#Cacti Chair

[mosneakers]

Coni: So the Bella clone was... you? [Eyes welled with tears] And the real Bella ...she wanted to call me Belladonna?

Coni's breath trembles as she listens to her alien parents give a rather clinical, emotionless version of events that paint the story of what happened to Bella Goth. She's engulfed in a kaleidoscope of glowing colors that signify a mixture of both anger and sadness. The betrayal she feels towards the Breeder Unit, or the family she once trusted, begins to fester.

Cacti: According to her records, upon reviewing them.

Coni: Why didn't you tell me? Cacti: It was years later that we reviewed her personal records, Concept. Coni: No. About any of this? Why didn't you tell me about her? Her family has been worried sick about her for years. Her children.

Pollination-Technician No. 12: [Shouting] You've become too emotional and fragile, like a human. You've lost your place, Concept. You forgot your purpose. You've grown up surrounded by human influence and fallen victim to their emotions. Cacti: Polly, stop-

Coni: [Shouting] She considered me her daughter! Pollination-Technician No. 12: [Coldly] She was mistaken! A mere surrogate, incapable of comprehending beyond her limited scope. Humans waste their energy on emotional attachments and family ties, overlooking the importance of survival. Look at the consequences it led her to. Cacti: [Screaming] POLLY, ENOUGH!

Coni: Please don't tell me you...

Cacti: I'm sorry Coni you had to find out like this, sweetie. But at the very least, we weren't the ones to- Pollination-Technician No. 12: She's dead. She endangered our species and all extra-terrestrial beings with her foolish behavior. She was transported to Sixam and handed over to the Eradication Unit and promptly eliminated.

Cacti: We had no choice, sweetie... if it were to get exposed-

Rabbit: We would all be contained in a government facility, subjected to endless tests, including you, Concept. And you wouldn't be running around playing house with humans right now. Coni: You could have erased her memory. Rabbit: Oh that seems to work well for your friend, doesn't it? There couldn't be any trace of her. Eradication would've found her eventually, anyway. You can't hide from them.

Coni: You... You're all monsters! All of you... [Cries]

Cacti: [Gasp] Coni, I raised you!!! Pollination-Technician No. 12: The humans have corrupted your mind. You used to be so intelligent. We may be monsters, Concept, but you're one of us. You're just like us.

Coni: No. I'm nothing like you...

Pollination-Technician No. 12: [Scoffs] Oh, how typical...

Coni: I want nothing to do with any of you ever again. Never contact me or my family again.

With tears streaming down her face, Coni rounds up her pet goat, and storms out of her childhood home for the last time.

[avant-greendecor]

Wicker & Wine: A Boho Boudoir under the Spanish Sun

Visit my website for more inspiration 🌿

[lydiaalin]

the way i don't remember drawing this. so true tho

[cronicasdeunafashionista]

[tiniigi]

[fy-hyungwonho]

Gravel Landscape Los Angeles Photo of a mid-sized mid-century modern drought-tolerant and full sun backyard gravel landscaping.

[frogplaystoomuchkatamari]

Misha, the hell lion

[deeva-arud]

Deeva Årud - Tsumsted Wonderland Voice Lines

Summon Line: Pointy ears, wings, freckles and blue marks under its eye… it really looks like me. What a strange situation.

Groooovy!!: Apparently, this tsum feels relaxed when I cover it with my wings.

Home: By some unexpected turn of events, there’s two Deevas now. It’s okay, we won’t cause you any trouble.

Home Idle 1: You want to hold my tsum? That’s going to be complicated… Don’t worry, you won’t be hit, but it’ll fly away if you try to approach it. Until it warms up to you, I’m afraid it won’t let you touch it.

Home Idle 2: When I was about to start my violin practice, I looked back at my tsum and found it holding a tsum-sized violin. It took me by surprise. Where did it get that from? And how could it play with those tiny arms?

Home Idle 3: My tsum was helping me convince my club members to practice a song together, but then Kalim brought out a box of pastries his family gifted him. I can’t believe its curiosity also succumbed to those delicious foreign snacks…

Home Idle - Login: Back at the dorm, someone thought my tsum was just a regular plushie because of how still it is. As soon as he stretched his hand towards it, it took flight. The shriek he let out hurt my ears but I still find the scene amusing.

Home Idle - Groovy: Hovering over a salmon dish and hopping around my cup of jasmine tea… well, it’s supposed to represent me, I wouldn’t have expected less. Unfortunately, I doubt it can eat any of that.

Home Tap 1: Even if tsums can’t talk, Sebek’s does a spectacular job at showing its loud personality using just body language.

Home Tap 2: Cater’s tsum constantly follows my tsum to show it photos and music on its phone. It seems his tsum also took a liking to mine, huh? It reminds me of when we were first years… Not that he stopped doing that now, though.

Home Tap 3: It seems my tsum and Jack’s bonded over cacti. It was heartwarming seeing them quietly observing plants together.

Home Tap 4: Floyd’s tsum went on “bored mode” while I was doing my shift at Mostro Lounge. I spent several minutes picking it up from the chairs so the customers could get a seat.

Home Tap 5: Tsums are cute. But the fact that they came down from the sky, looking and acting like us is a bit eerie. It sounds like the plot of a horror movie.

Home Tap - Groovy: I can’t help but think about the place tsums come from. Is everything made of round and squishy materials? Stacking can also scare away predators? Wait, do you even have predators? …Hm, no reaction, I may be wrong.

[hogans-heroes]

Freight Train, Baby

(Westcore AU)

Snippet from chapter 1

The boy seemed at home as he filled the bike with gas without getting off, savoring the popsicle he’d just gotten from the beat up chest freezer by the door, the hot breeze fluttering the blond hair made sweaty and messy from the helmet. He was so gorgeously disheveled that he seemed like some mythical desert creature and Bucky barely held back a snort of derision at himself. He really was losing it.  

“Passing through?” he blurted anyway, hoping the old plastic chair didn’t break under his shifting.

The boy looked at him. The simple beauty of his face swamped Bucky with a wave of bitterness at his own stupidity, but his eyes were open and too honest—a pale, distant blue like they were part of the sky right above them—and Bucky was suddenly dizzy. The boy took another bite of his popsicle without saying anything, plush lips shifting as he swallowed, and finally shook his head.

“I live here.” The deep, soft rasp of his voice cleared Bucky’s head for a second and he blinked as the other’s gaze went back to the frozen treat. “You?”

Bucky hummed, sound catching in his throat, and inclined his head toward the door. “My grandfather owns this. I’m here for the summer.”

The sky-eyes were back on him. “Where you from?”

“San Francisco.”

The boy nodded then gestured to Bucky’s popsicle with his own. “Better eat that or the heat will eat it for ya.”

Buck suddenly felt the syrup melting on his fingers and licked the dripping edges, though he couldn’t really taste it anymore, the stronger ice in his chest crushing into invisible bruises that hurt every time he breathed, though he could breathe easier out here in the hot, dry air that had a freeing quality, lifting a weight from his body. Since he had gotten away from the humidity he’d been sucking in deep breaths of dusty, burning breeze smelling of dried grass and faint earthy metal of the ground until he was light-headed. 

Approaching footsteps made him startle, but before his mind could catch up the steps stopped and the boy dropped the popsicle stick into the garbage can beside Bucky. Bucky raised his eyes just in time to watch him lick the sticky residue from his fingers and was powerless to look away. This close the various patches on the jacket were clearer—a colorful UFO that said I want to believe, a round alien head with the phrase We are not alone, and other nasa, space, and desert themed patches of motley shapes. The denim was worn soft at the seams and elbows, edges frayed in a way that screamed of long years of attachment, and Bucky’s lungs ached. The weight of eyes on him made his glaze flicker and accidentally meet the sky-heat-bright eyes and Bucky jerked his head away on reflex. He blinked, vision unfocusing as the ringing flowed over him again, footsteps retreating as the boy went back to his bike.

“See you around,” that voice said, and Bucky nodded, only half looking up to fixate on the torn hole in the knee of the boy’s jeans where it was pressed against the bike’s fuel tank. The motorcycle coughed to life with a deep rumble and roared off, speed climbing as its figure blended into the shimmering haze over the road that disappeared where the half-dead cacti plants spilled over the overgrown curb. Bucky’s vision went fuzzy again, and he clenched his fingers into his jeans until it hurt.

[indeedcaptain]

Regulatory Relations, Chapter 22: The Captain

Holy fucking shitballs, yall. This is the end.

Posted on my AO3 here.

All I really have to say after this is thank you.

☆☆☆

Dear Mom and Dad, 

Dear Winona and George, 

Guess what!

Hi, 

[Are you sure you want to close the program? Your content will not be saved. YES / NO] 

☆☆☆

On the first day after the trial, Kirk took ShiKahr’s public transit from Amanda and Sarek’s house through the city center, and out the other side. Alone on the train as it flew along its magnetic track, he watched out the window as the now-familiar sandstone buildings whirled by. They passed the judicial complex where he had spent the entire previous day: he had walked in a suspect and walked out a free man. It rose up before him, sprawling and imposing, passed in an instant, and then vanished. Kirk turned forward again, letting the rest of the city pass him by, and waited for his stop.

The Vulcan Science Academy complex was housed on the outskirts of ShiKahr, built without formal boundaries to account for its near-constant expansion. It crept further and further out into the Forge— the buildings nearest the public entrance were the oldest, their corners sandblasted into curves by the desert wind, but the newest ones, built to house new advances in technology and new fields of research, were still sharp-edged and angular. The hospital was one of the oldest buildings in the complex--- one of the oldest buildings in the city, according to the lecture Spock gave Kirk and Bones that morning over breakfast. It had originally been a temple, housing healers in the millenia before Surak, a holdover from Vulcan’s war-torn history. Even after the wars had ended, the people who lived on the planet needed care, and so the temple of healers remained, now known as one of the most advanced teaching hospitals in the galaxy. 

Kirk gave his name at the front desk, which was manned by a young Vulcan woman wearing scrubs and a student badge, and was granted entrance. He rode a swift and silent elevator up to the eighth floor and stepped out into a warmly lit hall. Enormous windows at either end of the hallway and the recessed light bulbs set into the ceiling gave the impression of midday sun, despite the early hour. He heard voices coming from the left side, and so he turned that way. 

Around another corner he found two Vulcan doctors and a third human one, deep in conversation next to a bench and a variety of potted cacti. The human doctor, with graying red hair and a petite build, turned to him as he approached and said, “I thought you might come by.” Sarah April nodded to the other doctors before she gestured in front of her, and Kirk fell into step beside her. She led him deeper into the labyrinthine building--- the layout designed before the Vulcan preoccupation with logic--- and eventually stopped next to a closed door with a Vulcan sign appended to the front, a phonetic translation of April’s name. She smiled with sad eyes and said, “I’ll be outside if you need anything.” 

Kirk nodded, and opened the door. 

Admiral Robert April lay quietly in a biobed, surrounded by beeping machines and sensors. His head had been shaved, electrodes stuck to his scalp in a neat grid, and his dark skin was sallow under the lights. For a moment Kirk stood in the doorway, unwilling to wake him if he was resting, but then April rolled his head on the pillow to look at him. 

“Enter,” he said, and Kirk did. There was a chair tucked into the corner with a blanket folded over the back of it. Kirk dragged it next to the bed and sat. The whites of April’s eyes were yellowed with exhaustion. Kirk looked at him; the man who had set everything in motion. How much of his behavior was Elise pulling the strings? How much was April unleashed? 

“What do you want, Kirk?” April’s voice was tired, dry, almost a whisper. Kirk had had grand plans--- he had rehearsed what he wanted to say on the train ride there. He had told Spock where he was going and what he wanted to do, and Spock had sent him off with a kiss and a promise to see him later. But his words failed when he looked at the battered body of the man he had thought was his enemy. 

He still saw the phaser fire before it tore through Spock when he looked at April. He saw himself on his knees in the gritty dust of Kindinos, and saw the sniper with the plasma rifle settling her sights on both of them. But he also saw the blinking brutality of the neutralizer and April’s muffled screams beneath it. He saw April, months ago, trying to pull Spock to safety with a promotion to a science ship far from him. He saw April fighting that hidden programming to allow him and his crew to leave the 31 ship with Elise in tow. 

Elise would have hated what he was about to do--- she never could have understood it. Maybe that was why he had to say it. 

“Thank you,” Kirk said. “For what you tried to do for Spock.” April rolled his head away from Kirk, looking up at the ceiling, and scoffed tiredly. 

“For all the good it did, in the end.” 

Kirk shifted to the edge of his chair. He had expected defensiveness, or the silent treatment; not this bone-deep resignation. “For all the good it did? Admiral, if you hadn’t forced the issue, you would still be stuck on that ship and that woman would still be running Section 31.” April looked back at him. “Spock and I only put together all the pieces after we had to start talking about marriage and bonding, and we only did that because you were going to take him away otherwise.” Kirk considered April’s shaved head, the scattering of machines and their symphony of beeping and whirring. He could have left then, his mission accomplished. But something in April’s haggard face told him that the other man was lost.

“I’m sorry that she did this to you,” Kirk said recklessly. “And I’m sorry for putting you here.” April shook his head shallowly. 

“I knew…” he said slowly. “I knew that the charges were a sham. I knew they wouldn’t stick. This was what I wanted.” His voice dragged, like he was having a hard time connecting his mind to his mouth. “You can go, Kirk.” 

Kirk didn’t move. “What are you going to do next?” 

“Resign,” April said. “Retire.” 

“That’s it? You’re going to give up?” The volume of his voice rose involuntarily. April’s eyes flashed to him--- the first movement that matched the vigor that Kirk had come to expect from him. 

“What would you have me do? Weasel back into a desk job after I defiled everything Starfleet stands for?”

“And how much of that was voluntary, Admiral? How much of working for 31 was voluntary at all?” 

In a blink, the fight melted back out of him. April looked away from him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anymore.” 

Kirk leaned back in his chair, and for a moment they sat in silence, the only sound the beeping of the machinery. Then Kirk said, “Can I be honest with you?” 

“I doubt anyone could stop you from doing so.” 

“I don’t think it matters anymore, whether or not you know if it was voluntary,” Kirk said. “Enough of it wasn’t, and then you fought it. What matters now is what you’re going to do about it.” 

April raised one hand weakly and gestured at the hospital room around him. “And what am I going to do about it?”

“Fix it,” Kirk said. “Find a way to talk about what you can’t talk about, and then help fix it.”  When April finally looked at him again, there was a spark of life in his eyes: there was hope, a desperate hope, and the yawning cavern of an isolation that Kirk could only begin to understand. 

“How?”

Kirk shifted his chair closer again. “Listen,” he said. “On Vulcan, what she did to us is called nekwitaya …” 

Their situations were different, of course; the sheer volume of scarring in April’s brain was going to require a lot more hands-on medical care than Kirk had needed. But there was no better place for April to recover than on Vulcan, where a planet of telepaths and scientists understood the gravity of what had been done to him. Here, though there was no undoing what had been done, April stood a chance of healing from it. 

When Kirk left, Sarah April was sitting outside the room, reading on her padd. She stood as he exited, concern pulling her eyebrows together and deepening the creases in her face. Kirk sent her Dr. Rowan McIntire’s contact information, and then he went home. 

☆☆☆

The rest of that day was spent on logistics and organization. Kirk and Spock’s bonding would have none of the violence and circumstance of Spock and T’Pring’s koon-ut-kal-if-fee . They were not children, and there would be no challenge: they needed only their consent and a telepath to perform the bonding. Kirk was vaguely disconcerted by the sheer number of details that went into what was, in effect, a simple backyard wedding ceremony, and made a note to give Janice a commendation for coordinating both their engagement party and their first wedding with seventy-two hours’ notice. 

Despite the fervent and genuine invitation that Kirk had extended, Neera Ketoul excused herself from the bonding festivities after he returned from his visit to April. “I do have other clients to attend to, Captain Kirk,” she said, but she shook his hand warmly when he walked her to the aircar that would return her to the transport hub and away. 

“If there’s ever anything that we can do for you, just say the word,” Kirk said. “We could not have done this without you.” 

“Maybe not,” she agreed, with her hand on the door of the aircar. She considered him, her dark eyes and skin shining under the hot Vulcan sun. “My people are not part of the Federation,” she said. “There is a lot of mistrust on both sides, perhaps too much to overcome. But men like you make me think that someday it could be.” 

Later that night, as Bones washed and dried the dishes from dinner, Amanda reached out to the clan to request the services of a healer to perform the bonding, and Spock convinced a local restaurant to cater enough food for at least twenty people on such short notice, Kirk received a high-priority message on his padd from Starfleet HQ. 

Dear Captain Kirk, 

Congratulations! Though, naturally, the details of your court-martial are classified, I’ve received a new set of orders that make me think I can guess how it went. I’ve been called to Vulcan immediately to assist with [THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN REDACTED]. 

My formal title might be regulations administrator, but not many know that this role includes enforcement, compliance, and oversight, as needed. I think I’m going to have a lot to do over the next few months. 

I’ve been asked to assemble a team for it, which is why I’m reaching out today--- it’s a bit irregular, but if you’re willing to sign off on the transfer and if she agrees, I’d like to request Yeoman Janice Rand for it. She’s got an unparalleled grasp of how and why regulation works in practice, and I could use a mind like hers for what we’re trying to do. 

Let me know what you think, and what she thinks. 

My best to you and the commander. :)

LC Kathleen Lee

Kirk read the message twice before carrying it to Spock, claiming the open seat next to him at the island in the kitchen. Spock scanned it and said, handing it back, “If Yeoman Rand takes this post, I do not believe we will see her again in any short amount of time.” Bones turned to them curiously, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed. He cocked an eyebrow up. 

“Oh, I think we’ll see her again,” Kirk said. “It’ll just be when she’s running for president of the Federation.” 

���☆☆

On the second day after the trial, the morning of his and Spock’s bonding ceremony, Kirk sat undressed on the end of their bed and stared at the empty text block on his padd screen. 

Dear Mom and Dad, I’m getting married today, again. 

I’m Vulcan-bonding with my first officer today. 

Did you go to Sam and Aurelan’s wedding? Would you want to come to mine?

Spock stepped out of the bathroom, barefoot and in an untied robe, and sat down next to him to look at what he was working on. Kirk closed the program and tossed the padd on the bed behind him before leaning into Spock. He was warm and fresh from the sonic, olive and bronzed from months on Vulcan. 

“Do you wish your parents were attending?” Spock’s voice was gentle. 

“Not enough to have written them about it earlier,” Kirk said, and when Spock leaned over him, one long hand against his sternum, he let Spock push him backwards onto the bed. “There’s so much to fix before we’d even get to that point.” 

Spock’s lips brushed the skin behind his ear, down his neck, across one collarbone. “At our current rate, we will have another wedding in approximately eighteen months. You can reevaluate at that point.” Kirk laughed, and Spock’s hand skimmed down his arm, flipping their hands to be palm-to-palm and pressing his down into the mattress. 

“I thought you were tired of parties,” Kirk teased. Spock nipped at him. 

“I have been convinced of their utility,” he said, and slid his hands under Kirk’s hips in a clear attempt to distract him further. His efforts were successful.

The survivors arrived at the house just as the sun was beginning its graceful descent towards the mountains on the horizon beyond the Forge. Kevin wore his dress uniform, but the others were in civilian attire: Ellie and Tommy in near-matching black suits, much to Mira’s delight, and Martha in a dress. Mira wore a hot pink one-piece garment that Kirk couldn’t have named if he had tried, but he watched with a grin as Ellie teased her dryly about having brought party clothes to a court-martial (“We were only coming to testify!”) and Mira defended herself (“Wasn’t I right, though?”).

Bones also wore his uniform. He sidled up to Kirk as they greeted the survivors at the front gate, Vulcan’s closest approximation to a mint julep in hand. 

“Seems to me like you’re starting to wrap things up here, Jim,” he said. “You’ve got more time. No need to rush back into things.” 

Kirk glanced sidelong at him as his friends passed by, led by Amanda towards the garden where the bonding would take place. “I think I’ve had enough time away,” he said. “I don’t want to sit still any longer.” 

Bones’s eyes were shrewd. “But you did sit still for at least a little bit, right?” Down the road a pair of figures began to materialize out of the heat shimmering off the pavement: a round human figure with a short dark thatch of hair, and a bear-sized lump of white and brown. 

“I did,” Kirk said, and watched as the two abstract shapes slowly became Rowan and Suk’han as they approached. “Actually, this is someone I’d like you to meet.” Rowan wore her everyday professional attire that Kirk had come to recognize, but she had woven cactus blossoms into a crown and placed it jauntily over Suk’han’s ears. 

“You’re looking well, Jim,” Rowan said, and smiled approvingly. He grinned and shrugged back at her before turning to Bones. 

“Rowan, this is my chief medical officer, Bones. Leonard McCoy, this is Rowan McIntire. She, ah… she’s the new therapist.”

“Oh?” Bones extended his hand, turning completely towards her to get a better look. 

“The famous Dr. McCoy!” Rowan shook his hand and accepted his inspection. “Tell me, how do you get Bones from Leonard?” As they clasped hands, some sort of mysterious medical understanding passed between them; when Bones smiled back at her, it was genuine. 

“You ask him politely, ma’am,” Bones said, and Rowan laughed wickedly. Suk’han, apparently tired of not being the center of Kirk’s attention, pushed her head against his sternum and leaned a portion of her significant mass against him. 

“Hello to you too,” he murmured, and passed his hands through the thick fur at the base of her neck. She nuzzled him sweetly, and for a moment, abandoning his pretexts at dignity, he threw his arms around her neck entirely. Then he released her, left Bones and Rowan to get to know each other, and went to find his husband. 

The senior staff of the Enterprise were next to arrive. In small groups they beamed down outside the garden gates: Sulu, Chekov, and Pike, then Uhura, Chapel, Janice, and Priyal Khan at Spock’s invitation, and then Sal Giotto and Scotty. Uhura’s feet had no sooner settled into the sand before she was moving, throwing her arms around Spock and Kirk. Spock’s hand came up to stroke affectionately over the back of her hair, but Kirk couldn’t help himself: he picked her up and swung her in a circle as her laughter rang out. There were embraces and back slaps and handshakes all around from his friends; they accepted him back into their ranks as if he had never left.

“God, it’s good to see you all,” he said, grinning so hard his cheeks ached. He squatted next to Chris’s chair to hear him better over the hubbub. His crew mingled in the garden among the cacti and shrubbery with Spock’s parents, Rowan, and the Tarsus survivors. Amanda and Rowan talked quietly by the table of beverages, and something Rowan said made Amanda’s quiet laugh burble through the garden. Suk’han was ecstatic on her back as Mira, Uhura, and Chapel cooed over her spots and rubbed her belly. “How have things been?”

“Surprisingly quiet,” Chris said. “Seems as though you’re the magnet for most of the trouble that the Enterprise gets in.” 

“Hey, now,” Kirk complained, and his eyes found Spock across the way, dark and handsome in the goldenrod light of dusk. “Spock was gone too. Maybe he’s the magnet.” 

“You just keep telling yourself that, son,” Chris laughed. “Maybe someday you’ll convince someone else.” He navigated his hoverchair carefully around Amanda’s plants to talk to Spock, and Kirk basked in the presence of so many of his loved ones. As he stood alone, looking over the assembled, something painful twinged in his heart. Sam should have been here. After so many wounds had been healed and problems solved, part of Kirk thought that Sam and his ridiculous mustache should have emerged, laughing and whole, from behind some curtain. It didn’t seem fair that, after everything, Sam and Aurelan were still dead.

He took a sip of his drink and tilted his head back, letting the last of the day’s sunlight wash over him. I miss you, he thought fervently. I wish you were here for all this. He pictured Sam as he remembered him: throwing open the door to his hospital room, skipping classes with him after his return to school, showing him around the Academy campus when he first arrived, the holos of him holding baby Peter after he was born. He held the ache in his chest with both hands, letting himself miss Sam, before he opened his eyes again. The ache didn’t go away, but it took up a safe and manageable residence in his heart next to everything else. Then he exhaled and rejoined his friends.

Kirk was turned away from the garden entrance, talking to Scotty and Giotto, and so he didn’t see her when she arrived. He only heard the sudden hush that fell over those gathered, and in the silence, he turned. 

T’Pau swept towards him through the garden, the edges of her robes disturbing the sand in tornado-like swirls. It seemed like even the insects and the night-birds had fallen quiet in her presence. Kirk raised the ta’al and glanced quickly at Spock. 

“Elder T’Pau,” he said. “What can I do for you?” He felt, more than saw, Spock wind his way through the crowd and materialize at his side. T’Pau considered him, the half-light casting the wrinkles of her face in sharp contrast. 

“ S’chn T’gai James Kirk,” she said finally. “Thee and Spock are to be bonded.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. She nodded once. Her eyes glinted in the fading light, no less shrewd for her age. 

“Thee has done Vulcan a service,” she said. She raised one hand, her robes collapsing down around her elbow. “If thee will give thy mind, I will bond thee.” Spock’s shoulders settled back in surprise as he clasped his hands behind his back, and Amanda’s eyebrows shot upwards before she reined her facial expression back into a warm neutrality. 

“It would be an honor,” Kirk said, when he found his voice. Spock shifted closer to him, their shoulders brushing, and they both sank to their knees under T’Pau’s titanium gaze. Their family, their friends, formed a loose circle around them and the leader of their clan as T’Pau raised both hands. 

“I will bond thee in the way of our people,” T’Pau said, her voice sonorous in the desert evening. “What thee will witness comes down from the time of the beginning without change. This is the Vulcan heart. This is the Vulcan soul. This is our way. Kah-if-farr! ”

She lowered her hands, and for a second, before she put her fingers on Kirk’s face, she waited. Kirk closed his eyes and nodded. With that consent, she placed her fingers on his psi-points, and the world around him vanished. 

It was dark in the meld. T’Pau’s mind was vast and echoing around him. He could feel the enormity of her intellect, her age, the reverberating katric energy that she carried. He felt very small. He was a speck in the darkness, one single star in the galaxy, and he felt the scrunity when that gargantuan mind came to focus on him. 

James Kirk , T’Pau said. This is the Vulcan way. Thee gives thy mind willingly to another?

There was a tiny part of him, ancient and wounded, that longed to flinch, if only out of habit. But he had not spent the past four months excavating his heart to give in to that habit now. I give it to Spock , Kirk said, or thought. He felt the rumble of her approval rattle the world around him. 

Speak our words, she told him. I would bond with thee, ever and always touching and touched . 

Kirk repeated them back, stumbling at first but then growing in strength: I would bond with thee, ever and always touching and touched. He said them again and again until he could feel his heart beating in time with its rhythm. He heard the echoes of hundreds of thousands of bonded pairs singing with him in T’Pau’s ancestral memory. He repeated them until he could feel himself vibrating with it; he glowed with his conviction. This was for Spock, this was for his best friend and his husband, the man who had walked into hell for him and carried him out--- this was what Kirk wanted to give to him. 

Then, in the darkness --- there was light. A golden sun erupted into flames on the far horizon of T’Pau’s mind. It soared from an impossible distance towards him, trailing a burning thread like a meteor shower behind it, before falling towards him. Kirk held out both hands and caught the tiny star in his palms. It burned. It loved him. It unspooled into thread and formed a glimmering road from his hands to some indescribable point in the dark void beyond, stretching on forever. He felt T’Pau’s sudden and fierce curiosity, so like Spock’s, and the roaring approval of those who had come before him as it lit the way forward. 

This is the Vulcan heart , T’Pau said. Her voice was as stoic as ever, but beneath it, reverberating through the meld-space, he could hear something that was almost surprise. Guidance is unnecessary for thee now. Follow the bond. There was an enormous shifting around him as T’Pau closed parts of her mind off to him; it was suddenly quieter than he had ever experienced. There was only his mind, and his thrumming heartbeat, and the golden burning string that pulled him forward. Follow the bond, James Kirk, T’Pau said. 

Kirk took a fumbling step forward in the darkness, feet falling unsteadily towards the invisible floor under him. Then another. Then another. The string pulled him forward, steadying him, anchoring him. He knew where he was going now. At the far end of the road before him was Spock, his ecstatic curiosity and his secret kindness and the beautiful mind that he had offered to Kirk without reservation. 

Kirk wrapped both hands in the nascent bond before him and took off running. 

Ever and always, ever and always, ever and always . 

The bond grew hotter and hotter in his hands, glowing brighter until it had all but banished the inky void around him. He had been wrong about the color--- it was gold, but it wasn’t only gold. It was the silver of the Enterprise , and the burgundy of Spock’s old quarters. It was the cream and green and gold of wedding streamers, and the blue of a science tunic. It was the umber of Vulcan sand and the black of uniform trousers and the yellow of an Iowa cornfield and the teal of a Tarsus sky. It was everything that was both of them, and it burned in his hands. 

The sense of T’Pau was fading, that ancient intellect melting away. It was replaced instead by the insistent surety that Spock was near, that he was following the same path from the other side. The sense of him grew with every step as the bond glowed white-hot until it was too hot to hold. Even when he dropped it Kirk could feel it in and around him. 

He was in the center of a star, and it flared around him. He was going to burn with it. It was all-encompassing, inescapable, incomprehensible. 

I would bond with thee, he said to the star. Ever and always touching and touched. 

Spock said, I would bond with thee, and his voice was everywhere. Ever and always touching and touched . Spock’s mind was everywhere, and Kirk dissolved in it. He settled entirely into Spock’s hands as Spock spun around him. 

My Jim , Spock said, nearly purring with satisfaction. They tangled in each other.

K’diwa , Kirk said. In the meld there was no hiding his delight. Honey! Spock’s mind curled around his, and Kirk threw his arms open to accept it. He had not known before how literal the translation ‘meld’ was for what he felt: there was no separating them now as they spun around each other, a binary star system, a hurricane, inextricably entwined. He had feared this intimacy so entirely when they had first married, pushing Spock away to prevent the opportunity from ever arising. But none of that fear remained. There was no part of himself that he wouldn’t trust Spock to see and hold. They swung around each other as the star of the nascent bond burned. It slowly consolidated, condensing down from uncontrollable flame into something more like a bridge. It refracted into every color Kirk had ever seen before it settled into a solid arc from his mind to Spock’s. It glowed. 

Spock pressed on it, and it reverberated. Kirk laughed as he felt it vibrate through him, rumbling his bones, lighting up his mind. 

Bondmates , Kirk said. 

Telsu , Spock said. His voice was steady, but there was no hiding his emotion in the bond: it sang with his pleasure. Slowly Kirk became aware of his body again, as well as his mind and the bond. He remembered that there was a world outside of their minds, T’Pau and Spock’s parents and their friends, and he felt Spock’s amusement at his chagrin. 

We will have time, ashayam , Spock said, and in the swirling abyss of the meld Kirk felt his arms come around him. With the bond glowing like a meteor shower between them, he carried them back to the world. 

Kirk’s eyes opened. T’Pau pulled her hands from his and Spock’s faces, shaking her robes back down over her wrists. 

“Thee are bonded,” she declared without preamble, and she only blinked once as the unruly humans around her whooped and hollered. She caught Kirk’s eyes, looking down on him from where he still knelt in the sand, and she nodded. They were now even, he thought, and somehow he was certain that he and Spock would be welcomed back to Vulcan whenever they chose to return. He turned to Spock, a wide smile splitting his face, and Spock pulled him to his feet. The touch of his hands seared through him. By the time he had turned back to T’Pau to thank her, she was already halfway across the garden, a black-robed mass vanishing into the dark. He watched her go until a pulsing warmth in the back of his head pulled his attention back to the garden. Spock watched him, outwardly stoic, but Kirk could feel him through the bond: a subtle and curious joy that he knew didn’t belong to him. The sun had set while they were in the meld, and in the evening twilight Spock glowed in his vision with some invisible, intangible psychic energy.

He held two fingers out, and Spock met him in the ozh’esta. His eyes widened as their hands met and that energy arced between their hands, flashing up his arm and making his hair stand on end. Spock’s amusement and the dark heat of a promise for later in the evening soaked into his mind. 

“I get it now,” he breathed. For a moment the heat overwhelmed him; he only wanted to drag Spock back to the guesthouse and make love to him while the new bridge sang between their minds. But their friends were here to celebrate them; they would have time enough later. With the knowledge of what was to come heating his thoughts, they turned back to their family and friends to celebrate beneath the desert sky. 

The night stretched on as Kirk and Spock mingled with their loved ones. Every brush of their fingers or casual touch sparked down Kirk’s skin, driving him to distraction, and Spock’s well-hidden amusement was evident through the bond. Kirk could feel him in the back of his mind, like Spock had a hand on the back of his neck, and he couldn’t stop himself from nuzzling his mind against the spot just to feel Spock glow with pleasure on the other side. 

Eventually, both too soon and not soon enough, the guests started to say their goodbyes. Tommy and Martha left first, with the promise that they would come by the next day to see Kirk again before they went home, then Mira and Ellie. Rowan and Suk’han followed, much to Chapel and Uhura’s disappointment. Rowan gave Kirk a hug before she left. 

“You keep my information, you hear?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Kirk said. 

“My new best friend Bones will tell me if you need to reach out and you don’t,” she said, and Kirk’s eyes widened with betrayal. 

“I never should have introduced the two of you!”

Rowan shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “But it’s too late now.” She waited as Kirk pressed his forehead to Suk’han’s, fondling her ears and accepting a rough-scrape lick across his cheek, and then, with one more smile, she left. Bones appeared at his shoulder. 

“I like her,” he said immediately, and Kirk slapped him on the back. 

“I’m sure you do,” he said. The Enterprise crew started beaming back up to the ship as well; Bones retrieved his things from the main house and accepted hugs from Amanda and Kirk before he left. As Janice stepped forward with Uhura and Chapel, Kirk snagged her arm. 

“If you don’t mind too terribly,” he said. “I have a work question for you.” 

“Sure, captain,” she said, and nodded to Christine and Uhura for them to continue on without her. Kevin dropped in behind them, returning to the Enterprise rather than ShiKahr now that the trial was over. Kirk steered them a few paces away from the rest of the crew as Spock saw them off, trying not to twitch as Spock left his side for the first time since they were bonded, and said, “I received an interesting message today.” 

Janice’s eyebrows went up. “Interesting how?” 

“It was a job offer for you.” Her eyebrows went higher, climbing towards her braided beehive. 

“What type of job?” 

Kirk considered her, trying to gauge how best to explain Lee’s offer. He mentally backed up, and instead put both hands on her shoulders. 

“Thank you,” he said first. “For all your help before the trial. I don’t know what we would have done without you.” 

“Oh,” she said, pleased, and looked down. “I’m sure that it would have been fine, you had Kathleen---” Then she cut herself off, and to Kirk’s immense surprise, blushed. “Lieutenant Commander Lee,” she said awkwardly. 

“Now, Janice,” Kirk said slowly, grinning, “What’s all this about?” 

“Nothing, captain,” she said immediately. Kirk shook her by the shoulders.

“We are at my wedding, yeoman,” he said, and released her. “I think you can be a little personal, if you want.” She looked up at him, blue eyes enormous, and covered her cheeks with the backs of her fingers before she said, “It’s nothing. It’s really nothing. It’s just…” She took a deep breath and said, her blush returning with a vengeance, “I’ve never met anyone whose mind works like hers before. Like mine. Working with her…” She trailed off and looked down.  

“You like her,” Kirk said, and Spock looked over at him in response to his pulse of delight over the bond. 

“I don’t know,” she protested. Kirk had never seen her at a loss for words before. “I’ve never even met her in person. I just…”

“She offered you a job,” Kirk said, unable to hide the grin spreading across his face. “She messaged me today. If you want it, I’ll sign your transfer.”

“What?” Her voice was sharp with shock. She covered her cheeks again. The bond in the back of Kirk’s head vibrated and shivered as Spock approached. 

“I believe her exact words were, ‘She’s got an unparalleled grasp of how and why regulation works in practice,’” Spock said. “She has been tasked with something in the aftermath of the court-martial, and requested you for her staff.” Janice pressed her hands harder against her cheeks. 

“I… But…” She looked up at them, her eyes shining. 

“Yeoman,” Kirk said, and felt Spock settle his hand at the base of his spine. The contact sent shivers over his skin, refracting in his vision. “Can I give you some advice?” She nodded. He leaned into Spock’s shoulder and said, “Take the leap.” 

Janice closed her eyes and nodded again. Then she dropped her hands away from her face and straightened, and Kirk saw the steel in her spine reassert itself. 

“By your leave, captain,” she said, voice high with excitement, and Kirk nodded. With one more mischievous grin breaking out over her face, she turned and ran to where Giotto was waiting to beam up. Kirk and Spock turned to the last of their guests. The rest of the crew then beamed back to the ship, and when Kirk watched them go, it was with the knowledge that he would be joining them soon.

He and Spock helped clear away the detritus of celebration, and under the light of T’Khut stole away back to the guesthouse. Before the door had even shut behind them entirely Spock had pushed him back against it. It clicked sharply in the silence, and before the echo had even faded away entirely Spock was on him, tongue and teeth against his skin and his hand sliding down into his trousers. Finally he could focus entirely on the new bond in the back of his mind. When he closed his eyes, tilting his head back against the door as Spock licked down his neck, he felt not only his own arousal, but Spock’s too, shuddering over the bond in great gasps. He pulled Spock’s face to his so he could kiss him. He slid his tongue past the seam of Spock’s lips as they parted for him, one of Spock’s hands coming up to cradle the back of his head and hold him in place. He listened, and felt it like the ocean: behind a barrier that he could only assume were Spock’s shields, some raging morass swelled. Kirk slid his hands under Spock’s robes, running them up his chest, and he could feel it: both Spock’s heat and skin under his palms, but also the mirror of the feeling through the bond, the way Spock tingled and lit up at his touch. Their mutual arousal bounced between them, magnifying with each pass down the bond of nails against backs and teeth against nipples and tongues against skin. Kirk pushed him backwards towards the bed, pulling Spock’s robes off his shoulders and sliding his hands greedily over the miles and miles of exposed skin. He glowed in the light of T’Khut through the windows, rippled scars and body hair and bony joints all illuminated for Kirk’s admiration. Spock was his, every inch and neuron, to touch and hold and love. 

“Yours,” Spock murmured in response as he let Kirk push him backwards onto the bed. Kirk crawled over him, relishing the mirrored drag of skin and hair, the way Spock ground up against his thigh between his legs. 

Yours , Kirk thought down the bond, as loudly as he could, and felt Spock’s mind throb in response. The dual sensations of both him and Spock were overwhelming. He was flying blind, but he followed his instincts: he pressed his mind messily against Spock’s shields as he kissed and licked and bit down his body. Let me in, let me see you. 

Ashayam--- Spock’s mind-voice was breathless as Kirk took him into his mouth, kneeling between his legs. His own cock throbbed, untouched, as what Spock was feeling flooded over him. He felt giddy with overstimulation, high on the sensation of the reverberating bond, the tether between their minds bouncing with movement and arousal. He crawled back up the bed to retrieve the lubricant from Spock’s bedside table. When he settled back next to him to work him open, Spock peeled back the layers of his shields in a striptease unlike any other.

Kirk did not frequently forget that Spock was an alien, a completely different species than himself; but it had never been so apparent than it did when Spock’s senses started to leak down the bond. His hearing was far keener than Kirk’s, his color vision slightly different, his sense of smell completely different. He closed his eyes to take it all in as he opened Spock up by touch alone. The way Spock saw him, felt him, smelled his sweat and sex--- all of it pulsed and dripped like wax down the bond into his mind. His fingers in Spock sparked with latent psi-energy, now made tangible through their bonding, lighting him up from the inside. Then Spock brought his hand up to Kirk’s face, sliding over his cheekbones and settling onto his psi-points. They slipped into the meld.

His body continued to move on autopilot. He settled between Spock’s thighs and pulled him into his lap. Spock groped at his shoulders and bit his neck as he slid into him, but all of his attention was within. He no longer had any concept of controlling or directing his own thoughts; the bond and Kirk’s mind were flooded with Spock. Spock slid into his mind. Spock pressed him open, the sheer overwhelming depth of his regard and his arousal dripping and licking into every fold and crevice. He could see himself the way Spock saw him: he could see shades that Kirk’s human eyes never could have distinguished. In Spock’s vision, he glowed a thousand shades of gold. 

Kirk laced his fingers through Spock’s, pinning his hands down against the mattress, and buried his face in his neck with his eyes closed. He listened to Spock’s sharp little gasps and let Spock’s mind push into his, tonguing him open, laving his love, his thoughts, his lust over everything he was. The bond drew them tighter and tighter, swelling with the energy that poured between them, vibrating until it was singing one clear note between them--- 

When they came, they came together, and the bond erupted into glimmering shards of light. 

☆☆☆

When he awoke the next morning, Kirk’s padd had a notice on it from the Enterprise .

By order of Dr. Leonard McCoy, chief medical officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, Captain James Kirk is authorized to return to duty, with no restrictions, effective start of next Alpha shift. 

His jag of bright sharp happiness startled Spock out of sleep, who turned to him immediately, reaching for him across the bed. “Jim?” 

Kirk flopped backwards onto the pillows and tossed his padd out of reach before rolling over Spock, straddling his hips and pressing his forehead to his. Spock skimmed his hands over his back and ass, his question floating over the bond and through his skin. 

Kirk said, “Let’s go home.”

☆☆☆

Kirk and Spock prepared lunch in the kitchen of the main house before the survivors arrived. They would spend a few hours together before they scattered back to the far corners of the galaxy; Tommy and Martha to their university, Mira and Ellie to their school, and Kirk and Kevin back to the Enterprise . After they’d all arrived and eaten together, Spock extended a gracious hand in front of him and said to Martha, “Would you care to see my mother’s garden? She has encouraged many non-native plants to flourish here.” 

“Yes! I meant to ask you about Vulcan pollinators last night,” Martha said immediately, and smoothed a hand over Tommy’s hair as she passed him and followed Spock outside. The door shut quietly behind them, leaving the survivors seated around the island. It struck Kirk that, without his noticing, he and his kids had sat around a table to share a meal for the first time since Farm School. He and Tommy had both found partners with whom they could share what they had endured, Kevin had carefully eaten nearly an entire plate with only one preliminary flinch, and with every moment spent in their company Ellie became a little less private. She was still reserved--- she and Mira had always had different temperaments--- but she shared more of her own interests, rather than letting Mira talk for both of them. Kirk learned that Martha and Tommy wanted children, that Ellie had a partner but Mira was uninterested in romance, that Kevin was the number one scorer across all of Starfleet on a popular holo-vid game. With every detail that he learned about them, their hollowed-out, desolate faces in his memory were replaced with them as they were now: scarred but alive, so alive. Even if they did not stay in contact any longer now that the trial was over, seeing them was a gift to him. 

The survivors stayed for three hours, talking over their empty plates. Martha and Spock eventually rejoined them with Martha’s promise to send along her research on artificial pollination for transplanted flowers, and Kirk spent his afternoon drinking in the pleasure of their company. His kids, his friends--- he had asked for help and they had risen to the challenge with a grace he had never predicted. 

Their time was winding down when Tommy said quietly, “I’ve been thinking about something since we got here.” All attention turned to him. He released his mask from the side of his head and rubbed the damaged skin self-consciously before resealing it. “I want to find Laika’s parents, and Madeleine and Natalya’s if possible, and tell them the truth.” Martha’s hand found Tommy’s under the table. For a second there was silence around the table as they remembered their fallen friend, the empty sixth chair, who had only tried to preserve their meager water supply and had died for it. They remembered the adults who had tried to save them.

“Yes,” Mira said, voice firm, and Ellie nodded. “They should know.” 

“Madeleine and Natalya were Starfleet,” Kirk said, and looked at Spock and Kevin. “Their emergency contacts might still be listed in their cadet files.”

“One of my professors from the Academy had been on the Valiant ,” Kevin offered. “She might know something useful, too.”

Tommy grinned lopsidedly across the table at Kirk, and Kirk grinned back. 

Kirk and Spock stood on the long, low front porch as the rest of the survivors called for aircars to take them to other transport or commed the Enterprise to be beamed back up. When it was time for each to go, Kirk pulled them in for a hug.

“Thank you,” he told each one, and each time he received a variation on a theme: I’m so glad you asked. I’m so glad you reached out. I’m happy that I could help you. Thank you for bringing us back together.  

Then it was only him and Spock standing in the late-afternoon sun, and Spock asked, “Will you remain in contact with them now?” 

“God, I hope so,” Kirk said. “Maybe I’ll let them all get home and settled before reaching back out again, though.” 

Then his padd dinged. He pulled it from his pocket. 

You have been invited to a group message by Mira Alcanzar: FARM SCHOOL FAMILY. Accept invitation? [YES / NO]

☆☆☆

Amanda and Spock prepared a special dinner for their last night on Vulcan: a wildly illogical smorgasbord of the foods that Kirk had enjoyed most during his time there. Breakfast breads rested alongside the vegetable wrap that he had eaten every day for lunch for three weeks in a row after first being introduced to it. There was a lot of soy; Vulcans had figured out ways to prepare tofu that even centuries of Earth vegans hadn’t attempted. Sarek, home earlier than usual from the embassy, joined them, and though dinner was quieter for his presence it was not tense or unpleasant.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Amanda assured them after they all cleared away the plates, either stored or recycled what hadn’t been eaten, and Sarek had vanished into his office. “But the house will feel so strange once you’ve gone back.” 

“I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me. For us,” Kirk said to her. He dried the dishes that she had deemed too delicate for the sonic and replaced them in their proper places. She handed him the last glass and leaned her hip against the counter, turning to look at him. 

“Logic does not need to be thanked, Jim,” she said. Then she laid her hand on his arm. “And neither does family.” His throat tightened at the unexpected words. She smiled as he struggled with his composure and turned to the kitchen at large, where Spock wiped down the table. 

“I hope you come visit when you’re able,” she said. “I hope it’s not another twenty years before we get Spock back here.” 

“I’ll see what I can do, ma’am. But if you could send me a list of anything that would qualify me for clan protection again, I might be able to speed up the process.” He and Amanda laughed as Spock raised an incredulous eyebrow at him, and then they bid her goodnight. 

They were halfway across the garden to the guesthouse when a deep voice called, “ Sa-fu. ” Spock straightened immediately and turned over his shoulder. Kirk turned with him as a spark of surprise flickered down the bond. Sarek stood by the back door, illuminated by the light of the main house; it swirled over the waves of his hair and caught in his robes. 

“ Sa-mekh,” Spock said, and Kirk felt the twinge of question and confusion in Spock’s mind. When was the last time he had called his father by that word, instead of his name? Had it been before that last catastrophic fight, before Spock joined Starfleet?

Sarek hesitated for a moment, before he crossed to them. For a moment he looked at his son, and his son at him. Then Sarek extended something between them. Spock took it and held it up in the light: it was a wrapped packet of coiled ka'athyra strings.

“Your playing has improved since your youth,” Sarek said. “But it appears that the strings on your instrument have not been replaced.” 

“ Ka’athyra strings are rarely sold off of Vulcan, and therefore difficult to acquire while on mission,” Spock said, and gently turned the packet in his hands. He looked at his father. 

“Then it would be prudent for you to return in order to purchase them more regularly,” Sarek said. He looked at his son, and though his face remained still, something in his eyes softened. He drew himself up and said, in the measured tones of the perfectly logical, “Your mother would like it.” He stepped backwards, as if to distance himself from what he had said, and instead raised the ta’al . “I travel early in the morning for a meeting, so I will not see you before you depart. Live long and prosper, Spock. Captain Kirk.” 

Spock and Kirk both raised the ta’al . “Live long and prosper, Father,” Spock said, and Sarek nodded once before turning and sweeping back into the house. Spock looked down at the strings in his hand before looking at Kirk with something close to abject shock bouncing over the bond. Kirk ran his hand over Spock’s back, leaning into him for a moment, and they continued back to the guesthouse to pack.

Before Kirk fell asleep that night, he sent a message. 

Dear Mom and Dad, 

I hope you’re both doing well. How is the U.S.S. Sausalito? Are you headed anywhere new? 

I wanted to let you know that I’m married now--- to my first officer, S’chn T’gai Spock of Vulcan. We were bonded on Vulcan while we were on-planet for leave. If we ever cross paths, I’d love to introduce him to you. He’s great. I think Dad would like him a lot. 

I also wanted to talk to you about something else. I’m not sure if you heard, but there was a court-martial recently--- I was cleared, but the trial brought up a lot of evidence about what happened when I was a kid. If you’re up for it, I’d like to talk to you about it. If you’re not, that’s fine. But the offer stands. 

Anyway, that’s all. Safe travels. 

Your son,

Jim

He closed his padd and dropped it onto the bedside table before rolling to wrap himself around Spock’s back. Part of him wanted to refresh his messages over and over until the battery died. Part of him hoped that his parents never responded. But he had done his part; the only thing he had control over was whether or not he had sent the comm. 

They might respond and refuse to acknowledge that anything had changed, or refuse to talk about Tarsus at all. They might prefer to stay estranged and leave themselves at arm’s distance. But Kirk had reached out. He would leave that hand extended, because that was what he did: he would rather reach out and fail than never try and wonder forever.

In the end, he thought, what his parents decided to do now wouldn’t really matter. He knew that, either way, he would be okay.

☆☆☆

The next morning, Kirk pulled his uniform down off the hanger in the closet for the first time in four months. He held it in his hands, letting it slide through his fingers to the bed, before stripping off his sleep clothes and stepping into them. He sensed Spock’s approach before the door opened, and when Spock entered from the bathroom in his science blues, Kirk turned with his hands outstretched and said, “How do I look?” 

Spock scanned him from head to toe and back again, and though his face did not change Kirk could feel him through the bond: pride and appreciation, a flicker of arousal that Kirk noted with curiosity and tucked away to consider in detail later, and his love. 

“Ready for duty, sir,” Spock said, and bent to kiss him. 

They met Amanda in the backyard with their bags. She was dressed to leave for her own work, hair wrapped carefully to prevent it being tossed in the day’s high winds, and unclasped her hands from in front of herself as they appeared. Kirk accepted a hug and Spock raised the ta’al .

“Please let us know how you’re doing every once in a while,” Amanda said to Kirk, eyes twinkling at them both. “Us human mothers do appreciate a sign of life.” 

“I’ll make it happen, ma’am,” Kirk said, grinning. Then, with a lurch of joy and apprehension, he flipped open his comm. “Captain Kirk to Lieutenant Commander Scott.” 

“Scotty here,” a welcome voice called back. “On standby for transport, sir.” 

“Thank you again, Amanda,” Kirk said, and Amanda smiled warmly. 

“You’re always welcome here, Jim,” she said. Then her focus turned to her son. “I love you, sa-fu. ” Spock inclined his head, and as Kirk gave Scotty the word and the transporter grabbed them, the bond twanged with gratitude and warmth and something that felt like daring. 

“And I you, ko-mekh ,” Spock said. Before the transporter whirled them away, they got one good look at the expression on Amanda Grayson’s face as she registered what Spock had said. It was beautiful. 

Kirk and Spock materialized on the starship Enterprise for the first time in four months, and it immediately felt like home again. Kirk closed his eyes, still standing on the transporter pad with his bag over his shoulder, and listened to the music of his ship: the constant low roar of life support and aircon, the beeps and whirrs of panels and machinery fans, footsteps in the hallway and the voices of his crew, and one Montgomery Scott at the transporter control panel calling, “Good to have you back, captain!” 

“Ah, Scotty,” Kirk said, and grinned broadly. “There’s no place like home.” They stepped out of the transporter room and were immediately overwhelmed by a chorus of “welcome back!” and “good to see you!” from the crew passing through the halls. Tired engineers leaving the bay after Gamma shift passed bright-eyed Alpha scientists headed down to the science decks early--- the scientists did double-takes at Spock’s reappearance, raising the Vulcan salute and squeaking their hellos before darting down to the labs. Kirk bounced on the balls of his feet, drinking it all in. He had been returned to his ship, rested and repaired and more grateful than he had ever been in his life for the crew that had held space for him while he was away. He wanted to wrap his arms around the entirety of the ship and hold it close to him.

Spock pulled Kirk’s duffel bag off his shoulder and placed it onto his own. “I will return our possessions to our quarters and meet you on the bridge,” he said. Amusement and affection pulsed over the bond, spilling into his mind, as Spock thought, Go. I’ll see you in a moment. Kirk grinned at him, quietly pressing two fingers to Spock’s, and slipped with Scotty into the crowd. 

He had thirty minutes before the start of Alpha shift, and he intended to make them count. He started by following Scotty down to Engineering to say hello to the engineers before shifting upward to the labs. He waved to Dr. Khan and Spock’s scientists, many of whom giggled and waved at the return of his formerly unexplained presence in the lab. He stuck his head in the crew mess to shout hello and grab a coffee, did the same in the officers’ mess, popped into the gym and Giotto’s office, and rode the turbolift just to hear the whooshing of it. He climbed a Jeffries tube and scared the living daylights out of an unprepared ensign when he swung out of it. He eventually found himself on the D deck: the longest strip of uninterrupted corridor on the ship, dead in the center and reaching from fore to aft. He didn’t see a single other person in the hallway; it didn’t have a formal use, and mostly served as a conduit to other places. 

He raised his hands high above his head, stretching and breathing in the slightly stale tang of recycled air. The oxygen level on the ship was higher than that of Vulcan, and he was high on the difference. He would miss Vulcan. He would miss the guesthouse and Amanda’s kitchen and the purple tile of Rowan’s ceiling. But the Enterprise was his home; this was where he belonged. He bounced on the balls of his feet and relished the feel of his uniform against his skin and the comfortable tread of his work boots against the floor. Then, completely alone, unwatched, and free, he ran the entire length of his beloved ship, laughing like a kid.

Kirk arrived on the bridge thirty seconds before the start of Alpha shift. The turbolift door whooshed open, and it was like the past four months had never happened: Uhura at the communications console, Sulu and Chekov bickering at the front, Spock standing at parade rest by the sensors, already looking at the turbolift when Kirk arrived. Chris wheeled his chair around as a rush of warmth engulfed Kirk: welcome backs and hellos, and Spock’s pleased pride and comfort humming in the back of his mind.

 “Welcome back, Captain Kirk,” Chris said. 

“Thank you, Admiral,” Kirk said, and grinned. “I relieve you, sir.” 

“I am relieved,” Chris said, and for a moment it crystallized between them: that unique love that a captain had for the ship they commanded, and their appreciation for the ship and the crew that they loved in common. Then Chris backed out of the chair-stall and Kirk strode down the steps to it. He flipped the seat back down and, after all his time away, sat back into it. 

He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. It felt a little different, after the alterations that Scotty had made for Chris��s chair. But he was different, as well, so that was alright. 

“Your orders are to escort me, Morrow, and Drake back to Earth,” Chris said. “Then you’ll head back out to the black.” His eyes flicked to a padd that Kirk hadn’t noticed, resting on the arm of the chair. “That came this morning.” Kirk sat forward and flicked it open to read as Chris made his farewells to the rest of the bridge crew and steered himself into the turbolift. 

HIGH PRIORITY 

CONFIDENTIAL 

Captain Kirk, 

It’s been a productive few days for us, but it seems like every time we learn something concrete, it sends us down another rabbit hole of secrets. My prediction of a few months of work may have been premature. We’re not waiting for the investigation to be done, though, before we start rectifying some of the more egregious violations. Please see attached an assignment for after you return the admirals to Headquarters. If you find it more painful than helpful, let me know, but I’ve decided that you and Lieutenant Riley get the right of first refusal on this one.

Two other updates for you: first, Admiral April is remaining on Vulcan for the time being so that he can work with the VSA to repair the damage done by the neutralizer. Though communication is complicated on that front at the moment, he has indicated that he intends to remain embedded with my team until the work is done. 

I did tell him what I was going to offer to you, and he said, and I quote, to “call it a belated wedding gift.” 

Second: Janice says hello. Thank you again for signing her transfer - she has been invaluable already. 

Reach out if you refuse the mission or if there are any complications. If not, report the outcome back to me once completed. 

Best,

LC Lee

Kirk tapped on the bond to get Spock’s attention as he re-read Lee’s note. His attention snagged on the phrase ‘right of first refusal’ as Spock left his sensors to stand at his shoulder and read the padd in his hand. 

Any guesses?

None that I am willing to put forth. 

Kirk tapped to the next page and pulled up the mission itself. Across the top was branded FOR EXTRADITION: CRIMES AGAINST SENTIENT LIFE. 

Then beneath that was LAST KNOWN ALIAS: ANTON KARIDIAN. 

Anton Karidian was a man who seemingly sprang to life eighteen years previously solely to perform as an actor on various far-flung planets. Beneath the brief dossiere of information known about him was the formal assignment signed by both Lee and April: This alias may be used by the man formerly known as Governor Kodos of Tarsus IV. Investigate, confirm, and if confirmed, capture alive and return to Earth for trial and sentencing.  

“My god,” Kirk said quietly, and covered his mouth with one hand. He scanned the information again: it wasn’t much, but it had come from April and Lee. Shock from him and comfort from Spock filled the bond in equal measure. A small part of him wailed in distress at the thought of facing the man who had killed his friends and destroyed Farm School. But there was a larger, louder, stronger part of him that called for justice. 

He had already faced Elise and found justice for himself and his friends; here was an opportunity to do the same on a much larger scale. He thought about the eight thousand people that had died on Tarsus: his friends and his teachers and an enormous list of people that he had never met and would never know. They deserved accountability from the Federation; they deserved for their stories to be told. He turned his eyes to the viewscreen ahead of him. Below them was Vulcan, and ahead were the stars, so many little pinholes of light in a black velvet sky. But closer to him were his beloved bridge crew, his friends and his family, and they were prepared to follow him wherever he chose to lead them. 

He looked down at the data sheet about Karidian. The troupe that he led was making its way through the Alpha quadrant; they could drop the admirals off on Earth and then continue on an intercept path to meet them before they got to Planet Q, where Tommy and Martha lived. He closed the padd. He would talk to Kevin before formally accepting, but he thought he had an idea about what Kevin might say about it. The Enterprise would take the mission, and he would tell his crew what their goals were when they were closer. He might tell the bridge crew why they had been assigned this mission, this man; he might even tell a select handful what he felt about it. 

Kirk might find an unlucky stranger, or he might find the man who had walked through his nightmares. But he wouldn’t do it alone. 

“Mr. Chekov, plot a course to Earth. Mr. Sulu, prepare for warp three,” Kirk said, and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his legs again. Behind him, Uhura called the Vulcan interstellar transportation authority to clear their exit, and his helmsman and his navigator in front of him ran through their checks together as they prepared for their departure. 

His science officer, his husband, his bondmate stood quietly at his side, and rested one hand on his shoulder before returning to his sensors and scanners. Even when the touch of his hand had dropped away, Kirk felt Spock’s attention through the bond: partially on his console, partially humming at the presence of Kirk’s mind nearby. He would need to learn to shield, at some point, or risk distracting Spock every time he looked over and saw him bent over the scanners just so. But they would have time enough for that; in the meanwhile, he was enjoying the constant comforting hum of Spock’s ever-churning mind in the back of his own.

“Course locked, captain,” Chekov said. 

“Ready for warp, captain,” Sulu said. 

“Impulse power until we’re out of Vulcan’s range, Mr. Sulu. Then take us away,” Kirk said. The ship hummed and beeped and sang around him as his orders were followed, and he watched the stars shift through the viewscreen ahead until the ship leapt to warp and they smeared into blurry streaks of light. 

Ad astra per amorem; and onward.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Martha and Tommy's first child, a daughter, is named Natalya. Giotto and his wife Miriam get to buy their house in Cairo, where they make up for the time they didn’t have. Janice and Kathleen Lee, along with Admiral April, have their work cut out for them. It’s ugly, and Elise does not let go without a fight--- but when it’s over, Lee will ask Janice to marry her. Sulu and Dr. Khan had a great time working together. When Sulu is offered his own command down the line, he takes her with him as his science officer. And Kirk and Spock, of course, live happily ever after.

[strange-august]

Tag Yourself as Aesthetics I resonate with

Changelingcore: Broken insect wings, wildflower meadows, catching tadpoles, lingering mist after it rains, wet shoes from the damp grass, the feeling of moss under your hands, collection of strange trinkets and objects, taking your stuffed animals on adventures, doodling on your clothes, busy hands, wading knee deep into a lake, screaming into the air to ease frustration, organizing and reorganizing your treasures, bird calls, animal howls, digging in the mud, chewing on your lip until it bleeds, bruises and scrapes, the urge to live in the woods and never return to regular society, knotted hair, forest shrines, putting flower blossoms in your hair, flooded swampy areas, jumping from short cliffs

Suburban Gothic: Hot muggy air sticking to your skin, the buzz of florescent lights, flickering street lights, budget popsicles, late night drug store visits, muffled arguments, an old clock ticking, guady wallpaper, gossamer curtains, dusty cotton sheets, faded quilts, dog barkings, milkshakes in an empty diner, broken windows and graffiti, abandoned train tracks, 24/7 laundromats, rusty swingsets, shadowy silhouettes, semi-abandoned malls, sounds of far off traffic and train horns, driving around at night while soft music plays on the radio, tv static, junk yards and pick-n-pulls, holding hands with a stranger, urban legends, varsity jackets, broken glass on the road, crumbling buildings, local television channels

Cuddle Party: Excited giggles and hushed whispers, condensation on drinkware, running through an empty field hollering and whooping in the dead of night, sitting on the porch in rocking chairs, drunken "I love you"s, old cartoons, classic disney movies, five dollar pizza and breadsticks, singing out loud in the car, finding new places to explore, county fairs and arcade visits, eating fair food and screaming your lungs out on rides, trying to earn as many tickets at the arcade and still winning cheap prizes, being the last one to fall asleep, casually sleeping all together in the same bed, holding hands in crowds, if one of us isn't having a good time none of us are, wondering how long these days will last

Cryptid Academia: Listening to video essays while sketching cryptids, exploring abandoned buildings (legally and illegally), pocket knives, blackout curtains, newspaper clippings, viewing the night sky through a telescope, visiting natural history or science museums, old typewriters, info dumping conspiracy theories on friends, making plans to investigate that never come to fruition, tearing yet another hole into your clothes climbing over fences, shoddily patched up clothes, keychains and aluminum pins, novelty socks, analog watches, Buzzfeed Unsolved, cryptid podcasts, sprint training so you can outrun whatever is chasing you, rubiks cubes, sore fingers from mending, thrift shopping, essays only about cryptids

Desertwave: Billowing winds, sandstorms, wind chimes and suncatchers, succulents in handmade clay pots, aloe vera plants on the kitchen windowsill, the distant howl of a coyote, faded winnebagos, the soft hiss of patio misters, campsites and trailer parks, large rock formations covered in graffiti, picking up trash, the crackle of a bonfire, cacti and joshua trees in the backyard, never getting the sand completely out of your shoes, dusty clothes, laying in a hammock watching the stars, water balloon fights, hot springs, mexican ice cream bars, rocky desert mountains, plots of sand and plants that stretch on as far as the eye can see

[mosneakers]

Coni pedals her bike all the way to Shady Acres. She storms into her childhood home—a little farmhouse built into a rock at the very top of the Plateau. She swiftly draws the curtains shut, gathers all the members of the Breeder Unit in the living area, and slams the flash drive onto the coffee table.

Rabbit: [Croaky voice] What is the meaning of this, Concept?

Coni: Bella Goth. She went missing several years ago, leaving her family devastated and confused, with no answers as to what happened to her. Reports on a doppelgänger were linked HERE. To this address. [Voice trembling] What did you do?

[avant-greendecor]

Visit my website for more inspiration 🌿

Texan Panache: Leather, Wood and Wild West

Are you ready to embark on a journey through the heart of Texan-inspired interior design, where every element exudes warmth, character, and a dash of wild west allure? Picture this: rich mahogany wood buffets standing as guardians of history, sumptuous leather sofas and armchairs that beckon you to sink into their embrace, lush greenery enveloping your space, and walls adorned with Texan and country-inspired art that tells tales of the Lone Star State.

[greyauras]

This is like 600 words.

Everyone headcanons Ghost and Soap's living conditions like Ghost is a frequent visitor of r/malelivingspace and Soap has like a slightly cozy, filled just enough with furniture type of place. I think that's cute and hilarious, but I'm just thinking about the opposite.

That Ghost actually has this REALLY nice place somewhere near the base that Price *legally* finances for him but pays out of pocket for. King sized bed, some cacti, has an elderly neighbor that waters them for him if he's gone for too long and everything. I'm pretty sure Ghost was canonically a butcher (I hc him that way anyway) so he probably can make a good steak, and eventually learned how to cook for himself and it's become a hobby. He grew up without, so now that he has the money and the luxury to have a quiet space of his own, he takes full advantage of it.

I believe he likes stability, and while the base is where he feels the most like himself, the bustle of it all irritates him. Sometimes it's nice to drink your weird ass flavored tea with your pink cacti. Best date you'll ever have if you squint past the red flags Tom Cardy style.

And Soap? Pretty big, concrete, studio loft. Completely empty save necessary appliances and the fullest place being his art space with easels and canvases in front of the large windows, a cot with boxes of his shit next to it. And a bean bag chair begging for life. The only thing he knows how to cook is ramen and MRE tuna packets. He tries family recipes, but fucks it up so badly he hopes his nan doesn't see it beyond the grave. Growing up, he took care of himself while his parents worked constantly and could have been away for days at the time. It's easier to take care of yourself when your only obligations are feeding yourself, doing homework, and going to bed before midnight. Being an adult has similar rules but for some reason it's much worse.

Being in the military, it's an automatic rule to take care of yourself (physically). You stink, you'll get a bath one way or another. He doesn't buy anything because why need a bed if you'll only sleep on it for a month or so? Why a couch and TV when paying for a streaming service would be a waste? (Laptop disc player kind of guy, got a box of classic movies too, “THIS IS SPARTA!”) Really shouldn't even invest in a flat, he doesn't really celebrate holidays with his family anymore since they're the vacation on Christmas type. The only time he's there is when injured, forced or both.

But since Simon moves to Scotland and brings all his stuff with him, the big place gets filled a lot quicker. John gets some shelf racks and finally unpacks his boxes. I would say and maybe vice versa since Soap doesn't have a lot of stuff, but Price is glad to get that freeloader’s lease off his name.

Extra: They're all hanging out in the base’s living area.

Gaz: Does anybody need a couch? My sister's selling one, might even give it away if I ask.

Soap perks up from his spot on the floor: I do! I've been sleeping on the floor for 3 years!

Ghost: Johnny, I thought you said you had a cot?

Soap: I did. The legs broke, now it's just a framed mat.

Gaz: Bruv, what the fuck.

Soap: Does it have a stench?

Gaz: No?

Soap: I'll take it.

[shadowpeachceo]

Ninjago incorrect quotes I'm having too much fun

Nya: Alright, who’s hogging the Netflix account? I’ve been locked out all week!

Lloyd: Sucks to suck! I’m already on the 8th season of Friends!

Kai: Not me.

Nya: Don’t lie. I know it’s not Jay or Zane.

Kai: It’s not me, really!

Nya: …

Kai: …But it might be Ronin…

Nya: You gave Ronin access to our Netflix account!?!?

Kai: he wanted to watch Orange is the New Black!

Nya: I’m going to kill you.

*The team at Home Depot*

Nya: *pushed in the cacti display while wandering around the garden section*

Jay: *Shitting in the display toilets*

Kai: *Tokyo Drifting one of those flatbed carts down the aisles*

Lloyd: *Stealing paint chips for aesthetic purposes*

Zane: *Just wanted some goddamn lightbulbs and everyone ruined it*

Cole: *In the car sleeping*

*The team is asked what they would do with 5 children with only 3 chairs.*

Cole: Get two more chairs!

Nya: They can get their own chairs.

Jay: Make them fight for it.

Zane: You only need one chair to beat them all with.

Lloyd: I would never be near children.

Kai: Kill two.

Zane: A mouse!

Kai, pulling out a knife: Go back to where you came from or I'll stab you.

Nya, pulling out a frying pan: It'll make a nice meal!

Lloyd, giving the mouse cheese: You deserve a treat, little guy.

Cole, gasping: It's Ratatouille!

Jay: His name is Remi, dummy.

Zane: ...I was going to say to just trap it and throw it out the window... what is wrong with you people.

Lloyd: So, did everyone learn their lesson?

Jay: No.

Kai: I did not.

Cole: I may have actually forgotten one.

Nya: Also no.

Lloyd: Oh good, neither did I.

Zane: *Exhausted sigh*

Zane: We’re kind of missing something guys.

Kai: Cohesion?

Lloyd: Teamwork?

Nya: A general sense of what we’re doing?

Cole: And Jay is not here.

Kai: Oh, and that, yeah.

Zane: Stressed.

Cole: Depressed.

Lloyd: Possessed.

Nya: Obsessed.

Jay: Impressed.

Kai: Chicken breast.

Everyone: ...What?

Kai: I just wanted to join in.

Zane: You know, when Nya comes over, Jay can get a little…

Cole: Psycho?

Kai: Scary?

Lloyd: Drunk?

Zane: All three.

Before Lloyd joins the team

Jay: The floor is lava!

Cole: *helps Zane onto the counter*

Nya: *kicks Kai off the sofa*

Kai: *lays on the floor*

Jay: ...Are you okay?

Kai: No.

Jay: What's worse than a heartbreak?

Nya: Waking up in the morning and your phone wasn't charging.

Lloyd: Waking up in the morning.

Cole: Waking up.

Kai: Waking up in the morning...

Kai: And seeing Zane.

Zane: Hey! Rude!!

Squad reactions to being called straight:

Kai: The fuck, no I'm not.

Nya: Excuse the hell out of you?

Zane: Ding dong, you are wrong!

Lloyd: Who told you that? And why did they lie?

Jay: Rude.

Cole: *punches the person*

Jay: *standing at the top of the stairs* What are y'all doing at the bottom of the staircase?

Zane: I accidentally fell down.

Cole: KAI PUSHED ME down the stairs because I refuse to pay THEIR part of our rent!

Nya: Zane bet me fifty bucks that I couldn't reach the bottom of the stairs faster than they did falling down it, so I slide down the banister to get my money.

Lloyd: I don't know how I got here. One moment, I was sleeping in my bed, three floors up, and then suddenly I was waking up here, just in time to get crushed by Nya.

*The squad's reaction to being told they're the chosen one*

Nya: I will not let you down.

Zane: Sounds fun.

Cole: K.

Kai: No, I'm fucking not.

Jay: Do I have to be?

Lloyd: Please god, I am so tired.

*the team at mega monster amusement park, in the teacups*

Jay, Cole, and Zane: *spinning a little and talking*

Nya, Lloyd, and Kai: *flying past them, spinning as fast as they can, screaming*

Cole: If you got arrested what would be the charges?

Kai: Theft.

Nya: Disturbing the peace.

Jay: Aggravated assault.

Zane: Arson.

Lloyd: All of the above. In that order, probably.

Nya: Imagine if someone handed you a box full of all the things you lost throughout your life.

Zane: It would be nice to have my sense of purpose back...

Cole: Oh wow, my childhood innocence! Thank you for finding this.

Lloyd: My will to live! I haven't seen this in years.

Kai: I knew I lost that potential somewhere.

Jay: Mental stability, my old friend!

Nya: Jesus, could you guys lighten up a little?

Cole to Jay, who’s about to get married to Nya: Today, two families are becoming one.

Zane, in an ominous voice: Two families enter, one family leaves.

Kai: That sounds so threatening…

Nya: The Wedding Games…

Lloyd: May the bouquet toss be ever in your favor.

Jay: Beautiful.

Cole: Fuck all of you!

Lloyd: *dies*

Cole: Timer starts now! When are they coming back? I say two months!

Zane: Bullshit. One month.

Nya: Nah, half a month.

Jay, sobbing: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? LLOYD JUST DIED!

Kai, scratching chin in thought: One week.

Nya: I’m the smartest person in my friend group.

Kid Lloyd: You hang out with Kai, Cole, Zane, and Jay.

Kid Lloyd: It’s not as high a compliment as you think.

Zane: Throw lamps at people who need to lighten up, and throw handles at someone who needs to get a grip!

Jay: Throw a refrigerator at someone who needs to chill!

Cole: Throw scissors at someone who needs to cut it out!

Kai: Throw a clock at someone who needs to get with the times!

Nya: Throw matches at someone who needs to get fired up!

Lloyd: Throw a brick at someone to kill them.

*Everyone is standing around the broken coffee maker*

Nya: So. Who broke it? I'm not mad, I just wanna know.

Everyone:

Lloyd: ...I did. I broke it.

Nya: No. No you didn't. Kai?

Kai: Don't look at me. Look at Zane.

Zane: What?! I didn't break it.

Kai: Huh, that's weird. How'd you even know it was broken?

Zane: Because it's sitting right in front of us and it's broken.

Kai: Suspicious.

Zane: No, it's not!

Cole: If it matters, probably not, but Jay was the last one to use it.

Jay: Liar! I don't even drink that crap!

Cole: Oh really? Then what were you doing by the coffee cart earlier?

Jay: I use the wooden stirrers to push back my cuticles. Everyone knows that, Cole!

Lloyd: Okay let's not fight. I broke it. Let me pay for it, Nya.

Nya: No! Who broke it!?

Everyone:

Cole: Nya... Kai's been awfully quiet.

Kai: rEALLY?!

*Everyone starts arguing*

Nya, talking to Sensei Wu and Sensei Garmadon: I broke it. I burned my hand so I punched it.

Nya: I predict 10 minutes from now they'll be at each other's throats with warpaint on their faces and a pig head on a stick.

Nya:

Nya: Good. It was getting a little chummy around here.

*the team in the bad timeline*

Cole: So what have you been up to recently?

Nya: Leading a revolution with Zane.

Cole: Good for you two! Me, I've joined the mob.

Nya: *nods* Oh, how cool! That's awesome!

Cole: I know! Anyway, have you heard from the others? Jay?

Nya: Happily living as a hermit in the woods. Lloyd?

Cole: Wrongfully locked up in an asylum, which reminds me, we need to break them out later. Kai?

Nya: Cult leader.

Cole: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Zane: Doctor = $140,000 a year, Furry artist on patreon = $160,000 a year.

Lloyd: I think you’re lowballing the furry art amount tbh.

Zane: Sorry for the inaccuracies Doctor Yiff.

Lloyd: No matter how I respond I don’t look well, well played. I walked into that.

Nya: Well, furry artists are typically more competent and courteous than your average doctor, so I can see that.

Zane: Did you legitimately just tell me that a person who draws wolf ass is more competent than a dude who spent 8+ years in an university to give you a lung transplant?

Jay: Doctors are bullshit and furry artists perform an infinitely more valuable service to society compared to them.

Zane: You will die in 7 days.

Kai: It took doctors 10 years to diagnose what was wrong with me, some insisting I was faking it for attention while a furry artist I knew said “Sounds like Crohn’s” after hearing me complain once and ended up being right.

Kai: Besides I can’t go to a doctor and ask them to draw Rouge the Bat wider than she is tall with tits to match, now can I?

Jay: You could if you weren’t a fucking coward.

Cole: This was like 50 consecutive punches to the face, what the fuck went on here.

Jay: If you put 'violently' in front of anything to describe your action, it becomes funnier.

Jay: Violently practices.

Zane: Violently studies.

Nya: Violently sleeps.

Kai: Violently shoots pictures.

Cole: Violently boxes.

Lloyd: Violently murders people.

Nya: Violently worries about the previous statement.

[featheredenby]

Winner’s Guilt

This was just an excuse for me to torcher Grian.

Written by: FeatheredEnby

Word Count: 3,466

Random One Shot Fic

For the first time since the game started he’s alone, the hot desert sun beating down on him as he clutches the shirt of his now dead friend. Silent tears run down his face and bore pathways through the blood, sweat, and sand that clings to his skin. What has he just done? You killed him, the voices taunt because aren’t they good at that, at ruining what he holds dear. At the beginning of the game he hadn’t remembered anything really, just the basics of who he was and who the others were. He had been left in the world and they had given him a note to read to welcome the players to the game. But now he’s won and Scar’s blood is on his hands and this time there’s no do overs. His skin is burnt and his knuckles are bruised and his wings are changing back to their old purple and he can feel the eyes surrounding him. Their voices feel like new wounds on his skin, You destroyed everything that you loved. It’s the only thing that you’re good at. 

He knows what they want, they want to torment him to make him suffer. Alone in the world with the weight of his actions but he’s not about to give them, the creatures who have been chasing him since he left, satisfaction. He knows what he has to do. Grian lifts from the ground and takes off his poncho which he lays over Scar like a blanket. He stands up only faltering when he places his fingers to his lips and then closes Scar’s eyes. He makes his way out of the circle of cacti and over to the cliff, his wings are starting to work again but that doesn’t stop him. As he reaches the edge of the mountain he turns back to Scar and whispers, “It’s been amazing, goodbye.”

-

The pain is brief and soon after everything goes black but he isn’t dead. Maybe he is dead now that he thinks about it but he isn’t with his friends so it doesn’t matter. He opens his eyes and sees an expansion of red-orange sand in front of him and in the sky it’s only half night. The sky looks dark but only a purple sun can be seen in it, how odd. A few yards in front of him there’s a building similar to his home on monopoly mountain. Tears are starting to fall from his eyes again but there could be someone in that house, they could tell him what’s going on. So he walks forward and opens the door into a small room with a table at the center and two connecting doors. It doesn’t seem to be inhabited, it couldn’t hurt to look around. He walks over to the door on his right and opens it to see a shimmering path in a surrounding void and on one side of the path there’s a mural.

It’s stained glass which has been carefully shaped to look like Egyption hieroglyphics. And the scene that it depicts is awful. He’s there surrounded by cacti holding a dead Scar in his hands. The eyes are watching him and the shape of the sun is behind his head. He’s clutching Scar’s hands with his own and in them there is a bouquet of poppies and lilacs. Beneath the painting there’s a sign and it reads, The Sun.

Grian runs out of that room and back into the one he saw earlier he sits on the single chair at the table and makes a connection. He won and now this is where he gets to stay. He slowly calms down and stands back up. He walks over to the other door which was on his left originally. He turns the handle and finds a cozy bedroom with a large window to let in light and a large amount of sun themed decorations. It also has a pizza banner, lofted bed, and a vase of poppies and lilacs. He understands now this is the winner's void. There will never be another game so he will be the only person to ever step foot here. 

-

When they enter the second game he’s surprised that there’s a second one. However he’s even more surprised that no one else remembers but he won’t make the same mistakes as last time. Grian pushes Scar away knowing that it’s for the best. He spends the game with Timmy, Impulse, Martyn, and Mumbo. But then the game ends for him he dies and wakes up once again in the winner’s void. He sits there for days, maybe even weeks but then as he looks out of the window the sky shifts. Now instead of just a purple sun there are cyan stars and instead of just a red desert there are mossy spruce trees popping up. This can only mean one thing, someone else has won.

Grian jumps up and runs outside barely noticing the changes that have happened to the house. When he gets outside he sees that standing in front of him there is a very confused Scott. Scott looks up at him and shudders, “What happened?”

Grian stares at him, surely he remembers what just happened. Surely he remembers that he won. “It's kind of hard to explain, uhm… welcome to the winner’s void.” The man in front of him stands up shaking and without a word he walks towards the house. Grian pushes the door open for him and notices that there are now pieces of darker woods and moss on it. When he walks in he sees that there is now another door on the left side. “So,” Grian asks in a hesitant tone, “Do you want a tour around?”

“Grian,” Scott says, “Why did I forget it?”

“Forget what?”

“I forgot about the poppy and the pufferfish,” Scott cries, “and I forgot about Jimmy.”

“I think that only winners remember.” He explains.

“Oh,” Scott looks up, “I think I’ll take that tour.”

Grian slowly shows Scott around the building. When they enter the void room there’s a new mural. It’s stained glass too, but much more realistic it shows Scott standing while holding a sword straight up to the sky in one hand, a bucket with an axolotl in the other. He’s getting struck with lightning. Around him there are also eyes opening up but there are a fair amount of teal mouths too. Under the painting it reads, The Stars. They quickly move on to the new room which is another bedroom but this time it’s snug and cozy with stars decorating its walls, a queen sized bed, and a painting of a tree canopy on the ceiling. It also has a pizza banner and an aquarium with an axolotl and a pufferfish.“Hm… it’s nice here.” Scott says.

-

Grian isn’t ready for the third game either and when it happens it’s all he can do not to scream. He has a soulmate they tell him, Someone who makes you complete. And of course they pair him with Scar who he continues to push away. They manage to be the last greens but their deaths come soon after, TNT, zombies, and the warden. Grian wakes up again in his sun colored bed in the winner’s void. This time he waits out the rest of the game in the mural room. As soon as the painting forms he runs out and greets the two other people. Pearl is sitting on one of the patches of snow that now litters the ground and Scott is in his bed. With a glance at the sky he sees that the purple sun is no longer in the center and that it now shares the sky with a regular moon. Scott comes out of the building and they help Pearl up and show her around.

Her painting is in a horror film style and it shows her riding on a wolf with a yellow collar. In her hand there’s a shattered green heart with a broken string, slowly changing to yellow and then red, attached and in the other there’s a bloodied diamond sythe. The moon is at the upper center. Just like the others there are eyes opening around her in the glass. Once again there’s  a caption, The Moon. The three of them leave that room and quickly go to the new one. They show Pearl her new room which is spread out with a desk in one corner and a lofted bed with a hammock underneath, moons decorating it and a moss pet on a shelf. There’s also a plush of her dog Tilly.

When the three of them sit back down in the now three chairs in the main room she speaks up, “I’m sorry Scott.”

“It’s fine,” he says, “I already won once and this is still a half win for me. It was my fault really.”

-

The fourth time that a game occurs he half expects it. Similarly to the other games they split off and Grian once again pushes Scar away. He stays with the bad boys and when they both die he joins the nosey neighbors. He watches the other winners closely. He sees Scott team up with Martyn despite their past and when he asks why Scott he explains the reasoning, We remember it but he doesn’t, we can’t push people away for something they don’t remember. You’ve teamed with him before and you remembered it when you did. This isn’t that much different. Ha! That’s awfully poetic for someone who spent almost the entirety of the last game pushing someone away. In any case it’s too late for him to stop pushing Scar away now.

After his final death Grian wakes up in his bed again and lays in it until he hears Pearl’s footsteps in the main room. He explains to her that he’s gonna wait for the new winner in the room with the stained glass and she agrees to join him. They sit in silence and wait for a while until they hear a noise from a different room and exit. They see Scott walking into the living room with a strange look in his eyes, “He’ll be here soon.”

Just as promised soon after Scott arrived another door is added to the room and they walk outside and see a yellow version of the planet Mars in the sky. The terrain in front of the house has also gained a tropical coast lined with driftwood and coral. The building now has coral growing up the sides and intertwining with the vines. Standing near them is a very frazzled Martyn. The sight of him is enough to make Grian blood boil but he thinks about what Scott said and tries to calm down. He’s the first person to walk up, “Hello Martyn.”

“Ha! This isn’t real is it?”

“What-“

“You all died, I killed you!”

Scott steps forward, “Martyn are you-“

Martyn passes a line into hysteria and soon passes out so the three of them pick him up and slowly carry him to his new bedroom where they place him on a small bed. It’s a spacious area with an axe sitting in one corner and a pile of different headbands on a table. On the wall there is a Dogwarts banner and a broken hearts club flier. They lay him down in a bed and quietly exit the room. The trio walks across the dining room and Grian opens the door to the art room.

Inside there is yet another painting this time in a style that he can’t quite place. It depicts Martyn standing at the world’s spawn with a sword and an empty bucket. He looks like he’s going insane and in the background there’s a dead Impulse who’s bleeding out and Scott who lays in a pool of lava. Behind Martyn’s head is Mars and all of the glass has random red splatters. There are eyes in even more spaces on his and there are also yellow ears hidden around it. Logically the caption under his mural reads, Mars.

-

During the next game Grian can see even more of their influence. At the world’s spawn there is a large statue of a person with a very familiar symbol on its face. He doesn’t team up with Scar this time but he doesn’t push him away as much. Still nothing really changes, this time he teams up with Cleo and Etho. Things are alright but still it’s nothing unusual. He goes through his three lives and then he wakes up back in his bed except now his room has a photo of his last team in a frame and things from the last few games are there too. A spy glass on a shelf, a goat horn next to it, and a pair of sunglasses. When he gets up he opens the door and sees Martyn sitting with tea, he looks disheveled. To be fair he did go slightly crazy after the last game and seemed to be in a coma like state for the week that they remained in the void until going back to their respective worlds. Maybe he needs someone to talk to. Grian starts talking while pulling up a chair., “You good Martyn?”

“No.” He responds flatly.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Why…” Martyn asks, “Why are you so willing to talk to me after what happened during Third Life?”

“Up until recently you didn’t remember, I couldn’t really blame you.”

“Ren…” Martyn says under his breath, “Why wasn’t he there?”

“I’m not sure… It just happens sometimes. Like how Pearl wasn’t in Third Life, and Lizzie and Mumbo have only been in two games. Or how this was Gem’s first.”

…

“Well I’ll leave you here. I’m gonna go wait for the next mural to form.”

Grian leaves the room and walks onto the shining path in the void. He positions himself in front of the area where the next painting will form. Slowly over the next few days or so Martyn decides to join him, but for some reason neither Pearl nor Scott arrive until the last day of the game. First Scott gets there and joins them explaining that he let Gem kill him in hopes of her winning. Then a few hours later Pearl gets there, she says she died of fall damage and that the next winner should be there any moment. Just as she promised, Grian sees the mural form, it’s someone very familiar. On the new mural there stands a person with brown hair and scarred skin pressing the succeed button. He’s wearing a purple cloak with the hood over his head and the edge embroidered with poppies and lilacs. On the edges of the painting there are sunflowers growing and behind him is the secret keeper. The caption reads, The Earth.

The others have barely had time to process what this means when Grian bolts up and out of the door he dashes through the living room and out onto the new porch. He narrowly avoids running into the railing that borders the area and runs out into the sand now sprouting with sunflowers, lilacs, and poppies. Grian locks his eyes on Scar and suddenly freezes. Once again the voices taunt him, Do you really think that he wants to be around you after all that you’ve done? He doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. Grian takes a hesitant step backwards as Scar looks up at him from where he’s sitting in a patch of grass. Then Grian turns and runs as tears start streaming from his eyes. He runs back up the stairs to the porch and back through the front down, almost running into the others. He turns straight to his left and bursts through his bedroom door, slamming it shut behind him. He flies onto his bed and hides under the blanket until his hyperventilating causes him to have to pull the blanket off of his head. He turns his back to the door and faces the wall, he knows. Scar remembers now and Grian has to try and make amends but how can he after everything that he’s put Scar through.

Knock, knock, knock. “Grian? Can I come in?” Scar asks. At Grian’s lack of response he continues talking, “It’s alright if you don’t want me to. You know it’s funny to remember all of these things now. Things make a lot more sense at least.”

…

“You don’t have to come out but if you need to talk I’ll be in my room.”

Scar leaves Grian’s room and Grian hears his footsteps fade away. He lays on top of his loft for awhile until he can’t think while being there any longer. He climbs down from his bed and leaves his room but through the window instead of the door. Grian walks over to a patch of the ground with a large amount of flowers growing in it. He lays down and breathes.

-

Scar’s hand presses the button and he’s teleported away from the secret keeper. He finds himself sitting in a patch of grass, in front of him there’s a house that resembles the one that he now remembers sharing with Grian, except for the fact that it has spruce parts with vines and coral growing on the sides. There’s an expanse of red-orange sand around him with spruce trees here and there along with patches of powdered snow and clumps of poppies, lilacs, and sunflowers growing. To his left there’s a beach covered in driftwood and dead coral. He hears running and looks up to find Grian coming towards him but then he stops with his eyes flashing a strange look in them. Grian turns away from Scar and runs off, the other winners come out of the building and help Scar up. They give him a tour of the place but nothing really stands out to him. Afterwards he walks over and knocks on Grian’s door. “Grian? Can I come in?” No response, “It’s alright if you don’t want me to. You know it’s funny to remember all of these things now. Things make a lot more sense at least.”

…

“You don’t have to come out but if you need to talk I’ll be in my room.” He walks over to his room which turns out to be a small area with a bed in one corner and a bookshelf in the other. A pizza banner hangs on the wall and on the shelf there’s a statue of Jellie, a collection of crystals, and a clock. On one wall there’s a large window with floral engravings and through it Scar sees Grian jump out of his window and go to lay down in a patch of plants. Scar leaves his room and walks over to where Grian is sitting, he sits down next to him but Grian doesn’t say anything, so Scar does. “It’s a nice view from here.”

“I guess so.”

…

“Scar, why are you so casual about this?”

“About what?”

“About all of this! About us.”

“Is there something to not be casual about?”

“Yes! I mean I just- ever since I killed you in Third Life I’ve regretted it and know you remember it and you’re just acting like nothing happened.” Grian exclaims and when Scar doesn’t say anything he continues, “And then I spent three games pushing you away and I hurt you and you don’t seem to think that much about it.”

“I don’t.”

“What.”

“I don’t think about it, it's as simple as that. Sure you made a mistake but all of us do, you took my final life in Third Life but I’m happy that you won that game. And sure you pushed me away in the other games but I don’t blame you, you were trying not to hurt me again. You just didn’t go about it in the right way.”

“Scar- I- Why?” He asks.

“Why what? Why am I forgiving you? It’s because you deserve it.”

“No I don’t, Scar I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

He turns and looks at Grian, “Listen to me G,” Scar says as he picks up Grian’s hands, “Yes you do. I forgive you, I forgive everyone. I forgive Ren and Martyn and Joel and Etho. But I especially forgive you.”

Tears start to build in Grian’s eyes again and he turns away to wipe them, “But what if I don’t Scar? What if I just can’t forgive myself for everything that I’ve done?”

“Oh G…” Scar wraps his arm around him and Grian lays his head down on Scar’s shoulder, “You just have to let it go.”

“I- Thanks.”