#(plenty of room for them to question all the angst and trauma and physical changes but we won’t get into that /lh)

[wanderingchocolateeclair]

i stand by my headcanon that power loader has accidentally time-traveled back to his yuuei years once or twice. i also fully believe that he took one of ectoplasm's clones with him on accident lol

-story anon (hi, eclair! been a while since ive sent an ask in)

All I think of was just:

What happens when you meet your younger selves on accident and also accidentally spoil many things that will happen for them in the future?? It’ll be fine- surely-

[xoxo-teddybear]

Oh, The Lies You Tell - Bakugou Katsuki - pt. 2

Bakugou x f!reader

Warnings: angst, trauma, abuse, betrayal, fluff, slice of life, smut, cursing, manipulation, possible spoilers, physical harm, 18+

BAKUGOU’S MASTERLIST

Ep. Warnings: fluff, childhood trauma, cursing, Bakugou kinda OOC, DADZAWA

Summary: More Bakugou x reader interaction! And Y/N’s first time training with the students and showing off her “quirk.” How will the students react?

Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3 Pt.4 Pt.5 Pt.6 Pt.7 Pt.8 Pt.9

Once you saw the familiar blonde, you smiled. “.....hey back, cutie.” You said with confidence. Bakugou only blushed at the comment and sucked his teeth as he rolled his eyes.

“Soo...you’re my escort?” You flirtatiously asked. You can’t help it, it’s just your personality. Plus, after years of villainous work, you had to learn how to speak with a calm and seductive voice to get your way with your victims.

“Yeah, that means I’m stuck with your dumbass for the next few months. So try to keep up and don’t you dare hold me back.” He ferociously said. You just giggled and went to mess with his unbuttoned shirt collar.

“Whatever you say, Fiesty,” as you examined his clothes, you just had to speak up again. “Whattup with the clothes? No tie, no tuck, no....prestigiousness?” Bakugou scoffed at your question.

“Oh yea? Like you’re one to talk. You completely changed your uniform. You realize the girls in UA don’t dress this-“ you cut him off.

“What? Rebellious?”

“I was gonna say hot.”

“That works too.”

“Suits you real well.”

“Oh, I bet it does,” you smirked. During your time throwing spitfire replies to one another, you realized how close both your faces have gotten. You saw ruby eyes, perfect porcelain skin with the perfect amount of tan, soft but fluffy, spiky, blonde hair, and a smirk that copied your own. As Bakugou was too busy admiring your looks, you gently placed two fingers under his chin.....and flicked his head upwards at the sky.

“Hehe...let’s go, Cutie. You gotta show me my dorm, remember? Cant stand here forever staring at me.” You chuckled to yourself.

“I was not doing any of that shitty woman!” Bakugou yelled. As Bakugou did that, Rumor ran right across him making his balance go all outta wack.

“Heh..yeah, sure.” You said as you walked off with Rumor, petting his head. Oh, this is gonna be fun.

——————————————————————————

On the walk to the dorms, you and Bakugou got to know each other quite well. Just the basics though. Favorite music, favorite foods, personality types, likes and dislikes, all that good stuff. You also both shared a little flirtatious banter, not that you minded, however it threw Bakugou off. When the fuck does he ever talk like that? As you both walked up to the entrance you realized something.

“Hey, you never asked me about my quirk. How come?” You asked as you both continued to walk to the doors.

“Don’t need to. I’ll see all I have to see tomorrow during training.” Bakugou said.

“Makes sense.” You replied.

“Of course it does,” He said as he opened the doors to give you a tour. You were in awe. Growing up, you never really had a home before the league. You slept in benches, jail cells, or straight on the ground outside in the rain. But this? Basically luxury to you, but of course you kept up a chill persona.

“This is the common area, kitchens over there, everyone gets their own bathrooms, the showers are that way, and I’ll show you to your dorm,” Bakugou said, giving you the “grand” tour. As you walked up to your room, you saw how already filled it was...but this wasn’t any of your stuff.

“Didn’t realize you were into music like that.” Bakugou said. When you turned to look at your desk, you saw how large it was and how there was a control panel they used at recording studios on it. Set up with it was a microphone that artist used when recording their songs and there was a mini keyboard and acoustic guitar set up on the side. Then it hit you. You had gone over your interest with Mr. Aizawa, guess he filled up the room to make you more comfortable OR to make it seem like you were a normal kid who actually had stuff. In reality, you had nothing but your villain costume (which you demanded to be kept) and Rumor.

“Umm...not really. I just sing a little and enjoy writing little songs. Nothing special really,” you replied to him. “Uh, could you give me a sec? I wanna change out of this uniform and relax a little.” You said to him.

“Yeah, sure. Dinner starts at 6 so be down by then and come meet the rest of the morons.” He said as he backed out the room and walked on to wherever. You began to explore the room. Rumor took comfort on the soft bed, and you looked at the recording area. It was amazing. You strummed the guitar, taking in it’s beautiful sound and dabbled on the keyboard. You then realized.

“Rumor! What am I gonna change in to?! I literally have nothing!” You said as you ran to your closet, astound when you saw the large amount of clothes, along with a little sticky note.

Enjoy the gift, Y/N! Cant wait to have you in class!

- Ms. Midnight

“Midnight, huh? Then these clothes must be hot as fuck!” You excitedly said. Safe to say you put on a little fashion show for yourself and Rumor. As you put on the clothes and made new outfits, you noticed how she had gone for the typical “baddie style.” Lots of ripped jeans, plenty of casual heels, thigh high boots, leather jackets, bomber jackets, crop tops, tube tops, and of course booty shorts. You also noticed the massive amount of jewelry given to you. Plenty of necklaces and anklets. Very pretty.

Once done with your little show, you and Rumor looked at the clock. 5:30.

“I think we should stay in here. Who needs dinner anyways?” Rumor only growled at you. He knew better. You both needed food and you should go down there and make some friends.

“Oh c’mon! We’ve gone days without food before, why not now?” You saw how Rumor gave you this look of ‘because it wasn’t available then’ and you rolled your eyes knowing your friend was right.

“Fineeeeeee,” you reluctantly said as Rumor gave a happy bark and wagged his tail. You changed into some comfortable clothes and went to the common area.

When walking down there, you saw a spikey read head, a tall black haired boy, a girl with long greenish hair, and then you saw Deku, Kaminari, Uraraka, Todoroki, and Bakugou. While they were talking, the red head took notice of yours and Rumor’s presence.

“Oh! Hey L/N! Rumor! Come join us!” How sweet of him to include Rumor. As you both walked towards a single open seat on a solo couch seat, you saw how everyone had their eyes set on you with a smile.

“Umm....hey.” You nervously let out with a small laugh. As you tried to settle, Rumor placed his head on your lap to calm you down and Bakugou took notice of this.

“Would you idiots stop staring at her like that? She’s obviously kinda nervous.” Bakugou said with his head thrown back on the couch. The red head then spoke up to agree.

“Oh right! Sorry about that L/N!” He said kindly.

“No, it’s no trouble. And you guys can quit the formalities and just call me Y/N. I don’t mind!” You sweetly said.

“Alright then, nice to meet you Y/N! I’m Eijirou Kirishima, this is Hanta Sero, and Tsuyu Asui. I’ve heard you already met these guys, and I’ve also heard you got Bakugou as your escort!” Bakugou growled at Kirishima for mentioning that.

“Yeah! He’s kinda.....bratty?” You teased. Bakugou only looked at you with wide angry eyes and a small blush.

“Ha, yeah. Bakubro can be a brute, but when you get to know the guy, you find out he’s just a big ole softie with rough ways.” He joked.

“I AIN’T SOFT SHITTY HAIR!” Bakugou screamed. The group just giggled and watch the interaction go on. You guys talked and laughed and they got to know about you and Rumor a little better. Finally, a girl with a black ponytail came in.

“Hey guys! Dinner’s ready! Oh! And L/N, we made 2 steaks for Rumor. I hope you don’t mind.” She said.

“Oh not at all! Thanks you guys, that was really sweet of you.” Rumor understood what was going on just by the scent in the air and he was excited. As you all walked to the table and took ur seats, everyone got to talking again. Dinner went on and Rumor was enjoying his steaks.

“Man..what a lucky dog. Steak for dinner.” Kirishima spoke. Everyone chuckled and continued on. The girl with the pony tail, who you learned was nicknamed Momo, walked in with a final pot.

“Okay you guys! This is the final dish! Just some Miso soup to peck on. Kaminari, can you go and grab the ladel?” As the blonde walked away, everyone was excited for the dish.

“Sorry guys, the soup is a little too hot. You should wait for it to cool down before digging in,” Momo said apologetically.

“Oh hey, no worries, I have a solution!” You said as you made a tiny little tornado with you air bending and sent it to the pot of soup on the table to cool it down. The massive amount of steam was clearly decreased and everyone thanked you.

“So your quirk is tiny tornadoes?” Bakugou whispered to you as he was the one sitting next to you.

“No, you dummy.” You giggled until you heard a crack. Everyone looked over and saw Kaminari broke the one and only ladel. Everyone booed and sighed at the loss of miso soup and the poor blonde just apologized with a nervous smile.

“It’s fine you guys, we don’t need a ladel. Who wants some miso?” You asked and everyone raised their hands. So, you used your water bending to pick up the soup give some to all your classmates. Everyone was confused but impressed.

“Okay, what the hell is your quirk?” Bakugou asked in confusion.

“You’ll find out soon, Cutie.”

“Whatever you say, Princess.” He replied back.

It was safe to say the new nickname left you in shock with some blush and you noticed everyone stopped eating to look at you both.

“........huh?!” The group simultaneously said with blank and confused faces as Bakugou yelled at them saying they heard nothing.

——————————————————————————

The next day the students met up with Mr. Aizawa wearing any comfortable gym/fighting attire. Instead of meeting at Gym Gamma, the teacher took his students out to the Sports Festival Areana. The students all buzzed with excitement, most only wanting to know the new student’s quirk and fight style.

“Okay, today we’ll be doing sparring matches. We’ve paired you all up based on skill level and experience. One battle at a time. Whoever makes it to the top 3, those students are excused from classes tomorrow. Get warmed up, take your seats, and I’ll call up the first two fighters.” Mr. Aizawa spoke.

The students were ready. Everyone was, but no one was prepared for you. They never saw your fight style, never saw you use your quirk for battle, never even saw you pick a fight. This’ll be interesting.

“Okay bud, since it’s a 1v1, you’re benched.” You spoke to Rumor. He whined at the fact that he wouldn’t be getting any action but nonetheless, listened to his best friend. “Oh don’t give me that sass, why don’t you go talk to Kirishima or Bakugou while I’m in battle. Fair?” Rumor huffed at you, but you took it as compliance.

“Hey, Princess.”

You turned to who called you and saw Bakugou and what appeared to be his little posse following him. It consisted of Kirishima, Sero, Kaminari, and Mina.

“Oh hey guys. What’s up?” You asked.

“We’re all pumped up to see your quirk! Those tricks you did during dinner last night had us all coming up with ideas on what it could be.” Mina squealed. “I guessed substance manipulation.”

“Telekinesis,” Kirishima said

“Weather powers,” Sero guessed

“Food control!” Kaminari answered. Oh what a piece of work that one is. Everyone looked at the fool with raised brows.

“Heh...guess not.” The goofy boy said with a scratch to his head. You all laughed and you looked towards Bakugou waiting for him to answer.

“Well..what’s your guess, Cutie?” You looked towards Bakugou as he just stared at you.

“Elements,” he said calmly. That shocked you. Who knew someone was gonna guess. Well, he was still wrong considering it wasn’t really a quirk but yeah.

“Just a guess. I’ll figure it out once I see you fight.” He added on.

“Oh yeah! Mr. Aizawa pairs us up based on skill level and experience! We’ll get to know more about how you fight based on your partner.” Mina said.

As the group continued talking, Mr. Aizawa finally came to speak up.

“Okay, listen up. I’m sure you’re all curious as to what L/N is able to do, so our first match we’ll be L/N vs. Todoroki.” Everyone had their jaws drop. Shoto Todoroki?!? He was one of the top students in the class in both intelligence and physical skill. He is an excellent fight with a powerful quirk. How the hell are you supposed to win. You only smirked and walked up to the fighting area. As you walked, a pair of red eyes followed you.

‘What the hell can this chick do?’ Bakugou thought to himself.

As you and Todoroki met in the middle facing each other with Mr. Aizawa in between you both, he spoke up.

“Okay, here are the rules......there are none. The match will begin when you hear the buzzer go off. You’ll hear 3 beeps then a ring, then you can spar. You can use your quirk at any level, do whatever you may please, do whatever it takes to win. The match stops when one of you falls off the square or is knocked out and unable to continue fighting. Understand?” He said while looking at both of you and speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. You both nodded your heads but Mr. Aizawa looked at you with a more stern stare.

“Do you understand, Y/N?” He asked once more. You nodded your head and waited for him to start the match. He walked off the field and went to sit with the class. They all stared in anticipation. Bakugou focused his eyes on you.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Ring!

At the first second, Todoroki used his left side to throw some fire your way. At the sight of the burning flames you only smirked and extended your hand. Everyone watched you do, what they thought was, nothing. They only saw you stand there.

“Y/N DO SOMETHING!” Bakugou screamed in fear of you getting hurt.

When the flames came close enough, you used your fire bending to move them around your body and attack Todoroki. The boy had a quick reaction and sent an ice wall towards you. Perfect. You ran to the ice coming your way and turned it into water, which you used to push back Todoroki, closer to the edge. You sent fire his way and he ran at you, dodging it and attempting to strike you. You flipped away from him. Everyone saw how acrobatic you were. When he came closer once more to punch you, you turned to you side and struck his right shoulder, paralyzing his arm.

Todoroki screamed in shock and pain as he realized he couldn’t feel his arm. He sent more fire to you, in which you used your air bending to put the flames out. You used your earth bending to lift the area that Todoroki was standing on into the air, as he flew through the air, you blasted fire from your feet to get up in the air and blasted him with a gust of wind that knocked him out the area of the square. When he fell to the ground, he hit the field instead of the square, meaning he lost. You fell closer to the concrete but used your fire to slow down before you could crash. Once you landed you looked around for Aizawa.

Beeeeeeeepppppp!!

“That’s the match. L/N wins.” You looked around and everyone still sat in shock. Nobody even clapped. They just looked so....impressed? Kaminari was in the middle of petting Rumor and when he stopped, Rumor noticed the match was over and saw you standing. He howled to cheer for you as everyone ran down to say something. As the crowd came up to you, you were hit with compliments.

As the class continued to hype you up, you saw how Bakugou still just stared at you. You walked over to him.

“Impressed?” You asked.

“......you’re good.” Bakugou still said in slight shock. You only laughed at his answer. You knew he thought more, but you weren’t gonna push him. Every one saw Todoroki get up and limp towards you.

“L/N....that was a great fight. You’re incredibly skilled.” He complimented.

“Thank you Todoroki. And please, I told you to call me Y/N.” You kindly said

“Right, of course...ah.” He hissed in pain. You felt bad for how hard you went on him.

“Here..let me just,” you took the moisture in the air and took water out of it. You used it to heal up Todoroki’s injuries and soothe his pain. “Feel better?”

“Very much, yes. Thank you.” He said.

“No problem, but your arm is a different story. I temporarily paralyzed it with my dim mak fighting style. It’ll take some minutes for it to come back fully.” You explained.

“Okay. That was really impressive. I had no idea there was a fighter like you.” He said once again.

“Whats dim mak?” Kirishima asked.

“It’s the fighting style I use. It’s attacks a person’s pressure points with quick and sharp jabs. It paralyzes a person or just a limb for a good hour depending on how hard I hit.” You replied.

“Pressure points?” Kaminari asked.

“They’re the parts in your body where you’re sensitive and can be detained when they’re hit. With that, it means I know the human body like the back of my hand. Thanks to that I’ve come up with a skill called Chi Blocking.” You explained.

“What’s that?” Mina asked.

“Something you’ll all find out about the next time Y/N fights. Until then, let’s have Todoroki get to recovery girl and let’s continue the matches.” Aizawa said. As everyone went to their seat and Aizawa called up Iida and Aoyama, Bakugou asked you a few questions.

“What the fuck was that?!” He asked.

“What?” You giggled.

“The fucking fire, and the wind, and you moved rocks and you turned his ice into water!!” He spasmed out.

“Uh huh...” you said with a smile and raised brow.

“A-and the flips! You flip and did a bunch of acrobatic tricks, and the jabs, the “dim mak,” it was- I was- it was-.......HUH” he exclaimed.

“Not like Bakugou to freak out over a fight like that. What happened to Mr. Cool Guy?” Denki said.

“You shut your mouth, Sparky!” Bakugou threatened. “Look, all I’m tryna ask is..how and when did you learn all of this? Your quirk is crazy OP, and your fighter skill is insane! Appreciate that bullshit cuz I don’t say shit like that often.”

You just laughed and sighed. You weren’t sure how to answer his question. “Umm,” you started “I don’t really know...I just-“ you were cut off by a mouse. Principle Nezu, you remembered him.

“Mr. Aizawa?” The peppy mouse asked.

“Yes?” Aizawa replied.

“May I speak with you? Concerning your new student and her transfers. There’s been a few complications with her paperwork that need to be solved.” He politely asked.

“Yes, I understand sir. Class, free day. Head back to your dorms but be sure to get in an hour and a half of training today. That’ll be all. Dismissed.” The pro said as he followed the principle. As students gathered to leave and head back to the dormitory, Bakugou stopped you.

“Hey, wait. You still gotta tell me how you learned all this, Princess.” He said.

“What’s there to say?” You awkwardly laughed out. “Uh..I discovered my...quirk.. while doing some work-“

“Work as a child?” Bakugou asked.

“Sorta. I discovered it there and then..I met someone who trained me how to fight like that.” You explained.

“Your parents must be really proud.” Bakugou slightly smiled.

“Umm..yeah, I bet they are.” You said kind of skiddish.

“I can imagine the look on their faces when they saw the pretty impressive quirk you got. My parents were pretty shocked too with mine.” He added on.

“Oh really? You can imagine their faces?” You laughed out nervously. ‘I sure can’t,’ you thought to yourself.

“I mean yeah. Parents usually....” you drowned him out. Parents...parents...parents...PARENTS. You snapped.

“Bakugou!” You said with tone. “I don’t have or know my parents....” you said as he stopped talking and dropped his jaw to the ground. Before he could say anything, you bit your lips, called Rumor to go, and left, leaving Bakugou in regret.

As you ran with slight tears in your eyes, you told Rumor to change into a giant wolf. He shifted and you hopped on him.

“Let’s go to the spot, Rumor.” You said as he took off.

——————————————————————————

When Rumor arrived at ‘The Spot’ you settled. The spot was beautiful. Tall trees, beautiful plants, plenty of adorable creatures, and a gorgeous pond right in the middle of it all. You layed against a tree as Rumor placed you down so you could stop your tears and he transformed back into his wolf-dog form and cuddled up against you.

“No parents...” you said aloud. Although sad you never really got to experience or meet your parents or what it’s like to have them or a family, you were conflicted. Yes it was sad not having parents or a family, but you never had one so it’s hard to tell how you feel about the topic. As the thoughts ran through your mind, your eyes glowed a bright white and when you opened them, you weren’t at the spot anymore.

“Hello....?” You said as you looked around. “Helloooo...?? Anyone there?”

“Welcome back to the spirit world, Y/N.” When you turned to your side, you were in awe.

“Avatar Korra!” You bowed to show respect but then went to hug your spiritual mentor. She embraced you with wide arms. She’s always been the friendly, open, optimistic type. “What am I doing here, Korra?”

“Why do you think you’re here, Y/N?” She said with a sly smile and hands on her hips, but beaming eyes.

“My parents?” You questioned but she only shook her head.

“Your path.” Korra stated.

“My path?” You asked.

“Yes. Or more so, the path you choose.” She corrected.

“I don’t understand.” You said.

As Korra continued to smile at you, you both stood still as the world shifted. You looked around and saw the LOV hideout.

“The league? I don’t understand, what does my path have to do with them?” You questioned, but before she said anything, the world shifted once more and you were infront of UA’s building.

“The school?....Oh, this isn’t some typa light and dark thing, is it?” You asked Korra.

“It is.” She replied back.

“Ugghhhh, we’ve been through this. I’m a bad person. I could never fit in with those goodie two shoes! I’m a member of the league of villains! Not heroes. My path is the darkness.” You stated.

“Is it? You weren’t born into darkness.” Korra said.

“What?....”

“Y/N, you’re not a bad person. Your a villain because of survival. That’s the life that you know. That’s the life that you were kidnapped into.” Korra began.

“Yeah but-“

“But nothing. You know in your heart you would much rather be a hero than some low life villain!” Korra exclaimed.

“No I couldn’t. They’re too good. I could never be that great. Hell, I’m on a plan to take down UA right now!” You said.

“And are you doing that because you want to? Or is it because you think the league is gonna torture you any less if you succeed......you don’t wanna take down the heroes. You wanna be like them.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I can’t!”

“But you can. You can be all these amazing things, but you’re just on the wrong path with the wrong people. All you have to do is make the choice to leave them. You want to be good, Y/N. It’s in your nature. You’re the avatar after all. It’s your destiny to bring peace to the world.”

Once Korra had said that, a flash came and you were back in the spot. You gasped as you returned and shook your head. You saw it had gotten dark now and figured it was best if you headed back. You woke up Rumor and asked him to become a giant wolf again. He shifted and brought you back to UA. Along the walk, you couldn’t help but think back to what Korra said.

“My path......light or dark...” you looked down at your palms and squeezed them shut in frustration. You huffed and looked ahead, and saw you arrived at the front of the dorms. Standing there, waiting for you, Mr. Aizawa.

“Welcome back.” He said to you.

“Hi...” you blankly said as you attempted to get past him. However, he stopped you from going in.

“Not so fast, we need to speak first before anything else.” He stated

“What about? Because I’ve had a really long and kinda frustrating day, and I don’t need some bullshit to fuck it up even more. I mean, I’m so aggravated that I-“ a piece of paper dangling in your face shut you up.

“What are those?” You asked the hero.

“Adoption papers. I’m now your legal guardian.” Aizawa stated.

“.........HUHHHHH?!?!???” There was no way this was happening. It couldn’t be. You??? Adopted??? By a pro hero??? One that you almost killed???

“Okay, I’m sorry but I don’t need a guardian. I’ve been by myself, on my own, the second I was born. No family raised me, no motherly figure, no nothing. It’s just been me, the spirits, and the villain who took care of me till I was, what, 5? And then kicked me out and left me stranded. I’ve been surviving on my own for over a decade, I don’t need you to look out for me.” You exclaimed.

“Yeah, don’t worry. I won’t be an annoying parent, I’m just your legal guardian. You’re still underage, meaning you’ll need permission for certain things to continue to move forward.” He explained to you. You thought about it, and damn it, he was right. If you wanted to go about this whole thing the legal way, you’d need this.

“.....Fine. Just don’t tell me what to do dAD,” you sarcastically said.

“I’m your guardian and teacher now, I can tell you whatever I want, brat. Now get inside, you’re past curfew.” He said but you only squinted your eyes at him in disbelief. Did he really give you a curfew?

“Student curfew. You live in the dorms, all students have to be in this building by 10:30,” he explained. You just scoffed and went inside with Rumor.

“Guess I have a dad now, Rumor.” You sighed. You never had a father before. It warmed your heart a little, but then you remembered he wasn’t really your dad. Just a guardian. As you walked into the common area, you saw the lights were out. The students must’ve been in their dorms. You walked to the kitchen to grab a snack before heading to bed but you saw Bakugou sitting there with a water bottle in hand. He seemed kinda bummed out. You cleared your voice to get his attention and when he looked up at you, you told Rumor to head to the room.

“Y-Y/N! Hey!..” he said to you.

“Heh..hi Bakugou...Umm..I’m sorry about the whole..running away thing. I just needed to clear my head a little.” You said as you took the seat next to him.

“No, don’t apologize. I’m.....i-.....I’m sorry for pushing you about the whole parent thing. I didn’t know.” He apologized. You only shook your head and stared at your hands before speaking up.

“It’s fine. How could you know? After all, I’ve only been here for 2 days. Besides, you didn’t really upset me, it’s just..I feel kinda outta place when the parent topic comes up. Guess I just freaked out,” you saw the look on his face. Disappointment. Is he that upset that hurt you? Or at least thought he did? “B-but don’t worry! I’m fine! For real! I’ve been parent-less for almost my entire life so it doesn’t sting like that. Hehe..wow Umm. Depressing. You know I feel like I’m rambling, am I rambling? Should I stop? I think I should shut up, or maybe I’m just gonna go now that I-“ Bakugou placed his hand on yours which shut you up real quick. You looked up at his face as he stared into your eyes.

“You can talk to me about it you know. It’s clear you wanna get some things off your chest and I’m really interested in you.” You raised your brow at that last sentence. He realized what he said and quickly tried to correct himself.

“I mean- uh- not like that, or um it could be like that! It could be, if you’re cool with that. But it’s not, or maybe, i don’t know, it’s not it’s, I was, it was, I- yeah I’m gonna stop talking now.” He cleared his throat at the end of that, settling down. You giggled and reassured him.

“No, no it’s fine. I really don’t mind. Umm, what do you wanna know. I’m fine with sharing anything.” You said.

“Okay, let’s just continue with this parent topic then....how were you raised?” He asked. This scared you. You had to be real careful with your choice of words or else your cover would be blown.

“Okay, let’s see. I was born in a place-“

“Oh really?” He teased.

“Shuddup,” you laughed and playfully hit his shoulder.

“And that place was..very private. Very unknown, but my parents Umm, i don’t really know what happened to them. The earliest thing I can remember is that..someone found me and told me my parents were gone, they weren’t my real family, they just took me in because they couldn’t let a baby die, and raised me till I was 5.” You said.

“And then?” He asked.

“You sure? It just goes down hill from here.” You warned. But he only nodded and asked for you to continue. You looked at your hands in your lap before continuing.

“I was kicked out. Left on the streets. I slept on park benches, in alleyway tunnels, on rooftops of buildings. I pawned for food and..” you didn’t know if you should admit the next part. But Bakugou held onto your hand and asked for more.

“And then?” He questioned.

“.....I did what I had to do to survive. I committed crimes, but I had to live. I was just a child and didn’t know what to do. If you look at me any different for what I did though, I won’t judge you.” You said. He squeezed your hand almost as if he was telling you he understood. He nodded and pleaded for more.

“After 2 years on the streets, a cult found me. An evil and dark cult. They used their quirks to torture people they kidnapped and made them slaves to create weapons. They kept us in cells and chains, working 24/7. It was there that I learned of my abilities. I found out I could control the 4 elements and their sub-elements. There, I also met a master. He was old and couldn’t fight anymore, but he saw the potential in me and taught me dim mak in the shadows. After a year of being enslaved there and secretly training, these people (the LOV) came in and killed the cult members and stole some of their weapons and destroyed the rest. Once I saw them taking down those horrible people, I used my abilities and they saw. I guess I impressed them and they recruited me to join their little family. I’ve been with them ever since. But then I met Mr. Aizawa and he asked me to join UA. Since the group I joined wasn’t really family, I didn’t need their permission. They were more like friends and they were even the ones who pushed me to come here.” You finished up your little story and saw Bakugou looked at you with worry in his eyes.

“And now I’m here! Sitting in a dim kitchen at UA with a cute boy at 11:00 p.m.” you said trying to cheer up the mood. “Bakugou...”

“You’re not..affected? By everything you’ve been through?”

“You don’t have to feel bad!”

“But I do! You’re here! You’re not...”

“Dead?” You teased.

“Basically!” You laughed at that.

“Y/N, I’m serious!” Bakugou tried to say.

“And so am I! You don’t have to be upset. I value everything I went through, all the good and bad.” You explained.

“Why?” He asked.

“Because it made me the kickass baddie that I am today!” You said flipping your hair and laughing. “Seriously though! Everything I went through made me who I am. It’s made me stronger, more independent. It lets me know I can handle myself. So I’m good, you don’t have to worry.” You said grabbing onto his hand again and reassuring him. He used his thumb to rub at your hand and enjoy the feeling.

“You are...probably the strongest person I’ve ever met.” He said calmly with a small SMALL smile on his face as he looked at you.

“I’ll also bet that I’m also the only “criminal” that you look like you wanna kiss.” You playfully said.

“Maybe I do...” he said with a smirk and soft voice as he leaned in closer.

“And maybe I’ll let you..” you said as you leaned in. As you two got closer and closer, your eyes filled with daze and the world around you two fell apart. It was just you and him in that moment. Until it was ruined. Just as your lips were about to touch, Mr. Aizawa came in.

“Hey!” He shouted

“GAH!” You both screamed and jumped away from each other with a blush adoring both your faces. Aizawa walked up to both of you, shoving the adoption papers in bakugou’s face.

“No smooching with my newly adopted daughter!” He said with a stern voice.

“I’m not your daughter! You’re just my guardian and it only happened like a few hours ago!” You stated.

“You can’t tell me who I can and can’t kiss, old man.” Bakugou said.

“Listen you little punk! I outta...” then Bakugou and your teacher were now going at it, yelling over each other and saying whatever, completely leaving you outta the conversation. You let out a little gust of wind to shut them up and get their attention.

“Okay, it’s late, tomorrow is Saturday, so you two won’t have to see each other, MAYBE, for 2 days. Can we just let this whole thing cool over?” You asked.

“We can, I’m just annoyed at the fact that this dynamite stick was gonna steal my daughter away from me!” Aizawa complained.

“I wasn’t stealing her, I was-“

“STOLEEEEEEE” Aizawa corrected and Bakugou just sucked his teeth and looked around.

“Whatever, can we just let it go?” You asked again. They nodded and you all went your separate way. Except for the fact that once Aizawa was outta sight, Bakugou went running right back to you and walked you to your dorm.

“Sooo..about that kiss.” Bakugou said. You just giggled and opened the door to your room.

“Goodnight, Bakugou,” you said but as you were about to walk in, he said something else.

“Katsuki.”

“Huh?” You said looking back at him.

“Katsuki. It’s my name. You can call me Katsuki.” He explained.

“Wow, trust me that much?” You teased.

“You trusted me enough to open up, this is the least I could do.” He said. You smiled and corrected yourself.

“Okay then...goodnight, Katsuki.” You said smiling. He pulled you in by your waists and held you close as he placed a soft kiss to your cheek.

“Goodnight, Princess.” He said and walked off.

A/N: Ok Cubs! That was the second part and in here we got to see the spirit world! We’re intorduced to Avatar Korra and we’ve discovered Y/N is the present avatar! How do we feel about this? Good? Bad? Let me know!!! I hope your enjoying the story so far. I know it’s kinda weird and all outta disorder but this is my personal day dream that I wanna bring to life that I’m hoping some of you enjoy. It’s just a jumble of avatar elements with a BNHA/MHA base. Please be patient with me! I know this is a Bakugou x Reader fic but it is also a story. It’s gonna grow and build and once we establish the basics, more Bakugou x Reader issues will show up along the way! I hope you’ve liked it so far! See you next time! 💗🧸

[erin-bo-berin]

Second Chances

MASTERLIST

This was an anon request based on the series finale. If you’ve yet to see it and don’t want any spoilers, feel free to bookmark this to read later. This isn’t really spoilery if you already know what happens, but I won’t take offense if you wait to read this after watching the episode. This is just my take on a different way it could’ve gone with the reader involved, also with a bit of inspiration from the Derek episode, a thing that happened to him and Savannah. Anyway, you’ll see. Prepare yourself for some Spencer angst and mystique. Happy reading!

Spencer Reid/Reader

Rating: G (angst and fluff)

Word Count: 2,810

Chaos surrounded you.

You had the oddest sensation that everything around you wasn’t really happening even though it actually was. Everything and everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion.

You were standing in the middle of the hallway when the stretcher passed by you.

In reality, it probably whizzed by, the doctors and nurses running and darting around, energized by the adrenaline rush of helping an incoming patient. In your mind though, time slowed even further, your heart beating rapidly in your chest as you fought the dread in your stomach from seeing your boyfriend on said stretcher. He was unresponsive, pale and in bad condition.

He was being rushed into emergency surgery. The doctors suspected a possible cerebral hemorrhage or even an edema; bleeding in the brain or swelling of the brain in non-medical speak.

You were suspended in time, frozen in place. Your world was crumbling around you.

You felt hands on your arms as you were led to a chair in the waiting room. The person pushed you gently down to sit before sitting down next to you and taking your hands in theirs.

It was only then did you feel the ache in your head and behind your eyes, the side effect of your hysterical crying. You’d been crying this entire time and hadn’t even realized it.

Penelope Garcia squeezed your hands and you looked up at her, her face a little blurry from your tears.

“He is strong. He will get through this,” she said.

With that, she pulled you into her arms and hugged you tight.

•

Spencer was in a cemetery, on a bench. It was warm, with a slight breeze in the air to ruffle the loose curls that fell over his forehead.

He stood, walking to the nearest headstone to get a better look.

“Where am I?” he mumbled.

He stopped in front of the headstone and he gasped at the sight. It was his own. It read:

Spencer Reid

1981-2020

Beloved son and friend

Devoted agent of the FBI’s BAU

“What happened?” he wondered out loud, more confused than alarmed.

“You were injured, Spencer.”

The voice caught his attention. It sounded familiar, but it couldn’t be who he thought it was.

“You’re on a journey.”

He turned around, surprised to see the familiar brunette sitting on the bench he’d been sitting on just moments before.

“Maeve?” he whispered.

“Hi, Spencer,” she smiled.

He crossed to her quickly, falling on the bench at her side.

“Maeve, is it really you? But, how?” his hands reached to touch her face, “I’m so, so sorry.”

She smiled, putting a hand over one of his on her face and then pulled his hands into her lap, holding them both with hers.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s not your fault what happened. No matter what you think.”

“How are you here? What happened?”

“You remember Everett Lynch, don’t you?” she asked.

Spencer thought for a moment, the name sounded extremely familiar.

“Oh yeah. We’ve been hunting him for a year.”

“You thought you had him captured and were going to move in when he ignited a bomb. You were injured badly in the blast.”

“Am I- Am I dead?” he whispered.

“No,” she shook her head emphatically, “But I’m here to help you.”

“How?”

“Well first, I need to tell you something okay?”

He nodded, waiting.

“I know firsthand just how hard of a job you have, Spencer. But the world is such a better place with you in it.”

He smiled through the tears that had been forming in his eyes.

“Come on,” she stood, holding out her hand, “We don’t have much time.”

•

Spencer had been put in a medical coma after his surgery. It was good for his brain to slowly start healing the doctor had said.

You were sitting one one side of his bed, Penelope on the other. The rest of the team were out in the field busting their asses to find Lynch.

“At least he made it through surgery okay,” Garcia said, trying to be upbeat.

“Yeah, that’s true,” you nodded.

Your hand rested in his and you didn’t want to let go. It hurt so much seeing him lay in a hospital bed, his condition so up in the air.

The doctor still wasn’t sure just how much damage was done to his brain; that would be something that would be answered once he woke up.

“I’m scared,” you whispered to her.

You’d had plenty of scares with Spencer before due to his job, but never something this severe. This was horrifying, the thought that you could possibly lose him and everything you shared with him.

“I am too,” she answered honestly.

Your eyes watched his calm, sleeping face.

“I wonder where he is right now.”

•

“I’m still confused. You’re here to help me?” 

Spencer was walking next to Maeve, her arm looped through his. For a cemetery, it was surprisingly beautiful. The grass was bright green, flowers covered every grave in a multitude of colors and the sky was a bright blue. 

“In a way, yes,” she answered, “You’re at a crossroads aren’t you? Something has been weighing on you hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Spencer sighed, “Sometimes I’ve wondered if this job is worth it.”

“You’ve seen a lot of bad things. You’ve been through a lot of bad things. It can change you.”

“Yeah, it does.”

He looked out across the landscape, thinking. This was something that had been weighing on him for a long time.

“You also save lives. You stop monsters too. Isn’t that what you enjoy doing?”

“I thought I did.”

She held onto his arm more tightly, pulling him to a stop in front of her.

“No one deserves to go through everything you’ve been through in the years you’ve worked at the FBI. Being kidnapped, a drug addiction, multiple hostage situations, multiple gunshot wounds, losing people you love and you’re close to, prison-”

“Losing you,” he finished, quietly.

“Yes, that too,” she nodded at him somberly.

“It’s not always been the easiest job to have,” Spencer sighed.

“You, of all people Spencer, don’t deserve what happened to you. But it did and you’re strong. I know you aren’t going to let your trauma win,” Maeve said.

She started walking again, Spencer matching her pace.

“I’ve missed so much too.”

“How do you mean?” she questioned, looking up at him.

The sun was shining bright on her face, casting a soft glow on her skin. She looked like an angel. Maybe in a way, she was his angel.

“I’m almost 40 and I don’t have kids. I barely have a serious relationship. My life has revolved around the FBI for 15 years. I’ve lost so much because of it.”

“You’ve gained a lot as well though. Close friends that are just like family, the knowledge that you’re making the world a better place even in the smallest way and of course, Y/N.”

He was surprised.

“You know about Y/N?”

“You would be surprised at the amount of gossip on this side,” she chuckled.

“Come on, I want to show you something.”

•

Monitors beeping was the only sound to cut through the quiet of Spencer’s hospital room.

You had hardly left his side since he came out of surgery. Garcia almost had to physically pull you out of the chair just to get you to take a breather and use the bathroom.

She had been floating in and out of the room as she took calls and kept working, simultaneously researching for the case and keeping the team up to date on Spencer’s condition.

She’d stepped out earlier, leaving you alone with Spencer.

The doctor had told you earlier than talking to Spencer might be beneficial, that he could possibly hear you. You felt a bit silly attempting to, especially in front of Penelope, but you decided to give it another shot.

“Hi baby,” you whispered, squeezing his hand, “It’s me, Y/N. I haven’t left your side. I would’ve probably sat by your side in surgery if they would’ve let me.”

You chuckled brokenly, holding back tears. Your hand touched his cheek. It still felt warm and soft like it always did. The only difference was he wasn’t awake to react to your gesture.

Your fingers pushed back a stray strand of hair that was curling against his forehead and falling in his eyes. You pressed your lips to his forehead.

“Everyone is so worried. Especially me. I know they put you in a coma for your brain to heal, but I’m still worried about you. I just want to know that you’re okay, that that big, amazing brain of yours is okay.”

The steady beeping of his heart monitor was the only answer to your emotional outpouring.

“I don’t think I could be the same without you Spencer,” you whispered, “You’ve changed my life so much, for the better. I don’t think- no I know I can’t live without you.”

Your hand, still resting on his cheek, stroked it softly.

“Please come back to us. Come back to us with all your knowledge and statistics. I miss hearing you talk like a genius already,” you smiled, wiping your tears with your other hand.

“I miss your beautiful hazel eyes, that beautiful smile, your beautiful soul. They make my day better, you make me better.”

You’re silent a little while, trying to control the overflowing feeling of emotions whirling inside you like a tornado.

“I think I can speak for all of us that we’re ready for you to open those hazel eyes already. We believe in you Spence. You can get through this.”

Your hand returned to his and you thought you felt a slight squeeze in return but you couldn’t be sure.

You squeezed his hand gently in return, regardless if it had been just a reflex or not.

“I love you, Spencer.”

•

“What is this? My grave?”

Spencer was once again worried and confused.

“Am I dying?” he asked, turning to look at Maeve.

“Technically, no. But this is where you have to make your decision on what you’re going to do Spencer.”

“I don’t know, Maeve. I can’t think clearly. I just feel...lost.”

“I know,” she smiled kindly, “That’s why I’m here to help you.”

She paused, studying him.

“You’re scared.”

“I am,” he admitted, “Can’t I just stay here with you? Where everything is so peaceful and easy.”

She laughed gently.

“I’m afraid you can’t. The world needs you to do what you love. Have you done that?”

“I don’t know,” he answered hesitantly.

“Sure you do. What do you love?”

He looked at her, watching her as she waited for him to respond. 

“Well, I love magic. And ghost stories.”

“What else?”

“Jell-O,” he paused, thinking, “Kumquats. Uh...teaching, learning. Books. Hope. Making connections.”

She nodded encouragingly.

“Making- Making a difference. And...Y/N.”

A part of him felt guilty admitting it to Maeve though, like somehow he was letting her down.

“I would expect so,” she grinned, touching his arm, “What do you love about her?”

He bit his lip, feeling conflicted. He did love his girlfriend very much, but he had loved Maeve too.

“Don’t feel bad,” she urged, as if she could read his thoughts, “I know you loved me and I’m more than grateful to have been a part of your life, but Y/N is your future. You have every right to be happy and to love her. Now, tell me.”

“Well, for one she’s amazing when it comes to my job. It’s hard to find someone when you have this job, that you can trust, someone that understands.”

“I imagine so.”

“She’s...she’s beautiful. I didn’t expect to meet her when I did,” he chuckled, “I didn’t really expect to have the ability to love anyone after what happened to you.”

“But you did.”

Maeve looked at him like a proud mother. She looked at him with ease and pure happiness. It helped lessen the guilt he felt earlier.

“I did,” he smiled.

“How did you meet her?”

“Well I met her at a bookstore for starters,” he laughed and Maeve chuckled as well.

“That’s definitely on brand for Spencer Reid.”

“She was having trouble reaching a book, so I got it for her. It turned out she was just exploring classics and was having trouble figuring where to start and I suggested a few that might be easy on her.”

“What did you suggest?”

“Great Expectations, some Mark Twain. You know, typical reading for me.”

“And that was the beginning of the blossoming romance huh?”

“You sound like a cheesy romance movie,” he grinned, “But yes, it was.”

“Tell me more.” 

“She’s smart, maybe not at a genius level, but that’s not a bad thing at all. I like it. It’s refreshing,” he smiled a bit.

“I may not be able to talk to her about things like I did with you, but I’m also able to tell her and teach her things that she never knew. It makes me feel good to be able to do that.”

“Anything else?”

“She has a big heart. She’s always there for me. She’d give up anything to help me or the ones she loves. She has a great laugh. I love when she laughs so hard she’s practically laughing without sound coming out. It especially makes me happy when I’m the one to make her laugh that hard. I love that she loves books like I do. We may not have the same tastes, but it’s always so nice to spend time in each other’s presence just reading. Those are some of my favorite moments with her.”

Maeve was smiling at him, watching him intently. He could tell she was happy hearing him talk about Y/N.

“I’m afraid of hurting her though. I’m afraid my job will somehow hurt her. I’m afraid of dying, that I am dying and leaving her.”

“That’s why you can’t stay Spencer.”

Maeve took his hand, one last time, giving it a squeeze.

“The team needs you, your friends need you, Y/N needs you. Your girls will need you too.”

“My girls?” 

His brow furrowed in confusion, not understanding what she meant.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

She wrapped her arms around him, her hands on his back as she hugged him. He held on to her tightly, a small part of him afraid to let go.

“Spencer.”

The voice came like a whisper in the wind. It sounded like someone was calling him from the other side of the cemetery.

He pulled away from Maeve, looking behind him, as if he expected someone else to show up. No one was there. When he turned back to face Maeve, he realized she was gone.

His heart ached. He knew she wanted him to let her go. In a way, she was right, in so many ways. 

It was time to go.

He looked at the gaping hole that had suddenly appeared in the ground next to his headstone. 

Sometimes, all it took was just one step forward.

With a deep breath, he put one foot forward and fell deep into the darkness.

•

You had fallen asleep next to Spencer’s bed, your hand still in his. 

“Y/N?”

You stirred, thinking you’d heard your name. You sat up in the chair and saw Spencer looking at you groggily. He must have just woken a few moments earlier.

“Spence!” 

You threw your arms around him as carefully as you could, tears of happiness blurring your vision.

You pulled back, your hands resting on either side of his face. 

“We were so worried. I was so worried,” you half laughed, pulling away to brush your tears away.

“Don’t cry. I’m okay.”

He smiled, kissing your hand, holding on to it tightly.

“I have to be here for the team, for you and for my girls.”

“Your gir-“

Your question was cut short by the nurse coming in. A flurry of activity had followed as they checked his vitals, his doctors checking on him and the team immediately coming to see him. You didn’t have time to question further what he meant and soon forgot it.

A month and a half later, Spencer was fully recovered and back on his feet. You were so happy that he’d been given a second chance at living.

It came as a surprise when you discovered you were pregnant. Both you and Spencer were floored and overjoyed at the same time.

It was an even bigger surprise when you found out you were having twins. Somehow, it surprised Spencer the most when you found out. 

You and Spencer were expecting twins, yet the surprises didn’t stop there.

They were twin girls.

Tag List: @dreatine​ @reid-187​ @groovyreid​ @reidslibra​ @suvikamahes98blr​ @fuckthealarm​ @whatspunispun​ @iamburdened​ @cindywayne​ @thomasfoockinshelby​ @tinyminy88​ @theitcaramelchick​ @missprettyboy​ @hushlilbabydoll​ @sammy-jo1977​ @theonlyone-meeeee​ @haileymorelikestupid​ @lemonypink​ @multifandommandy​ @teamkiall​ @redbullchick​ @ifeelloved​ @one-sweet-gubler​ @nanocoool​ @delightfullyspeedyearthquake​ @unsteadyimagines​ @ughitsbaby​ @inkwiet​ @pennythetechgoddess​ @capt-engr-ssa​ @sixx-sic-sixx​ @mipetronella​ (sorry for some reason it won’t let me tag your spencer account?) @reidsstudies​ @disney-dreams-world​ @chocolatecalzoneherringbonk @mggwhore​ @andiebeaword​ @cupcake525​ @be-the-bravest​ @gretaamyk​

[bigfan-fanfic]

So tell me...

How did Morgan (or Cullen?) approach their desire for their current arrangement to the other?

(lol this got long. Anyway, feel free to ask any questions!)

Okay - so Morgan shows up at the Winter Palace and shoos off the gaggle of Orlesians swarming Cullen, and all those feelings he’s had over the years since first seeing Morgan during the Fifth Blight and mistaking him for the Maker returned (he consoles himself of that embarrassment by recalling that he was nowhere near his right mind at that point) come rushing back and Cullen feels his heart jackhammering inside his chest.

But of course he’s not going to make the first move - not with Ser Morgan the Mysterious, Savior of Ferelden. I do enjoy the idea of Morgan coming across Cullen in a moment of -shall we say, indiscretion? - while saying his name, and that leading into a tender first time, after which Morgan assures Cullen he’s not going anywhere. However, it might be equally as likely that Morgan simply approaches Cullen one day and confesses his feelings - Cullen protests his unworthiness, obviously - but it results in the two spending much more time together before they eventually sleep together. I’ve written the former as a one-shot, but the latter seems a more healthy introduction to a relationship.

They know right from the beginning that it’s a romantic relationship and not something purely sexual. There’s not much angst to it at all, and in fact both of them get the chance to discuss their trauma, Cullen with his addiction and his PTSD and his past (and Morgan makes sure to try and guide him to be better), and Morgan opens up about his mother and his insecurities and his loneliness and his worries about being a father.

As far as the BDSM aspect of their relationship, it is largely more of a lifestyle thing for them than a sexual activity. It started out as something they tried once after Morgan revealed a couple of his fantasies, and Cullen enjoyed it a lot. A LOT. But really it became more than just a kink for him when he asked Morgan to tie him up during after a withdrawal episode. It both grounded him and sent him into subspace and Cullen just found that to be so liberating, ironically. He kept his fantasies about this to himself until finally he was able to drum up the courage to ask about it, and with some help from the Iron Bull in determining what they wanted, Cullen became Morgan’s sub, wearing a small green circle on a cord in public to signify his belonging, and a leather collar made special for him in private. 

Cullen is almost always tied up for sex, and quite often relaxation involves Cullen bound in some way, unless he is required to go outside where he could be seen or if he’s needed physically and his hands need to spread wider than a set of manacles would allow. They do spend plenty of time without bondage, but even so Cullen always wears one of his collars - Morgan is the only one allowed to change them out.

When they have children, Cullen prefers to limit their activities to their room and those times they are traveling to meet old friends or check on the rehabilitation center. Morgan works with Cullen’s siblings on the Rutherford Homestead and their friends to ensure that they have plenty of time alone to continue their play and comfort without involving their children, although Cullen does continue to wear his public collar as it helps ground him.

As far as in a Modern!AU, it’s a lot easier for them to shift into that lifestyle once Cullen realizes he likes being tied up just in general, not just in bed, and they do so after a frank discussion and negotiation.

[luluwquidprocrow]

i know their names, i carry their blood too

originally posted: august 13th, 2018

word count: 19,681 words

rated: teen

beatrice snicket, lemony snicket

family, angst with a happy ending, VFD, assorted original vfd characters, assorted canon characters repeatedly mentioned, one small girl going through a lot of unpleasantness, most of the time by herself, attempted kidnapping (legit vfd recruitment in action), also one small girl trying to avoid a decent amount of trauma and loss

summary: A man has come back to the city. Beatrice Baudelaire, eight years old and miles away, is trying to find him.

opening notes:

this fic relies pretty heavily on the beatrice letters, and there are a few references and one code that will make a lot more sense if you’ve read all the wrong questions and the unauthorized autobiography!

title from the crooked kind by radical face

.

Beatrice learns early on, at seven and with a bare ankle because they said they don’t require the tattoo anymore, that if she turns the doorknob slowly and lifts it up at the same time, her bedroom door doesn’t stick when it opens. At eight, she learns if she stays close to the hallway wall, avoids the places where the floor groans under her feet, especially in the spot in front of the chaperone’s room, then she can make it in absolute silence to the staircase. The stairs are trickier—most of the steps have warped over time—so she wraps her hands tight around the banister and inches along the edge until she stretches out a tentative foot and finds the smooth carpet of the ground floor rug under her socks.

At almost one in the morning, everything, every overstuffed armchair and faded green wall and well-stocked pantry, is smothered in black shadows. Beatrice doesn’t mind. She can still find her way around. She had walked around for a week with her eyes closed to prove a point a few months ago. (The point was that she could tell anyone by their footsteps, which she could. The result was that she could navigate the entirety of headquarters in the middle of the night. She knows every creak in every floorboard and what everyone’s shoes sound like now.)

A proper adult might ask her if she’d like a light on so she can see a little easier at one in the morning. A proper adult would probably think she’d be afraid of the dark, after everything that happened. Then again, a proper adult would probably not have put her in this situation to begin with. She’s not entirely sure. She’s only known a few proper adults in her life, or people older and taller than her to the point she considered them adults. She hopes she’ll know at least one more.

From the report a volunteer smuggled to her during dinner in the mashed potatoes—and from the confirmation from another volunteer during dessert, waving his spoon through the air at her—and from the further confirmation from the chaperones standing in a corner with their heads together and mumbling not very quietly at all—a man was seen. Far away, on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings in the city. A man they tell stories about, a man no one seems to know for sure, a man who might be a detective, or has had that printed on an office door at one point or another. A man who hasn’t been seen in a long, long time.

“That’s him,” Beatrice had said.

“How do you know?” a volunteer had asked. “You’ve never seen him either.”

Beatrice hasn’t, but she thinks she’s allowed to make an educated guess here. A niece should know her own uncle, even by rumors. And she knows him like she knows the back of her hand, or the floorboard underneath her bed she stashes the picture and the ring under, or the books she’s read in the middle of the night when she was supposed to be asleep, the ones they tried to hide from her so she couldn’t read his name. She knows.

(One of the older chaperones told her—or muttered disparagingly in her direction after Beatrice asked the same question for a whole hour one day, because no one would give her a straight answer—that she has the analytical eyes of her mother and the stubborn streak of her namesake and the brazen attitude of her uncle. Another one told her later, a little more kindly, that she looks like her father when she reads, quiet and studious. So, she knows.)

Her backpack is a heavy weight on her back as she creeps through the downstairs rooms, her shoes gripped in one hand and a letter almost crumpled tight in the other. She’d written it after dinner, tucked away in a corner of a room that no one ever looked in (the bathroom closet, of course), the typewriter across her lap and the news still fresh in her mind. She tapped her fingers against the keys. How should she address the letter? Because she’d have to send a letter. It was only polite, after all. But calling him uncle outright might be a little too much, a little too soon. Dear, she typed, for a start. Dear—physically distant relative? Closest living relative? The person she had to find, because he could help her find the people most important to her? This had to be perfect, and Beatrice knew it would be, but she still had to think—

Dear Sir, she settled on, with a small, pleased smile.

That was when she’d heard the voices from outside in the hall, filtering through the bathroom door.

“This can’t be good news,” said a chaperone Beatrice never liked. “He’s a wanted criminal, isn’t he? And I heard he was responsible for that other fire a few years ago, too. What if he comes here?”

“How can we trust someone like him?” said another one that Beatrice had almost respected until that moment.

“It’s probably not even him,” said a third voice. “There’s been too many people with his initials showing up over the years. With any luck, he’s dead and gone.”

Beatrice frowned, mostly in anger, because that was such an awful, rude thing to say about someone. She knew it was him. There was no way it couldn’t be. But the chaperones had a point about the initials, and it made her think of something else. In case the letter went astray, because the mail could be so unreliable, especially so far from the city, she should preface it with something, shouldn’t she?

I have no way of knowing if this letter will reach you, as the distance between us is so very far and so very troublesome, she’d written, proud at how professional she sounded. And even if this letter does reach you, I am not sure it will reach the right person. Perhaps you are not who I think you are.

But she’d learned one important thing here, and that was that you had to be certain, because you might be wrong. So at the end of the day, it was merely a pretense, a formality. There was nothing she didn’t know for sure, because she was certain.

My name is Beatrice Baudelaire, she typed, with a fierce determination and her head held high. I am searching for my family. Then she’d known that she was going to leave.

Beatrice squints up at the grandfather clock in the corner of the main room, trying to see the time through the shadows. If she cuts it too close she’ll run into the chaperones doing their middle-of-the-night check on the neophytes. She has to be out of the building before it comes to that. The ground floor of headquarters is silent as a grave right now, as dark as one too, and she steps close to the couch where the floor won’t talk back to her as she makes her way to the heavy ivory front door, washed grey in the dark.

She knows from experience—from carefully watching and listening—that the door is locked (silver, outdated, the kind from the old hardware manuals Beatrice has extensively studied in the dead of night) from the outside, the volunteer who locks it then running up the fire escape and back inside through an upstairs window. But the quickest way out is always the easiest way in. She puts on her shoes and takes off her backpack, unzips the latter as slow as she can, and feels around for the thin red ribbon.

She shifts her hair, shoulder-length and blonde with a curl at the very end, away from her face, and ties it back securely with the ribbon.

An older volunteer had given her a lock pick the previous week after Beatrice helped her solve a word game—there’s no way she would’ve been able to get one otherwise. The chaperones almost always seem to know when someone’s doing something they shouldn’t, considering how much else they miss. Beatrice takes it out and gets to work, moving quickly and quietly, listening for the barely audible tick when one of the tumblers releases. One of the chaperones laughs upstairs, a disembodied thing in the darkness, and Beatrice grips the tools harder so she doesn’t jump and drop them.

The lock clicks sharply, the door easing open with a heavy creak. Beatrice freezes in place, straining her ears, her breath still in her throat. She’s sure someone had to hear that.

Something creaks upstairs.

The floorboard outside the chaperone’s door.

Beatrice snatches up her bag, squeezes herself through the gap and outside, and pulls the door shut behind her. She runs down the stone steps two at a time and doesn’t look back.

Ten blocks away, when she’s sure no one is looking, Beatrice drops the folded letter into a public mailbox.

The only train out of town leaves at five in the morning. Beatrice gets to the station with plenty of time to spare, and easily memorizes the route she’ll have to take to get to the city. It’s a long one, so she sits down on one of the benches and counts out her change. She digs the ring out of her bag, the heirloom from the island Sunny had given her that Beatrice had hid from the chaperones, and tries it on different fingers until it stays and doesn’t slide. Then she waits, tracing the low ceiling beams with her eyes, swinging her legs back and forth.

She knows just what he’ll be like. Not too tall, keeps to himself, intelligent. Sensible, maybe a little tentative, a little worried. His books made it sound like he’d been through a lot, after all. But she’s not too concerned about that. He’ll talk to her, because she’s his niece, and she’s read everything he’s written, and they have a good deal in common. They both like big words, long books, and could take or leave the sea.

She has one picture of him, of the side of his back and a corner of his face and one hand, or the side of the back and the corner of a face and the one hand of a man Violet and Klaus didn’t know, but a man Beatrice knew couldn’t be anyone else. There were three other people in the photograph—the uncle she’ll never meet, and the Baudelaire parents.

Beatrice hadn’t meant to take the photograph. It was their photograph, Violet and Klaus and Sunny’s, the last thing they had of their parents. But she thought it might be the only glimpse she’d get of her uncle, especially when she’d only known about Jacques, so she would sneak it out of Klaus’s commonplace book when he wasn’t looking. She’d wonder who the other man was, since that was before she knew. And she’d meant to put it back, but—but there hadn’t been time.

Violet and Klaus told her her mother had blue eyes, and so did Jacques, and she has them too, so she knows she’ll see the same shade of blue in his eyes, another link between the two of them. Excitement flutters around inside of her like a million wonderful butterflies, and she can’t help but smile. Not only is she going to find the family she lost, she’s going to find the family she didn’t even know she still had until a few months before. Beatrice can’t think of anything luckier.

There’s not too many people on the train when it comes into the station, so Beatrice picks a windowseat all to herself, pressing herself close so she can see everything passing by. She doesn’t want to miss a single thing. She swings her legs again, heels kicking the seat, and waits for the train to start moving.

“Aren’t you a little young to be traveling alone?” the woman across the aisle asks. She lowers yesterday’s evening edition newspaper and gives Beatrice a pointed stare behind her thick-framed glasses.

“No,” Beatrice says.

“You seem a little young,” the woman continues.

“I’m short for my age,” Beatrice says.

The woman gives her another look, specifically at her feet, and then looks back up at Beatrice with a raised eyebrow. She ruffles her newspaper imperiously and disappears behind it again.

Beatrice swallows, her shoulders pulling in. She makes a point to stop swinging her legs and sits up straighter. She keeps at it, even when the woman gets off at the next station and she’s by herself on the train.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she jolts awake at a flash of light across her face. It flickers jagged on her hands, lighting up the seat beneath her, bright and blinding white. She looks around frantically, expecting to see rain and bending wood, to hear the roar of crashing waves, before she remembers she’s still on the train. There’s no lightning on a train. It’s just the sun streaming in from the window. She watches with wide eyes as it creates patterns on her arms and her dress, then tears her gaze away and stares hard at the faraway houses outside the window instead, clutching her bag in her lap. Beatrice thinks of big words (pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity surely counts as a word, and she spends ten minutes testing out pronunciations), long books (Anna Karenina is long, and she can probably still read it even though she already knows the central theme), and anything but the sea, until her hands loosen and her shoulders drop and the sun is high enough that she can’t see it.

Beatrice had first found his name buried in old reports, in thirteen files jammed into the back of a drawer, down in the basement at headquarters when someone had asked her to find a flashlight. She found a bat instead, clinging to the rafters, and it blinked at her with big, black eyes. Beatrice blinked back, because she knew all about all kinds of animals, especially the ones the organization trained, and she didn’t mind bats. Then it fluttered down on top of an old filing cabinet in the corner.

Beatrice wandered over and picked out faded letters that spelled Baudelaire on the front. Eager, because no one at headquarters would talk to her about Violet or Klaus or Sunny, or answer her questions about where they might be, she yanked it open and found files and files with a distinct cursive signature ending each one—Lemony Snicket. And her stomach had twisted up tight, because she could hear Klaus like he was standing right behind her, telling her the name Kit Snicket.

Kit Snicket, Beatrice had echoed.

That’s right, Klaus had said, smiling. She was your mother.

Beatrice knew all about her mother. Violet and Klaus and Sunny had told her her mother was a good person, a volunteer, someone who had helped them, and they had helped her. That was how Beatrice was born. And she knew all about Jacques, because they’d said the same thing about him. But they’d never mentioned a Lemony. She knew better than to think he was her father, because she knew her father’s name, too. Dewey Denouement. They’d said his name only once, and she’d repeated it over and over again to herself. Beatrice didn’t know who this was.

She read through them all in the dead of night so no one would bother her, because Beatrice knew they were watching her, closer than they watched the other neophytes. She tried to find the four volumes she’d found hints at in other files, although she never managed to pin them down. But the thirteen files told her enough. They confirmed that Violet and Klaus and Sunny were still out there somewhere, just like she thought. They confirmed their stories, although with other details they hadn’t said or had relayed differently—but Beatrice had never doubted what they’d told her to begin with.

And they confirmed that Lemony Snicket was her uncle, and he was alive.

All of Beatrice’s hopes became real, became fact. There was someone else out there, someone who could help her. Someone who was family. Someone who could help her find Violet and Klaus and Sunny. Someone who knew the whole story too.

So then she just had to wait. She had to wait, and learn, and sit through someone telling her how to make a meringue when she knew full well how to make a meringue, and how to pick a lock and how to define a word and the right way to escape a burning building. She had to keep waiting until the right moment came and she could leave and try to find him, try to find them all. And Beatrice would know when it was. She was Beatrice Baudelaire, after all. She knew everything now.

Beatrice spends three weeks switching trains, eating greasy sandwiches from the vendors hanging around in the old, dingy train stations. Sunny wouldn’t like any of the sandwiches at all, but Beatrice has to make do with what she can. No one talks to her, so she doesn’t get a chance to try out any of the other things she’d thought to say after she spoke to that woman. I’m visiting a relative. I’m in a special program. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers? She’s a little bummed about that, because she practiced the perfect eyebrow raise in the hand mirror she took from one of the chaperones, but it’s really for the best. She doesn’t need to be sidetracked.

Instead, she listens to how the trains sound smoother and sleeker closer to the city, watches how the stations get more impressive. She takes pamphlets from each station until she has a neat collection detailing train mechanics, local restaurants, and sometimes, if she finds one, the smallest books she’s ever seen. Beatrice sits in the hard station seats and flips through them while she waits for her train to come in. Mostly they’re books she’s read before, but she thinks they’re cute, being so tiny. She’ll show them to Violet and Klaus and Sunny, and her uncle, too. She knows they’ll enjoy them.

A voice mumbles indistinct static over the loudspeaker. Beatrice finishes her sandwich, puts the latest brochure in her bag, and gets on the next train.

The train station in the city is enormous, bigger than headquarters. It certainly looks as old as headquarters, but a little more distinguished, with a solid white floor and an endlessly high ceiling. Beatrice would be able to appreciate it more, she thinks, if there wasn’t so many people, all bustling past in a flurry of suitcases and elbows. None of them spare her a second glance, not even when she climbs up on top of one of the curved benches for a better view of the entire station.

Whenever Violet couldn’t figure out how to fix an invention, or Klaus couldn’t figure out the meaning of a sentence, or Sunny couldn’t figure out how to change a recipe, they would take it apart and look at each individual component before continuing. The same principle works for a city, Beatrice figures. A city is just a collection of streets, one right after the other, and all of them go somewhere. It’s not too hard to find out where, especially when you have the right map.

She finally spots the map display, drops back onto the floor, and goes and grabs every single map available. She squeezes her way through the crowd mobbing around the exit and emerges out on the city street into a sudden deluge of bright lights and noise. Beatrice blinks until it all evens out, all the traffic lights and towering buildings and the people, hundreds and hundreds more of them. She swallows, presses herself against the outside wall, and takes a moment to watch everything.

It’s strange. The ocean was vast, and they rarely ran into anyone out there, and headquarters, tucked away in a small town miles from the sea, had only about twenty neophytes and a handful of teachers and chaperones. But the city is full of jostling bodies and constant sound, like the whole world rushing around her, a storm that doesn’t stop. Beatrice thinks she might be scared, if she wasn’t so systematic about it. You can’t be scared if you know everything. It’s just different, is all it is. She reminds herself to breathe and thinks it’s just different.

Beatrice spreads the maps out in the park across the street, holding the edges down with rocks so they don’t blow away when the breeze kicks up. Everything is marked on the maps, every street and building and corner store, and even the best places to see certain birds. One map includes Nine Dreary Buildings to Avoid on Your Lunch Break, which is absurdly specific but exactly what she needs, and Beatrice hunts them all down with a careful eye and a black pen. All nine buildings are within a few blocks of each other, clustered in the center of the city. She’ll have to go through all of them, just to be sure. Klaus taught her it was good to be thorough. She puts the rest of the maps away and starts looking.

The first two buildings are too short to have a thirteenth floor. The third building looks like it was condemned years ago and no one bothered to do anything with it. The fourth building has so many floors that Beatrice loses track when she stands on the sidewalk and tilts her head back to try and count, and she looks through the directory inside the doors but doesn’t see any mention of her uncle’s name (or a pseudonym, or an anagram, or even just a suspicious blank space).

The walk to the fifth building takes the longest, because Beatrice has to find a path around the construction being done on seventh street, and takes ten minutes to wrestle with the map and figure out which street she’s on when she winds up in a dark alley with a lot of cigarette butts and one very noisy pigeon who tries to steal her map. The sixth building has the suspicious blank space on the directory, but it’s on the fifteenth floor. The seventh and eighth buildings, when she manages to find them, were mislabeled and wind up being two different diners, one of them even across from a completely different train station. Beatrice admits that they’re still pretty dreary-looking and uncomfortable, especially the latter one. She certainly wouldn’t want to eat at a place called The Hemlock Tearoom and Stationary Shop. That’s just tempting fate a little too much.

The ninth building proclaims itself to be the Rhetorical Building in faded but still distinct black print on an otherwise grey building, with a tattered brown awning over the glass double doors. It’s definitely tall enough to have thirteen floors—Beatrice counts twenty rows of windows going up the side. She bites her lip and scans the directory. Her heart leaps when she spots the little card for an office on the thirteenth floor. The name scribbled out, but whoever did it used a faded black pen and didn’t do that good a job, so she can still see the very clear L at the beginning and the S somewhere in the middle. She bites her lip around a smile.

This is it. This is her uncle’s office.

Beatrice pushes the doors open and takes a cursory glance around the lobby, and finds the inside lives up to the dreary reputation too. She wouldn’t have put so much sagging grey furniture and scuffed flooring and wilted potted plants in an office building. She ducks down as she hurries past the front desk so the bored receptionist doesn’t see her, vaguely wondering what it is about the building that her uncle likes so much to have an office here, and heads up the staircase. She can ask him when she sees him. She can ask him everything when she sees him, although everything is just one single question, but it’s everything to her.

The thirteen floors pass in what feels like a matter of moments, and Beatrice breaks into a run when she gets closer to his office, bursting through the doors onto the thirteenth floor. She darts from door to door, looking for the right number, wood creaking under her shoes, and almost barrels right into a panel of old, frosted glass on a door halfway down the hall. The only writing on it says DETECTIVE in peeling letters, which is exactly what she expected. Beatrice grins and knocks a few times, bouncing on the balls of her feet. When there’s no answer right away, she tries the doorknob.

The door is unlocked.

Beatrice tries with everything she has to contain her excitement, but it still comes through in her shaking hands as she turns the doorknob. “Hello?” she calls.

She comes face to face with a cloud of dust. Beatrice coughs into her fist, waving her other hand around to disperse it, and looks up to find a cluttered, but empty office.

Beatrice frowns and walks inside. The blinds are shut tight over the windows, so she eases them open carefully, letting in just enough light to see, and the office still doesn’t have anyone else in it. She checks under the desk, and out on the fire escape, and even under the papers on the walls, but there’s no reasonably tall man with her eyes waiting for her. She huffs out a sigh, her shoulders falling, but then the papers on the wall catch her attention. She looks closer.

They aren’t just papers—there are photographs mixed in, pictures of people she’s never seen before, and pictures of places, cities, hotel rooms, at least one rental car office, an all-you-can-eat buffet, and two separate theaters, and newspaper articles and pages ripped from books, all framing a humongous map of the city and surrounding areas, bigger than any she picked up at the train station. The papers are connected by a thin red string, wound around tacks and marking pins and what looks like an old bottle cap for a soda Beatrice doesn’t think sounds very pleasing. The middle of the map has more recent ones, polaroids dated a few months back of steep, rolling hills, a note paperclipped to one, neat typewriter type proclaiming it could be possible, underlined in a smooth, even blue pen. There’s a path marked beside them, curving through a wide and unlabeled space in the map.

That must be it, she thinks, nodding to herself. He’s not here, and she could be more upset about that, but she can’t be when now she knows exactly where he went. He’s pretty obvious for a detective, which makes her smile around a laugh.

She turns to the desk, which leans a little to one side, papers and a typewriter balanced precariously. A strangely-shaped paperweight sits on top of a stack of papers, and Beatrice mentally runs through every single animal she knows but can’t find a match. It looks like a snake or a worm or an eel, only with too many teeth.

Beatrice clambers up into the chair behind the desk, settles herself, and looks at the typewriter. It’s an old model, but well-cared-for, with shiny keys and a brand new ribbon, almost like it was waiting for her. Beatrice rolls in a sheet of paper, and then runs her fingers over the keys. She’s sure he won’t mind.

Dear Sir, she types. I am writing this on the typewriter in your small, dusty office, on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings of the city.

I am leaving this city, only hours after seeing it for the first time, to follow your path of yarn and pins. I am heading for the hills…

When she leaves his office and starts hunting through the bus schedules for an idea of how she’s going to get to the hills, she realizes, with an exhilarated jump of her stomach, that it’s now March 1st. She’s been nine years old for a whole day.

On her last birthday on the boat, which Violet had radically modified before leaving the island and on the journey after, Sunny made her a cake. There were no candles, because none of them ever used a candle, at least when Beatrice was looking, and Violet and Klaus read her favorite story, and everyone got icing all over their hands and faces. Beatrice can just barely hear the way they all laughed. There’s a thin fog over the rest of the memory, one that strangles the excitement out of her. She can’t quite recall what the weather was like, or what she wore, or what flavor the cake was or even what the story was and especially how close it was to the day where—

Beatrice clears her throat and looks back at the bus schedules. She doesn’t think I have to find them. She thinks I will find them.

Beatrice takes one look at the sandwich counter in the bus station and resolutely decides she’s too hungry for another sad, uncomfortably greasy sandwich, and she needs a much better option. She takes out her map and backtracks to the Rhetorical Building, because the closest diner is on that street, right across from the office, between a tailor shop and a building shaped almost like a short, squat pen. For a city that on the whole is a lot more dreary than she thought it’d be, the diner looks bright and welcoming, with soft lights in the windows and cheerful blue curtains. Klaus taught her to be aware of her surroundings, so she makes sure she looks at everything when she steps inside.

The diner isn’t very big, but it’s clean and well-kept, with tan booths against either wall, a line of square tables right down the middle, and a counter blocking most of the kitchen from view. The pictures on the walls are all framed and organized in neat rows, and Beatrice’s gaze moves quickly from the few pictures of an ocean and a group of people in front of a boat to the other ones of cityscapes, and then to a completely blank piece of paper with #47! scribbled in the lower right corner. She looks to the other side of the room and finds a tightly-packed bookshelf near the counter. She thinks Klaus would definitely approve.

She climbs up on top of one of the counter stools and smooths out her skirt, and then sees a tall man standing behind the counter, flipping an oozing sandwich on the grill. He looks at her with wide eyes, surprise clear on his face, but then he smiles, so genuine she could’ve just imagined the shock. Beatrice thinks he looks a little like a movie star, with that thick red hair and easy stance.

“What can I get you?” he asks.

“I don’t have much money,” Beatrice says, because Violet always taught her to be honest. Sunny taught her to lie, but she thinks Sunny would like this man too, if she saw that sandwich.

“Not a problem,” the man says. “It’s on the house. What do you like?”

“What are you making?”

“The best grilled cheese you’ll ever eat in your life,” he says, and he slides the sandwich onto a plate and sets it in front of her. Then he puts a napkin and a glass of water beside it and smiles expectantly.

It is the best grilled cheese she’s ever eaten in her life. It puts the millions of sandwiches she ate at all those train stations to shame. When the cheese pulls when she takes a bite out of it, she knows that Sunny would love this sandwich. It seems almost unfair to get it for free. “Are you sure it’s okay?” she asks through a mouthful of toasted bread and mozzarella and a hint of pepper.

“Tell you what,” he says, wiping his hands on his apron. “Have you read anything good lately? My friends and I are always looking for book recommendations.”

She wishes she could get everything in life with a good book recommendation, because that sounds like a great system. The last book she’d read had been back at headquarters, so that she would understand a certain code, but Beatrice liked it a lot anyway. She was told it was a classic too, and she knows lots of adults like it when you read classics. “I read a book about a girl who goes out to dinner with her family,” she says, “and cracks an egg on her forehead. Not at the dinner, in a different chapter.”

He laughs. “A friend of mine liked that one when we were kids,” he says. “She went around trying to crack an egg on her forehead too, made me go through a whole carton of eggs.”

“Did she do it?”

“She sure did. Got egg all over my aunt’s diner in the process, but she looked me right in the eye and told me it was worth it.”

Someone else sits down farther down the counter, and the man walks off in their direction, leaving Beatrice alone with the grilled cheese. But he comes back, a curious look in his eyes. “So what brings you to the city?” he asks.

She thinks this is the question where she shouldn’t be entirely honest. Beatrice sits up straighter in her seat, trying to pull the sandwich apart into smaller, more dignified bites, the cheese oozing. “I’m visiting a relative,” she says.

“A relative?”

“A relative,” she says. “That’s all.”

“Do you need any help?” he asks. “I know this city like the back of my hand, and I’d be happy to—”

“No,” Beatrice says. “I know what I’m doing.” She finishes the last of the grilled cheese and wipes her hand on the napkin. “Thank you very much.”

He frowns a little, like he wants to ask her something else, but then he settles on another smile. “If you’re ever in the area,” he says, “or you need anything, even just some good food, stop on by.”

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Jake Hix.”

“Beatrice Baudelaire.”

The only thing about the journey into the hills that Beatrice didn’t account for is all the open space.

The bus driver only takes her as far as a convenience store on the outskirts of the city, so Beatrice walks the nearby dirt roads out into the hills, stopping at the first sight of open, empty land. She grips the straps of her backpack, standing at the edge of the misty and faded earth spread out all around her, reaching on and on and on, sloping down at dangerous angles before disappearing completely in a thick haze. She swallows hard and stares even harder.

Beatrice focuses on the color. Even in late winter, it’s green, pale but distinctly green. They’re hills, not the ocean, with a horizon blurred white with fog and clouds. Nothing is a dangerous, roiling blue-black-grey, and the tall crests of the hills don’t move like waves, and nothing rushes through her ears like a scream, except the wind, which is much less thunderous than water. After all that, it’s almost silent, in the hills. It’s silent, and it’s not all that open, is it? There’s at least two scraggly little trees that she can see. Landmarks. Points of reference. She is not alone in the hills.

He’s out there, somewhere.

She starts walking.

Without the train schedules for something to keep track of, Beatrice isn’t sure how long she spends in the hills. Time passes in cool nights and cloudy days and an awful lot of grass with actually very few trees before, in a low valley in the hills, she reaches an encampment of about thirty shepherds. Beyond them, where she expects sheep, is an impressive collection of yaks. They might be the only people she runs into out here, and she’s starting to get worried, not so much that she won’t find her uncle, but that she’ll overlook him completely in all this space. The path on the map in his office was pretty vague. She’s going to have to ask them.

Beatrice approaches one of the shepherds. He looks like he’s the oldest, his wild and white beard tangling in the wind. He holds a thick, dark bell in one hand, his elbow propped against a sturdy walking stick, and watches Beatrice with startlingly cold eyes as she approaches.

“Excuse me,” Beatrice says. “Have you seen a man around here?”

“Depends,” he says. His voice rumbles like deep thunder, and it makes her flinch. “What’s he look like?”

Beatrice thinks about it. “Average height, not bald, fully clothed, answers to the initials L.S.”

“Oh,” the shepherd says, straightening up. “Him! He was here for a while. A strange one. Kept to himself most of the time. Stayed in that cave about two miles away.” He rings the bell, and the sound clunks and thunks against her ears. The yaks in the distance raise their heads and gaze in his direction. The shepherd, meanwhile, looks back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Seemed like he might have been waiting for someone, I thought.”

She feels a twinge of guilt and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She should’ve gotten here faster. “Can you take me there, please?” she asks.

“I don’t do anything for free,” he says shortly.

“I don’t have much,” she says, frowning, and it’s more true now than it was when she told it to Jake Hix. Between all the train fare and the subpar sandwiches and then the cost of the bus, Beatrice figures she has maybe seventy-five cents.

The shepherd bends down, sweeping a critical eye over Beatrice. When his gaze finds her hands, he points at the little band around one of her fingers. “That,” he says. “That would do.”

“Oh,” Beatrice says. She looks down at the ring, dull in the lack of sunlight. She’s seen it sparkle beautiful gold and red, the carving of the initial in the stone glittering brighter than anything. Something lost, something that was found again after so much time. Beatrice likes wearing it, even though she doesn’t always think about it.

But it’s not like it is a family heirloom, for her mother or her father or for Violet and Klaus and Sunny. It belonged to the Duchess of Winnipeg, and although it found its way through her family anyway, it’s certainly never really been Beatrice’s. She just thought that she’d be able to give it back to the Duchess at some point.

She slides the ring off her finger and holds it up for the shepherd. His beard parts in a smile, revealing awfully shiny teeth, and he snatches the ring up and drops it into his pocket. The yaks are closer now, and he winds his hand into the rope around one of their necks and drags it over. He climbs up onto its back and stares at Beatrice. “It’s a ride. You’d best get on.”

Beatrice pulls herself up behind him. She tracks the sun this time, over the huge shoulders of the shepherd, watching it dip through the sky as they ride.

“Did he say anything?” Beatrice asks at one point. “The man.”

The shepherd scratches at his chin. His elbow swings back as he does, jostling into Beatrice’s ear. “Something about a root beer float,” he says. “I’m in the mood for a root beer float.”

“That seems a lot to ask, in the hills,” Beatrice says, tilting her head to the side to avoid the elbow. “The closest diner is back in the city.”

“No, that’s what he said. I’m in the mood for a root beer float.”

“Oh,” Beatrice says, feeling her face flush.

“Well, there you go,” the shepherd says, some time later when he stops in front of a low but deep cave jutting awkwardly out of the earth. Beatrice thanks him, slides down off the yak, and makes her way inside.

There’s nothing much in the cave—just a few sheets of loose, stained paper, and a whole lot of bats, almost indistinguishable from the shadows. They squeak when Beatrice gets too close, so she leaves them alone in the back and focuses on the rest of the cave. A few sheets of peeling and faded flower-patterned wallpaper cling to the curved walls. A collection of wires sits near the mouth of the cave, and a lone light bulb rolls by her feet. The wind collects in the hollow at the center, making it drafty and uncomfortable. She pulls her sweater tighter around her.

From the shepherd’s words, she knew he wouldn’t be here, but it still stings to get all the way here and then find out he’s gone again, to find out she just missed him. But that just means she has to try again, try harder. That’s not a problem for her. She’s been through worse.

Beatrice rifles through the sheets of paper left behind. She picks out the least ruined one, the only mark a K by a ripped corner. She pulls out a pen and sits down.

Dear Sir, she writes. I have found you at last—but you’re not here.

She finishes her letter and folds it neatly. She didn’t bring a single envelope, and she looks around in her bag to find something else she could possibly trade for the shepherd to send her letter. She doesn’t think he’ll care for a sweater or her lock pick, and she needs them. Beatrice walks out of the cave, staring into the direction of the city. She can’t quite see it, but she’s sure it’s there, just as sure as she is that she’ll find her uncle when she gets back.

She starts to figure out how she’ll get back, because she can worry about the letter when she finds the shepherd. How long it’ll take to get out of the hills, where to catch the right bus, how she can find the diner—when one of the younger shepherds, not much older than her, trots over, tugging a yak behind him.

“The city���s a long ways away,” he says when he stops beside her, panting a little. “I think your best bet is this yak here.”

Beatrice stares at him, and then the yak. The yak yawns at her.

“He’s pretty comfortable,” the boy says, smiling. “And he’s got a good sense of direction. The best yak this side of the hills, I guarantee it.”

“What about the other side?” Beatrice asks.

The boy laughs. “No comparison at all.”

“Don’t you need him?”

He shakes his head. “I can make do without him for a while.”

He tells her he’s heard about a shortcut back to the city, through a mountain rather than the miles of rolling hills. Beatrice has never been on a mountain. When he points it out to her, an enormous shimmering outline through the fog, it’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen in her life. It looks nothing like the ocean.

The mountain is dangerously uneven, but Beatrice has never been so high up before, and that and the yak make up for all the sudden dips and drops in the path. The yak seems to know where he’s going—she never has to keep him on track or nudge him along, and he always stops around sunset and lets her curl up against his side. Sometimes he stops in front of the occasional bush, and Beatrice makes sure she can identify the berries on them with what Klaus wrote in his commonplace book, and the two of them snack to keep up their strength, Beatrice making sure not to stain the edges of the notebook with juice fingerprints.

Sometimes she flips back, back to when Klaus was a few years older than her, to the page where she’d taken the photograph. She’d replaced when both the objects became hers. She likes reading what he wrote, the little bits of her family’s story, like he’s right beside her on this mountain even as he was trying to get through the Mortmain Mountains. Recipes Sunny put together, things Violet said, pieces of codes and books and memories.

The notebook was the last thing he gave her. He’d thrown it at her during the shipwreck, and she can still see that, plain as anything. The black clouds and the thunder and the lightning, the wood splintering up in a roaring crash under her feet, everything slick with the endless rain and the thick, dark waves, including the edge of wood keeping Beatrice afloat. Then Violet’s voice, shouting we’ll find you, I promise—

Beatrice pages through the notebook, staring at Klaus’s immaculate handwriting. “How much more mountain do you think there is?” she asks the yak.

There’s a lot more mountain, days and days of mountain. Beatrice promises herself that if she ever has to do this again, she’s bringing a calendar.

When she gets to the bottom of the mountain, the ground covered in rocks and patchy grass, still a ways out from the city but definitely closer to it than the spot where the bus had dropped her off, Beatrice isn’t sure what to do with the yak. She climbs down, dusts him off, readjusts her bag, and then watches him. The yak watches her. Then he yawns, turns, and starts meandering back in the direction of the hills. She figures he probably wouldn’t be the best yak this side of the hills if he didn’t know how to get back to the shepherd.

“Bye,” Beatrice calls.

The city is uncomfortably close when she gets back, full of a heavy, simmering summer heat. She wipes the sweat off her face and thinks she could also go for a root beer float right about now. But there's probably a lot more diners than dreary office buildings in the city, ones that will be harder to eliminate than the offices were. She's not even sure if he'll be in his office now either, after he wasn’t where he was supposed to be in the hills. The thought sits in a knot inside her, twisting up the more she thinks. She of all people should know where he is. What sort of person is she, if she doesn't know the whereabouts of her own uncle?

Beatrice winds her way carefully through the masses of people still crowding the sidewalks, as if they never left, like the same people from months ago have been standing around here all this time. She could pull out the maps, but she doesn’t see a place to put them down and look at them again. Beatrice finally comes to a halt in front of a square, stocky building, old pillars framing the tinted glass doors.

Violet and Klaus and Sunny told her about libraries. She doesn’t remember the one on the island, or the island itself, although Violet told her both were massive, and they didn’t have much of one on the boat, just a collection of books Klaus brought from the island. But Beatrice knows that a library is a sanctuary, a calm place, where someone is supposed to feel safe. She knows that her uncle considers a library all of those things too. And even if she doesn’t find anything, at least it’s probably air conditioned.

Beatrice heads inside.

The first thing she notices is that everything is so quiet. But not an unnaturally still quiet, more of a gentle, unobtrusive one, interrupted only by the occasional shuffle of paper. Beatrice understands with a rush what Violet and Klaus and Sunny meant. It’s like stepping into a whole world, one she could spend hours and hours in just reading, among the bookshelves and pale cream carpet and broad windows letting in a sunlight so serene that for the first time it doesn’t make her hands clench in fear.

Beatrice takes her time going through the library, taking it all in. She makes her way through aisle after aisle, down a staircase to the lower level. A short wall separates the little lobby near the staircase and the rest of the floor, and she follows it around where it curves to look at the room.

Her breath catches in her throat. Ten feet ahead, there’s a man standing in front of a glass case, his hands deep in the pockets of his suit jacket. Beatrice walks a little closer, staying against the wall, until she can see the plaque near the case, describing something about poetry and actresses and dedication to the theater. She can see herself in the glass, a distorted short reflection in a pale pink dress, and she smooths her hair on instinct. Beatrice looks up, and up, until she can see the sharp reflection of the man, blue eyes and dark hair and a suitcase beside him that has seen better days but still clearly proclaims the owner to have the initials L.S.

Beatrice ducks back behind the wall in her surprise, her hands gripping each other. What are you doing, she thinks frantically, her heart pounding and pounding. There he is!

But when she pushes herself away from the wall, her mouth open to call out to him, he’s gone. Her heart drops, and she rushes towards the glass case. She skims through the poem for a hint about anything, as he seemed to look at it with a great deal of concentration, but she stops at the line a word which here means “person who trains bats” because who writes a second verse with such an uneven rhythm, and there’s no way baticeer is really a word—then she hears quick footsteps thudding in the hall behind her. She turns and runs towards then.

Beatrice follows him outside, barely keeping up. He runs incredibly fast for a man of his age in this heat, whatever that age is. Beatrice knows it’s certainly much older than she is. She sees the edge of his hat, the corner of his suitcase winging around another street, and she keeps running. It’s him. She’s going to catch up with him.

She follows him to a nearby park, where she finds him yards away of her, almost collapsed on a bench, leaning to the side to examine something on the seat. Beatrice slows up. And then he’s on his feet again, strolling towards the lake. There’s something forced about his casual stance, and she picks up her pace, thinking somewhere inside that this is ridiculous. They’re both looking for each other, they’re both here, and she should just—

He bolts off, this time leaping with an unexpected agility over a patch of shrubbery, which Beatrice dodges around easily when she reaches it, tearing out of the park after him. Moments later, she sees him throwing himself into a bus one street up, disappearing completely when the doors snap shut.

Beatrice lets out a disbelieving groan, staring at the retreating bus. She can’t believe how difficult he’s being, or for what reason, or why he treats the city like a place he’s desperately trying to escape. For as much as he runs, he sure still seems to wind up back here eventually.

But now that she’s seen him, she knows exactly where he’s going. Where else would he go in the city, on this particular bus route? Beatrice has looked over all the maps, and she remembers exactly where to go. She wipes the sweat off her face, takes a breath, and keeps on going.

He still makes it to his office building before her. When Beatrice stops at the corner, clutching the nearby lamppost and gasping, the bus is already far down the street and he’s nowhere in sight. She swallows and heads for the Rhetorical Building.

The lobby is dreadfully cold and still dreadfully dreary, but she barely notices it this time. Beatrice bypasses everything and sprints right for the staircase, not even trying to hide.

It could be because she’s already run so much, but taking the staircase this time seems to take an eternity. She’s so sure she can hear him, wheezing a floor above her, and that pushes her forward when her lungs burn and her legs ache. She makes it to the thirteenth floor, flings the door open, and barrels down the hallway to his office door.

Beatrice tries the doorknob first, but it doesn’t yield. She pounds on the door for five whole minutes, and it rattles and shakes but no one opens it.

One of the doors further down the hallway opens, and a man sticks his head out. “Something I can help you with?” he calls. “I’ve never seen anyone open that door at all. Can I—”

“Thank you,” Beatrice says quickly, hoping she sounds more firm than out of breath, “but I have this under control.” The man shrugs and closes the door. Beatrice continues knocking and knocking.

Maybe you were wrong, a voice in her head whispers. Maybe it’s not him.

I’m not wrong, Beatrice tells herself. I’m not wrong.

She huffs out a sigh, drops her backpack on the floor, and pulls out the lock pick. She doesn’t want to pick the lock, but this is it, she’s not waiting anymore.

The lock springs easily. Beatrice jams the picks back into her bag, grips the doorknob, and hauls the door open.

The office is empty.

Beatrice gapes around at the office, almost incredulous. It looks different than it did before—the papers, notes, and photographs on the wall are new, linked by a thick blue yarn now. The typewriter has a sheet of paper sticking out of it, like someone was just there (and he was, he was just there, she knows he was). There’s a framed picture on the wall of a lighthouse. The curtains are different, stark white and clean and fluttering in the breeze because the window is open.

She runs over to the window, climbing out onto the fire escape. It’s distressingly empty as well. When she grips the railing and leans over to look down the rest of the stairs and into the alley below, she doesn’t find anything at all. She stands there a moment longer, just in case he reappears, her whole body coiled with anticipation. Then another moment, and another, and another after that, until the moments stretch into minutes and her expectations finally die like a doused fire. She pushes herself away from the railing, slides back inside, and slams the window shut. Beatrice glowers at it, then eases it back open. He’ll have to be able to get back in later.

She takes a look at the wall. Before, it was easy to tell where he was going. Now, Beatrice can’t figure out what any of the notes mean. They’re all scattered pictures of beach sand and close-ups of waves and an unsettling collection of curling, spindly things that look like dried seaweed. She catches a few glimpses of his handwriting, mostly just question marks, and some typewritten notes signed M. No matter how hard she tries, her eyes keep finding their way back to the pictures of the ocean, pearly blue and peppered with stark-white foam. Her jaw clenches, and she turns away sharply.

The desk has more papers on it than it did before, but no paperweight. Beatrice flips through them, but she doesn’t find her letters, or letters from anyone else. What she does find are lists of places she’s never heard of, most of them crossed off. The paper in the typewriter is completely blank, but she doesn’t feel like writing anything. She stares around the office, pointedly avoiding the wall, and tries not to feel too angry or too disappointed. It doesn’t work very well.

Beatrice walks back into the hallway and shuts the door behind her, frowning down at the floor. She follows him all this way, and she has him, they’re mere feet from each other, and then he leaves?

Maybe, she thinks, and then she stops, because she’s not wrong. It was him, it was, and despite how the decor has changed, this is the office she was in before. He was here, and then he was gone, and so there has to be a reason he’s gone now, a reason to figure out so she can track him down again. Maybe something came up, business, or an enemy, or maybe he was just hungry, or—or—

sssssssssshh.

Beatrice whirls around and wrenches his office door back open, staring desperately inside. But there’s still no one there. She shuts the door again and looks up and down the hallway. “What was that noise?” she says.

The door down the hallway opens again, and the same man sticks his head out. “Someone say something?” he asks, gazing at Beatrice.

“What was that noise?” she asks.

The man shakes his head. “I didn’t hear a noise.”

“I thought I—”

“It was nothing, probably.” He raises an eyebrow. “You know, shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Shouldn’t you be working?” Beatrice shoots back. It’s uncharacteristic of her, but she’s tired all of a sudden, and she doesn’t like how this bone-deep weariness feels. The man looks affronted, and he shuts his door with a loud bang.

She traipses downstairs, all thirteen floors. Beatrice walks past the old desk and the sad grey furniture and the limp potted plants and makes her way towards the front exit. She’ll just have to wait until he comes back, and she can do that across the street in the diner, where at least she can try to wrangle another sandwich out of Jake Hix. The grilled cheese feels like years ago, after trying to survive on the mountain.

Beatrice hears it again.

It’s a scuffle, or like a slither—the drag of a shoe, a split second brush against furniture.

Beatrice stops in the middle of the lobby, looking around. She only now notices it’s completely empty, the receptionist missing from her desk. A chill ripples down her spine that has nothing to do with the air conditioner. “If it’s nothing,” she says, “then what’s that noise?”

Something curls slowly around her left ankle, something like thin, calloused fingers, and then a hand clamps tight over her mouth. Beatrice gasps, the sound muffled by the hand. Someone heaves her up, jerking her back into a set of arms, wrenching her close to something dark blue and black. She inhales fabric softener and cotton but the color makes her think of salt and brine and she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe.

“When we drive away in secret,” rasps a woman’s voice in her ear, “you’ll be a volunteer. So don’t scream when we take you—”

Beatrice grabs at the woman’s hand with both her own. She drags it away from her mouth and manages to gasp, “The world is quiet here!”

The woman freezes. Beatrice lurches forward, tumbling out of her arms and onto the warped floor with a small shriek and a horrible thud. Beatrice feels horrible, with a red mark around her ankle and her whole body shaking as she stares up at the woman. She doesn’t understand, and that scares her almost as much as the woman. She hadn’t just learned the poem at headquarters, Violet had told her about it, it was something Violet’s parents used to say, but she didn’t—she hadn’t said—Beatrice doesn’t understand.

The woman—tall, in a thin, dark blue sweater, her hair massive and unruly and black—bends down in front of her. Beatrice inches back, trying to catch her breath.

She squints at Beatrice almost suspiciously. “Well, young lady,” she says, “have you been good to your mother?”

My mother is dead, Beatrice thinks in her panic, and then she forces herself to clear her throat and stop it. “The question is,” she pants, “has she been good to me?”

“You’re a volunteer,” the woman says.

No I’m not. “Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“Beatrice Baudelaire,” Beatrice says.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Baudelaire?” she repeats, scoffing. “Beatrice Baudelaire?”

Beatrice frowns. “Yes,” she says again.

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“I do,” Beatrice says, blinking. “It’s the only name I have.” Which isn’t exactly true, but she’s never felt that Snicket suits her all that much. Beatrice Denouement, even, sounds like someone sophisticated, not a short nine-year-old girl with only a fierce determination to her name. Which is still Beatrice Baudelaire, no matter what this woman says.

The woman straightens up, her face cold, and then she seizes Beatrice’s hand and pulls her roughly to her feet. “You’re coming with me.”

Headquarters in the city is a lot different than the one Beatrice was in out in the country. The main difference is that this one is predominately underground, hidden under a two-story library on the corner of a busy street, and seems, from a cursory glance, like it’s going to be harder to sneak out of. They had to walk through a set of locked double doors in the back of the library labeled Secretarial Department, which lead to a long, tunneling hallway devoid of any typewriters, after all. It’s full of sudden dips and the occasional staircase and one long ladder that leads, when Beatrice climbs down it, to the sewers. She focuses hard on the layout, the curves of the passageways, the way the water drips, on the faded signs she can’t read hanging onto the domed walls, so that she’ll stop thinking about the churning in her stomach.

The path ends in another set of doors, framed in the darkness by flickering torches. Beatrice stumbles to a halt in front of them.

She’s sure that Violet and Klaus and Sunny, while they were on the island and on the boat, had to have used it. There were things Sunny made that could only have been made on top of something hot, even though Sunny always got that fierce, unreadable look on her face when she talked about what she could remember of fires. But Beatrice never saw it. She never saw flames jumping around each other, spitting in the darkness, smoldering orange turning into dangerous white-hot tongues.

Beatrice thinks of lightning and wet, foundering wood under her hands. She feels salt in her mouth again.

The woman shoves her through the doors.

The narrow hallways are bathed in cold, buzzing orange light, an unsettling color against the red brick walls and the hardwood floor. It’s almost claustrophobic, a maze Beatrice can’t parse even when she pays attention. They go up a set of stairs, their footsteps echoing in the silence, and then the woman steers her towards a door around the corner.

She catches a quick glimpse of the plaque on the door and its unnatural shine—vice principal—before the woman pushes her through it as well. Beatrice finds herself in a cramped, shadowy room, illuminated with one single lamp on the desk, where the outline of a tall man sits, hunched over what looks like a stack of papers.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the thin gloom hovering at the edges of the lamp. The shapes on the shelves along the walls sharpen. They look like tea sets, if tea sets were collections of just small, differently-patterned oblong jars, all topped with fragile lids, a handle on either side.

Beatrice swallows. She never saw what Esmé Squalor was so desperate to find. She wonders if one of the sugar bowls crowding the shelves around her is what she was looking for.

The man looks up and sets down his pen. “Who’s this?” he asks, his voice a low, heavy murmur.

“My name is Beatrice Baudelaire,” Beatrice says, before the woman can say anything.

The man raises an eyebrow at her, like the woman had, and then leans back in his chair. The look he gives her isn’t suspicious—it’s appraising. Beatrice shivers.

“Well,” he says.

They put her in a room down the hall and tell her firmly to stay put. It’s a windowless room with pale walls and only a few other students, all of them her age and sitting behind typewriters, and a particularly flatfooted and wrinkled old instructor, who starts sobbing when Beatrice tells him her name. He motions to a free chair with a long white handkerchief and manages to tell her that they’re writing business letters. He motions to the blackboard and tells her there’s the format. He motions to the typewriter in front of her and tells her, please, write a nice letter, and they’ll all make it through the day.

He shuffles away from her, back to the front of the room. Beatrice watches him go with a confused frown. She doesn’t have time for this—to be stuck here again, or to try and figure out what’s going on, or to try and reason what she’s supposed to say in a business letter. She drops her eyes to the typewriter. It’s not too bad, but certainly not as nice as the one in her uncle’s office. She presses a few of the keys to test them, and they stick and then stab back into the air with loud, fierce snaps, so much that she jolts back in her chair. He’d never give her a typewriter this bad.

Beatrice gets an idea.

She has to get word to him somehow. She has to survive, too, and she’s perfectly capable of doing that anywhere, although she would prefer to do it in a situation where she isn’t at risk of being accosted violently around the ankle at any given moment, among other things. It seems like her best bet to get to him is to stay here, and not wait, this time, but let them lead her to him. It won’t be too hard. This city and this organization are his. He’s here, in this room, and he’s here, in this city, and she knows she will find him if she stays here.

She gives herself a shake and rests her fingers on the keys.

Dear Sir, she types, one eye on the instructor, now leaning against the wall and wiping his face with the handkerchief. I am writing to inquire further on the matter we discussed earlier this year. I’m in my business letter writing class, which is taught by a flat-footed man so sad and unaware that I am certain he will give me an A on this assignment without reading anything but the first sentence of each paragraph. I could say anything here at all. For instance: a “baticeer” is a person who trains bats. I learned that in a poem I watched you read.

The instructor straightens up, still dabbing under his eyes, and wanders around the room, glancing periodically at the typewriters. Beatrice schools her expression into business-like thoughtfulness. When he comes by, he scans the first line of her letter, heaves an enormous sigh, and keeps walking.

After careful consideration, Beatrice continues, biting down a smile, I am pleased to enclose the following information.

The instructors confirm her identity after careful consultation with twenty different people, all of whom Beatrice has never seen before, and a series of photographs and files Beatrice isn’t allowed to see, all of them crowded in an office and staring down at her an hour and a half after Beatrice has finished her business letter.

They tell her it was very irresponsible of her to sneak out like that from the country headquarters. Beatrice does not tell them it was very irresponsible to have a lock so easy to pick and a headquarters so easy to navigate in the dark. She stares back up at them, tries to look appropriately chided, and hopes they’ll think she feels appropriately chided. What she does feel is cornered.

One of the adults standing towards the back, his face in shadows, scoffs under his breath. “Just like her uncle,” he says.

“Which one?” asks another.

“You know,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “That one.”

“The dead one?”

“Aren’t they both dead?” asks a different voice.

“No, I’m sure at least one of them is alive—didn’t you get that message?”

“You know for a fact I haven’t gotten a single olive jar in three months, since someone broke my refrigerator—”

“For the last time,” someone sighs, “I did not break your refrigerator—”

Beatrice takes the opportunity to slip unnoticed from the room and into the hallway. She takes slow steps, listening to the little click of her shoes on the tile. The adults at the country headquarters had been secretive but easy to predict. The adults here, though—

She stops. She peers down, past the hem of her dress, and lets herself look at her left ankle.

It’s not that she doesn’t like it here, with this organization. They’ve given her a place to stay, and most of the volunteers her age were kind to her at the last headquarters. Most of all, she has vague memories of Violet telling her that people who read that many books can’t be all bad, that most of them were just trying their best, that they’d been noble enough in the end. But she’d said it with a curious look on her face that Beatrice can almost picture, like there was so much more Violet wasn’t sure how to say, like she still hadn’t figured something out, and it hurt to think about it.

That silence had carved out a worry in Beatrice, a hole she feels in her stomach now. She tries to imagine a permanent mark on her ankle, a tie, an anchor, bigger than a promise to be noble enough. She knows what Violet and Klaus and Sunny told her about what happened to them, and she knows what she’s read in the thirteen files, and she knows Klaus wrote in his commonplace book that the organization was their only hope. She knows there are a good many details that maybe they hadn’t left out when they told her their story, but maybe just hadn’t gotten around to telling her at the time. Beatrice knows about the hard choices between what seems right or wrong—and she knows the iron grip that woman had on her ankle. She knows about the circumstances that killed her family, her uncle, her parents.

Because she could be wrong, she has to be certain. Beatrice doesn’t like being wrong. She looks up at the hallway, the old pictures on the walls, the lack of windows, the flickering lights casting shadows around her, and tries to feel certain that her only choice is to stay.

With the considerable amount of volunteers in the city, Beatrice figures she’ll have to share a room with someone, but one of the adults takes her to a single room, off to the side, and tells her, once again, to stay there and not make any trouble.

It’s a simple room, with a bed, a closet, a desk, two lamps, and a bookshelf (already stocked, and she stops perusing it when she finds the book about the girl and the egg and the family dinner, because her hands start to shake). No windows. The walls are all solid stone, but the floors are wood, and Beatrice turns the lights off and stands in almost total darkness—there’s still a sliver of light under the door from the hallway—and tests out the places where the floor squeaks for hours. She memorizes the room, feels with her hands for catches or knobs or secret compartments and doesn’t find a single one.

The light under the door disappears. Beatrice, standing by the bed on the opposite wall, goes completely still. She listens.

After ten seconds, the lock on the door clicks.

After a whole three minutes, the shadow under the door still hasn’t moved. Beatrice swallows and keeps watching. She knows better than to try and pick this lock. They aren’t going to make getting out easy. Finding him might not be as easy as she thought, either.

That doesn’t mean I won’t, Beatrice thinks.

She fully expects to sit through their classes again, to tell the teacher how Sunny taught her to make a meringue, to relearn the same codes she learned from Klaus’s commonplace book, to listen to someone besides Violet explain the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light.

She doesn’t. Instead, she finds herself in the vice principal’s office again, early in the morning, although it’s impossible to tell in all the shadows in his office. She takes a moment to wonder where the principal is, but then the vice principal starts talking.

“You strike me as a young woman with a lot on her mind,” he says. “Someone very intent on her goals. And we value that here, you know. Commitment, dedication, loyalty. I think you—and the organization—would benefit the most if we assigned you to a chaperone immediately. There’s a place for you in this world, Miss Baudelaire, and I am most anxious for you to find it.”

Beatrice almost thinks he’s being incredibly nice, if it isn’t for the way his eyes glitter and the way he leans back in his chair, so slowly she barely notices until he’s staring down at her, almost pinning her in place.

Violet did teach her to be polite, but she also taught her to stand her ground. She swallows. “Thank you very much,” she says. “Do I get to pick my chaperone?”

“I’m afraid not,” he says, and he doesn’t sound the least bit apologetic. “We haven’t allowed that for quite some time.” The vice principal smiles. “It lead to some unfortunate events.”

Her chaperone is a woman named Marguerite. Beatrice looks through every record available and can’t find any positive proof that Marguerite has ever had a last name. What she does find out is that Marguerite spent her own apprenticeship working with the remaining volunteer animals.

She gets a letter telling her to meet her at the aquarium on the other side of the city, with just enough for the bus fare. Beatrice checks the letter over and over again the whole way there, but she doesn’t find any other hint about what she’s supposed to do to find her chaperone.

Beatrice wanders the aquarium for a long, uneasy hour before a short woman with chin-length, curly blonde hair catches her eye by the jellyfish tank. The woman gestures at one of the jellyfish. “I always thought they looked like clouds,” she says, in a soft voice. “I like to look at them when summer is dying.”

Beatrice bites her lip. She stares at the jellyfish and tries not to see them, tries to watch the reflections in the glass instead. Summer is dying. She always thought she’d be good at codes if she had to use them, but actually hearing them out loud just makes her uncomfortable. It could just be all the water, though.

“Well,” she says carefully, “summer is over and gone. And you can see clouds any time, you just have to look for them.”

The woman smiles, a surprisingly gentle smile, the lines at the corners of her eyes crinkling. Beatrice thinks she looks too young to have lines like that. “Marguerite,” she says, extending her hand. “You must be Beatrice.”

Beatrice shakes her hand.

“What sort of animals do you like, Beatrice?”

Beatrice looks away from the eerie blue glow of the tanks around them and says the first thing that comes to mind. “I don’t think bats are all that bad.”

As it turns out, the organization’s last collection of trainable bats is in the hills. The whole trek back into the mist, Beatrice can’t help but think her timing could sure use some work.

Beatrice and Marguerite set up camp in the cave, close to the shepherds and obviously very close to the bats. They pull down the remains of the wallpaper, and between the two of them, Violet’s inventing knowledge, and another piece of wire from Marguerite’s pocket, they rig up the light bulb. It casts a dim and hollow yellow light around the cave before it sputters and flickers, drenching them in a momentary darkness before lighting back up.

Beatrice gasps out of shock. The light bulb reminds her of the lamp in the vice principal’s office, something scary and unknown in a place that’s supposed to be safe. Fear grips her chest, and she makes an excuse to Marguerite that she doesn’t even remember and gets out of the cave as quickly as possible. She sits at the mouth of the cave in the darkness with her legs stretched out in front of her, her hands in her lap. Beatrice tells herself that hugging her legs to her chest would not be very mature.

Marguerite comes over and sits down beside her, not too close but not too far away. “Some children are afraid of the dark,” she says.

“I’m not,” Beatrice says, truthfully. Klaus taught her constellations, and Sunny made up her own, and Violet made a telescope so they could see them better. Beatrice knows there are beautiful things in the darkness, and she likes the quiet.

“It’s alright if you are,” Marguerite says gently.

Beatrice knows why Marguerite says that. It’s something a lot of the chaperones think. Some of the adults themselves are probably scared of the dark, even when they haven’t lived through a storm at sea. But she’s not. She’s not scared of the dark. The afternoon was when the storm started, and the dark was when the storm stopped, when everything calmed down. She couldn’t see anything at all, not the broken wood under her fingers or how alone she was, and she could breathe. She could keep floating and imagine Violet and Klaus and Sunny were still right there, telling her she’d make it.

Too much light is what frightens her. Too much light, like a jagged streak through the sky, lightning carving the boat in two, illuminating every fractured piece and the fear on Sunny’s usually calm face. The flashlights of the volunteers who found her, combing the beach for something else, the beams cutting cold white light against the sand.

“Beatrice?”

Beatrice looks up. She uncurls her fingers, which she only now notices had clenched tight into her palms. She swallows. “I’m not afraid.”

Marguerite smiles. She reaches over and squeezes one of Beatrice’s hands, just once.

“We’re going to be training bats to deliver messages,” Marguerite says in the morning. “It’ll be useful, especially all the way out here in the hills.”

Beatrice stares at Marguerite, and she hopes her incredulity isn’t too apparent on her face. She clears her throat and tries to think about how Violet would address this. “Are bats really the best to use?” she asks. “What about telegram wires, or even just pigeons, since they could fly at any time, or—”

“Sometimes we have to send messages at night, and bats come in handy for that.” Marguerite doesn’t interrupt her, just speaks patiently, reasonably, like making a point in a casual debate. “Sometimes the easier way can be more dangerous. People expect that more than something different.”

Beatrice isn’t sure if that makes complete sense. Marguerite definitely notices her confusion, and she smiles. Marguerite smiles a lot, but it’s never condescending. “It can be a little hard to understand,” she says. “I thought it was when I was your age, too. But it’s not a volunteer’s job to question, Beatrice. It’s a volunteer’s job to know, and to trust in what they’re doing.”

Somehow, it sounds right the way Marguerite says it, with her soothing voice. It sounds right, the idea of just knowing, since Beatrice is so certain in it anyway. She has to remind herself that they started this whole conversation about the absurdity of bats being used as a messenger system to counteract that. Beatrice has seen a lot of absurd things, because Violet told her about all her inventions over the years, and Beatrice isn’t quite sure how all of them worked but she knows that they did. But training bats, especially to deliver messages, just seems to take it a little too far.

“It’ll take a bit of time before we can train them that well, though,” Marguerite says. “Have you ever held one before?”

At the very least, training bats gives Beatrice something to think about. You really have to focus, otherwise they squeak too much. It gets easy after a while, once Beatrice knows how to do it. Marguerite is impressed, but Beatrice just tells her that you can do anything as long as you know how to do it.

Marguerite isn’t very talkative, which Beatrice appreciates. What she does say doesn’t always make that much sense, but she never pushes Beatrice or pressures her. She tells Beatrice stories about her own apprenticeship, the last of the volunteer feline detectives and what Marguerite’s own chaperone told her about the eagles. It’s the kindest anyone has ever treated her since Violet and Klaus and Sunny, and that makes Beatrice feel more comfort than she has in some time.

Beatrice is hunched over a notebook while sitting at the mouth of the cave, trying to figure out how to get the bats to follow the patterns of the yaks, because she’s sure that makes at least some sense, when the young shepherd who loaned her the yak last time comes up to her. Beatrice smiles at him, but she stops when she sees how nervous he looks.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

The shepherd bites his lip, looking over his shoulder at Marguerite, who’s examining one of the yaks in the field, and then motions quickly at Beatrice. “You forgot something,” he says.

Beatrice frowns. “What?”

He reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out a small circle. The weak sunlight catches on the slim gold band and the dark diamond set in the center, and Beatrice’s heart leaps when she can see the thin initial in the stone. He puts the ring in Beatrice’s hand and presses her fingers around it.

“I think you might be able to give it back to her, one of these days,” he says.

“Do you know her?” Beatrice asks, clutching the ring with both hands. “Do you know where—”

But the shepherd shakes his head, glances again at Marguerite, goes rigid when he sees the older shepherd approaching her, and then scampers away. Beatrice watches him go, until he’s a shrinking figure among the yaks and she can hear Marguerite calling her name. She lets herself wonder, for a moment, where the Duchess of Winnipeg is now, how much the shepherd knows, why no one can ever give her a clear answer. Then she reminds herself that none of that matters. She has all the answers she needs. She just has to get through this. She just has to get through this, and find her uncle, and then find her family, and she just has to get through this.

She slips the ring in her pocket.

She turns ten while they’re in the hills, which she only knows because she packed a calendar this time. She doesn’t tell Marguerite because Beatrice doesn’t want her to make a big deal out of it, because Marguerite would, and Beatrice spends that night staring up at the stars and trying to make up her own constellations. She connects lines and dots into books, wrenches, a whisk. Then, with her eyes shut tight, she tries to remember that last birthday. It was four or five years ago now, wasn’t it? And there was cake, she knows there was.

Beatrice forces her eyes open. What she remembers is Violet, tying her hair back with a ribbon as she worked on the boat; Klaus, adjusting his glasses as he read to Beatrice from a book; Sunny, talking cheerfully into the radio Violet had built. Everything else is all in pieces, a puzzle she’s losing the parts to.

I have to find them, she thinks, blinking fast. No. I will find them.

The first time Beatrice sends out a bat and it comes back, days later, with a message from one of the shepherds they’d sent out to expect it, she feels a lot more pride than she ever thought she would about training bats to be mail carriers. Marguerite laughs and sweeps Beatrice up into a tight hug, drawing her close, and Beatrice hugs her back.

In late summer, the hills still misty and chilly, they get called back to the city. Marguerite and Beatrice make their way back to the city on foot this time, through all the hills, no mountain. Beatrice sorely wishes she still had the yak.

When they get back to the city, Beatrice actually doesn’t see much of Marguerite. Marguerite tells her only that something is happening, but not exactly what. In the meantime, she tells Beatrice it’s for the best if Beatrice stays at headquarters, where she can write up the reports on training the bats. Beatrice figures someone would’ve had to write the reports at some point, so she doesn’t mind—except that someone seems to be watching her at all times, especially when she uses a typewriter.

Beatrice spends most of her time underground and growing increasingly frustrated, because it’s been months since she’s written to him, months since he’s heard from her, and he must be wondering where she is. He must be. She’s watched mail leave the city headquarters, and they never put a return address on anything. How can he write back to her if he doesn’t know where she is?

But he has to know. He’s been here. He’s in this city, and so is she, and wouldn’t he be able to figure out what happened to her, being a detective and all, or at least a man who has that printed on his door? He went through this too, he knows where she is, why does it have to take so long?

Marguerite comes back, and they go on assignments and scope out pet stores and parks and the occasional fancy restaurant, but Marguerite also lets her look in every single diner window they pass, and lets her linger on the street with the Rhetorical Building, even when the street is wildly out of their way. Then they go on less and less assignments, and she sees less and less of Marguerite, and Beatrice spends her time in so much silence that it starts to dig under her skin, a burrowing restlessness.

At night, she sneaks into the record room again. She isn’t sure what she’s looking for. Maybe the four files she couldn’t find at the country headquarters, or anything about her family, or anything about the organization. Anything at all about anything. And it’s not to find anything new, it can’t be, it’s just—it’s just to reassure her. He’s going to find her. She’s going to find him. They’re going to find her family.

In the back of the room, in a dusty filing cabinet drawer she has to pry open with two pens, she finds a thin, dark brown folder half-stuck under the back of the cabinet. Beatrice wiggles it out, flips it open, and sees the shape of a single piece of paper. She pulls out a flashlight from her pocket, steels herself, and flicks it on, squinting against the light.

It looks like a legal document, almost like a sort of deed, yellowed with age. Beatrice scans through it, and her frown deepens when she finds out it’s for a room in an office building, a room on a fourteenth floor, an office—an office in the Rhetorical Building, right above his. Beatrice grips the edges of the paper and reads further. Her heart stops dead when she sees a bold, imposing signature in red pen across the bottom of the page.

Beatrice Baudelaire.

She’s been in the building, but she’s certainly never tried to get an office there. This must be her, she realizes, reminding herself to inhale. This must be who they named her after.

Beatrice knows about Beatrice Baudelaire. She wasn’t just engaged to Beatrice’s uncle once, she was a person, a mother. She taught Klaus how to fence and how to throw a punch, and she taught Sunny how to scream, and she taught Violet how to stand her ground and be fierce and formidable. She could bake and sing and act, and she ate strawberries in the summer and danced with her husband to old records and took her family to the beach and read long books to them and did different voices for each character. Now, years later, here she is. A whisper in Beatrice’s ear, a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Beatrice Baudelaire sounds like she was a wonderful mother.

Beatrice shakes her head quickly and slips the deed into her pocket. It’s not like she thinks about her own mother a lot. Beatrice knows all about her anyway. Kit Snicket was a good person, a volunteer, someone who helped. So was Dewey Denouement. But sometimes she wonders, just a little, just for a moment, what things would be like if her mother was alive. If her father was alive. If they would’ve liked her. If they would’ve read to her, if they would’ve taught her things, if they would’ve liked strawberries or some other fruit and if they danced and if they baked and if they could act or sing. If she’d still be here, scrambling for the remains of her family. If she’d still see flashes of lightning when she closes her eyes, and the harpoon gun and fungus she’s imagined and the sandy grave at the far edges of her memory and the Baudelaires got their parents, didn’t they, if only for a while, how come she didn’t get hers, how could Violet and Klaus and Sunny do that—

Something creaks upstairs.

Beatrice slips from the records room, shuts the door, and feels her way through the darkness. Her hands find the banister of the stairs, and she creeps up them slowly, waiting for another noise.

The upstairs floor creaks for a second, and then stops. Then another creak, a little further down the hall, like someone’s taking long strides, trying to be light and quick. Beatrice heads up the rest of the stairs and sees the hazy outline of a shape in the darkness, one with short, curly hair.

“Marguerite?”

Marguerite turns, looking over her shoulder, still poised to keep going down the hallway. “Beatrice,” she breathes.

Beatrice hasn’t seen her in what feels like ages, although she knows it’s only been about a week. She walks towards Marguerite, and even in the darkness she can feel a heavy tension in the air. “Where are you going?”

Marguerite turns around all the way and bends down in front of Beatrice. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, “but I have to leave.”

Beatrice hears every word of that sentence perfectly, and somehow she still doesn’t understand it. She blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I was going to leave this with the vice principal for you,” Marguerite says. Beatrice hears a slight rustle, Marguerite digging in a pocket. She takes Beatrice’s hand and places something in it, a curved, spiral wire with a handle at the top. A corkscrew. “Something—something came up, and it’s not safe for me to be in the city anymore. I’m starting back for the hills tonight.”

“I can go with you,” Beatrice says, “I can—”

“No,” Marguerite sighs. “I can’t take you with me. I really am—so, so sorry, Beatrice.” Her voice cracks, and her hand settles on Beatrice’s shoulder. “There was so much I was looking forward to, so many things I wanted to do with you, but sometimes things don’t work out how you want them to. But you’ll be okay, I know you will. You’re brave and resourceful, and you’ll be a wonderful volunteer.”

Beatrice frowns at the slim outline of Marguerite’s face. Her fingers curl around the corkscrew, pushing it hard into her hand. She swallows and finds a lump in her throat, one she tries to breathe around. “But I—”

“Don’t worry,” Marguerite says. Her voice is still so gentle, but it doesn’t make sense with her words. Nothing about any of this makes sense. “You’ll know what to do, Beatrice. We all do. I know you will.”

“I know now,” Beatrice says quickly, “I just—”

“I have to go,” Marguerite whispers. The weight of her hand disappears from Beatrice’s shoulder, and then her face is gone, and Beatrice stands in the hall and listens to Marguerite’s progress downstairs from the distant creak of the floorboards. The sound of footsteps vanishes not long after, and Beatrice is alone. The metal of the corkscrew sits cold against her palm.

Beatrice listens, and listens, and listens, and hears nothing else.

Beatrice hasn’t cried in a long time. She knows she has—everyone does when they’re younger, and she can remember, through that fog, Sunny making faces at her to cheer her up—but it feels such a wrong thing to do now. Hot tears spill down her cheeks, her eyes squeezing shut, her mouth pressed tight so the rising whimper in her throat doesn’t escape.

It’s not as if she didn’t expect Marguerite to leave. All the chaperones do, eventually, and even if she had liked Marguerite she knew somewhere it wouldn’t last. She just didn’t think it would happen like this, so soon, that just like that she’d be gone, swept away from her. All the thoughts Beatrice tries so hard not to think come rushing into her—how much longer will this take, how much longer will she have to do this, how much longer will this feel, because she feels ten years old for the first time and so lost, still adrift in an ocean that could tear her apart as much as it could lead her somewhere safe. She wants to go home, but the only people who were ever home to her feel further away than ever. In a second, the despair and uncertainty she’s been running from overtake her like a crashing wave.

She thinks awful, vicious things. The Baudelaires are dead or they would’ve come for her by now; her uncle hates her and never wants to see her; her mother was a horrible person to die and leave her all alone like this; she’ll grow up like they all did, abandoned.

Beatrice walks back to her room, step by step. She shuts the door, and then sinks down and starts sobbing into her knees.

The vice principal calls her to his office the next morning. Beatrice sits in the chair in front of his desk, her hands in her lap. She’s shoved the memory and the uncertainty and the guilt of last night to the back of her mind, but it still flutters in her lungs, a light panic she tries to smother with each careful breath.

He seems to have acquired even more sugar bowls since the last time she was in here, and they tower above her on those whisper-thin shelves and make the office feel even tighter. A different item sits on the shelf right behind his desk, about the size of a milk bottle, and Beatrice stares at it. It stares back at her with a dark, beady eye, the long face and snout of an impossibly cruel animal, teeth bared and black. Then she notices—it’s only half of a statue, like it’s been cut down the middle, revealing a smooth, solid wood interior.

The vice principal himself looks unbothered, impassive as always. “It seems you’re without a chaperone,” he says.

Her hands tighten together involuntarily. “I’ve been without a chaperone before,” she says, and her voice only trembles a little.

He smiles. It is a thin and humorless smile, smug, and he leans slowly, too casually, back in his chair, his elbows on the armrests and his own hands folded neatly. She wishes he would stop doing that.

“You look like you want to ask me something,” he says.

Where is my family and when will I find them?

But she knows he won’t tell her. “What do you want to ask me?” she says instead.

The vice principal almost laughs. His eyes are dark and fathomless blue. “What did Marguerite leave you?”

Beatrice does not think of the corkscrew up in her room. But she has to say something, she has to show him something. She puts her hand in her pocket and finds the folded-up deed she’d stuck there last night. A deed for an office in the Rhetorical Building. A deed signed with an identical name.

She stares at the vice principal straight on. “An office,” she says. “On the fourteenth floor of the Rhetorical Building.” Beatrice pulls the paper from her pocket, unfolds it, and sets it square on his desk.

He stares at it, and then keeps staring at it, his eyes flicking over the paper as if looking for a loophole. When he doesn’t find any, his mouth thins, his jaw clenching. She’s never seen him with so much emotion on his face before.

“I’ll need a typewriter,” Beatrice says.

The next thing Beatrice does is get business cards. They say Beatrice Baudelaire, so no one will bother her about that, and then Baticeer Extraordinaire, because that’s the closest thing to an occupation she has right now, and then The Rhetorical Building, since that is the name of the building, and finally Fourteenth Floor, which is self-explanatory.

The third thing she does is go to her office. It hasn’t been used in a long time, so it’s empty and dusty and even colder than the lobby, and full of one too many spiders. Beatrice spends an afternoon cleaning the years out of it, and even repairs the radiator, Violet’s ribbon keeping her hair back from her face.

She sets her typewriter carefully on the desk, puts Klaus’s commonplace book in one of the locked drawers, puts the corkscrew in a completely different drawer, and then realizes she has very little else to put in the room. A business card taped to the door, some paper beside the typewriter. The brochures and books she collected from the train stations lined up on the little shelf on the wall. She keeps the Duchess of Winnipeg’s ring on a long chain around her neck so she always has it with her and no one else can see it.

She uses the back entrance so she doesn’t have to go through the lobby.

She stays awake in the office the first few nights, watching the window in the dark in case they try to come back for her, but Beatrice is left alone there.

Beatrice doesn’t know how old the building is exactly, but it must be old, because the wood creaks, and it creaks specifically and consistently in his office, right below hers, muffled but very distinct.

She finishes typing her most recent letter, pulls it out of the typewriter, then takes the corkscrew from her desk and sits down in the middle of the floor.

The wood parts, splitting easily into tiny spiral shavings, and Beatrice keeps twisting and twisting the corkscrew until there’s a reasonable hole in the floor and she can hear the creaking a little more clearly. It’s a small hole, not large enough to see through but large enough to put her letter through if she rolls it into a tiny tube, like she said she would. She throws the corkscrew back on her desk, grabs the letter, and starts to roll it up.

The creaking stops. Then the wood groans low, like he’s leaning on a specific spot, and she leans close and listens.

“Snicket,” says a woman’s voice.

Beatrice startles, jumping back with a slight gasp. She didn’t account for someone else, she didn’t think he knew anyone else, she didn’t think it wouldn’t be him pacing. She doesn’t know who this is.

“Did you always have that hole in your ceiling?” the woman says.

Someone replies. Beatrice can’t hear what he says, but the voice is a low murmur. That’s him, she thinks, biting her lip. That’s him

“You want me to come in here and find you buried under your ceiling one of these days?” the woman continues. “Don’t you think I deal with enough already as your editor?”

He says something else, something Beatrice still can’t hear.

The woman sighs. “If we don’t leave soon, we’re going to be late, and Cleo might just kill you.”

Beatrice waits until she hears the door close, and then sits for a few seconds in the silence, willing her heart to stop rocketing in her chest. She re-rolls the letter, looks down at the hole, and then pushes the letter through it and presses her ear against the floor. Beatrice can just barely hear it bounce off the ceiling fan, uncurl, and land open and waiting on his desk with the tiniest crinkle of the paper.

She sits back on the floor with a long sigh. She hopes she isn’t waiting too long, and Beatrice doesn’t do a very good job of squashing down the worry that she might not know how long it’ll take.

She waits a whole week and still doesn’t get a reply. No one comes to her door, no one tries to get in through the fire escape, no one leaves any secret messages anywhere, and she doesn’t hear anyone pacing in the office below her. She doesn’t hear the woman’s voice, and she doesn’t hear any sign that he’s in there at all. Everything is eerily quiet.

Beatrice goes across the street to the diner, because she figures being miserable but not hungry is better than being miserable and hungry. When she pushes the door open, Jake Hix catches sight of her from behind the counter and grins broadly. “Hey, Beatrice!”

She means to smile, but there are four people sitting at the counter, and all of them turn and look at her with interest. Two men wearing glasses who look like brothers, a sharp-eyed blonde woman in a cloche hat, and then the man in the middle, pale and staring at her with wide eyes. Beatrice looks back at him, suddenly breathless. Not just a mysterious figure she’s never seen, or one she glimpsed in the middle of a chase, but a real, physical person in front of her.

“It’s you!” she exclaims. “You’re here!”

They keep eye contact for a single, almost terrifying second—but then he clears his throat, holds up a hand, and spins around, putting his back to her.

Beatrice stands there, torn between disbelief and irritation. The other two men say something, and the woman rolls her eyes, gets up, pulls them to their feet, and herds them past Beatrice and out of the diner.

“Give him a moment,” the woman whispers to her, winking.

She doesn’t want to, she wants to go over and sit beside him and get right to things, but she picks a corner booth by the window anyway and sits down. She still has a good view of the counter from here. She swallows and tries to quell her anticipation. She wonders how long a moment is, to her uncle.

Jake walks over and gives her a smile. “What can I get you?”

Beatrice looks over his elbow at the counter, at the glass resting in front of her uncle. It occurs to her that she’s actually never had his drink of choice. She looks back up at Jake. “A root beer float.”

Jake smiles.

“And, could you please do me a favor?” she asks, unzipping her bag and digging around inside. “If I give you a message, would you give it to him?”

“Sure thing,” Jake says.

She takes out one of her business cards and turns it over.

Cocktail Time

I am sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends. I only wanted to talk to you.

The waiter agreed to bring this card with your drink. If you don’t want to meet me, rip it in half when you are done with your root beer float, and I will leave and never try to contact you again.

Ideally, she doesn’t want to say that, to give him an out, now that they’re both here, now that she’s this close, but it’s polite. She figures he’ll appreciate that.

But if you want to meet me, she continues, biting her lip, I’m the ten-year-old girl at the corner table.

B.

Beatrice folds the card in half and hands it to Jake. She watches Jake walk back to the counter, lean in and hand her card to her uncle, watches him open it with shaking fingers. He reads it, but he doesn’t turn around and look at her yet. He takes a sip of his root beer.

Jake brings her her own root beer, and she drinks it and barely tastes it, her eyes still fixed on her uncle. She reminds herself not to swing her legs and settles for jiggling her foot against the smooth tile, a tiny little tap as she waits and waits and waits. She thinks of looking anywhere else, trying to remain sophisticated and calm, because this is it, for real, but she doesn’t want to miss a single thing. She curls her hands together in her lap, forgets about the root beer float. She counts out the seconds in her head, stops when she thinks it’s stupid, starts again when he pushes his glass away and looks at the note again.

Finally, he stands up. He refolds her business card and puts it in his pocket. Then he turns, and he faces Beatrice, coming over and stopping beside her table.

He’s just like how Beatrice imagined him, now that she can finally see him, instead of just across a crowded street or a library wing. Definitely average height, if a little bit taller, in a grey suit and tie, his hair dark, thin at the temples. He looks at her half-finished drink, and then slowly meets her eyes, and they are blue, the same blue as hers, the best color she’s ever seen, brighter than every dark and endless sea. The corners of his mouth turn up a little, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He sits down across from her and extends his hand.

“My name is Lemony Snicket,” he says, his voice deep but soft, just as she expected.

Beatrice smiles, and her face almost hurts with the force of it. She shakes his hand with both of hers. “Beatrice Baudelaire.”

Lemony Snicket takes her to the park a few streets over and buys her ice cream. She points out that they could’ve had ice cream in the diner, but he tells her that he would rather have their conversation away from where a journalist could come back at any second and faithfully record every single moment of it. Beatrice eats her vanilla with sprinkles and figures the journalist had to be the woman, with eyes like that, and then she watches her uncle. Her uncle, real and in person after all this time, after almost two long years of searching, finally beside her.

He matches her pace, which isn’t very brisk, but he looks like he could run at a moment’s notice. He keeps his hat drawn low over his eyes, his gaze lingering on shadowy trees and exits and every single discarded cigarette butt before moving away. He takes quick, economical bites of his ice cream (vanilla, caramel swirl, in a cone).

“Did you like my business card?” Beatrice asks. Her voice comes out a little louder than she intended, which probably explains why Lemony jumps.

He pulls her business card out of his pocket. “It’s very nice,” he says. “Do you like bats?”

“Well,” she says, “I think they’re cute, but that’s all. I’d rather not work with them.”

“Are you saying that you gave me a false business card?”

“You can put anything on a business card,” Beatrice says brightly, looking up at him. “Do you still have those ones that say you’re an admiral in the French navy?”

Lemony looks shocked, then embarrassed, and then takes an incriminating crunch out of his cone. He doesn’t answer.

Beatrice’s throat sticks a little when she swallows her ice cream. She ducks her head, her shoulders bunching up, and scrapes at the bottom of her cup with her spoon. He’s just a quiet person, that’s all, she tells herself, and she’d thought that before. That he doesn’t have anything else to say is just because—just because he doesn’t have anything else to say. That’s fine. They have more important things to talk about than bats and business cards.

She waits until they’ve both finished their ice cream and points out a bench for them to sit down on. She even makes sure it’s out of the way, under a tree, reasonably shady and away from prying eyes, if that’ll make him feel better. Lemony hesitates for a few seconds before he agrees, and they sit down. Beatrice’s legs dangle off the edge, and she holds her hands tight in her lap and reminds herself again not to swing her legs.

“You said you didn’t know where Violet and Klaus and Sunny were,” Beatrice says, leaning towards him, “in your research. That you didn’t know what happened to them after—” Her voice catches. “—after we, we left the island. But that was years and years ago. You have to know now.”

Lemony looks at her, and this close, Beatrice can see the lines around his eyes, etched into his face. They only seem to deepen the longer they look at each other. He folds his hands together, just like hers, and Beatrice bites down on the inside of her lip, her toes wiggling in her shoes.

“No, Beatrice,” he says. “I do not know where the Baudelaires are.”

Some of the air disappears from her lungs, and she gapes at him. “Well—then can you help me find them?”

Lemony sighs. “I have looked,” he says slowly, “but my associates and I have found very little. I do not know if—”

“But you have to know!” Beatrice exclaims. The corners of her eyes start to burn, and she can feel a sharp sting tightening her throat, because he was supposed to know, she was so certain, and he had to be too, so why? “You have to, you’re the only person I’ve got left, and I came all this way to find you, and you—you—” Everything comes tumbling out of her, everything she’s been pushing aside and burying down inside her since the shipwreck, every cruel thought and punch to the gut, every second spent waiting. She’s never talked this much in her whole life, and now she can’t stop, even with Lemony looking at her with wide, broken eyes.

“You left me all alone out there!” Beatrice shouts, her voice cracking. “I followed you for two years, all by myself, and I wrote you letters, and I followed you into the hills, and I stole office space to be close to you, and I did everything I could to find you, and you didn’t do anything!”

She wants to be angry. She wants so much to be angry, to keep yelling, to hurt him, but now she can’t stop crying. “I thought you h-hated me,” she sobs, rubbing at her eyes, tears sticking to her fingers and her cheeks. “I th-thought you never wanted to see me, ever. I thought—I thought—”

Something soft brushes against her wrist, and she lowers her hands and finds Lemony, offering her a handkerchief. “I did not, and I do not hate you,” he murmurs firmly, for a man as heartbroken as he looks. “I could never.”

Beatrice takes the handkerchief and wipes at her eyes. It doesn’t do much in the way of stopping her tears.

“This is an awful thing to say,” Lemony begins quietly, “but the horrible truth is that I did not know if it was you. I did not know if you were—someone else.”

Beatrice swallows thickly, curling her fingers around the handkerchief, clutching it in her lap. She knows what he means and it’s like a dull knife twisting inside her.

“And I know you are not her,” Lemony continues, “or my sister—although you do look remarkably like her—or an old villainess intent on exacting a stiletto-heeled revenge after all these years, or a morally grey woman for whom I still feel a great deal of sadness and guilt. I wondered, though. I think even the most rational mind will wonder in the depths of loss, even when it knows better. It is a wound that does not want to heal, or at least one that I believed could not. When I did know it was you, which I assure you was only within the last year, I—I did not know if I could help you.”

“Why not?” Beatrice asks, sniffling. She chances a look up at him, out of the corner of her eye, and catches a quick, haunted look passing over his face. He stays quiet for a little longer, as if figuring out the right words.

“I was afraid,” he whispers. “It is no excuse for what I did to you, but it is a reason. When I was a little older than you, I made a considerable amount of promises, few of which I managed to keep, and I told myself that fear didn’t matter, which was an admirable if incredibly incorrect stance to take at the time. And since then, very few things have gone right. I lost my family, my friends, the loves of my life, and everything I had, because of that fear. You can have the best of intentions, and still doubt, and still worry, and only realize much later that all you’ve ever done was wrong. I once said that people do difficult things for more or less noble reasons—but it is truly so much harder than that.”

Beatrice lets the words sink in. She thought she knew what it was like to struggle with a decision, to do something villainous to be noble. She thought she understood her uncle and her family—all of it—after everything she’d read, after Klaus saying that it took a severe lack of moral stamina to commit murder, after Sunny suggested it and the fire regardless, after Violet worried about Hal’s keys and disguising her and her siblings and all the other tricky things Beatrice remembers her worrying about.

He looks like Violet, Beatrice realizes suddenly. Not really his facial features, but his expression, just like when Violet told her the volunteers were noble enough. He looks as lost and worried about the consequences as Violet did that day. She feels that hole in her stomach again, that gaping uncertainty—that fear. Beatrice thinks of avoiding the lobby where the woman grabbed her ankle, lying to Marguerite in the hills, covering up her doubts with a vehement optimism. She thinks of every time she read about Lemony’s fear and all the things she didn’t understand until this second, all the things she still doesn’t understand, because there is still so much, so many secrets she could drown in, trying to find them all by herself.

“I put you in a great amount of danger by not stepping in,” Lemony says. He looks at her straight on, his eyes filled with tears. “I did to you the same thing for which I despised so many people, people I too was supposed to trust, because of my cowardice. I cannot apologize to you enough, and you do not have to accept it, Beatrice. I would not blame you if you didn’t.”

Beatrice sniffles again, her mouth wobbling, and watches him for a moment longer. “I don’t know,” she says carefully. She doesn’t like saying it, but it’s true and she has to say it. She takes a breath. “I don’t know.”

They sit in silence on the bench for some time. Lemony wipes his eyes at some point with the back of his hand, and Beatrice holds his handkerchief back up to him, but he shakes his head with a small, trembling smile and tells her to keep it. Beatrice runs her thumb over the handkerchief, each individual stitch along the hem, the afternoon breeze drying her face. She thinks, almost impossibly, that she feels a little less lonely. Not quite not alone, but just not as lonely.

“Although my associates and I have found very little,” Lemony says, “that isn’t to say that there is nothing to find. If you would like, I would like to help you find the Baudelaires.”

Beatrice’s head shoots up, her eyes wide. “Really?”

“Really. We can hope for the best, at least.”

“I’m good at that,” Beatrice says. “I—it can’t be impossible. Everyone thought finding you was impossible. But you’re here.” And he is, isn’t he? Despite his previous absences, here he is. It doesn’t fix everything, not immediately. But it can be enough for right now. Here he is. Here they are.

ending notes: 

i went into this fanfic with a pretty clear idea of where it was going to go, and then realized i’d need to pull out the beatrice letters so i could put them in this, and then did a lot of screaming along the lines of ‘i need to put a yak in this??????????????????????????????’ and ‘good job danhan you shot a hole through my characterization AND my timeline.’ so this vibes with maybe like, 85% of the beatrice letters. i did what i could. (and then this fic gave me so much trouble when i was trying to edit it. like, so much trouble. i only hope this all like, reads okay.)

but once i thought of ‘quiet lil child knows really so little about the world and has been through so much that she adamantly and somewhat optimistically clings to what she does know and that is challenged over time,’ i was reluctant to stop writing that. babybea is definitely her own person but she’s also definitely her mother’s daughter, so that girl is gonna be pretty tightly wound up and trying her best to hide it. i didn’t really buy her constant worry that lemony wasn’t who she wanted him to be while she was writing to him. because she does still have that bright but firm optimism of her father!! and i didn’t want babybea to be as rooted in (or as dependent on) vfd as her predecessors because she has to be the character to break that cycle. she has way more important problems than unattainable worldly nobility….and training bats.

[swiss-mrs]

Let There Be War (4/?)

(Clyde Logan || Hunger Games: Catching Fire AU)

Word Count: 5.8k

Warnings: Death, Angst

Sleep. Sleep was simply not a necessity at the moment, not for you. You’ve gone plenty of sleepless nights, in the confines of your own home, your own room, even without murderous animals hunting you down. You all sat in a cave, a well hidden one you had to admit. It was so hidden that you wondered how they found it in the first placed, Threes. They were ridiculously intelligent, probably would’ve threatened you but their impeccable lack of physical strength and combat training worried you for a much different reason. You hated it. You hated worrying over their well being, hated feeling protective over them. They each had nearly twenty years on you, they’re to blame for their own demise here. Smart, but utterly stupid. You shook your head turning away from their sleeping figures to glance around at the others here. Six, the ‘morphlings’? Now they, they made you worry. Seemingly drugged out of their mind long ago, they held a certain innocence you could not help but feel sorry about. They didn’t speak much, vocally, not at all. They said a million things with their eyes like you’ve never seen before. They both simultaneously looked somewhere between 300 years and seven years old. Such pain and trauma of someone who had lived for ages but they held a quality you only wished to see in the children of your district. A strange pair they are. You assumed that grouping up would be the only way they could possibly last more than an hour here, even as a duo. The gaunt, grey toned couple laid facing each other, huddled up in a dark corner away from the small fire. They held each other so close you could barely distinguish their bodies from each other, shaking like scared puppies, from the cold? The fear? Withdraw? You were unsure but you determined that if these games weren’t rigged they could probably win from hiding alone.

You pan your head over to Twelve. Were they a team. The boy, he was kind of short, shorter than the girl. He wouldn’t stand much of a better chance than Three. He seemed too soft even after competing in his own games. The girl, She was one to look to. Weapon of choice, smart, Athletic, She knows what she needs to do to survive. Neither of them were asleep, dazed, tired looking, but not asleep. You recall constantly seeing them and their ‘romance’ blown up all over Panem. It made you roll your eyes. Six seemed to have a stronger connection and you weren’t even sure they were actually a couple if not brother and sister. Any single person could tell it wasn’t true. It was for the games. She, maybe, loved him, yes, but there was no doubt in your mind that she was not in love with him.You did not want to judge, because, like you said, it is all a game. Most liked, stays alive the longest. Do what you must to survive. But you know that if it was up to you, you would have left him behind, wouldn’t you? He’s dead weight, of course, but- You shook your head again, this time to rid yourself of your meaningless tangent. Seven.

District Seven. They were a really solid pair. Strong, ruthless, survivalist, they could make their way around these woods and break a man in half with their bare hands simultaneously with zero effort. The girl, she seemed like a winner, unphased by the game, headstrong. She could be a little annoying with her mouth, but, non the less, you could see how she’d win. She sat closest to the fire, seemingly utterly relaxed, watching every branch crackle under the flame. The male- Clyde. You wanted to tell yourself so badly that he’d make it through anything, so bad, but you knew better. He was big and strong, yes, undoubtedly smart, yes, but he was permanently disadvantaged. The only one of you physically bearing their past. And if it wasn’t for you, he would’ve drowned to death. Sure, he could hold his ground back at the platform, but if the girl from Twelve didn’t shoot him down, those overseeing the game would most likely have risen the water level or something like that. He was tending to the fire as you stared him down. He seemed to hold his concentrated pout indefinitely. You wondered how he hadn’t gotten his face stuck like that or gained any wrinkles in his brows. Your eyes softened in the slightest watching him tend to the fire. You could practically feel his nose brushing the sensitive skin of your neck, breathing down it, the weight of him leaned against your chest. It almost brought you comfort, but the thought of him having to die only saddened your eyes.

You got so deep in your own mind that you didn’t even see him climb up out of the hole everyone sat in, inside the back of the cave. You didn’t notice him taking a seat across from you and resting his back against the opposite cave wall as you. You didn’t even notice him reaching forward until you felt his fingers gently graze your cheekbone, jolting you out of your trance. Your eyes immediately trained themselves on the man, softening just a tad as they focused on his features, but your brows furrowed further. His hand wiping something wet on your face. “You’re cryin’.” His voice sounds ever so gently, so quietly you were sure only the two of you could hear. You blink a few times, feeling the wet lashes touch the tops of your cheeks. You take a deep breath in and sigh. a bit frustrated at your inability to feel your own uncontrollable tears. You shake your head, but Clyde only draws closer, scooting off the wall to sit directly in front of you, his hand ridding your face of the tears. “Why?” He breathes, tilting his chin up in the tiniest of movement as if chasing something with it, or nodding. His jaw tightens, eyes trained on your lips as he waits for your answer. You stay focused on his eyes, mapping out the irises in your mind. Your eyes flutter after a second too long and shake your head, almost fearing the answer yourself. He sighs, his thumb soothing the corner of your jaw as his hand now rests on the left side of your neck, the same side his submerged, dark strands once tickled. Your next breath was a bit more labored and shaky, your eyes losing their nonexistent battle with his. “Please,” He insists, still as gentle as ever. You start to feel your eyes burning a little, the first time in a long while since you felt the sting of building tears. Your jaw tightens this time and you’re trained on his clothed middle.

“I hate it.” you whisper with such venom, quickly sucking in a breath through your teeth as if you admitted a sin. Your head shakes from side to side, shaking so quickly yet so small. Clyde’s eyes met your teary ones with such sadness and understanding, he must’ve been boring into a traumatized bear cub. He stays silent, edging you to let it out, the voices in your head, your doubts. Your nose starts to sting, “I hate- I hate that I can’t look at a single person here without seeing their death. I hate that I know I might be the one to cause it.” You close your mouth, breathing so heavily yet so shallow, your cheeks puff up so slightly. You lick your lips nervously. “I fear that I won’t be able to. I don’t want to. I hate it.” Tears begin to resurface, Clyde wiping them as they fall. “I look around,” You turn your head just enough to see those in the cave underneath, “And-” Your breath begins to quicken, on the brink of hyperventilation, “I-” Clyde pulls your heaving body into his by your neck. Your head resting against his heart as you let out an open mouthed sigh, emptying the air from your lungs suddenly not feeling worthy of it.

Clyde shushes you, wrapping his arms around you, protectively holding your head in his chest, his forearm securing your mid back. His calm breaths leave his body in strings of, “Shh.” The gentle movement of his thumb just behind your ear eases your racing heart, his hand cradling your head like it’s the most precious thing in the world to his. “Please breathe.” You inhale deeply, almost forgetting to do so, the oxygen rushing to your head and making you feel light headed, like the first gasp of air after near drowning. Your eyes stay looking out over everyone in the pit of the cave. You notice the girl, Seven, staring up at you two from her seated position, keeping herself upright with her arms, legs leisurely crossed in front of her. Your eyes meet and there’s a hint of amusement playing in them, her face tainted with a smirk. Why? You couldn’t pinpoint but you would find out later.

Cold slowly consumed you as Clyde pulled away. He looked down at you as you slowly peeled your eyes away from the Seven girl to meet his eyes. His hand remains on the side of your head as his forearm rests at your waist, “You don’t need t’ worry about those things anymore, okay?” He says, awfully convincingly, but you know he’s just lying to comfort you. It somehow doesn’t stop his eyes from looking so genuine, like he knows it. “No more.” He looks so serious and you want nothing more to believe him. His eyes fluster down to where your heart lies in your chest, that pout puffing his lips up as it settles in his brow. He almost begrudgingly removes his hand from your head, it falling to hesitantly hold your hand instead. He looks down at your intertwined hands then back up to your eyes to search for any discomfort, not finding any. He sighs almost happily before scooting to turn his body to face the outside world beyond the cave, urging you to follow. You two are just out of view of the ones in the pit but far enough in the cave’s entrance to be out of view of anyone that might be lingering outside.

You hear the lightest throat clearing coming from the man on your left. You turn your head to look at the side of his, he staring out at the overview of the forest. “How was your life in District Four?” He offers a subject change. You were slightly taken aback by the question, never have been asked that before. “Everyone there a mermaid?” He grunted out the lame joke, cringing at himself the second it left his lips and met his own ears. Nonetheless, it brings the smallest of laughs from you. He thought he’d die for that laugh, to hear more of it, looking over to you once it reached his ears. You shook your head, looking out at the landscape in front of you with a small upward quirk of your mouth’s corners.

“No,” you sighed thinking back on your home. “It’s… nice.” you nod as if confirming your own words. “Everyone is always… prepared. It strengthens us, as a people. We are all very close. A tight knit community. A family. I love it, truly. It’s home, you know?” Your brows furrowed slightly, “But the constant preparations and education on survival in the games casts a cloud over everything.” Your head tilts up to gaze at the stars, something you used to love to do from the docks back home. “Like no matter how happy everyone seems, we’re all just waiting to hear our name called for tribute. Children, Elders, not one person ever has that glint leave their eyes, not for a second. It’s just… It’s hard to see my family like that.” You sigh, a pause settling between you two. You look over to him, his gaze having fallen to the rocky ground in front of your criss-crossed legs. “Do you have a family?” His eyes immediately finding yours, his brows raising a little. “Wife, Children?” His eyes cast over as he blinks a few times, leaving your eyes. You suddenly feel small. “I- I’m sorry. You just… seem like a family man.” You speak so softly, it’s almost hard to hear yourself. He shakes his head.

“No. No, it’s fine. I- uhh…” He starts, trying to find his wording, “I always wanted a family.” He admits. “Always wanted a wife. I jus’… I don’ think I could bare the pain of dealin’ with losin’ my family t’ this life. Couldn’t bare my family losin’ me t’ this life.” He sighs, “Then I got called in, los’ m’ hand, and thing got…” He breathes in and sighs out, “complicated.” His pout reappears. “Had t’ relearn life again, one less hand and a whole lot a… memories.” He sighs again. “It’s complicated, this here life. An’ it’s hard to go on, but we gotta try, movin’ forward, cause that’s all we got.” He looks over to you, losing his pout, his features softening and making him look younger. He sucks on his teeth, shifting his jaw and biting the inside corner of his bottom lip, a thinking habit, you assumed. He peers down to your lips, “I understand you, ya know?” He nods, “Things are hard, and I don’t know if they ever really go away.” He exhales, “But… they do get better, eventually. Get easier. It feels like it takes a time and a half, but things are gon’ start lookin’ up. I promise.” He looks back into your eyes, “Trust me, okay. I won’t let you down.” His eyes so sincere, all you can do is nod, fueling his fantasy. You look away from his eyes, overwhelmed, utterly bewildered at how such a man could contain so much hope and sincerity in times and a place like this; it amazed you.

“Okay.” You responded halfheartedly. His eyes turn stern, focused, determined.

“I mean it, ya hear.” His voice raises in the slightest, hard and structured, demanding your gaze. You look so deeply into his eyes you thought it might be possible to get lost. You just nod. He sighs and just lets you give him that answer. “It’s different this time.” he nods, assuring himself, “different.” He looks away from you to focus on looking out. You stay trained on the side of his face, confused at how he could be so sure. The hope of a determined toddler. You began to wonder if he was even in his right mind, but your heart didn’t care. It pulled to him and his childlike ambition. You squint your eyes at him, trying to figure him out. Failing, you huff out a humorless laugh, shaking your head lightly with a soft smile, turning your head to look up at the invisible dome.

~

A jarring noise awoke you out of your sleep. You look around you to find yourself still seated on the hard rock of the same cave. Your breath was erratic and your eyes wild, you looked to the right then to the left and found no other than Clyde’s worried, calming eyes. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s alright. You were only out for a few minutes.” He soothes, his hand squeezing yours reassuringly, tugging it a little to bring you back closer to him. You focused on slowing your breathing down as you scooted back over, Clyde resting your intertwined fingers on your knee, rubbing his thumb against the back of your hand. He took his gaze off you to look up to the ‘sky,’ you follow his eyes. Eight, the girl. Clyde sighs, his tight pout returning to his face. He shakes his head and bows it, letting it sit there for a few short seconds before looking back out to the surrounding land. You studied his actions skeptically. “I think she was a mother.” he says sorrowfully, he shakes his head again. Your eyes look down then back up to the ‘sky.’ Your heart aches at the thought of her children. They’re probably at home asleep right now, maybe being looked after by her husband, grandparents, no clue that they will never have another chance to see their mother, hear her voice, feel her kiss- You shake out your thoughts and look to the ground, catching Clyde’s attention. He squeezes your hand to gain your attention. “Hey,” you look up to him. “Stop thinking about it. It’ll be okay.” He assures. You furrow your brows and look behind you at the group, doing a mental count.

Six. Six down, as far as you are aware. You tried to recall hearing any other deaths from the past few hours. No, there had to be more than that. One wouldn’t just go off of the platform without killing anyone they sought their eyes on. Those two, District One’s tributes, you were sure that they’d both got at least two bodies each by now, but you couldn’t remember and you would not be taken down and off guard purely because you miscounted. So for now, you would assume twenty people left alive in this cursed dome. You look out to the horizon and see a glimpse of ‘sun’ peeking out. Clyde sighed, looking to you and then down to your hands longingly. “S’pose we get to packin’ up and movin’ out.” He said, still not moving from his spot, both of you wanting this moment of tranquility to last as long as it could, even if it was eerie and nerve wracking. You followed his sigh and nodded, scooting away a little.

“You wake everyone up. I’ll stay here.” You command softly, getting on higher alert and focusing on scanning outwards. He stays trained on you for a few seconds in the silence, savoring everything he can before giving a stiff nod and proceeding to do exactly what you said.

You waited, scanned, while everyone silently rustled behind you. You could hear the man from Three talking, something of a game plan. It was in very hushed tones so you could barely hear but it sounded like he was talking about splitting up, collecting things, explosions. You couldn’t quite tell but you could hear a pair of footsteps honing in from behind you. You peer over your shoulder into the cave to glance at who it is. Seven, the girl from Clyde’s district. She had such a dark look about her, like she hadn’t slept more than two hours in the past two years, but she held a sarcastic smirk on her lips 90% of the time, you’d yet to see her drop it when she isn’t in combat. She struts up to you, unafraid or uncaring of anything. “Hey.” She starts, her voice cutting through the wind like an arrow. You give her a curt nod as a greeting, but she wasn’t done talking, “You know,” her voice varying in tones, a stark contrast to Clyde’s ever deep, calm near monotone rasp, “I have never once seen that brick shithouse of a man so gentle and transparent in my life. It’s kinda weird, to be honest.” She reaches her hand down to you, you look down to her offer and decide to take, against your judgement. She pulls you up to your feet effortlessly. “I think he really thinks your somethin’ special.” She chuckles and shakes her head. “He’s a stupid boy to try and fins a girl in the arena, though.” She rolls her eyes, you bending down to retrieve your backpack and Triton as she goes on, “This isn’t a place to gain a weakness. It already sucks to have to come in here with one of your own.” Everyone down in the pit started to make their way up and out, and you two take this as an opportunity to start making your way out of the cave, she continues, “I envy that about you, ya know.” She glances over to you, you already preoccupied with scoping the land further. You hum in response. “You at least don’t have to worry about backstabbing someone from your own District.” You spare her a glance. She walks through the trees like she owns it, like no one would dare touch her. You paused to let the others catch up after determining there were no immediate threats lingering outside.

You see Clyde helping the girl from Six down from the rocks of the cave. You shook your head, examining this randomly put together team. A band of misfits. You get a surge run through your body, feeling protective over the man of the topic, violent, like you could kill her were she stood just at the thought of her laying a finger on Clyde. Your jaw tightens and your grip on the staff tightens along with it. You look over to her, finding her staring at you with her arms crossed and a smug look on her face. She raises an eyebrow and nods, huffing out a breathy laugh, like she’s mentally patting herself on the back for getting an answer to an unspoken question. She lets out a, “Hmph.” Clyde walks up to the two of you, splitting from the others as they head in another direction. You furrow your brows as you wait for him to reach you both with an explanation.

“Three, Six, and Twelve are gonna and see what things they can gather from the arsenal. We’re up to find ourselves some food and a good ground.” He says. He looks over to the Seven girl and seems to have a silent conversation, causing her to huff and roll her eyes, turning and leading the way for the three of you. You look over to Clyde as he walks past you, following her footsteps, ignoring your curiosity. You’re quick to trail him and drop it, and go back to looking out, determining you’re in charge of watching everyone’s backs.

Your stomach starts to ache at its emptiness but you ignore it and keep your stance strong. You guys find a large clearing, an amateur’s nightmare of an undoing. You all stop at the edge of the trees, just covered enough. “Perfect.” You hear slide from Clyde’s lips. This draws your attention to the two of them, now beside you in a line. You look at them, horrifyingly confused. The girl stood nonchalantly as ever with her arms crossed as she looked out to the field. Clyde is looking out just the same, but standing firm and tall, arms at his sides.

“What?” You speak up, hoping for an answer. Clyde looks over to you.

“It’s for an… ambush plan.” He seems to struggle to explain. You look at his oddly secretive form suspiciously. But your piercing eyes don’t bring the truth out of him, so you drop it and look out to the plane, scoping out the trees, high and low. It would be a good vantage point to have archers up in the trees if you could draw out the others to the field. The boy from Twelve could be good bait. Six and Three would be dead before they could lift a foot to run from any other district left. You sigh and nod. “Let’s go and meet up with the others-” Clyde was interrupted by ear shattering, distant screech and another one of those jarring noises coming from the ‘sky.’ All three of you look up, you silently hoping to find an only vaguely remembered face. The girl from Five. You sigh, unsure if you should be relieved or not. Clyde bows his head a little as the Seven girl starts walking back from where you all came. You wait for Clyde to lift his head again and start walking before you follow. You questioned his actions in your mind but determined to either keep quiet about it or, if you get the chance, ask him later.

The three of you just barely reach the cave from last night before you all hear yells and screams coming from the left, away from the beach the arsenal was located. All three heads whip in the direction, bodies coming to a halt, Clyde is quick to break out formation first, yanking his ax from the straps on the back of his backpack and taking off running in the direction of the screams. You’re hot on his heels before he can get too far, hearing a light scoff coming from the girl before she soon follows behind you. You see through the treeline that the source of the screams came from the Twelve girl. She’s running from a flurry of birds, towards the direction you three are coming from but to the Twelve boy and the duo from Three. All of a sudden, her screams are cut inaudible. The Twelve boy tries to meet her but is stopped by an invisible wall. You three reach the others just as the Twelve girl reaches the force field. She panics, screaming something you couldn’t read. The boy is yelling back at her, trying his best to comfort her cries. They both sink to the ground and the Threes tilt their heads down, sadly, trying to avoid witnessing an untimely end. You stare at the scene in front of you, standing the furthest back, letting the boy have his space. Clyde hits the ‘wall’ with his fist, testing its structure himself.

The scene plays out for a full 63 seconds, you counted, before the invisible field seems to tumble down, along with all the birds. The boy cradles a near passed out archer girl, startling her awake. Seven walks towards them, passing by the two to kick a few dead birds in anger. Clyde walks back to you and simply basks in your close company by standing next to you. Everyone watches the Seven girl as she exclaims, challenging The Capital’s leader. She looks back to the group before shrugging, “He can’t hurt me,” she says bitterly as everyone stays silent, “He’s already taken everything from me.” Her eyes go dark, vengeful. She mutters something towards the Twelve girl before walking off a short distance to regain her composure.

You look up to Clyde, then back to the pair on the ground as the boy tried lifting her up to stand. Clyde looked down to you for a lingering moment, mortality hitting him in a passing wave before he looks around and speaks up, “The Morphlings?” The man from Three looks up to Clyde, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

“They’re on a mission, spying.” He responds, eyes never fully meeting Clyde’s. You looked up to Clyde to find his face very stoic, intimidating. He stood tall and broad and tense. He looked frightening, genuinely, but something in you couldn’t buy it, not with the side you’ve seen of him. Seven’s voice rings out in your head. ‘He really does act differently around me.’ You squint up at him, trying to figure out his game. He accepts Three’s answer and looks down to you, instantaneously calming, all the tension leaving his body. He offers a gentle smile, before Three interrupts the silence again, “Johanna, Wiress, and I are going to continue on South and settle there for the night. Wiress and I are gonna start constructing some parts tonight.” He turns and faces the Twelves and points North, “There’s a stream up that way for you to collect some fresh water.” He finishes the sentence by looking to both you and Clyde, being the only two with backpacks and containers to hold the water. “You guys can head back this way once you’ve gotten everything.” Everyone nods and starts to break off.

~

The four of you sat at the edge of the passing water, resting your legs and just breathing in silence. You sat at the very edge of the water on a rock, examining how it streams over every pebble. “How ya doin’, water dweller?” a smooth accent rings out from behind you, soft as ever. You look up to find Clyde coming up to sit next to you on the ground, his backpack off to his side. Your shoulders were starting to itch and ache from the straps of yours but you were far too paranoid to take it off. You huff a small laugh and look back to the water.

“Surviving.” You respond bluntly, shrugging.

He hums, “Fair ‘nough.” He nods, pouting out his lips, though this time it wasn’t accompanied by a furrowed brow. He looks up to you from his spot on the ground, just staring like he was trying to burn your memory into his brain. Just as you both were about to speak up, a scream rang out, not too far away. You both spin around to face the source of the noise. Coming from the Southwest, you caught sight of the male Morphling. There didn’t seem to be anyone chasing him but he was closely followed by a sinister looking fog.

“Poison! Poison!” He calls out multiple times trying to warn everyone and get everyone up, which it did. Clyde gripped the backpack and threw it over his shoulders in one swift move, almost just as fast as it took you to stand. Everyone took off, The Morphling not too far behind.

Your heart bounded in your ears as you ran. Clyde yells out to you just as you skid to change directions, the fog coming from the right out of nowhere. It just barely grazes your ankle as you skid, causing you to scream out in pain. But before you could fully register it, Clyde is yanking you up from mid fall and dragging you along, practically throwing you ahead in the opposite way of the fog, his quick reflexes helping regain your footing before your mind catches up to your body. Clyde’s long legs keep up to your fast pace. You hear the Twelve girl and boy yell out in pain but you have no time to look back. You clear a fallen branch and just about jump into a cloud of fog that rushed out from behind a tree, but Clyde’s reaction time was quicker. He yanks you back by your waist tosses you into the other direction as he skid to the ground, his leg falling victim to the poison. His agonized scream rocks you to your core. He had strength enough to get back to his feet but stumbles just far enough away from the fog. You Race back to him and the Twelve boy reaches him just as you do. “I can’t lift him by myself.” You admit, panicking. He nods and takes Clyde’s injured arm, draping it over his shoulder, you mimicking the action with the right. Clyde is well enough to do his best to help carry himself but it’s failing.

You all get far enough to a small clearing, the fog consuming everything around you but the treeline in front of you. The Twelve boy’s foot gets caught on something sticking out of the ground causing him to topple over and twist his ankle, Clyde yelling out in pain as now he’s put more weight on that side, the injured leg. Clyde’s weight bearing too much for you, you fall to the ground with him. He groans out, rolling over in pain. “No! No, Come on!” The Twelve girl yells out frantically, helping the boy up.

“Come on, Clyde. I’m not leaving you.” You say to him, trying to hug his body to yours to lift him as best as you can. You look up, pleading with you eyes for help, and see The Morphling boy pass you all. He turns, skidding to a stop. He makes eye contact with you then down at Clyde. He sprints his way back to you and helps you grab Clyde. He was taller than the Twelve boy but not quite as strong. You both drag Clyde from under his arms, rushing as fast as you can backwards, away from the fog. Clyde yells out again as his leg brushes against the ground, irritating it. The Morphling boy quickly makes his way to Clyde’s feet and lifts them off the ground, making it a bit easier to carry him. You use all the strength you possibly can trying to keep Clyde off the ground, but it’s quickly failing. The Morphling boy screams out in agony as the fog nips at his back. You yank Clyde as much as you can as he’s in mid air, the Morphling boy falling to the ground and losing his hold on Clyde. You yelp in surprise at the sudden full weight of Clyde, but refuse to give up. The fog consumes the body of the Morphling as he takes his last agonizing breath. You try and hold your tears together and keep your grip on Clyde but you don’t make it more than four feet before your body gives in to the exhaustion. You fall to the ground and Clyde lands right on top of you.

You look down, pass his feet to the fog and hold his body closer in a vice grip of a hug. You clench your eyes shut and wait for your doom. But it never comes. You open your eyes just in time to see the fog hit another invisible wall like a wave. In that moment your body drains, all you feel is Clyde’s labored breathing and the weight of him in your arms. Your body goes limp and you lay back with a thud, trying to catch your breath. Your arms fall from around Clyde to lay on the ground beside you both. Your eyelids start to feel heavy and you’re tempted to close them until you hear Clyde rasping out your name repeatedly in a panic, worried since he felt your body relax. “Guys! Guys!” the Twelve girl yanks you out of your trance, interrupting Clyde’s chants. “The water! The water! Get in the water!” she calls out. You have no energy to see why but you just scoot your and Clyde’s body in the direction of her voice and the splashes.

You finally reach the water, feeling it graze your back. You use everything left in you to remove Clyde off of you and shove him in the shallow pond first, careful that his head remains above the surface. You crawl in after him and rest your forehead against his temple, exhausted. The last thing you remember, the feeling of his head turning to face you and the tip of his nose grazing yours as his hand reaches out for you. He calls your name one last time before darkness devours your senses.

--------------------------

tag list:

@douglasdriver​ @lesbionic-rex​ @clumsycopy​ @morby​ @dancingmicrobes​

[detectivesplotslies]

The Monster’s Lair

Description: The game is over, but is it ever really gone? When you come home, the traces lurk, like monsters in the shadows.

A gift for  @__shslprince on twitter for the SaiOu Winter Exchange 2019! Some postgame vr au, where we’re tired but still here.Some home interactions, post game musings, little angst, lil fun. Word Count: 2471

Read on AO3 here

The interview today was tiring. Being the man who ended DanganRonpa, you’d think that it would put an end to the media tirade as well, but if anything the number of requests and invitations to speak just kept going up. And “end” itself wasn’t even very accurate or conclusive, given the company was still vying for support. Whether they claimed they were in the right or not, it probably wouldn’t change, regardless of how many interviews he did. Still he went. Sometimes Maki came with him, and they stood as a united front. Himiko disliked making public appearances herself, but even managed a few of the more serious ones. She knew just as much as they did how important it was for the others. Shuichi was always more confident when they were there to back him up. When the words died in his throat, one would jump in and make the point he trailed off with.

The three of them never asked the others to come to interviews. Even if Kaito and Kaede both volunteered more than once to help. They had enough to deal with, with their privacy signed away. All the others who suffered in game deaths also had physical therapy to eat up their time. Coming out of the game unscathed seemed impossible. No, Maki always made sure that Kaito knew they were okay, that this was sidekick business, that the hero deserved a break. She’d gotten so much better at smiling over the past year, working through all the trauma together with them. Kaito had a hard time arguing with her when she was wearing that smile. Plus, Kaito needed to learn to take a step back too.

No, even if they came to the interviews, the one reporters always wanted to grill was Shuichi. The one who stopped the game. The one who suggested it. The ender of DanganRonpa.

Even though they were so wrong.

Walking into the apartment complex’s lobby, finally home from the chill, Shuichi shot off another text, numb fingers tapping away at the screen.

[This time they asked if we were paid by the competition to take the game down from the inside] -- [Does TDR even have a competitor?? I sure hope not] --

There was barely a second before the reply.

--[I should have come with you.]

[True, they wouldn't ask you that one, but I’m OK.]--

Shuichi doubted they even could try to ask Maki that one. The question would die on their lips, taken out instantly by her withering glare. But that probably wouldn’t help either.

[Too tired to cook though. Do you guys want to come over & do something tonight? Or does Kaito have another session with physio? Group session was Sunday though, right?]--

The elevator dings, and he stepped in, selecting his floor and waiting. He’s glad no one else is in it, he hasn’t had to meet the neighbours really and has no intention. His only pleasant shared elevator ride was the was a black lab pup out for a walk, and the person with the dog had been a hired dog walker. His floor arrived and the doors opened as his phone buzzed again.

--[We’re both free tonight, I’ll let him know. He doesn’t get a say in the matter, he needs to get out of the house before I lose him under the mess of plants. He got two more this week.]

Shuichi grinned, and reached in his pocket and approached the door, sending off a last message before pocketing the phone as well.

[For once the sidekicks do the dragging then.] --

A few false starts, a jangle of keys, a click, and the apartment door swung inwards. Shuichi walked in, noticing the lights were all out. Quietly he placed his keys and bag down on the counter of their kitchenette as his eyes adjusted. It didn’t look like anyone was home, but he was sure that there was nothing scheduled today.

“Hello?”

The darkness slowly refined itself into the familiar space. Scattered mail on the floor, unopened. Boxes of half unpacked possessions pushed against the wall. A tight maze of cheap furniture they’d acquired that was quite snugger than planned for the size of the place. It was a single afterall. The crutches by the door told him what he needed to know though.

Sliding his shoes off, Shuichi walked in, leaving the lights off for the time being. The blinds were closed too, so he assumed that darkening their apartment was deliberate. He shed his winter coat finally, tossing it haphazardly on the couch while inspecting the scene. A few empty plastic bottles littered the couch and one rolled away on the floor as his foot nudged it from its spot fallen beneath it as well. With a small huff, Shuichi squinted around in the dark, looking for their waste basket. As he spotted it he remembered they’d used it as a stand for the fern Kaito got them as a house-warming gift by the window. Months ago. No wonder they were drowning in trash. He reached around on the floor through the mess and found an unused plastic take away bag, and began to fill it idly as he looked for more signs of why it was quiet and dark in here. Receipts, wrappers, a paper napkin or two. He paused, however, at the end of their sitting room table as he saw something. Even in the dark the broken ceramic and stain were obvious on the floor.

The mug he had made his cup of coffee in that morning, only to forget here half finished and sitting out to get cold as he left, lay in pieces where it shattered on the floor. Coffee soaked the nearby rug, while still pooling and puddling between there and the table. Shuichi felt a chill run down his spine, backtracking out of the room with new urgency.

“Kokichi?!” He hurried to the bathroom door to turn the knob. It wasn’t locked and flew open. Their clutter inside was all intact. Seemingly unoccupied. Confirming that with a glance in the tub, he spun back around, back out in the apartment. He did a quick check of the closet then finally towards the last unsearched place. The bedroom.

The door was ajar, and Shuichi stepped into it, darker than the other room, no windows on this side of the apartment. In the bed, there was a lump under the covers, and his shoulders slumped in relief. He stepped carefully past the wheelchair that was waiting near the door, and towards the bed. It was slightly suspicious his shout hadn't woke him with how light a sleeper he was. He reached the bed and went to pat the covers.

Something icy and cold grabbed him by the ankle as he did.

Shuichi yelped and pitched forwards, the trash bag in his other hand tumbling to the ground. He landed on the bed, and the bundle of blankets squashed beneath him, to his surprise. Reaching around he discovered it was just pillows and laundry. Taking a moment to catch his breath, his thoughts were racing back to him with their conclusion. Turning around on the bed where he landed, he swung his head down to peer under the bed. Just barely in the darkness he could make out a pale face turned towards him and a hand creeping right around the edge of the shadow from the mattress. Kokichi was just lying there on his back, as if he were on top of the bed, rather than below it. Shock gave way to confusion.

“Why are you on the floor?”

“Cause I wanna be on the floor. Jeez, Shuichi, it’s not that hard, is it? Do I look like I fell down here?”

Shuichi blinked. No, he didn’t really look like he could have fallen all the way under the bed, that was true. There was no sign of physical distress. Still, that didn’t make it routine.

“I suppose not. But under the bed?”

Kokichi’s face in the dark stretched into a grin.

“Where monsters live.” Shuichi frowned and opened his mouth to object- but Kokichi continued, grabbing for the fallen trash bag and pawing through it.

“Every good monster hides under beds in the dark. And collects trash, so you must have brought me an offering! You know, your face is red! Didn’t know you liked monsters that much, you should have said so! I’d have told you I was one earlier.”

Rolling his eyes Shuichi pulled himself back right side up, before stepping off the bed and dropping to the floor as well, pulling himself under the bed. Kokichi backed up, swatting at him with one of the empty Panta bottles. Undeterred, he stopped only after wedging himself entirely under their bed, face to face with the other man. He could see him watching his face, wielding the bottle in a ready position. The grin wavered, becoming a sharp line as he waited. Eventually, Shuichi was the one to break the silence.

“I thought monsters were supposed to devour anyone who came into their lairs?” Shuichi’s face was completely serious, though there was no fear in his question. More of an academic inquiry.

“Only those deemed unworthy.” Kokichi’s grin returned, and he bonked Shuichi on the forehead with the empty plastic bludgeon.

“Well, then you should get to devouring, I am an unworthy boyfriend who leaves his dishes out all over the place carelessly.”

Kokichi broke eye contact, grip tightening on the cap of the bottle. The hand trembled a bit. Shuichi didn’t need him to say what happened. It probably fell when he was putting it away. Just a slip, a quiver. It was getting better, sure, but there were good days and bad days. And he knew that it was up to him to notice the bad ones himself.

The reporters were wrong. Shuichi was never the one that stopped the game. Sure, he and the others had been the last standing, and had seen it through to the end. They did it not knowing what they were shutting down, or even who to expect on the other side. But he had never been the one aiming to stop the game in its tracks. Plenty of others had, Kaede, Kaito, Rantaro and most determinedly, Kokichi. If Kokichi hadn’t tried so hard, they’d probably have run the course until the end without questioning it.

But Shuichi knew that being given credit here was hardly a reward. It was a role saddled with constant prodding, constant examination and criticism. Stuck eternally picking up the pieces of something they’d broken, even if breaking it was for the better.

Kokichi didn’t need to be picking up the pieces he broke when someone else set it up. Whether it was in here or out there.

Shuichi lightly put a hand on the bottle, halting the shake travelling up it. “Well if the monster doesn’t plan to devour me, does he want something else?”

Kokichi opened his mouth but was beaten to the punch as a gurgling sound came from his stomach. The look of betrayal as he glanced down at it made Shuichi snicker.

“Come on.”

Shuichi scooted back out from underneath, and reached out for his boyfriend’s hand. With a moment of hesitation the bottle was rolled aside. Kokichi took his hand and was hoisted out of the shadow of the bed. He helped him to his feet, and didn’t say a word about the shakiness, though glanced meaningfully at the chair. Kokichi shook his head quickly. They settled for making it slowly but carefully out of the bedroom to the couch, Kokichi flopping down on it. As the lights flicked on he hissed melodramatically.

Shuichi walked back towards the fridge, frowning. They were getting low on groceries. He pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of what they had and sent off a text quickly.

[Hey Maki, we don’t have much to work with here but going out isn't an option either]-- [IMG304.jpg attached]--

He closed the fridge door. Kokichi frowned at him puzzled.

“Well, what am I gonna devour? You said we’d get something else. Shuichi, are you lying? You know that’s my job. Taking advantage of a monster like that,” Kokichi moaned, some energy returning with his story.  He crossed his arms and pouted.

Shuichi stepped back over and sat down next to him, and tapped his chin thoughtfully. His cheeks went red under his boyfriend’s scrutiny, but he managed to get the line out with a straight face when he closed his eyes. “You know, I’ve changed my mind. You don’t need something else. I’m right here.”

There was silence and stillness, and Shuichi started to think his line backfired. His cheeks heated up more, and he opened his eyes to see a red-faced but grinning Kokichi next to him, waiting. As soon as their eyes met, he pounced, and their lips locked. Shuichi’s lashes fluttered as Kokichi leaned right into his lap, hand on his chest. It was warm and sure, no trembling now. He let his eyes shut once more, and ran his hands along Kokichi’s back. He could feel a nibble tugging at his lip and a yank on his tie to hold him there longer. He didn’t fight it. Let the monster devour as he pleased.

They broke apart long enough for Kokichi to mutter, “That was terrible.”

Shuichi’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but Kokichi’s hands were quicker, snatching it and quickly tapping in his password. He stopped wondering how he kept learning it ages ago. His boyfriend’s face went aghast.

“You invited a filthy hero to the monster’s lair?”

“Wh-” Shuichi began as the phone was thrust in his face. There was a text, accompanied with a picture of the noodle place down the street.

--[WE’RE ON IT SHUICHI. LEMME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. OUR TREAT!]

“Kaito’s bringing food! It’s a peace offering.”

“...Fine, I’ll decide if he’s worthy, if he brings something good.” He handed the phone to Shuichi, but didn’t release his tie, playing with the end of it a bit. Keeping him close. Shuichi tapped in their orders, and let the phone slide loose into his pocket, turning his attention to Kokichi once more as he tugged his 'leash'. A little less ‘vicious’ this time.

The phone buzzed again, and both of them looked at it. There was a semi-blurred selfie, of Kaito, his hair tied in a messy ponytail flashing them a grin & thumbs-up along with the takeaway meal containers, and Maki in the driver’s seat eyes on the road instead of the camera. The pair of them glanced around. Kaito wouldn’t mind the mess but…

“I think we need to get that trash offering back together, even monsters should be better hosts.”

[thatlonelygirl630]

If your still up for taking some prompts? I remember seeing a post about a groundhogs head cannon where if kara dies she relives that same day? Can you include how she discovers it? Kara x reader?

     A/N: Hello Anon! I do remember seeing a post about that some time ago but cant find it. If anyone could link it to me ill gladly put it in. I think its pretty gender neutral but again I write with fem!reader in mind unless told other wise. I wouldn’t call this fluffy but there is a sprinkle of angst.

Trigger warning: Death, Swearing?

       You and Kara Danvers grew up together in Midvale. Well maybe that was a stretch, you went to the same school and lived a street over. You weren’t the type of friends to hang out at each other’s house or go out to the mall, more like friends who you could talk to in a class full of strangers. Kara was always a bit closed off and unsure of herself in high school but she never had problems helping you with your calculus homework and you helping her in History.

     The two of you didn’t even mean to go to college together thus neither of you knew you would be thrust into the same intro to English lecture until the professor took attendance for the first and only time. After that year though Kara had told you about the horror story that was her roommate and you had to laugh at seeing the usually positive ‘give everyone a chance’ Kara complaining about someone for essentially living too loudly.

     So, at the start of the next semester, you both roomed together and some time into your senior year, you started dating. It was like any cheesy romance novel where the two of you went on one too many failed dates before finally realizing you were two blind roommates in love. At graduation you found out she was Kryptonian, it wasn’t like you knew all along or anything but your brain finally put the puzzle pieces together.

     Kara hadn’t told you, no, Kara had just gotten off the phone with her cousin who was exclaiming how proud he was of her all while she played with the silly Superman keychain you had gotten her. It was an odd realization but everything just made more sense. All the times she had played with it before was when the two of you would be watching the news showing Superman fighting with an alien. You always shrugged it off as her not wanting to see someone she clearly views as an idol get ruffed up but to see her do the same with her cousin? Maybe you had always had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t completely human but now you knew how deep that went.

     Form that day forwards you vowed to wait until she felt comfortable opening herself up like that. Surely just her being here on earth came with a horror story of why she left her home in the first place, a trauma that might still be too fresh even after years.

     To celebrate Kara upgrading her waitressing job at Noonan’s to Cat Grant’s assistant everyone came over to Alex’s apartment. In honor of the celebration, Alex turned over the lease handing her little sister the paperwork making it all set in stone. Kara bounced around in joy naming off all the things she would change and where she would put her stuff. It was an adorable ramble and she was so excited she lifted you up running around a few times. It was something she always did and you thought nothing of it but that’s when you noticed Alex staring at you.

“Do you know?” She had asked you one night after Kara left to go get the food.

“Know what?” You frowned at the completely out of the blue question.

“About Kara.”

“Alex you’re going to have to get more specific here, I’m not a mind reader.” You laughed picking at the bowl of chips.

“Look at me.” You look up and meet her serious expression “Do you know about Kara.” She stated more than asked.

     You resisted the urge to audibly gulp and fidget in place “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” You said carefully and you could see the way Alex’s eyes widened slightly the way she nodded and leaned back.

“Good answer.” The apartment was left in silence until Kara arrived all smiles and happy rambling.

      It was that conversation that landed you near kidnaped and taken to some kind of interrogation room. A few of what you think are agents, or maybe henchmen, in all-black tactical gear guard the door for what seems like hours until it opens.

“What the hell Alex!” Is the first thing you get out “This is messed up on so many levels.”

“Sorry” Alex smiled gently tilting her chin and you see the man who entered in behind her.

      In the end, he offered you a job, as it turned out Alex didn’t work for the FBI but for the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, DEO. Hank Henshaw wanted you for your computer engineering degree and Alex wanted you to help protect Kara. With the prospect of protecting your girlfriend, you agreed instantly.

     It was hard the lying but after you’re not only physical but mental training it was easier. The DEO taught you methods to pass a polygraph whilst lying straight through your teeth among many other skills. Kara commented on the extra muscle but certainly didn’t complain when you told her you had taken to working out. As far as she knew you had a desk job at the FBI just like Alex.

     On the day Kara agreed to go out to the bar with one of the interns at CatCo Alex was flying out to Geneva to get intel on a case as you flew to Boston your flights were only hours apart. You had been texting Kara periodically as she slowly started to realize the man meant the bar hang out as a date. She used angry emojis when she pieced together the puzzle because you didn’t tell her and “Why did you let me go!”

     You saw it immediately on the small crappy airport TVs displaying the news. Alex’s plane blew an engine right above the city. You watched for a moment in shock. A lot went through your head, finding out if this was some kind of attack, was Alex a target? The plane seemed to be headed for a nosedive in the harbor. Not the best odds but given Alex’s training in underwater situations, you’re sure she could make it out.

     Just as you were about to call Hank the plane leveled out engine still burning and even started to turn in order not to crash into the bridge. Definitely some kind of external intervention going on. By that point, news helicopters got close-ups of the plane settling into the harbor. Just on the plane’s wing, you saw it, well her. You saw Kara.

   It was hard to tell at first. The picture was grainy and at a bad angle. Her being covered in soot and soaking wet didn’t help but as creepy as it may sound that was Kara’s body. That was the way her hair gets when she has just stepped out of the pool or a shower. You had seen it plenty of times. Also, you had just bought her that same sweater just a few weeks ago when she spilled soy sauce all over her other one.

     Abandoning the airport, you got a cab back to Kara’s apartment and nearly ran into Alex at the door “Go back to the DEO.” she whispered “Hank he’s- “

      Before Alex could continue a thump was heard inside. You didn’t need Alex to finish her sentence so you nodded and walked away. This was serious, Kara was always aloud to skate by off the books because she didn’t use her powers or tell anyone her secret. Now that it’s out there, Hank might want to bring her in. It was only after days of arguing between Alex and Hank could reach an agreement. Alex swore Kara wouldn’t expose herself further but blend back into the woodwork like a normal human so Hank agreed to let it slide.

      You were just lucky you didn’t get in on that argument because days later a woman in red and blue started parading around the city in a homemade costume slowly getting more and more professional looking each save. It wasn’t until the finished form of the suit had made its debut did Hank send orders to capture ‘Supergirl’.

      At the time of the capture, you were stuck on a flight home from the delayed mission in Boston and Geneva. When you landed and saw the news you were devastated at how Alex allowed them to do it. Orders or not Kara is family.

“What the hell?” You ask walking in the main room seeing Hank look unpleased at another argument “You used Kryptonite on her? That was unnecessary she wasn’t a threat she was helping people!”

“Supergirl needed to be taught a lesson.” Hank said lowly “It’s standard protocol for aliens who blatantly show their powers on such a platform you know this.” You worked your jaw “if I had let this slide” he whispered lowly “everyone would know who she is.” He looked around to prove his point.

“You didn’t have to use Kryptonite.” You shook your head sighing as you see Supergirl with a look of betrayal firmly planted on her face as she watches from the doorway.

     She didn’t speak for a long moment and you couldn’t hold eye contact “You were in on this too?” You nod taking a deep breath as something between a sigh and a sob left her throat before she clumsily made off in a blur clearly trying to find the way out but not willing to ask.

     Alex came up next to you a minute later letting out a quick breath “Did you see her face?” you mumble still staring at the door she had left out of.

“Yea” Alex nearly whispered accompanied by a sigh in defeat “I’ll go try and talk to her.”

“I’ll follow you, best get the fighting done in one go.” You grabbed your bag that had been dumped on the floor, jet leg all but forgotten as tears stung your eyes.

   Alex beat you there and just nearing her apartment you could hear the screaming match, you sat in the hall listening to Alex give her side then Kara. You mentally prepped yourself for going in next and had almost convinced yourself to just leave when the door opened and Alex stormed out. Kara was all but slamming the door closed when she caught sight of you.

“Were you even on a business trip or was that a lie too.” She asked crossing her arms.

“Would you like to see the plane tickets?” You shuffle through the bag and pull the papers out. Kara hesitantly takes them and gives them a quick once over before looking up at you “Wanna explain why it’s not your name?”

“Cause it’s a cover.” You nearly whisper out grabbing the wallet as well toss it up to her.

     She scoffs looking through it seeing the fake IDs and credit cards “I can’t believe this.” She dropped it on your lap before walking further into the apartment but left the door open. You took the invitation and stood up walking through it keeping your bag by the door.

“How long have you known about me? Did they tell you or- “?

“No Kara I- “You hesitate “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How long have you known?” She insists.

“Known what?” You try.

“Known I’m an alien” She whispers lowly as if she doesn’t want it announced to the neighbors.

     You pause a second too long “You’re an alien?”

     Kara scoffs “Stop lying!” she rolls her eyes turning away.

“I’m sorry Kar- “.

“Just” she sighs interrupting you “Just please go, I’m really tired.” She muttered out dejectedly.

     Your mouth opens and closes severe times to protest but nothing comes out. Instead, you scoop up your bag and make to leave “For the record, I figured it out myself when we graduated college. I was just waiting for you to feel comfortable enough to tell me.”

     Kara turned slightly to look at you and you could see the mixed emotions swirling in her eyes. For a moment you think she is going to protest you leaving or say anything but after a moment of silence from her, you leave softly shutting the door behind yourself.

     The two of you do not speak for 2 weeks and you are pushing a 3rd when you get a knock on your door. Quickly you get up and go to fetch the food you had ordered but opening the door makes you freeze.

“Did you get a second job?” You try and tease as Kara holds the bags to your favorite takeout place and from the looks of it it’s what you ordered.

“No, I was on my way up when I saw the guy. It’s your favorite place so I just had a lucky guess. Figured I owed you dinner anyway.” She smiled holding out the food to you “I miss you.”

     You take the food bag that is the metaphorical olive branch while also letting her inside “I missed you too.”

     Together, in the following weeks, you try some of that healthy relationship communication and eventually work everything out. Secretly you support Kara in her embracing Supergirl because of the light it puts in her eye. It’s also you who convinces her to join the DEO for her own protection even though you think she half does it for yours’ and Alex’s protection as well.

     Everything was sorting itself out, Kara was over your apartment when you had been looking through the TV stations for something to watch “Groundhog’s day?” She frowned “What is that?”

“You’ve neve- Kara!” You gasped “It’s like a must-see the point is like a classic troupe now.”

     Kara shrugged and you instantly clicked in it watching the last few minutes of some crime show before the movie started. You watched the movie together and you noticed Kara was oddly silent during it, not asking her usual questions or small comments. You took that as her being invested and got up to refill your drinks and grab more snacks.

     By the time the movie ended and the credits filled the screen you looked over at Kara whose entire face was frozen “So what did you think?” At the sound of your voice, she snapped her head to the side staring at you in awe.

“It-it all makes sense now.” She swallows thickly “oh Rao.”

     She tells you all about her first few days on earth, how before any of her powers developed, she had wandered out in the dark to look out at the stars. A drunk driver had hit her and she woke up to repeat the same day. Then another time shortly after where she had been messing around in Jeremiah’s garage lab only to accidentally spill a vile on herself that made her skin glow green. Now she can place it as Kryptonite, but again she woke up repeating the same day over again.

     Immediately you took her to the DEO so you and Alex could run some tests while Kara called her cousin to see if he had experienced anything similar. He hadn’t.

     After a few months and a vile of Superman’s blood later you noticed that his solar cells and Kara’s were slightly different. It was Alex who figured out it was because Clark developed with his cells solar powered while Kara hadn’t. “It altered your DNA in a way Clark’s hasn’t” Alex had explained to her sister “it has to be the reason.” Of course, none of you wanted to test it, the thought of possibly killing Kara was too horrific for either of yours’ or Alex’s inner scientist.

     However, as Supergirl grew more and more popular she attracted more enemies and the more enemies she attracted the more dangerous they became. You found sometimes, after days of tirelessly tracking down the villain of the year, Kara would come into the DEO with a haunted look in her eye. Sometimes she would burst into your apartment at precisely 6am hugging you tightly breaking down in sobs.

     Each time she rejected your efforts to talk about it and each time you gently prodded until she confided that she had died “It’s like, I breathe out and my eyes close.” She closed her eyes letting a few tears fall “And then I wake up in bed all alone.” She eventually admitted to you after a year with the newly discovered power.

     You had moved in the next day because “I never want you to be alone when you wake up.”

      Honestly, you and Kara living together was long overdue, you had never pushed for the same reason she hadn’t. The secrets. The secrets that were now out in the open between you two.

     Kara got really good at hiding it but claimed they were becoming less frequent as her training got better. You believed her and she had stopped waking up every few weeks in tears. You’re sure even if she was good at hiding it, she would still wake with a start.

      When Reign showed up everyone was hyper-aware trying to track her down. You, however, were focused solely on Kara. How bright are her eyes were that morning? Did she have a small bounce in her step? How straight is her posture? Was there a smile on her face? All things that would point to a death day. It didn’t happen until you could feel yourself on the tip of a breakthrough.

     By accident, you had pulled an all-nighter and the rays of the sun were peeking through the windows when a hand grabbed your wrist making you jump. You took in the blue sleeve and looked up seeing a serious Supergirl starring back at you.

    She looks like she is about to deliver the worst news of your life but instead, she smiles softly “You’ve been at it all night, come on let’s go home.”

“Okay just give me one second and- “

“That silly code will be there later” She tabled out of it before you could type another letter “come on baby, let me take you home.”

     Slowly you nod as she picks you up flying you home and tucks you into bed crawling in beside you. The sun is high in the sky when you wake again as Kara asks how your night went. You go into a rant about how Alex and you played around in a lab for the first time in what felt like years and you ended up starting a fire but extinguished it before alarms could go off.

     When you looked over Kara was just staring at you with a soft smile, her face was almost knowingly…. knowingly?! “Kara” You whisper receiving a nod in return “How many times have I told you about the fire in the lab?”

     She smiles impossibly softer now “A few.”

“How many is a few?”

     Kara pauses usually it only takes her 2 maybe 3 attempts to get her day right in the best outcome possible neither of you could tell how many attempts she would get or if there was a limit, you feared she would be stuck in an infinite loop forever reliving her last day “32” she whispers softly.

“32?” You gasp out sitting up “Kara” You reach out placing a hand on her arm “tell me how I can help? How does it happen?”

     A laugh cuts you off “Don’t you think you’ve tried everything already?” She sits up as well “This is just- how it ends for me I guess.” Kara shrugs like it was nothing and not her death.

“No” You shake your head “please tell me how?”

“It won’t work.” Kara shakes her head smiling as if she had already accepted it “I only have another hour alone with you” she smiles stroking your face “Just let me have it?” She leans frowns placing a gentle kiss to your lips.

    After Kara refuses to tell you how she dies, again and again, you decide to try and live this day making every decision the opposite of what you would normally do. To get in the habit you took a different route to the DEO, did your coding at a different computer, used the other floor’s bathroom, and hell even ordered a salad in the cafeteria.

     Brainy was the one who tracked Pestilence and then got a location, so Supergirl and all the other Superheroes flew out to go after her while Alex and Winn stayed back still poisoned. You grabbed your belt ready to chase after them before freezing “Opposite…” You whisper slowly sitting back down in your chair feeling the anxiety running through your veins. You nearly stood back up three times seeing Kara go down but sagged back in relief when Imra got what you needed to make the cure.

     When you administered it to Kara, she blinked back her haze and looked at you “You are alive?”

“Yes,” you nod your head.

“I-every time you show up trying to save me Pestilence kills you.” She paused “Then some way or another I get killed, usually trying to save you.”

“I figured I had to do something I would never usually do.” you smile and Kara breathes out in relief wrapping you in a hug.

     After a long moment, Kara pulls back tears spilling from her eyes “I can’t wait to wake up next to you.” She smiles and from then on you vow to always make it home at night lest you break your next promise.

“I’ll always be there when you wake up.” Surely the ring in your DEO locker would be proof enough of that.

[dxmagedrose]

GET TO KNOW THE BLOGGER!

Tagged by: my lover @hammurabicomplex​ I’m tagging: anyone and everyone who wants to pick this one up! share with the class if you feel like it! tag me in it!!

PRESENTING. RANDOM DEEP DIVE WITH INDIGO-MUN AT 2AM ;

FIRST NAME Good fucking question… It’s (sort-of) currently Dylann! I was Kieran before that, though; it’s still used as one of my first names and I’m not used to Dylann quite yet bc I’ve just started using it. 

Indigo is one of my middle names though, and I’ve used it as an online handle elsewhere forever so I use it here now!  [ Fun etymology facts: Dylan(n) is a mythology name generally meaning “born of the wave” (aspiring diver & a water witch at heart). Kieran means “little dark one” bc of my love for horror, && I chose Indigo bc as a kid to be it was neither boy (blue) or purple (girl) and was both and neither as well as my absolute favorite color as this vibrant ass mystical color. ]

STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF hmmmmm…. I’m a horror lover at heart, so as a child (I wanna say 12), I was walking through an antique store (I have a few cool finds, I considered putting my other one as the fact tbh) and I turned the corner and I saw these two dolls staring back at me at the foot of the stairs of this antique building. my blood froze, and i felt my stomach drop. i got actual, physical goosebumps stumbling across these two creepy dolls staring back at me in the corner, and i couldn’t leave the store without them. perhaps the little painted porcelain boy would be somewhat spooky by himself if it wasn’t for the terrifying lidded gaze of the porcelain girl with the hairline fractures and slightly open lips. i cant look at her. i dont really find dolls scary, I like to find the spookier ones ones, and she makes me paranoid as hell. i keep her face covered and her up in my closet except for when i bring her out to show her off proudly as the spookiest thing I have but……. i dont really collect dolls anymore.  even thinking about her brings a fearful tear to my eye.  i don’t like to think about her for very long, but that’s why I’m so fucking proud to own her. ( YES — I’m THAT white person in the horror film )

TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON hhhhh a beardy jawline, high cheekbones, crooked canine teeth >:3c

A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF b.l.t.’s with avocado. ahhhh. my mouth is watering just thinking about it, oh my god. just a bit of salt and pepper???

A FOOD YOU HATE barbecue anything, i hate the taste of bbq sauce, you keep your nasty black goo to yourselves at the grill. twice in my life i have presented with barbecue pizza and both times i cried literal tears. why would you do such a horrible thing to a person? what kind of a monster are you? how do you sleep at night?!

GUILTY PLEASURE the sims. constantly. always. i’ve sunk thousands of hours into my households. oh also uhhhhhh i run two 80s horror blogs, one being a shitpost blog with occasional art of mine and one gremlin fanfic ship blog for horrible, terrible self indulgent fanfics i’ll get the courage to finish writing & post so i can be cancelled on tumblr for at some point. NO, i won’t link them. as i pretend they’re even all that hard to find, within a day i was found on both by someone i admire here a lot :’) ilu bby thnk u eternally for supporting ur local horrifying dumbass wtf

WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN the same clothes i’ve been wearing all day usually, my sweats & long sleeve raglans or my hoodies. i like being cozy day & and out. and ugh. efoort. just throw me in a blanket in a cool room and im out.

SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS serious relationships with some openness or poly. i wish i could fling! just not exactly easy for demisexual autistics lmao.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE I think I would be adopted by my grandma as a kid. It would save me some trauma but mostly I think it would get my autism diagnosed way earlier and save me angsting all these years of wondering why & thinking it’s my fault I’m struggling so much and so loud and affectionate and different in a world that i didnt fit in the same way. 

ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON when i get drunk i text people how much they mean to me in my life. does that answer your question? ahhh. i’m sometimes a cuddle monster with friends, i message people with long texts about how much they mean to me, but I sometimes really don’t like to be touched at all. 

A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN FLYPAPER.  F L Y P A P E R.  FLYPAPER.  FLY, and, I can’t stress this enough, fucking PAPER. ( Though also Whole Nine Yards and both Re-Animator & Bride ). I have watched Flypaper already like, 5 times this week and I’m still not done, and the other movies have been on repeat for days in this household within the last year. In the past it has also been Donnie Darko & the new Nightmare on Elm Street.  roast me.

FAVORITE BOOK White Fang by Jack London. Have I actually ever finished it? No. Do I still own a copy I’ve had since childhood thru multiple dogs eating it, taking it to and from school, and highlighting and circling all the best parts of chapter one ever since I was a kid and it was too hard of a book for me to read? You bet your ass. If I ever need inspiration I just reread chapter 1. Although one of my other favorites was Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes. But White Fang is like, a weirdly personal text. We stan London’s writing in this household.

YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE FENNEC FOX!! I used to daydream about having my own named Shiloh when I was a lil kid. they’re adorable little things and i am obsessed. i mean, gimme any fox and im happy, marble foxes, red foxes… but I was obsessed with fennec foxes. Also tbh ferrets. I want a ferret.

TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS [IF YOU ARE AN RP BLOG, YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN SHIPS AS WELL] Rosa & @ninetyscnds‘s Luke, Rosa & @iimpulsivity is already screaming my name, Rosa & Constantine, Jesse & Andrea from Breaking Bad, and the joker and harley of 80s sci-fi Dan & Herbert from Re-Ani.  I am but a simple opossum. 

PIE OR CAKE Pie! I’ll take both pumpkin & melty apple over cake. also, cheesecake is more pie than cake soooo, pie wins.

FAVORITE SCENT my dogs / my blanket. :’)  It’s the most grounding smell in the world. 

CELEBRITY CRUSH oliver jackson-cohen, i’m fucking GAY and im angry about it. there i was, minding my own business, and i saw that asshole in a certain SHIRTLESS GIF and it AWOKE SOMETHING IN ME. dont talk to me about it, holy shit im obsessed with beardy men now god fuckkdafjaask i hate him why did he make me this gay i was perfectly fine being into girls but NOOOOOO him and his dumb hairy chest and sweet rugged face and I——  I also am obsessed with the archaeologist & television personality Josh Gates and may or may not be considering making a fan blog for him bc idk if my anthropology docuseries host is Dad or Daddy but i love him lots

IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO I would go on a dive with anthropologists and archaeologists doing fieldwork research in the ancient cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula. My actual dream job, catch me crying & fantasizing about being underwater documenting Mayan skulls given as offerings. Fuckkkk, I love anthropology so much!!  take me anywhere in the world to immerse myself into culture & archaeology.

INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT Introvert. I have a real life friend I see roughly once a month, and that’s it. Plenty of online relationships, I’m chatty, message me all day every day. but i dont do people well.

DO YOU SCARE EASILY I used to! Really bad. I don’t as much anymore. I do get paranoia a lot still. Having therapists telling you that the FBI could be outside your house watching you through your windows will kind of nervous. ( no google results for: yes hello fbi i am a writer please dont put me on watchlists i just have research i need to do for this idea im working on, would you like to try again? ) I have nightmares nightly but not they never make me afraid, they just make me feel like crap. jumpscares and loud noises and seeing people reaching into their pockets dont set off as many brain alarms anymore tho!! progress haha.

IPHONE OR ANDROID I like my android better bc of capabilities but meh

DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES My mom, her husband & I play COD for family game night, and Silent Hill is my life’s blood. I’ve sunken hours into Sims & Skyrim, and Norman Jayden from Heavy Rain is my #1 fictional character in existence, why do i love the druggie babies

DREAM JOB Oh… You’re asking me to pick? I’d love to be an anthropologist doing work out in the field. Underwater archaeology is peak, but I’m also heavily considering being a body recovery diver or police diver. I’d love to see myself in uniform someday, if possible. Just the thought makes me teary eyed & proud.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS fund my person creative & educational endeavors. get myself a spooky ass abandoned house to make my own home to create in, and travel to the world’s best dive sites. just live a mild life of education, creation & exploration. that’s the dream TM.

FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE dr. hill is a gross and whiny lil bitch this post brought to u by the miskatonic crew, how is everyone here an even worse bad guy than herbert west precious dan excluded talk shit get hit tho john winchester from spn and both walter white & todd from breaking bad are all in my crew of hated characters. i jusT…   the reani novel is difficult to read because i have to deal with this old sack of shit.

FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER Supernatural :-)

… AND THIS CONCLUDES A DEEP DIVE WITH INDIGO!! //

[killian-whump]

Non-OUAT Whumpers

Most of the whump collected on this blog takes place on the show Once Upon a Time. The Whumpers responsible for these incidents are collected on this blog’s Official Whumpers Page for your amusement.

However, this blog also collects whump from Colin’s other work, as well as humorous “bestings” from real life when appropriate. Those “whumpers” will be collected on this post, also for your amusement ;)

Incidentally, while the Official Whumpers List is listed by character names, this list is organized by the name of the actor/actress playing the role. There’s no reason for this, other than it amuses me.

Amy Huberman Irish actress. Played Conor’s friend Daisy in The Clinic. Entirely angsty bestings here, as Daisy is the cause of a lot of Conor’s emotional upheavals throughout his time on the show.

Anthony Hopkins Academy Award winning actor. Played Father Lucas in The Rite. All kinds of whump here. Father Lucas brings about angst, delivers lectures, manhandles him, attempts to possess, and even throws Michael Kovak across the room.

Antonia Campbell-Hughes Irish actress. Played Shelley in Storage 24. Shelley doesn’t really do much to Mark throughout this film, but near the end, after everything he’s done to his friends... she gives him a sound slap.

Bad Fashion Choices Let’s be real, it’s mostly just that fucking shirt. This one also has a lot of Killian Jones bestings, as there was the diving suit, the white tuxedo, the Dark One robe that offended him, that hair bow, and various other questionable fashions in that show. There’s also some lovely fandom contributions of Killian/Colin being bested with bad fashion. And, of course, plenty of that buzz cut and that fucking shirt.

Bathroom Fixtures Seen in every bathroom in every home around the world. Usually, bathroom fixtures are useful. Sometimes, not so much.

Bel Powley English actress. Played Carrie Pilby in the movie of the same name. Carrie doesn’t really whump Professor Harrison, but near the end of the film, she does bring her father over to his house - and the two of them invade his home, her father punches him in the face, and Carrie mocks him.

Berserkers A crazy band of murderers found in What Still Remains. The Berserkers are at war with Peter’s commune in the film, and near the end of it, they attack and annihilate the commune entirely, burning it to the ground.

Bikers Random ruffians found in 2004′s Love Is the Drug. LITD’s Peter goes up against some badass biker dudes to defend the guy his sister’s with. It doesn’t go well, and he gets punched in the face. As usual.

Camera Angles Found in everything, everywhere. Stupid cameras. Let’s be real, though. It’s mostly just me bitching about leaves.

Cats Adorable furry creatures. Showed up en masse in The Rite. “Make sure they don’t come in,” Lucas said. Spoiler: They all got in.

Chris Carmack American actor. Played Nora’s boyfriend David in The Dust Storm. Near the end of the film, David confronts Nora and Brennan in a bar and punches Brennan in the face, resulting in a pretty big bruise.

Chris Ellis American actor. Played Harvey in What Still Remains. Harvey seems, at first, to be a harmless old man cooking over a campfire in the middle of the day. Unfortunately, his innocent demeanor lures Anna right in - and once she and Peter are close enough, they’re ambushed.

Colin O’Donoghue I think we all know who this guy is. This tag’s not for him getting bested... it’s for when HE bests US.

Cops Police officers. Seen in many films and TV shows. This tag includes some Once Upon a Time whump, but also has Conor Elliott’s arrest in The Clinic.

Demons Evil otherworldly beings. Most famously found in The Rite. This tag covers the demonic goings-on in The Rite, as well as some fandom bestings of Killian Jones being possessed or haunted.

Dorothy Cotter Irish actress. Played Laura in the short film, The Euthanizer. Laura is Ben’s beloved girlfriend, who has left him for unstated reasons. Ben is completely heartbroken by the loss, and turns to suicide.

Feels Seen: Everywhere, in everything. This tag encompasses all those moments when Colin’s character is overcome by emotion - including when that character is Killian Jones.

Finbar Lynch Irish actor. Played Terry in 2005′s Proof 2. The moment is very brief, but Terry does a wonderful job of grabbing Jamie by the lapels and manhandling him.

Frogs More animals, spotted in 2011′s The Rite, besting Michael Kovak. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding him.

Gary Lydon British actor. Played Dr. Patrick Murray on The Clinic. Patrick Murray was Conor Elliott’s therapist, and his poor handling of Conor (and Conor’s condition) contributed to the emotional breakdown that led to Conor setting himself on fire.

Gabriel Byrne Well-known Irish actor. Played Carrie’s father in Carrie Pilby. Carrie’s father invades Professor Harrison’s home and eventually punches him right in the face. In an interview about the film, Colin said, “Who doesn’t want to be punched in the face by Gabriel Byrne?” Indeed.

Giant Alien Monsters Giant. Alien. Monstrous. Starred in 2011′s Storage 24. One thing you can say about these things... they have good taste.

Jeff Kober American actor. Played Zack in What Still Remains. Zack doesn’t whump Peter at all within the film, but as the main driving force behind Peter’s warped world view and the man who orchestrated the abusive environment Peter grew up in, he is instrumental in the trauma that made Peter into the mal-adjusted psycho he undoubtedly is.

Jennifer Morrison American actress. Played Emma Swan in Once Upon a Time. She and Colin like to tease each other at conventions. “By teasing each other, we mean that Jen teases me, is what happens.” We got you, Col.

Josh Dallas American actor. Played Prince Charming in Once Upon a Time. O’Dallas is love. O’Dallas is life.

Keith McErlean Irish actor. Played Dr. Adam in Season 5 of The Clinic. Dr. Adam was Daisy’s boyfriend in Season 5. Conor and Dr. Adam didn’t get along very well, causing much angst... and eventually a blow-up that resulted in some physical aggression.

Kristen Gutoskie Canadian actress. Played Nora in 2016′s The Dust Storm. Brennan’s feelings for Nora (and Nora’s rather unhealthy ways of dealing with her own emotions) cause a lot of conflict and angst throughout the film. She also inflicts physical harm on Brennan near the end of the film, when she burns his arm with a cigarette.

Lana Parrilla American actress. Played Regina Mills in Once Upon a Time. Only adorable bestings need apply <3

Lee Arenberg’s Acting Choices American actor. Played Grumpy in Once Upon a Time. What was he even doing, tho? And why? And what?

Lesley Conroy Irish actress. Played Mandy in the 2003 short film, Call Girl. Mandy comes to Brendan’s house, she makes him nervous, they have sex, she argues with him, she pushes him... umm, yadda yadda yadda?

Lulu Antariksa American actress. Played Anna in What Still Remains. Anna spends more of this film getting whumped by Peter than whumping him, to be honest, but when she does get her whump in... it’s the fatal kind.

Marta Gastini Italian actress. Played Rosaria in 2011′s The Rite. Rosaria is a young woman who is possessed by a demon. Her behavior during a routine exorcism unnerves Michael in the beginning, but eventually escalates to an all-out physical attack where she tries to strangle him.

Mimi Rogers American actress. Played Judith in What Still Remains. Aside from a few awkward hugs and exchanges in the film, Judith doesn’t actually whump Peter on screen. So why is she here? The film hints at long-term sexual and emotional abuse that Peter suffered at the hands of Judith and her husband Zack - abuse that surely shaped Peter into the psycho he is, and a dynamic that adds depth to those awkward encounters.

Noel Clarke British actor. Played Charlie in Storage 24. Charlie is Mark’s best friend when the film begins, though he’s arguably less so as the film progresses and Charlie finds out Mark’s been sleeping with his girl and is the reason said girl broke up with him. There’s an accidental nut-crunch in the beginning, a fight when the betrayal is discovered, and a punch right in the kisser later on.

Others Everyone and Anyone NOT listed here or on the Once Whumpers list. That means everyone. Even you, if you play your cards right.

Pay Phones Apparently, they still had them in Ireland in 2009. In The Euthanizer, Ben has a bit of trouble with one of these.

Robert Carlyle Scottish actor. Played Rumplestiltskin in Once Upon a Time. Full honesty - this is mostly just endless references to that blooper.

Rose Reynolds English actress. Played Alice Jones on Once Upon a Time. Rose and Colin are amazing together <3 Their bestings are the best!

Rutger Hauer Dutch actor. Played Michael Kovak’s father, Istvan, in The Rite. There’s not really much besting shown in the film, but the man made his son Michael help embalm his own mother. If that’s not a fucking besting, I really don’t know what would be.

Sarah Bolger Irish actress. Played Princess Mary in The Tudors. You likely recognize this actress’s name from her role in Once Upon a Time as Princess Aurora, but what lands her on this list is her role as Mary in The Tudors - where she allegedly steps on Duke Phillip’s foot.

The Crew Assorted crew members of assorted projects, including OUAT. ...because everyone likes to tease Colin. It’s an international pastime!

Tobias Jelinek American actor. Played Phillip in What Still Remains. The dystopian world of this film lends itself well to random whumpings from complete strangers. Phillip is one of two men who Anna and Peter run into on their journey who attempt to rob them.

Tommy O’Neill Irish actor. Played the Euthanizer in the short film of the same name. The Euthanizer is originally hired by Ben to help him hang himself... but when Ben changes his mind and decides to live, things turn even whumpier!

This list was last updated on February 5, 2019.