never been good at giving it, or perhaps that’s because he gives too much — and Evan would like to ask, now, but what right does he have? An apology is owed and he’s too much of a coward to give it. 

Connor still kneels down in front of him. 

Evan holds his head up. Looks at Connor, watches as reluctance and concern flickers in the other’s eyes. Cautious as always. Evan loved and hated that about him. He moves closer, wraps his arms around Evan, pulls him close to his chest. Against his own self-scrutiny, Evan buries his face into the crook of Connor’s neck.

Evan’s shoulders drop down. His breathing remains shaky and jagged, but it slows as Connor’s arms fold around him. His grip tightens, but it doesn’t hurt. That’s funny. 

“If you let me take care of you,” Connor says, “I promise — I am not going to hurt you.”

Evan’s voice goes very quiet. “Don’t let go, then,” 

“Okay,” Connor tells him. “Okay.”

iv.

The bus ride back to Blackrock is mostly quiet. It’s a night ride though, so Evan’s exhausted, and not even Frank Ocean’s crooning can keep him awake. He drifts off, eyes fluttering drowsily when he turns to Connor, mouth falling open, as if to say something. To ask for something. No sound comes out, but still, Connor lifts a hand and guides Evan’s head down his shoulder. Something warm fills Evan’s chest. He’s not sure what to call the feeling, but it’s quite a special thing, when someone knows exactly what you need, and you don’t even have to ask. Evan’s head stays on Connor’s shoulder for the whole drive home.

[hailing-stars]

for peter - part 4/5

summary

“Something’s wrong with Buddy, dad.”

Tony turned at the sound of gravel crunching under tires and saw the source of Buddy’s unrest. A car full of Avengers, pulling up and parking in his driveway.

Buddy bolted towards the car, barking, and as Steve Rogers opened his door and stepped outside, growled. His head was bowed low to the ground, like he was about to attack, while Steve, and now Nat and the ant-guy – Tony couldn’t remember his real name – stared at him.

“Are you going to call off the guard dog?” asked Steve.

OR

Peter is still a dog and endgame is happening 

read below or on ao3

“I don’t want to.”

“Morguna,” said Tony, looking back and forth, between the jet-ski bobbing in the lake water, and his little girl, who rocked from foot to foot on the dock. “It’s gonna be really fun. Are you sure?”

It was uncharacteristic for her to not want to try out one of the many inventions that came out of the garage. She loved trying out his crazy builds, loved it too much, actually, and so much that it sometimes scared Tony. That it made him believe Morgan was just a repeat of himself, with Pepper’s DNA mixed there to make her ten times as dangerous.

At least she had inherited Pepper’s common sense and intelligence along with Tony’s knack for blowing things up in the garage.

A breeze blew off the night, and Tony knelt down to swipe her hair out of her eyes. “Are you afraid?”

“What if I fall in, like before?” asked Morgan, staring down at the lake below.

“Daddy will catch you.”

“What if you can’t? What if you’re not there?”

It seemed like a ridiculous question. Of course Tony would be there. He wasn’t going to let Morgan drive a jet-ski around the lake by herself, but he knew her fear wasn’t in the future, it was in the past.

When Morgan had fallen through the ice, and into the water, he hadn’t been there. He’d been taking out the trash.

Never again. It was a vow the night of the near tragic Christmas, while he watched her sleep. He’d always be there for Morgan, and if, for some reason, he couldn’t be, he would make sure she and Pepper would be looked after.

“Hey, you know what?” asked Tony. “What if Buddy came with us? On the jet-ski?”

Behind her, Buddy’s head shot up from where he was sniffing the ground, searching for the squirrel that had escaped him and went up the tree he stood under. That mutt. He would hear his name being called if he were located on a planet in a different universe. Before Morgan could even answer, he was barking and running over to where they stood on the dock.

“Well now you have to,” said Tony. “For Buddy.”

Morgan gave him a small, sly smile, and nodded her head.

Just a few minutes later, after putting Morgan in a lifejacket and after wrestling one onto Buddy, the three of them sat on the jet-ski. Tony’s arms stretched over them both as his hands gripped the handlebars, and Morgan leaned into him, tense and scared, but trying her best to be brave.

It wasn’t so hard once Tony started up the engine and they took off from the dock. Buddy barked and Morgan laughed, and Tony never wanted the day to end.

But the sun did set, even if they did have dinner outside to try and stretch the day out as far as they could.

“Dad,” said Morgan, as Tony brought the covers up to her chin. “I’m sorry I was scared. I know Starks aren’t supposed to be afraid.”

“What? Who told you that?”

“I figured it out,” said Morgan. “You’re Iron Man.”

“Do you wanna hear a secret?”

Morgan smiled. She nodded her head.

“I’m afraid a lot,” he told her. “I just try to push through and keep going. That’s what Starks do.”

Tony kissed her on the forehead after they exchanged goodnights, then he headed back out to the garage, where another what of his insane projects lived. An armor in a shade of blue Tony had fallen in love with years ago.

He worked in the quiet, with Buddy by his side, occasionally passing him the tools he needed. Buddy always knew what he needed, and when, and Tony didn’t bother questioning it.

*

The end started as a perfect day, just like the end typically does.

Sunlight hit Tony as he stepped off the porch and into the yard, and the air was crisp as he walked towards Morgan’s play tent.

It was the perfect kind of weather. Weather where wearing a sweater was comfortable, but not required. Weather that wasn’t foreboding.

Weather that lied.

“Morguna,” said Tony, in a sing-song voice, as he sat down in her little wooden chair. From that angle, he could see Buddy’s tail popping out from under the tent, wagging back and forth in the dirt. “Morgan H. Stark. Want some lunch?”

“Define lunch, or be disintegrated,” said Morgan, as she appeared out from the tent. She wore Pepper’s rescue helmet, and had her arm outstretched, pointing a toy Iron Man blaster at him.

Tony took the helmet off her. “You should not be wearing this, okay? It’s part of a very special anniversary present I’m making mom.” He wiped some hair out of her face. “Where did you find it?”

“In the garage.”

He lowered his hands and gently took her little hand in his and rubbed his thumb across the worn, red cloth that surrounded the glow light that was supposed to be a blaster. “And this?”

“In Buddy’s boxes.”

Buddy barked and ran out from the tent. He pointed his nose at Morgan, then the blaster, then the helmet, and gave a series of happy barks while he did a half jump in the air. Tony translated his excitement into a pride. Look at their girl. Quizzical just like her dad. A thief, but a curious one.

Tony fought the smile from his face. He wasn’t the firm parent, so he failed.

“You mutt,” said Tony. He waged a finger at Buddy, who snapped his teeth at it and earned a giggle from Morgan. “You’re supposed to be watching her.”

Tony lifted Morgan off the ground by her legs, holding her with one hand and the rescue helmet in the other as he began walking back towards the cabin.

“You like going into the garage? So does daddy.”

Maybe one day he’d have a proper workshop again, like before, and maybe they would spend days or most likely nights there, like he and Pete used to do. Imagining what Morgan would be like, wondering who she would grow up to be, were the only moments Tony looked forward to the future instead of wanting to hit a pause button and freeze time.

He had an aching, dreadful feeling that time raced towards something he wouldn’t walk away from. That his time may stop, but the world would march on without him.

His feelings were echoed by Buddy, who out of nowhere, stuck his head up in the air and barked. Not his usual happy bark. A strange bark that was like a mix between a howl and growl. He barked, and barked, and kept barking, causing Tony to stop in his tracks and Morgan to shift around in his arm.

“Something’s wrong with Buddy, dad.”

Tony turned at the sound of gravel crunching under tires and saw the source of Buddy’s unrest. A car full of Avengers, pulling up and parking in his driveway.

Buddy bolted towards the car, barking, and as Steve Rogers opened his door and stepped outside, growled. His head was bowed low to the ground, like he was about to attack, while Steve, and now Nat and the ant-guy – Tony couldn’t remember his real name – stared at him.

“Are you going to call off the guard dog?” asked Steve.

Buddy growled louder and moved towards Steve.

“Easy boy,” said Tony.

As much fun as it’d be to see Buddy giving Steve a good bite on the ankle, he didn’t need Steve bleeding all over his yard.

Hesitantly, Buddy straightened out, and circled back to stand with Tony and Morgan, but planted himself between them, creating a barrier between the Avengers and Tony as they stared each other down.

*

They were tripping.

Nat and Steve and Scott sat on his porch and talked to him about time travel, while Buddy sat at his feet and occasionally groaned, letting them all know even the dog thought their ideas were ridiculous.

Tony could barely believe what he was hearing. The only part that didn’t take him off guard was that the first time the Avengers dropped by it was about business. That part was predictable. Nonsense about time travel wasn’t.

He listened, until he couldn’t anymore and until Morgan came out to rescue him.

He offered them dinner, if they could save him the speeches about time travel and duty, as he walked back inside his home with Morgan in his arms. Buddy followed him back inside, giving the Avengers one last angry bark as the door swung shut behind them.

*

Then Tony was tripping.

He was spraying himself in the face with the dish rinser, distracted by his own theories about time travel, distracted by a tiny spark of hope that was kindling in his chest. Hope that he would get to see Peter Parker smile again.

That he would get to hear his laugh.

That 3 AM phone calls would return, where Tony would shout at Peter for being an idiot and getting himself stabbed.

Or maybe, he’d wake up not to a phone call, but to a meme he didn’t really understand. He’d laugh and show Pepper anyway.

He took the picture of him and Pete holding the Stark Industries picture off the shelf, the one Buddy used to carry around the house and show anyone who would pay attention and dried it off with a towel. It stabbed at him the same way it always did, and when he put it back and turned, he saw Buddy standing in the doorway, staring at him.

Buddy’s eyes stabbed at him, too.

And they continued to stab him, even as Tony left the kitchen and walked into a sitting room he’d turned into a makeshift lab. He powered on his tech to run some numbers, and Buddy darted out of the room, only to return seconds later with his tail wagging and his tennis ball in his mouth.

“Not now, boy,” Tony told him. “Can’t you see the old man is trying to work?”

Buddy dropped the ball and it bounced against the floor. He barked, loud and clear, and somehow, Tony knew he was being called out. That Buddy knew what he was up to, and that he wasn’t going to allow it.

“Don’t be like that. It’s a fool’s mission, anyway. Time travel is impossible.”

And yet, there he was, trying to work through it.

Buddy barked again.

Tony pretended he didn’t hear him. He tore his eyes away from his dog, but before he could get started, Buddy was under the table, tugging at his pant leg, trying to drag him away from his work.

With a sigh, Tony knelt down to the floor and messaged Buddy’s ears, realizing that the only way he’d get to work in peace was if he tricked Buddy into going into Morgan’s room and locked him in.

He didn’t feel great about it, felt even worse as he softly shut the door and heard Buddy’s quiet, sad whine, but he had to do it.

Time travel wouldn’t solve itself, and Tony’s mind wouldn’t stop racing with the possibilities unless he tried and failed.

*

“Shit.”

“Shit,” repeated Morgan.

Tony’s finger flew in front of his lips as he turned to his side and saw Morgan sitting on the staircase watching him, with her arm over Buddy, who sat at her side.

“No. We don’t say that word. That’s mommy’s word. She coined it.”

“What are you doing up?”

“I had some important shit going on in here, what do you think?”

Morgan tilted her head and gave him a quizzical look. Tony tried to take a mental picture. To remember that look forever, and probably, he would. He had a gut-wrenching theory his forever wasn’t as long as he wanted it to be.

“No, I – I had something on my mind.”

“So… it’s not because you’re scared?”

“Scared? No – why would daddy be scared?”

Morgan looked down at Buddy and ran her fingers through his fur. “Buddy’s scared because you’re scared. Animals feel our emotions. Mommy read it to me from a book.”

Tony stared back at his daughter and wondered what kind of books, exactly, Pepper was reading to her. She was too smart, too perceptive, for her own good. Just like Buddy, the dog who sometimes and always knew and understood more than he should.

If one day Tony was gone, if he had to leave them, like he always feared that he would, at least they had each other. Tony hoped that would be enough.

“Was it juice pops?”

“Huh?”

“On your mind.”

“You know, it was,” said Tony, standing up from his chair and stretching out his hand, his fingers intertwining with Morgan’s tiny ones. “That’s extortion.”

Buddy padded along after them as they headed towards the kitchen, giving Tony his mournful and knowing eyes while Tony searched the freezer for the beloved popsicles. He unwrapped one for Morgan, and for Buddy, placing his in the dog bowl on the floor after the dog refused to take it out of his hand.  

The next morning, there was a wooden stick and a puddle of juice sitting in Buddy’s bowl.

*

Before Tony left for the time heist, he said goodbye to his family.

He hugged and kissed Pepper, never wanting to let her go. Their goodbye was silent. No words needed to be exchanged. She knew there was a chance he wouldn’t be coming back, so Tony didn’t have to explain or lie. They just breathed, together, maybe, for the last time.

There was still hope in her eyes, though, and Tony didn’t like it, didn’t want her to be crushed. He supposed it wasn’t illogical hope.

Tony had always come back before.

His goodbye to Morgan was the same as if he were going out for a quick store run. He told her he loved. He kissed her cheek and pulled her up into his arms for a hug, that lasted so long she started to squirm out of his arms. When he put her down, she replied that she loved him too, and went back to playing with her monster trucks.

Tony wondered if he’d be there to take her to get her first car, if he’d be there to teach her how to drive.

He said goodbye to Buddy last.

He kneeled in the grass, outside in the front yard, and looked into Buddy’s mysteriously familiar brown eyes.

“Listen buddy,” he said. “I know you don’t like what I’m doing, but this – this might bring Peter back. Him and so many others. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to see Pete again?”

Buddy offered him a sad whine, and it made Tony wonder if there was anyone else Buddy missed. Any other humans that would’ve been kind to a stray.

“I’m gonna do whatever it takes, even if it means – even if it means I don’t make it back.”

Buddy whined-growled at him.

“Don’t give me that,” said Tony. “You’d do the same thing, if you got the chance, which is why I need you to promise me you’ll take care of my girls if I don’t come back.”

Buddy was silent for a long time, then sealed his promise by placing a paw on Tony’s knee and giving a loud, clear bark that could only be mean an agreement.

“I knew I could count on you.”

Tony forced a smile as he gave his dog one last pet, as he lost control of his better judgement and wrapped both his arms around Buddy and gave him a full-out hug. Eventually he had to force himself up and away and into his car.

When he looked in his rearview mirror on his way out, Buddy was still sitting in the same spot in the grass, watching as Tony drove away from his wife, his daughter, his dog. His perfect life, that he always kind of knew would come to end before he was ready.

*

Something was wrong.

Buddy could sense it in his heart.

More than that, he heard it, in the floorboards as Pepper paced from room to room, as she tried to make her voice sound normal whenever she spoke to Morgan, but there were cracks in it. Buddy heard them.

He heard a lot of things humans couldn’t hear.

When he was a human and had a different name – although he couldn’t always remember what that other name was – it was same. He was different then, too, had sharper senses than most.

But now his senses were dulling. They were weaker.

He was getting weaker.

Buddy stood up from where he laid by the fireplace and bolted through the doggy door. He didn’t stop running until he was in the shed, with just Gerald, where Pepper and Morgan couldn’t see what was about to happen to him.

He was fading out. He was disappearing, and he knew keeping the promise he made to Tony meant not letting Pepper or Morgan see him turn back into dust.

The last thing he heard with dog ears was Gerald snorting.

The he was dust blowing across the atmosphere, that pieced back together on a planet far from home.

The first thing he heard with human ears, in five years, was Doctor Strange.

Peter’s eyes snapped open as the man shook his shoulder. He sat up slowly, and looked at his arms and legs, covered with Iron Spider armor and not fur. It was like waking up from a dream that had been real.

“Hurry up,” Doctor Strange told him, yanking him to his feet by his arm. “They need you.”

*

Chaos erupted around him, as aliens and avengers fought.

Peter bounced around the battlefield, ducking and dodging and getting a few good hints in, but mostly, searching for Mr. Stark. That took most his concentration, most his energy, and when he finally did spot Iron Man, he was on the ground.

He flung himself over and helped Mr. Stark out from a pile of rubble he’d fallen in. Seeing him there, looking at him, at eye-level while standing with just two legs, and knowing he’d spent the last five years grieving him, Peter just wanted to explain.

Everything. How he was a dog. How Morgan was great, and how she deserved to grow up with a father. With Mr. Stark.

“Holy cow, Mr. Stark, you will not believe-“ started Peter, but he was cut off by Mr. Stark’s slow march forwards, by his arms surrounding him, knocking the air out of him.

Peter let it happen. He let Mr. Stark hold him, then kiss him on the cheek, then hold him some more, as the blasts and battle cries kept playing around them. Peter let out a breath, felt his body relax. He put his head into Mr. Stark’s shoulder.

“Thanks for all the cheeseburgers, Mr. Stark.”

“What?”

A blast from a stray laser beam landed dangerously close and broke them apart.

Worry flashed across Mr. Stark’s eyes. Probably, Peter thought, he was realizing that because he had Peter back, he could lose him a second time. Peter was worried about similar things, although he felt his worry was more justified.

He remembered Tony’s goodbye speech. He remembered the promise he made as Buddy, to be there for Pepper and Morgan, if something happened to Tony.

“Be safe,” Mr. Stark told him with a nod.

“You too,” said Peter, back at him,

He nodded at him before rejoining the fight, but Peter knew it was a lie. Mr. Stark was still willing to do whatever it took to keep Thanos from wiping out the universe, even if it meant he didn’t survive, and when the gauntlet ended up in Peter’s hands, somehow, he knew two things.

Peter knew he had to keep the stones away from Thanos, but he absolutely knew had to keep them away from Mr. Stark, too. Whatever it took.

[chilly-me-softly]

Safe • Harry Winks

How ya gonna love  How ya gonna feel  How you gonna live your life like the dream you have is real

And If you lost your way  I will keep you safe  We'll open up all the world inside  I see it come alive tonight  I will keep you safe

He tries every time to imagine the lives of the people he met while tasting his coffee at that table. Their names, age, job, if they had a family, their dreams. Because his dream came true, he was a professional footballer and was quite satisfied with his life, and generally wants the best for people. And sometimes he even wondered if one of those same people he had studied had somehow done the same to him. If he had the face of a footballer.

His mother always told him not to stare at people, that it was rude. But he couldn't help it, thinking about others somehow relaxed him. And then most of the times his mother took him around with her, he got bored and so he had to find something alternative to do.

So when he needed to pull the plug or felt he was in a particular stressful period, he would go into that cafe and think about the possible lives of the others. Sometimes he had even met the same people and his mind had perfectly remembered what he had thought the previous time, allowing him to continue the story.

And in the last period there was one particular person who had caught his attention. A girl, twenty-ish, who always sat at the same table on the back with a pile of paper and a computer in front of her. He doesn't know if it was the time, but he'd been seeing her in there for days and he was becoming more and more convinced that the girl was sleeping at that table too.

Curly hair gathered in a tail or in a braid or in a messy bun. Every day a different hairstyle that always showed off the black headphones she was wearing to complete the description. But the thing that struck him most about her, what made him go beyond pure curiosity was her face. In his life he had seen so few of them and it was what had prompted him to ask more about her, to dwell on her.

Over time he understood that music most likely helped her to concentrate, the words that follow a melody make less noise than those screams mixed with laughter or meaningless phrases. And the project she was working on had to be one of the important ones, a degree thesis or a corporate deadline, one of those that lead you to spend endless days on it. Days and nights. But it seemed as if she was trying to keep herself busy, that task probably the last of her thoughts. Every now and then she took a break checking her watch or taking a sip of the drink she had had taken, even that different day by day, from the maid to whom she had smiled. But it was just a smile of courtesy, no desire to do that gesture.

**

Two days later she is there again, computer and sheets always in front of her but she seems to be with her head somewhere else. She continues to play with the pen she has in her hands and often her eyes seem unfocused. Their eyes have also met for a brief second, he smiles at her and the corners of her mouth rise slightly. Then she looks down and keeps scribbling on the paper in front of her.

She has dark circles under her eyes and he doesn't want to admit it, but that unknown one is just getting into his head. He can't stop thinking about that sad look she has on her face, what she might be facing so hard in her life. This time he can't be detached and he really doesn't understand why. He even thought of the worst scenarios in his head, a relative in the hospital or the end of a relationship or even a story of abuse, but he always chased away these thoughts as if somehow just thinking about them could make them happen. He can no longer distinguish reality from fantasy and knows that he will have to do something as soon as possible or he’ll go completely mad.

**

He was away for three days for an away game and inside him there was always this senseless desire to go home to be able to step in that cafe. Too much desire to see if something had changed in her life, if she had at least improved a little and if she had managed to smile. But when he goes back that day, she's not there. And maybe it’s the first time in his life that he cares about someone like that, about a complete stranger especially. And he heads to the counter to ask for information but when he gets there he sighs and simply orders a coffee. Curses himself mentally, what would he ask of a girl of whom he knows nothing but the completely invented things that he made up?

He drinks that dark liquid at her table, eyes pointed at the door with the hope of seeing her enter at any moment. Which doesn't happen.

**

He's there again, but he's not alone. Eric and Dele wanted to stop on their way home and he didn't do anything to stop them, despite imposed to himself to calm down with that story and it had been almost a week since he didn’t come in there. And there she is, of course.

Her face is more relaxed. She still looks sad, but something tells him she has one less thing to worry about. She isn’t wearing headphones, the computer is closed in front of her and she is drinking a cup of what he thinks is hot tea. Every now and then she looks at the phone like she's waiting for a phone call, maybe something that could change her life and suddenly he feels a sharp pain to his right leg.

“Oi! Are you stupid?" he says to the friend in front of him, who kicked him.

“You're staring at her. It's not nice" he comments, and for a moment it reminds him of his mother. Only she didn't leave him with a sore leg.

“Go and talk to her" Eric shrugs and he opens his eyes wide shaking his head vigorously, “No way”

“Oh Winksy don't tell me you're scared" grins Dele and then hid behind his ceramic cup.

He shakes his head and sighs. He had even planned to leave a note in her place as in the movies, but talking to her like any other guys may do hadn't crossed his mind. Or maybe it did, he had also fantasized about that but the thought had always ended up in a corner of his mind. Too scared or worried about being tagged as weird or worse, to at least try.

“Go talk to her" Eric repeats, this time in a softer tone of voice. Like he's giving advice to his own brother. And he doesn't know how but he gets up, sighs and approaches her. “May I sit?”

Part 2

[writerman]

hi my man i got a prompt request for u if thats ok :) : modern au thranduil is gay and cant drive also he cant do math,,, we need stupid twink representation ;))))))

Thank you for this I need to write something light-hearted after my last prompt! I just want to let you know that I also cannot do maths and had to google the answer to this insanely easy maths problem. Also I can’t drive… because I don’t have a license.

So yah… read into that what you will!

This accidentally ended up being 2k+ words when it was meant to be shorter. Whoops!

---------

Tires screech followed by a crunch of metal colliding with metal.

A beat of silence before Bard cursed out loud from inside his car.

He'd been rear-ended and it sounded pretty bad, felt it too from the whiplash he was now suffering from being shoved forward by the impact.

Closing his eyes for a moment, Bard took a deep breath before removing his seat belt and climbing out of the car to speak with the other motorist.

Time slowed down for a moment as the most beautiful tall blond creature stepped out of their silver BMW and headed towards Bard looking almost sheepish at the damage to the rear bumper and tail lights.

Don't forgive him just because he's hot! Bard, don't forgive him just because he's hot. Just… don't do it. Boy, don't do it! His brain seemed to have sense but the brunet couldn't trust his mouth so remained silent as the blond approached still looking entirely horrified that he had caused such an incident.

"I'm so sorry…" The blond began, he was well-spoken and seemed genuine in his apology, though Bard wasn't sure he was taking in anything he said.

Clearing his throat Bard looked between his car and the others and sighed as though reluctant to say what he was going to propose to the other.

"I wasn't paying attention at all, and yes, I am well aware that I'm obviously a bad driver for that sole reason, but if you'd be so kind as to hear me out on this," He flipped his long blond hair over his shoulder as he spoke and Bard felt any hope for the situation slowly deflate and dissolve, he was just too in awe of the creature stood before him in a form-fitting grey suit and lavender shirt.... "Let's forget insurance companies and let me pay you for the damage outside of all that legal stuff, yes?"

Was he one of those millionaires that didn't seem bothered by any bill under 10,000?!

It was then that Bard realised the blond probably didn't have insurance. Out of frustration he rubbed at his brow his eyes closed hoping some semblance of sense could be gleaned from the man before him.

Though, really keeping the insurance companies out of this wasn't a bad idea. It could work out assuming this man gave him legitimate contact details.

"My name is Thranduil by the way. Let me… give you my number." He fumbled in his jacket pocket for something before eventually pulling out a phone, Bard followed suit and did the same, they exchanged contact info and Bard confirmed that once he had a price for the repairs he would call or text the blond.

He received a bright smile at this before Thranduil demurely said, "You know, if we hadn't met in such embarrassing circumstances I would have asked you out for a drink."

For a split second Bard was catapulted into a state of shock and he very nearly suggested they should do so anyway but he remembered he was meant to be picking the kids up from his ex-wife's apartment and all his sense and logic came flooding back.

You can't forgive him because he's hot, Bard! This is your brain speaking and you should really REALLY listen.

That was the end of that and Bard dismissed what Thranduil had said with an uneasy laugh before they parted ways.

When he finally made it to Mari's apartment he had to take a seat and explain what happened, and he was completely honest about it all. Even when he considered letting the handsome stranger take him out.

"Oh wow, you've had quite the afternoon then. Wish hot guys would crash into the back of me… wait… no, but still as Sigrid would say 'Big Mood'.

No idea if I'm even using that right." She dismissed her own words by giving a lacklustre flourish of her free hand, the other holding a take out coffee cup.

"He sounds like your type Bard, ya know, hot... and it wouldn't kill you to get out there and date even if he IS a dangerous driver. No one is perfect." Mari shrugged before taking a sip of her coffee. She seemed more understanding of the situation than he but it wasn't like her car had been banged up.

"Yeah… probably not gonna happen. He likely wanted to try and get out of paying for my car. Uh... where are the kids?"

"Not everyone is a skeevy loser trying to rob you, Bard. Kids are still at their swimming class, Jack will be home with them soon." Jack was Mari's husband, they met in Seattle while Mari was away on business, he was an all-round great guy and loved the kids. Bard had no problems with him. They’d shared a few beers and sometimes they talked sports, though Bard generally didn't have much to say on college football because they were in England and Jack hadn't realised that most people didn't care about American sports all that much.

"I suppose I'll hang around until they're back then. Oh… actually, I'll take the car to the garage and see if I can get a quote on how much the repairs will be."

Mari waved him off and he left without another word.

All in all the repairs wouldn't cost all that much. The bumper was heavily scratched and dented but some buffing and a paint job would fix that and the lights were easily replaced. It wouldn't be too expensive and Bard wondered if he should just forget about asking Thranduil to pay for it.

Instantly his brain whirred into gear.

Don't forgive him because he's hot!!!! He did this so he should pay! Don't let the hot man win!

Pulling out his phone Bard composed a text explaining the price of the repairs and that he'd be happy if he just gave him 60% of the bill.

Right away he received a reply.

[Guy That Wrecked My Car] No problem. But what is 60% of £300?

[Guy That Wrecked My Car] It's ok I'll Google it or something.

He's a dumbass that can't drive and can't do math… and, dammit, you think he's hot, Bard. Resist asking him out. RESIST.

[Guy That Wrecked My Car] Maths is so hard. I'm a busy man I don't have time to do this. Can't I just pay the whole £300 and you can buy me a drink or something and we can call it even?

For awhile Bard just blinked down at his phone, this man was clearly adamant in trying to take him out. Still, he knew he had to refuse…

Didn't he?

The phone began to ring and in his surprise Bard almost dropped the device, regaining his grip on it he answered the phone to hear the smooth voice of Thranduil floating through the speaker.

"Didn't you receive my message?"

"Yeah, sure did."

"Well?"

"Just pay me £180 and we're fine."

"What an odd figure to pull out of thin air." Came the annoyed response, Bard nearly hung up.

"Ah, sure, don't know why I even said that." Bard's reply drier than the desert but it went right over Thranduil's head who just huffed again down the phone.

"Well, let's meet up and I'll pay you. I assume cash is alright?"

Man, he sounded like a damn snob on the phone, much less apologetic than earlier and not as peppy as he was in his texts.

Something didn't seem right but Bard didn't really know this man well enough to confirm why so he shrugged it off and agreed on a time and gave him the address of the garage before disconnecting the call.

Weird guy…

When Thranduil showed up he was in an entirely different car than the one involved in the crash, and it took Bard a moment to realise, that in his haste to fix his own car, he hadn’t checked if the blond was ok or if his car had survived.

As he was approached by the beauty it was Bard’s turn to offer a slightly apologetic smile in greeting but it only caused the blond’s brows to knit together in confusion at the sudden tender gesture.

“I didn’t get to ask if you were alright earlier, you might have crashed into me but you still could have been injured on impact… I’m sorry that I didn’t check you or your car.” There was silence between them and for a second Bard believed that his statement may have been completely ignored until a dark pink blush bloomed over Thranduil’s cheeks and he looked away for a moment mumbling that he was fine and there was nothing to worry about.

“See, you say that but you’re in a different car and maybe you’re good at hiding your pain. I would feel better if you absolutely told me the truth. Are you ok?” He tried to offer what he believed to be a gentle smile as Thranduil looked back to him.

“My car was scratched but it remains in one piece and only requires paint to fix it. I am in good health, nothing hurt but my pride… I suppose.”

“Can’t handle crashing into someone and having to deal with it like an adult?” Bard joked he had hoped to coax a smile out of the blond but so far he remained stoic and he wondered if Thranduil had gotten into some trouble for the crash or was just having a really bad day that continued after their incident.

Either way, it didn’t sit well with Bard and he had no idea why.

It shouldn’t really matter to him if Thranduil was in good spirits or not, he was only really there to pay for the damage he had caused by being reckless while driving, whatever he had been doing to cause him to crash into a parked car… it must have been bloody well interesting.

“Strangely, not the reason for my bruised ego, I assure you.”

“It really should be why you’re so embarrassed, to be honest,” Bard muttered quietly as he accepted the cash and scowled when he counted out £300 rather than the agreed 60%- though, truthfully, Thranduil had not agreed to anything but to pay him.

“Do you really not know what 60% of £300 is?” He was counting the bills as he spoke but when he looked up he saw a faint blush creeping over the blond’s pale skin again and he guessed that maths really wasn’t this man’s strong point.

“Calculators were invented for a reason, you know.” Was all Thranduil said and Bard bit back a chuckle though he couldn’t quite hide his smile. Regardless of the way he spoke this man was quite adorable and he had to admit to his credit Thranduil did show up and pay the full amount, most people would have given fake details.

“You really don’t have to pay the full thing.”

“Let me do this, it’s bad enough you won’t let me take you out!” The blond fumed almost pouting like a petulant child over the fact he couldn’t persuade Bard to go out for a drink.

In his defence, he barely knew the guy but then again, getting a drink with him would mean talking and he would get to know him if they met up again. Did- did Thranduil was to take him out on a date that badly?

It wasn’t like Bard hadn’t been struggling to resist asking him out, he had been rendered speechless the second he saw him and even though they had spent a measly 15 minutes together in their entire lives… he did find him sweet.

Perhaps there would be no harm in grabbing coffee with him or a drink maybe even dinner?

Offering Thranduil a lopsided grin he threw his hands up as a gesture of ‘what the hell!’.

“Sure, let’s go out sometime. Coffee, dinner, whatever you want. You have my number let’s talk soon.” With that, he turned on his heel and headed back to the garage leaving a dazed Thranduil stood by his car brimming with excitement.

Mari was probably right.

Not everyone is a skeevy loser trying to rob you.

Sometimes they’re beautiful creatures who can’t drive and can’t do math who want to date you…

[a-closet-emo]

Phanniemay 2019 Day 5: Second Gen

Word Count: 2423

Genre: Angst

Warning: slight mentions of dissection but nothing graphic.

A/N: Ok so I know that Phanniemay is over and this phic is long overdue. But, I just want to finish the prompts, no matter how long it takes. So here is probably the longest thing I’ve ever written. Sorry it took me so long. I know it isn’t much, but I’m working on getting better at this kind of thing.

Maddie woke to the sound of cement cracking and a bad pun. That could only mean one thing: a ghost fight that involved Phantom. Again.

She looked at the clock. 3:05 am. Maddie sighed. Of course, since ghosts don’t sleep they’ll fight at any time they want to. She stole a glance at Jack. The big figure next to her was sleeping soundly, snoring through all the chaotic noises and witty banter outside. She pecked him on the cheek.

“Sweetie, what’s the commotion? Are the ghosts trying to steal my fudge?” he murmured, still only half awake.

“No, Jack, just some cats fighting in the street. I’m just going to get some water. Don’t—“

She was interrupted by his loud snores.

She smiled in the dark.

She quietly got out of bed, quickly putting on her HAZMAT suit. Her husband was sweet and he meant well, but he wasn’t exactly stealthy. And the orange suit certainly did not help. If she moved fast enough, Maddie could get to the fight in time to possibly capture the ghosts.

Maddie tiptoed past Jazz’s and Danny’s rooms. She was rather surprised that Jazz was still asleep. Her daughter had been getting quite good at ghost hunting as of late. But this was for the better. No need to wake them up and alarm them.

Despite her recent interest in the family business, Jazz was still a psychologist. She would be mad at Maddie for bothering with ghosts at this hour. She would go on a tangent about how ghosts took up too much of their time and how she and jack,”Have an obsession, just as much as the ghosts do!” Maddie shook her head. Jazz may be smart as a whip, but ghosts were Maddie’s field of expertise.

Danny…...Maddie didn’t know exactly how he’d react. The boy seemed to be so afraid of ghosts nowadays. Which was so unlike him. Then again, he’d been so distant lately, Maddie wasn’t so sure what was “like him” anymore. She sighed. She worried about her son. A lot. But it’s not like she could force him into telling her what’s been going on. She didn’t need Jazz to know that that was a very bad idea. So all she could do was wait, and hope that soon he’d start talking to her again.

In the basement, she decided to take the Fenton Finder™️, the Fenton Hand Blaster™️, and the Jack o’ Nine Tails™️. All patented and licensed as per the regulations of that year.

All stocked up, she went out into the night.

~~~

When Maddie had left her house some minutes earlier, the neighbors hadn’t made too much of a fuss over the fight. After all, ghosts and their subsequent fights were as common as rain nowadays.

She followed the trail of property destruction to its end. Phantom probably won this one. Like he always did. She took out her Fenton Finder(™️) and input Phantom’s ecto-signature.

As the ghost tracker processed the information, Maddie looked around. Then she noticed another trail. A trail of ectoplasm leading to the park. That meant….that one of the ghosts was injured. This was a golden opportunity. An injured ghost would be much easier to capture and subdue.

She turned her device off, it was too loud anyway, and let the drops and puddles of ectoplasm lead her to her prey.

~~~~

There he was, floating in the middle of a clearing surrounded by birch trees in the park. By the light of the full moon, she could tell that he was still bleeding. A Fenton Thermos(™️) lay beside him on the grass.

Maddie silently inched her way to a bush close enough to his little sanctuary, careful not to step on any stray twigs and cause a snapping sound. She kept her eyes on him, and her ears open to any indication that he was aware of her presence.

The ghost slowly lowered himself to the ground, wincing from his wounds. He was muttering to himself and Maddie only caught a few words.

“Skulker….new gadgets…”

Maddie readied her Jack O’Nine Tails. The infamous ghost boy was only a few meters away from her. She decided it was best to stun him with the weapon first, (in case he wasn’t as vulnerable as he looked at the moment) and capture him in his own (stolen) Thermos after.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” the specter screamed, and Maddie flinched, thinking it was directed at her. But no, she had not been discovered. The ghost had just managed to hurt himself by accident.

This one was so strange. Of all the ghosts in and outside of Amity Park, this Phantom (as he likes to be called) was the most powerful, the most dangerous, and yet the townspeople adored him.

“Freakin Vlad Masters. I’m gonna fricking kill him!” he said to the moon as Maddie crouched in the bushes. She was aghast. He added a little something else, more to himself, that Maddie didn’t quite catch. But that was of little to no importance.

She honestly didn’t see why Jack liked Vlad so much. She liked him, sure. And if she was being honest with herself, she only tolerated Vlad because of how much Jack liked him and because she didn’t want to completely cut him off. The three of them were close in college after all and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But he was a bit of a creep, and she just didn’t like the way he acted around her and her family sometimes. He gave her bad vibes. But that didn’t mean that Vlad deserved to die.

How could the people of Amity Park treat Phantom like such a hero? He was a ghost and all ghosts were evil. That should be common knowledge at this point. Here he was, saying that he wanted to kill their mayor. Not only that, Phantom’s fights with the other ghosts cause so much property damage and so many injuries. He’s brainwashed almost the entire town into thinking he’s the “good guy”, the “hero”. But ghosts are nothing but evil.

Maddie cocked her Jack O’Nine Tails.

Phantom turned around, startled, but she could see he was still dazed.

She fired.

The nine long arms of the weapon whipped around Phantom and tied him up, while the sharp ends dug into his flesh and started zapping him.

After a few seconds of agonized screaming, Phantom was out cold. Although, that figure of speech was a tad redundant considering how ghosts (being dead) were already cold.

Maddie walked over quickly and picked up the stolen Fenton Thermos(™). She sucked him into it and sat down on the grass, wondering at what she had just done.

She did it. She finally captured Phantom! She turned the thermos around in her hands, smiling. She was almost giddy with happiness. Phantom was such a...different ghost. Here she actually had the chance to examine him and find out what made him so unique.

There was no time to lose then. Even though Amity Park was quite used to all sorts of noises in the night, Maddie knew it was best to get this specter home before one of his many human fans or few ghostly allies realized what had happened and went after her.

She gathered her things and did her best to quietly run home.

~~~

By the time she had gotten home, all the lights in Maddie’s neighborhood had turned off. She checked the time; it was only 4 am. Seems like the few people who had been curious enough to get out of bed to see the fight earlier where now sleeping once more.

After a few minutes dealing with a minor problem involving only getting Phantom (without getting the other ghost, Skulker) (although she planned on doing so soon) out of the thermos, she finally had him on her examining table.

She quickly strapped him to the table and activated the anti-ghost locks. They locked a ghost in place. Once turned on, a ghost caught in them would be “locked” in their current form and also in place.These were their heavy duty ones. With those turned on, even a strong ghost like Phantom wouldn’t be able to use their powers.

~~~

While preparing her equipment, Maddie wondered if she should wake Jack for this. He would love this. But she didn’t want to turn her back on Phantom. There were many reasons as to why he was the strongest ghost in Amity Park, and the strongest ghost they had ever fought. What if he suddenly came to while she was busy trying to get Jack to wake up? While she trusted her and Jack’s inventions, she didn’t want to take any chances. Who knows when she’ll have an opportunity like this ever again? She sighed. She’d just have to make it up to him in the morning with fudge. A lot of fudge.

She brought her tray of dissecting equipment over to the examining table. Phantom was slowly waking up. Maddie wondered if she should get some anesthesia. No, there’s no need for that. It would be good to be able to talk to the ghost while the procedure was underway. Aside from the dissection itself, talking to Phantom might help her get some answers to questions she’s been so frustrated by. And maybe she was a bit mad at Phantom for always managing to escape her.

As she prepared her things, she flicked her eyes over his dormant form.

He looked so peaceful, almost as if he were asleep. It was probably the fluorescent lights contrasting with his own eerie glow that somehow made Phantom seem different. He almost looked like Danny in that moment. Seeing the way his white hair was strewn all over his head, she sighed. He needed a haircut, just like Danny. She almost reached out and ruffled his hair, like how she did sometimes with her son, no matter how much it embarrassed him.

She shook her head and pulled her hand back. This wasn’t the time or place to be a mother. Right now, she was a scientist. Dr. Madeline Fenton was in.

She knew Phantom was special somehow. He managed to trick almost everyone, even her own kids, into thinking that he’s good. With that he gets away with most anything. All the property destruction, the injuries, and the chaos. No one minds because he “does it to save the town”.

Another thing about this specter was that he was probably the most complicated one in Amity park. He was the one that resembled humans the most. He seemed to be the only one capable of copying complex human emotions so well. Maybe that was why he was so popular.

The ghost seemed to finally understand the situation he was in.

“Maddie, wait, you don’t understand,” he said as he tried to activate his powers. To no avail. He started to panic a bit. “You don’t want to do this-”

“And why not? Why wouldn’t a scientist like myself want to continue my research?” she asked, calmly.

“Because you can’t! I’m--’

“Can’t I? You’re not exactly in a position to be making demands, Phantom.”

She could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead and neck. Interesting. He was the most human ghost she and Jack had ever encountered. This dissection should answer their questions as to why. She moved toward him, scalpel in hand.

“WAIT!”

Maddie cringed. He was so loud. He’d wake up Jack and the kids. He’d wake up the entire neighborhood.

But that wasn’t the only thing that had bothered her. His voice had cracked, which was no surprise since he must have died before puberty ended, but why she was suddenly reminded of her son in that moment was disconcerting. Phantom reminded her of when Danny was still little and would get so frustrated when she wasn’t paying attention to him. It also reminded her of her Danny now, the one who was still figuring out puberty.

“Be quiet!” she hissed. “You’ll wake my children.”

He spoke louder. “OH I’M SORRY I SURE DON’T WANT TO WAKE UP ANYBODY. CERTAINLY NOT ANYONE NAMED JAZ—”

The gag Maddie had quickly gotten was just right. The muffled sounds of him trying his hardest to say something were much better than his inhumanly loud shouting. The quiet also helped her to clear her thoughts. She didn’t need to be thinking about Danny now, not when she knew that this was such a monumental scientific moment.

She picked up her scalpel once more.

Phantom fought against his restraints. Shrieking. His muffled shouts were now accompanied by tears.

He—It, she corrected herself—was begging her now.

Maddie hesitated for a second. Only a second.

The ghost of course was only copying humans.

Ghosts can’t cry. Ghosts can’t feel anything other than anger or hate. They completely lacked the ability to feel empathy. Ghosts were mere imprints of the good, caring human beings they used to be. It was all just a ploy. It was trying to trick her into setting it free.

It was trying to say something. No doubt something to stall her or something it’d fabricate to get her to stop.

She held her tool tightly and started the dissection. She ignored the eerily human-like cries of the specter and carried on with her work. It was all for research. She needed to find out what made this one so different. Why this ghost was the most human. How it could copy humans so convincingly. For a world without ghosts. A better world. She thought about her children sleeping upstairs. It was so the next generation could lead safer lives. For her—

“MOM, PLEASE.”

The ghost in all its struggling somehow managed to remove the gag from its mouth. Maddie knew she should’ve made it tighter. She chose to ignore its choice of words. You can’t trust anything a ghost says after all.

“STOP.”

Despite her strong determination to just get on with the procedure, she found herself staring at her subject.

It was looking up at her with pleading eyes filled with tears. Those green eyes that so reminded her of her son’s blue ones. It looked so vulnerable in that moment, so...human. She almost obeyed the command to stop from the specter she held captive.

But no, she thought as she tightened its gag. It was all for her children after all. For Jazz. For Danny.

For the second generation.

[dinoswrites]

Clothed in Light || Chapter 6: Corona

Arranged Marriage AU. Asra/Apprentice/Muriel. Ongoing.

| Previous | Masterpost | Next |

Content Warnings at the bottom of the post.

—

Kai stays with Muriel for four days before he’s well enough for her to return to her shop.

The whole first day she’s pretty sure he won’t even remember. After she cleans his wound he sleeps in fits and starts, until the yarrow starts to work and his fever breaks, sometime in the blackest hour of the night. She watches him sleep while she sits on the floor, her weak magelight catching in the lines of sweat that have run down his brow, a bowl of water on the floor beside her and the lepidolite pendant in her hand.

She thinks of Asra, over and over, clutching it so hard her knuckles are white. I want to speak to you. I want to speak to you. Please.

The bowl of water only shows her own reflection.

By the fourth day, Muriel is lucid. When there is a break in the rain, he mumbles something about checking on his chickens before going outside. As she packs up her belongings, and some shirts Muriel needs mended, she hears him chopping wood—even though she had explicitly told him not to strain himself. But she can only shake her head, wrap herself in her shawl, and throw her bag over her shoulder.

She hesitates in the doorway when she sees him. He’s shirtless now. The shirt he’d worn—the last one without any holes in it—had been so soaked through with his own blood that she had just burned the damn thing. She can see the long, jagged scar running across his side, pink and new against his skin. She couldn’t help the scar—he’d gone too long without help that she suspects even Aisha’s healing spells couldn’t have avoided it.

Muriel claims he doesn’t remember what made it, and she doesn’t know enough about healing to even guess. She doesn’t like it—she’s spent the last few days thinking of the oils she makes to reduce stretch marks for a few of her customers, and wondering if her aunt had anything written down about scars, and how to treat them.

As she stares at it now, at how it pulls at his skin when he moves, she can only think of finding him, curled up next to his weak fire, Inanna trying to keep him warm…

He turns, suddenly, and she hurriedly looks up at his face. He’s reaching up to wipe the sweat from his brow, his breathing heavy after only splitting a few logs. But he doesn’t look dizzy, she thinks, even as her gaze drops to his lips—slightly parted, as he catches his breath.

A thought occurs to her, rogue and unbidden—she knows exactly how they feel against hers.

Muriel’s brow furrows.

Her face grows warm, and she busies herself with the strap of her bag. “I’ll mend your shirts for you,” she blurts, “though I think you’ll need new ones soon.”

It takes him a moment to respond. “Don’t bother. They’ll just rip again.”

“You need to wear a shirt, Muriel.”

He ignores her. She hears him grunt, and when she glances up he’s bending down to set another log for chopping.

“I’ll tell Asra you’re feeling better.”

He lets out a short breath.

She wrings her hands together. She can’t stop looking at his lips.

“Do you. Um.”

He does not look at her. He just raises the axe over his head, and cleaves the log in two. “What?”

She bites her lip. “Nothing. I’ll—I’ll bring you something for that scar tomorrow. Okay?”

Muriel looks like he’s about to say something. But he glances over at her, and his expression softens. He meets her gaze for a moment—just a moment—before he looks back down. “Thanks.”

“I can come back tonight if you want. You can—you can come with me, now. If you want.”

He looks down at the axe. And then he bends down, picks up another log, and places it on his stump. “Have to chop wood.”

“Oh. Okay.” She grips the strap of her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He does not reply.

It’s a long, lonely walk home. The rain picks up again when she reaches the city, and Cinis cries until she lets him ride on her shoulders, under her barrier.

When she finally reaches her shop, she can feel the full effects of sleeping on the floor for the last three nights—when she’d slept at all. She locks the door behind her while Cinis jumps off her shoulder to the counter.

He makes a curious mrr noise, low in his throat. Then she hears him pawing at something, making it scrape across the glass.

When she turns, he’s knocked a little wooden figure over. She shoos him away, and ignores his chatter of complaint as she reaches down to right it. A bear, she sees—and with it a jaguar, with a delicate tail and intricately etched spots. Both of them sitting next to the note she left for Asra.

She looks around, but there’s no fox figure to go with them.

“Oh, Asra,” she says, softly. She runs a hand through her hair, and takes a long, deep breath.

She takes the figurines upstairs with her. She places them on her dresser, and then makes Cinis promise not to knock them over. She finds the uneaten pumpkin bread Asra dropped on the floor, and Cinis chases the mice it’s attracted with glee while she gets rid of it. She gets water from the garden and scrubs herself down, and combs oils through her hair, and then dresses herself in a clean nightgown before she collapses into her bed.  

She doesn’t fall asleep right away—Cinis curls up at the small of her back, and she lies on her side and stares up at the figurines. How they were carved to fit together, so perfectly…

And she can’t help but think of a conversation she had with her aunt, five years ago now. Jay had been leaning on the windowsill, Zaru on her shoulder, and Kalani had been searching for scissors to clip the aloe plant.

That Muriel’s awfully protective of you and Asra, isn’t he?

What do you mean?

Oh, you know. He and Asra have known each other for so long, they must be very close.

Close?

And Asra plays the doting spouse better than most married couples I know. They’re good kids, Kai. You’re luckier than you know to have fallen in with them.

All of Muriel’s lingering glances, why he would stick around Vesuvia at all if he hated the city so much… She had thought her aunt was telling her that Muriel was in love with Asra—it had seemed so obvious at the time.

And he is. In love with Asra. Beautiful Asra, who looks like moonlight come to life, and laughs like a bubbling stream. Brilliant Asra, who invents spells she’s never heard of and married her to save her from her father when he barely knew who she was. Asra who is perfect for Muriel in every way, so much that it makes her heart hurt that she can’t just tell him.

But Muriel kissed her.

She thinks of Asra’s face, the way he looked like he had so desperately been trying not to cry… She tugs at the lepidolite pendant, but it’s still cold in her hand.

“I think I screwed up,” she whispers to Cinis.

He stirs a little. Then he stretches, and gets up, climbs over her and burrows under her arm to stretch alongside her chest, tucking his face into her neck.

Think too much, he tells her, sleepily.

She sighs. “Easy for you to say.”

It is, he agrees. And then he burrows a little closer to her, and starts to purr. He keeps purring until her exhaustion catches up with her, and she finally closes her eyes and slips off to a deep, dreamless sleep.

 --

The next morning, she does not light the lamp outside. She gets right to work on a salve for Muriel—she has an oil for him to work into the skin, and she’s just pouring the last of a salve she thinks will reduce the appearance of the scar into a jar when she hears someone banging on the door.

“Miss Kai!” Trevor calls through the door. “Miss Kai! Are you in there?”

She screws the lid on the jar with a sigh. “If I were his mother I’d have migraines too,” she grumbles to Cinis.

Cinis quickly jumps from the bookshelf to his favourite spot in the rafters, chittering in excitement the whole while.

“Don’t jump on him,” she scolds, skirting around the counter to head to the door. She opens it, and Trevor stands on the doorstep, hand raised to pound on the door again.

“Miss—Miss Kai! Oh good, you’re home! I came last night but you weren’t here, I was so worried!”

“Hello, Trevor. Did your mother run out of tea again?”

“Oh—oh no, it’s not my Mom. It’s Em, my sister? She’s got this fever, and her nose is running, and she’s not eating…”

He looks beside himself with worry. So Kalani smiles, and steps aside to let him in. “It sounds like something the dock kids all caught last week. She’s made some new friends?”

“You… could say that. She keeps trying to fight them, Miss Kai, it’s making my mother tear her hair out.”

She can’t help a laugh. “She’s definitely making friends. Hang on, I think I still have something left…”

“Thanks so much. You’re a lifesaver.”

She finds the appropriate drawer, and opens it to find it still well stocked—she’d made a bag batch, expecting a second wave of sniffly-nosed dock kids sheepishly knocking on her door. Though she supposes Trevor won’t be the only hand-wringing big brother knocking, if his little sister has spread it to the other children.

“Brew this like your mother’s tea,” she tells him, handing over a small satchel. “Shouldn’t need more than that, the other cases all cleared up after a couple days. Make sure she drinks lots of clean water, and that she gets plenty of rest until she feels better.”

He clutches it to his chest, and then digs around in his pocket. “I will, definitely. Listen, I sort of don’t have any money on me…”

“Bring me an apple sometime,” she tells him, fondly.

Before Trevor can reply, Muriel bursts through the open door, Inanna hot on his heels.

Trevor scrambles backwards to get out of his way, while Muriel looks directly to Kalani at the counter, his eyes wide, his face pale.

“Muriel?” she blurts, looking him up and down. He’s just thrown his cloak over his shoulders, and he’s still not wearing a shirt, so she can see his chest heaving, as if he’s been running. “What’s wrong? I told you not to strain yourself—”

“We have to go,” he says, coming around the counter to take her hand. He holds it tighter than normal, and his hand is shaking. “Now.”

“Go?” she parrots, while Cinis yowls in irritation from the rafters. “Go where? Is Asra in trouble?”

He starts to gently, but urgently, guide her towards the door. “We all are. We have to get Asra and go before it’s too late.”

“Muriel—what?” She stands her ground, and resists his tugging when he tries to lead her out the door. “What is going on?”

He tugs again, gently, but his eyes are wild. He’s terrified, she realises, more than she’s ever seen him.

“The helmet,” he says. “I found it. He—the man who attacked me. He’s coming this way.”

Before she can shake her head and ask Muriel for any more details, the lepidolite hanging around her neck grows warm. She reaches for it, and Muriel’s eyes grow even wider.

“Asra,” she says.

She tugs Muriel back into the shop, and leads him back into the garden.

Even before she casts a barrier over the reflecting pool, she can see Asra’s image trying to form in its rainfall-distorted surface. She and Muriel crouch over it, hearing Asra’s warped voice slowly settle as the water draws still.

“… been ignoring you please I need to talk to you.”

“Asra!”

“Kai! Muriel!” He glances over his shoulder, and Kai can hear the clamor of voices rising from somewhere behind him. She can make out the council chamber behind him—the colour of everything is off, though, and it takes her a moment to realise that he’s talking to her through a cup of tea.

He leans in closer, so close his breath casts tiny ripples all over the image of his face as he whispers, “You need to get out of the city as soon as you can. They’re going to close the gates and I don’t know how much time is left—”

“Asra, what’s going on?”

“There’s an army heading this way,” Asra says. “They’ll reach the city before noon. There’s—there’s so many, Kai, please, you need to go.”

“We have an army too,” she starts to say, but Muriel puts a hand on her shoulder.

“They’re marauders,” he explains. “They… they leave nothing behind, Kai. Nothing.”

“Marauders?” Trevor calls. When she looks up, he’s standing in the doorway, wringing his hands. “That uh. That sounds bad. Coming here?”

“Go into the woods,” Asra says. “You and Muriel. I’ll—I have to stay with Mom and Dad, but you—you have to go, please.”

But she just keeps looking at Trevor. His face pale, his eyes wide, his throat bobbing as he swallows, the satchel clutched in his white-knuckled fist.

They leave nothing behind.

“I’m not leaving,” she says.

“Kai, I didn’t hear you—”

“I’m not leaving this city.” She turns back down to Asra’s projected image. “We’re coming to you. Stay put.”

“Kai—”

She splashes reflecting pool as hard as she can, and Asra’s spell falters, and fails.

She hurries back inside. She goes under the counter and pulls out the crate that holds all her bandage and poultice supplies, puts it on the counter, and grabs the blue fabric someone had traded her too for good measure. She grabs everything that could be used to wrap a wound or stop bleeding, and then she thrusts it all into Trevor’s arms.

“Uh? Miss Kai?”

“Go straight to your mother,” she tells him. “You get her and you get home, and you do not open your door for anything. Right?”

He swallows. “Yeah. Right—what’s all this for?”

She takes a deep breath. Then she pulls a key out of her pocket, and hands it to him. “This key will get you in the back door. You’ll have to climb the back wall, but Asra’s got hand holds carved out. Look for those.”

“I thought you said don’t leave—”

“Your mother’s tea is in this drawer, here—see where I’m pointing?”

Tears are starting to form in his eyes. “But—I can’t grab that, not without paying…”

“All my records are here,” she continues, pointing to a slim shelf Muriel had built her. “Bring someone here who can read. They can help you figure out how to mix more. This—” she pulls out a slim book, in her own neat handwriting and filled with Asra’s meticulous diagrams, and tucks it into the box, “is full of wound treatments. It tells you how to stop bleeding, how to keep a wound from gangrene, and how to keep a fever down. Are you listening?”

“Yes, but I don’t understand—”

“When the fighting stops, I need you and your mother to help as many people as you can. When you run out of supplies, bring them here, and get more where you can. Okay? Can you do that for me, Trevor?”

He goes still for a moment. He considers her, and she considers him—fifteen, she thinks, and it breaks her heart a little.

“Only until you come back,” he says, his voice breaking. “When—when you come back, you’ll show us how to do it right. Okay?”

She throws her arms around his shoulders, tugging him into a hug so fierce that the box he’s holding digs painfully into her chest.

“Now go,” she tells him. “Tell your mother everything I told you. Go!”

Trevor bolts into the street while Muriel hovers uncertainly over her shoulder.

She takes a deep, shaking breath. Muriel takes her hand again, and she returns his grip, tight and firm, before she steps out into the street, and locks the door behind them.

 --

Asra doesn’t think it’s ever been this loud in the council room.

Everyone is talking over each other all at once, constantly. Messengers are running in and out at a frantic pace, and someone keeps bringing tea but Asra’s had three cups already and he’s too jittery by far to drink any more. So he stands to the side of everything, his back to windows and the plains that stretch beyond the palace, and tries his best to stay out of the way.

His hand keeps going to the lapis hanging from his throat—and he hopes beyond all hope that Muriel has talked some sense into Kai, and they have left.

Faust is hiding in his scarf, trembling with worry.

His mother and father are looking over a map of the palace she’s conjured from air. The Courtiers have been huddling over it and dealing with the messengers as best they can in turns.

But the count only stands next to Asra at the window. He does not face the chaos in the room; instead he looks out at the mercenary army assembling in the fields in the shadow of the palace. His hands are clasped behind his straight, straight back, his expression utterly blank in a way that strikes Asra as strangely, hauntingly familiar.

“The shield spells haven’t been tested,” Salim is saying. “And we only have enough repeaters for the palace, not the city.”

The Pontifex is pacing, and he’s chewed his thumb nail down to nothing. “What is the progress on the installation of the repeaters we do have?”

“We are at fifty percent,” Aisha replies. She waves her hand, and a number of spots on the map light up.

“And how many hits could the shields take?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” Salim pushes his glasses further up his nose with a shaking hand. “We don’t know. Magical attacks? Physical attacks? I don’t have an answer for you because there isn’t one. This shield system is purely theoretical, we have no idea if it will even work at all at a large scale—”

“Then why are we building it?”

“Because you demanded it!”

“Enough,” Aisha snaps, right as the Pontifex and Salim look about to descend into a new wave of bickering. “We don’t have much time. Have the citizens been alerted?”

The Consul, in the middle of accepting a report from a messenger, speaks without even looking up. “Lady Aisha, we have sent runners telling people to return to their homes. All entrances to the city and the palace have been barred and are under guard, and our troops are assembled and awaiting further orders.”

The messenger gives a shallow bow, then leaves—and Asra can see them reach the door out of the corner of his eye, and can see them pause, then step aside and hold it open with another, more formal bow.

His breath catches in his throat, and he turns just as Kai and Muriel walk through the door.

Kai is wearing one of her formal gowns—deep blue, with ivory accents—and has hastily tied up some of her hair, and just enough makeup not to look suspicious. The only visible jewellery she wears is a pair of ruby earrings, though he can spy a brief shimmer that must be the silver chain of the lepidolite necklace where she’s tucked it into her dress.

Muriel stands behind her, in that guard’s uniform he wears every Masquerade. He appears to have slicked back his hair with water, in a hurry, as it’s already starting to revert to its usual messy state. He does not wear his mask, and Asra can read how overwhelmed Muriel is as clear as day as he surveys the rooms with wide, panicked eyes.

“Oh good,” the Pontifex exclaims. “The spineless one finally decided to show up.”

Kai narrows her eyes at him. She looks about to say something cutting, but she bites her lip instead, her hands balling into fists.

Asra can’t see Cinis, as he’s not riding on her shoulder, but he can hear the cat’s low, angry growl.

“I’m here to help in any way I can,” is what she finally says, her voice shaking.

The count tenses, for half a heartbeat—and then his shoulders droop, ever so slightly, his eyes slipping shut.

“You can help by staying out of the way,” the Pontifex snaps.

“You’ll not speak to my daughter in law like that,” Aisha informs him icily.

“Kalani, I’m glad you’re here,” Salim says. “Could you show me that trick you did with my work lamp? I need to make it work on a much larger scale, very quickly.”

Kai’s eyes grow wide. She takes a deep, steadying breath, then nods. “Of—of course. I’ll try my best. Does anyone have paper?”

As Kai and Salim huddle over the table, Kai drawing on the back of a map with charcoal and Muriel hovering nearby, Asra feels his uncle’s hand clasp over his shoulder.

His uncle is trying to smile—but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Count Sahir,” someone yells from the door. “I have—I have a message from the mercenary army.”

Everyone turns at once. There’s a messenger standing at the door, holding a missive. She hesitates, as the cacophony in the room dies down to an utter silence, before clearing her throat nervously, and looking back to the count.

Sahir nods. “Speak. Please.”

“It’s—it’s the leader. Their… warlord, he calls himself. He says he wishes to enter the city with a small party, for an audience with the court.”

“Interesting.” Sahir’s eyes narrow. “And did he say what he wished that audience for?”

The messenger swallows. “He… he wishes to challenge you to a duel, my lord.”

The room erupts into a cacophony of noise. Everyone seems to be shouting all at once—the Pontifex declares that they will fight in the Count’s stead, and actually moves to draw their sword before the Consul yells to think about where they are. Salim seems to be trying to get everyone to calm down, and Aisha looks to Asra, her face drawn with worry.

Kai is holding Muriel’s hand in a white-knuckled grip, looking at Asra with a frightened expression.

Muriel, however, is looking at the Count—his brows furrowed in confusion.

“That will be enough,” Sahir says, loud enough that everyone stalls, and the noise starts to die down again. “Pontifex, send your most trusted soldiers to escort this warlord to the great hall.”

Aisha looks stricken. “Sahir, you can’t mean—”

“I mean to resolve this with as little bloodshed as possible,” Sahir interrupts her, his hand falling from Asra’s shoulder. “If this warlord wants a duel, then he shall have it—if it means Vesuvia is spared any amount of violence, then that is the course we will take.”

“But, my lord,” the Pontifex starts. “Our armies can handle this. With no danger to you at all—”

“I have made my decision.” The count finally steps forward, and crosses the room in quick, even strides. He hesitates a moment as he passes Kai, though Asra can’t see his expression.

Sahir leans in, a hand on her shoulder, and whispers something in her ear.

And then he pulls away, and walks right out of the room, without looking at or saying anything to anyone on his way.

Cinis jumps up on Kai’s shoulder—and she pets his fur absently, frowning, while Asra makes his way over to her. She doesn’t notice him until he very gently touches her arm, and then she reaches for his hand, squeezing tight.

She’s still holding Muriel’s. Luckily, everyone seems too busy to notice as they file out of the room, following the Count.

“There’s a back way out,” Asra whispers in her ear. “It’s magic, I don’t think anyone knows about it. I can lead you out.”

Kai takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. Her hand is shaking in his.

Muriel shifts his weight, leaning closer. “These people… they chased my family away from our home. The Count can’t win against him. We have to go.”

Asra shoots Muriel a grateful glance. “Muriel will protect you, it’s okay—”

“Can you get every single person in this city out your secret back way? Every servant in this palace?”

Asra stalls.

She opens her eyes, and meets his gaze directly, without hesitation. There’s a determination in her eyes he can’t remember ever seeing before this moment—and it burns in her aura like a spark, like a match struck in the dark, a single flame growing brighter with each passing moment.

“This city is my home,” she tells him. “I won’t abandon it. Not when I could have helped.”

She drops his and Muriel’s hands, and in a whirl of navy and ivory fabric she storms off after the Count.

 --

The warlord named Lucio arrives at Vesuvia’s court with two of his own warriors, flanked on all sides by city guards.

He wears a bright red coat, with a dramatic cape hanging over his left arm from a heavy cowl of fur. He grins at everyone he sees as he is led into the room with a too-large smile that does not reach his eyes.

The court is silent as he approaches. No one whispers—no one says anything at all.

Asra keeps looking over at Kai. She’s sitting on her chair next to his, fingernails digging into the armrests. Cinis is perched on its back, and the little cat seems to grow a little larger, his shadow a little darker, and his eyes a little brighter with each step Lucio takes closer to the Count’s throne, and the chairs of his family around him.

Muriel stands off to the side, just in Asra’s line of sight—he had tried to stand behind Kai’s chair, but the Pontifex barked at him to stand with the other guards. He sticks out among them, easily the tallest in the room by far, and every time Asra glances at Kai he can see Muriel too, and he looks terrified.

“Let’s get down to business, then,” Lucio says without preamble, standing before the count.

“I believe expediency would be prudent,” the count agrees.

Lucio flashes that eerie, utterly unfriendly smile. “Alright then, here’s the deal—you have a city. I’ve decided I’d like it. I’m prepared to slaughter every man, woman, and child in it to get it, but I’ll settle for a friendly duel with you. That expedient enough for you?”

Asra’s stomach twists. He glances sideways at his uncle, but the count only nods sagely, and smiles politely.

“Of course. However—as you might have noticed, I am not precisely in as such peak physical condition as yourself.”

Lucio just keeps grinning. “Few are.”

“Would you permit, perhaps, duelling someone from my family in my stead? Any of them would be willing to stand against you in battle—each a talented magician, an equal match for your sword.”

For the first time since walking into the room, Lucio pauses and takes them all in. His gaze sweeps over Asra’s family, one by one—the count, on his left Aisha and then Salim, and then to his right Asra, then Kai.

His gaze rests a moment longer on Kai. His eyes narrow, and he tilts his head slightly before looking back once more to Sahir.

“And I would choose?” he drawls, low and calculated.

A chill runs up Asra’s spine. Faust curls tighter around his neck.

Uncle Sahir’s polite smile has not faltered once. “Certainly.”

“And when I win, you agree to give the city over to me?”

“In the event of your victory, the rest of my family would leave the city immediately and you would be free to do with it as you wished. However, in the event of our victory, you and your army would agree to vacate Vesuvia and its territories entirely, harming none of its lands or people.”

Lucio doesn’t even seem to be giving a thought to the possibility of losing. “And the duel will be to the death?”

At that, his uncle hesitates. Only for half a heartbeat, and his eyes narrow slightly, as if finally pausing to take the measure of the man before him.

“You don’t want to do that, son,” Sahir says, softly.

Lucio’s smile twists, just enough that it almost looks like a snarl of rage, before shifting back again. “To the death. I insist.”

Sahir sighs. “Very well,” he says, gesturing with a sweep of his hand. “Which of my family—”

Lucio draws his sword and, with a grand flourish, points the tip directly at Kai. “That one.”

Asra launches to his feet. “No!”

“Absolutely not!” Salim shouts.

“Coward!” Aisha spits.

Cinis hisses, all his fur on end and appearing nearly twice his normal size as he arches his back. Kai doesn’t even move—she just stares at Lucio with an expression that reminds Asra of when she was brought to court by her father, all those years ago.

Lucio’s grin only grows. “I suppose her little cat can help, too.”

“I’ll fight in her stead,” Asra insists, looking Lucio dead in the eye. “Unless you’re scared of a real challenge.”

“Sit down, Asra,” Sahir says, not even glancing away from Lucio.

“No—”

“Asra,” Kai says, and he immediately turns back to her.

She’s standing, slowly, a growling Cinis already stepping onto her shoulder. She reaches up to touch his fur with a trembling hand, and he gives up on glaring at Lucio a moment to rub his face against her cheek.

“He gets to choose,” she continues, her voice shaking. “Those are the terms.”

“They’re bullshit,” Asra starts to say—but Kai reaches for his hand, and pulls him close so she can tuck their joined hands against her chest.

He can feel the frantic beating of her heart under her skin. He reaches, instinctively, for the small of her back, guiding her closer still—as if this is another masquerade, and they’re just dancing.

She rests her head against his chest, and he buries his face in her hair. She’s not wearing her perfume—she smells like sweat, and dust, and fear—but he closes his eyes and breathes her in all the same, his fingers curling into the small of her back, his heart racing to match the pace hers sets, under their joined hands.

Faust pokes her head out of Asra’s scarf, and tries to nuzzle Kai’s cheek.

“Faust,” she says, her voice breaking, “look after Asra.”

“Don’t do this,” he whispers.

She takes a shuddering breath. “Asra, I—”

Lucio’s voice rings out in the utter silence of the room. “I’m waiting.”

Whatever she had been about to say, her courage seems to have vanished. She shakes her head, and whispers, “Take care of Muriel,” before pulling back with great reluctance.

He tries, desperately, to hold her hand. To keep her close—he tries to say her name but there are so many people watching, both her names just catch on his tongue and he can’t say either. So he just stares after her, uselessly, as his fingertips catch on hers for half a heartbeat before she slips away.

“Finally,” Lucio drawls with a smile, lifting his sword to rest the blade on his shoulder. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

Asra perches on the edge of his chair. His fingernails dig deep gouges into the armrests.

Kai stands uncertainly across the marble floor from Lucio. Cinis rubs his face against her cheek, and she takes a deep, unsteady breath, before nodding once.

When the duel is called, Lucio launches himself at Kai without a moment’s hesitation.

She raises a barrier—Lucio’s sword collides against it, sending sparks of magic flying through the air, but it holds.

Cinis darts around her, unnoticed by Lucio as he takes another swing.

Kai’s knees buckle, but again the barrier holds. Asra can see her mouth twist in determination, and her barrier flares as she pours more magic to it.

But Lucio only grins—and he lurches forward, reaching with his left arm, previously covered by his cape. The moment his arm comes in contact with the barrier, Kai’s magic flares—and his cape blows backwards from the force of it, exposing an arm made of metal instead of flesh, and glowing brightly with magic.

It’s hardly elegant. It’s an ugly thing made of large ungainly cogs and unfinished iron. But it is enchanted, and it does function—and each finger is tipped with long, pointed claws, which dig into the surface of Kai’s barrier, no matter how bright it flares.

Kai must see her barrier about to fail, because she sidesteps as she drops it.

Lucio turns on his heel and reaches for her. She scrambles backwards, and his claws tear a long gash through the sleeve of her dress.

As she stumbles away, clutching her arm, Asra sees drops of blood on the white tile at her feet.

Lucio laughs.

“Is that all you have, little magician?” he taunts. He starts to circle her, swinging his sword in a lazy arc. “You’ll have to do better than that if—”

Cinis, nothing more than a tiny streak of black fur and angry orange eyes, launches himself at the back of Lucio’s head.

Lucio screams. He nearly drops his sword, and reaches up with his metal hand to try to get Cinis off—but the cat’s too fast, moving over to Lucio’s right side and shredding the side of his neck with his claws, spitting and snarling.

Kai throws her arm out, and the ground below Lucio begins to shift. The tiles tremble, then crack, and then burst open entirely to reveal old, gnarling tree roots. They snake out of the floor at an unnatural speed, winding around Lucio’s legs. He tries to slash at them, furiously, but the roots snake up and around his arm, surprisingly resilient, and he is forced to let the weapon go as it is slowly, steadily, encased in a living prison.

Cinis sinks his teeth into Lucio’s ear, and tears half of it clean off.

Lucio howls in rage and pain. Now that both his hands are free he reaches for Cinis, but the cat only leaps off his shoulder and dashes away. He spits the ear out on the floor, and Asra swears he’s never seen that cat look so smug in his life, blood dripping from his mouth and claws.

The roots start to wind up Lucio’s sword arm—and he curses, yanking hard, as the roots curl tighter and tighter around him, trying to pin his arm to his side. He claws at them with his metal arm—iron claws raking into the roots, yanking and pulling, but he can’t seem to tear them apart fast enough. They keep growing, and curling, and winding tighter around him, no matter how frantically he tries to free himself.

Cinis jumps on the back of his neck again, tearing into his exposed skin. Lucio snarls, swiping with his claws—but the cat only jumps away again, skidding on the floor, and darting around to Lucio’s back, his tail flicking as he waits for his next chance to strike.

“Yield!” Kai shouts, as the roots finally pin Lucio’s sword arm to his side. “I don’t want to kill you!”

But Lucio only barks out a low, frantic laugh. He holds his iron arm out—and a strange, cold white light begins to seep out through all its seams, casting Lucio’s face in twisted, gnarling shadows.

“You think this is over, little girl?” he taunts. “We’re just getting started.”

He tears through the roots pinning him in place with one mighty swipe of his claws.

Kai takes a step back, startled.

Lucio lunges for her.

She throws up a barrier—but Lucio slams his now-gleaming fist into it, and Asra watches as it simply vanishes. Lucio’s fist carries through, striking Kai square in the jaw. She hits the floor with a cry.

Asra launches to his feet.

Uncle Sahir grabs his wrist. “Sit down, Asra,” he hisses.

Asra yanks once, hard, unable to tear his eyes from the fight—but his uncle does not let go.

Lucio stalks after Kai—and Asra watches as Kai tries to scramble backwards, roots popping up between the cracks in the tile and trying to tangle around Lucio’s legs, but he’s moving too fast for them to find any purchase.

Just as he reaches her, and raises his arm, Cinis leaps up at the back of his neck again.

This time, however, Lucio whirls, striking Cinis with the back of his iron hand.

“Cinis!” Kai screams.

Cinis flies backwards and hits the ground, hard, sliding across the tile. Asra watches, heart in his throat, as Cinis scrambles to his feet, a low and pained growl building in his throat. Louder, Asra thinks, than any cat he’s ever heard before.

Lucio pauses to look down at the cat. And then his face splits into a wild grin, and he starts to walk over to Cinis with heavy, angry strides.

“No!” Kai shouts. She grabs at his heel to try and stop him—only for Lucio to kick back.

Asra hears the crunch of her nose as his metal boot collides with it. She cries out in pain, but tries to hold on anyway—until Lucio stomps on her hand, hard, and Asra hears the bones of her fingers snap before she screams.

The count yanks hard on Asra’s wrist. “Sit down!”

Faust is a writhing mess of wordless panic and misery in his scarf.

Asra watches as Lucio strides over to Cinis—as the cat’s growls grow lower, and louder, and all the fur on his tiny little body seems to stand higher, and higher, and his eyes glow brighter, and brighter.

“Nothing personal,” Lucio tells Cinis. “But you’re putting up a much better fight than the girl.”

Lucio raises his arm, claws splayed.

Kai screams.

Cinis’s eyes go white—and then all of a sudden, he bursts into flames.

It’s like the entire room grows smithy-hot in the space of a single heartbeat. Asra can feel every single person in the room reel back from the intensity of it, of the flame burning where Cinis once stood.

And, as Lucio takes an uncertain step back, that flame grows, starts to take shape—and then launches itself at his face with an ear-splitting roar.

Lucio hits the floor, and there is a massive, white-hot cat pinning him there, flames rolling off his fur as he bares his teeth, molten spit dripping down onto Lucio’s face.

Asra can see Lucio’s armour start to sizzle and melt under the heat of the cat’s paws.

Cinis? Faust whispers with awe, peeking her head out of Asra’s scarf.

Lucio’s grin has only gotten wilder, and more frantic. He swipes at Cinis’s side with his claws, and the cat has to shift to dodge it—giving Lucio the space he needs to roll out from under the cat.

Cinis starts to circle Lucio, growling low in his throat. Lucio scrambles to his feet, and spares a glance backwards towards where the roots still have his sword trapped—close to Kai, out of reach.

Kai has pulled herself up into a sitting position, clutching her hand to her chest, blood streaming down her face, her eyes wide with wonder as she stares at Cinis.

“Alright,” Lucio says. He wipes his face with the back of his hand. “That’s a first.”

Cinis snarls—and launches himself at Lucio.

Lucio brings his iron arm up—and he staggers under the weight of Cinis as the great cat locks his jaw onto Lucio’s wrist. Cinis starts to burn brighter, and Asra watches the metal under his teeth begin to burn, orange to yellow to white hot—

Lucio turns as he falls back, swinging his arm hard to the side with a yell. Cinis lands on all four paws, raking great burning claw marks in the tile as he skids to a halt.

Lucio is already on his feet—and as Cinis launches himself again, Lucio grabs the clasp of his heavy red cloak and throws it at Cinis before turning tail and bolting for his sword.

It gives Cinis only a moment’s pause—the heavy fur cowl of the cloak takes a precious minute to burn as Cinis claws at it, snarling. The skin at the back of Asra’s neck rises at the smell of burning fur filling the room, just as Cinis knocks the smoking cowl aside and chases after Lucio.

Lucio reaches the sword. He rips it out of the roots, and whirls to face Cinis again.

Lucio takes a swing—Cinis deflects it with one massive paw, and advances.

Lucio claws at Cinis’s face—and Cinis catches his metal claws in his teeth, clenching down with his massive jaw. He yanks, hard, digging claws into the smoking tile. Lucio falls, sprawling on the ground, and Cinis lunges for his throat—

And Lucio thrusts his sword into Cinis’s side.

Cinis roars in pain.

Kai screams.

Lucio throws the cat off him—and Asra watches an arc of white-hot blood in the air as Lucio pulls the sword out, and he watches as Cinis falls, tries to get up, and then falls again. His flames weaken, then flicker, and then die out—leaving only a black panther on the floor, his side rising and falling in desperate, steadily weakening gasps for air.

Lucio’s sword is twisted beyond recognition—the edge dulled by the heat of Cinis’s blood, and then the rapid cooling as the temperature room in the drops as the cat’s flames fail. Lucio doesn’t look much better: there’s blood smeared all over the side of his face from his ear, down his neck and onto his armour. The armour looks like it’s been crushed and then tossed into a fire it’s so dented and burnt, partially melted in places, and looks to be physically paining him as he rolls his arm, then his neck.

He pants for breath as he stands over Cinis, his eyes wild, his grin splitting his face nearly in two.

“Nice try,” he spits out, raising his sword above his head.

The tiles beneath his feet split open, knocking his balance off-centre, and more tree roots start to grow through the cracks.

As Lucio stumbles back, trying to catch his footing, Kai throws her whole body at his side.

They both go tumbling, sprawling onto the floor. Kai tries to grab his sword, but her broken hand hinders her, and Lucio uses the pommel to hit her in the forehead. It collides with a crack, and she’s stunned enough for Lucio to simply grab her with his metal arm and throw her to the floor.

Asra tries to yank free of his uncle’s grasp—but Sahir is steady, his grip on Asra’s wrist unflinching.

Kai rolls a few feet, before lying still.

Lucio digs his sword tip into the broken tile. He leans on it as he stands, breathing heavily. He’s not so much grinning now as bearing his teeth, as he takes the few unsteady steps that separate him from Kai.

“Bravo,” he says, through gritted teeth. “Bra-fucking-vo. Made me fight for my goddamn city, didn’t you? Made it hard.”

Kai doesn’t move. Lucio kicks her shoulder, and she rolls onto her back with a pained whimper.

Cinis tries to move—his muscles twitch in an aborted attempt to stand, and he lets out a low, ragged breath that sounds like it was supposed to be a growl.

“I was just going to cut your head off,” Lucio says, reaching down and closing his iron hand around Kai’s throat. “But I think I’ll make it hard for you, too.”

“Kai!’ Asra screams.

Lucio lifts her in the air by her throat.

“Hang on!” Asra cries, finally breaking free of his uncle’s grip. “Kai I’m coming hang on—”

Someone grabs him from behind—and he throws out a burst of energy, a wild and unformed spell, trying to throw them back. But they are unaffected by his attempt, only gripping him tighter as Asra’s magic slides off their armour.

“You interfere and you’ve killed us all, idiot child!” the Pontifex hisses in his ear.

He hears a commotion off where Muriel stands, cursing and shouting and scuffling and swords being drawn, and he hears someone big collide with the floor. Muriel, he knows, his heart racing in his chest—but he can’t look away from Kai, her legs dangling in the air, tearing her fingernails on Lucio’s iron arm as he holds her, as her face grows darker, and darker, as her breaths begin to wheeze and her attempts to pry herself free grow weaker—

“Kill me instead!” Asra screams. “Let her go, kill me instead!”

The magic in Lucio’s arm burns brighter, and he tightens his grip.

Asra can’t look away. He doesn’t want to see this but he can’t look away—

She takes one last ragged, wheezing breath. And then her expression falls slack, and Asra can see her eyes turn from umber to orange, to red, to yellow, to blinding white—

Lucio grins and grins—holding her without pause, without remorse, as her limbs go slack and her arms hang useless at her sides. But still she meets his gaze, her eyes burning, holding her breath as Lucio’s expression twists, and his feral smile begins to falter.

“What—” he starts to ask, before he chokes. His free hand goes to his throat, his expression rapidly shifting to confusion, and then alarm, and then terror.

He drops Kai on the floor, and starts to frantically claw at his armour.

Kai hits the floor, gasping for breath. Without hesitating, she starts to crawl over to Cinis, her whole body wracked as she coughs and gasps and tries to breathe, in between choking on her own sobs.

Lucio stumbles backwards. He tries to get off his breastplate, but it’s melted shut. He claws so furiously at his neck that he draws blood—and Asra can see his skin there start to light up, as if there is some light source just under its surface…

He tries to scream—but only smoke pours out of his throat, and light from a flickering flame burning somewhere inside him.

Burning him alive from the inside out.

The entire court watches Lucio claw at his skin. They watch him try to stumble towards Kai, only to fall onto the floor in a heap of metal and writhing limbs.

Kai has reached Cinis, and is halfway through curling protectively over his side as she turns, and meets Lucio’s gaze.

Asra cannot see the man’s expression as the flames burning his insides start to consume his whole body. Asra cannot see what passes over Lucio’s face as his armour melts into his flesh, as the magic in his iron arm burns brighter and brighter before faltering, and growing dark. As the arm itself begins to break in the heat, and twist, before it, too, melts. As the flames course over his entire body, and his skull caves in, and the fire consumes him, down to his last shred of clothing.

Kai does not look away. She doesn’t even blink.

When the fire dies, all that is left of Lucio is melted iron and ash.

Cinis twitches, trying to rise. Kai turns back to him, finally, pressing her shaking hands against his wound, but she does not try to heal him. “It’s okay,” she tries to say, her voice ragged and scraping. “You did so good, I’m so sorry, it’s—”

Asra shakes free of the Pontifex’s hold. He bolts down to Kai, scrambling over tree roots and broken tiles, and he kneels on the floor and reaches for her.

“Kai,” he says, softly. “Kai—”

“Help him,” Kai blurts, her tears mixing with the blood on her face. “Asra, please, help him.”

She takes his hands and presses them to Cinis’s wound. Asra’s stomach turns—it’s a lot of blood, and it feels hotter than blood should be. But Cinis is still breathing—so Asra closes his eyes, and tries to calm his racing heart.

It’s almost a relief, the feeling of healing magic passing from his hands to Cinis. Like a cool wind on a hot day, it steadies him a little. And when he opens his eyes, Cinis gets to his feet and shoves his face right into the crook of Kai’s neck, as if he was still a tiny little cat. He doesn’t really purr—it’s kind of a soft growl, the noise he makes, as if he’s trying to purr but can’t.

Kai throws her arms around Cinis’s neck, weeping openly. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Asra knows he should give her space—but he can’t help himself, but reach for her. He can’t help but put a hand on her shoulder, and try to offer her some measure of comfort.

That’s when she reaches for him with her good hand. She reaches for him, taking the hand in his lap and pulling him closer, so that his hand rests over her heart.

He lets himself be pulled. He tucks himself alongside Kai and Cinis, close enough to feel the heat rising off Cinis’s massive body, and buries his face in her hair as she weeps into Cinis’s fur, and tries to stop his own shaking, his own trembling.

She’s alive. He didn’t lose her.

She’s alive.

—

Content warnings:  extreme violence, stabbing, blood, bones breaking, choking, violence against animals, character death.