#Can’t believe cocoon won the war

[moonilit]

if Im choosing who kill me Im going with Pulse Fal’ Cie, at least I get to strike a pose and get a really cool sculpture instead of the absolute disgrace Dahj and Cid got

[plantfeed]

head already tossing, alma interjects a little early, eager to make her point. “they can’t bulldoze it. it’s a listed building. unless war, plague, or tragedy strikes, this place is practically invulnerable.” or so she likes to think ; but the truth is, empires had fallen, buildings would do the same. putnam ranch itself, while it felt like a fortress, was only as strong as it’s weakest brick. “this building was erected before we were born and i’d wager it’ll stand long after we’re buried six feet beneath the sod. it’s a protected historic site.” she’s built her whole life around art, around history ━ for that to crumble around her would be a crying shame. honestly, it’s a bit of a downer. “yes, shall we?” alma concedes, gathering up the petticoats of what her mother had affectionately referred to as her ‘catholic propaganda’ gown, a dazzling halo of pale organza and sacred heart embroidered tulle. abandoning her wine ( she’ll claim another from a lover or else attempt to tackle the ruthless cornucopia of the open bar ) alma takes lydia’s free hand in her gloved one and shoulders her way towards the bathroom. “god. it’s so stuffy out there i could die. i love a corset, and my tits look great, but i don’t half feel like i want to peel it off and just breathe.” she feels like keira knightley in pirates of the caribbean, fainting off the side of the military fort, when the fantasy she craves is being keira knightley fucked against the library shelves in atonement, only in alma's version they at least get to finish, dewy skinned and high, sweaty and smelling of it rather than interrupted by a conniving little rat. fuck saoirse ronan ━ alma would’ve eaten that role alive. part of alma believes, in the dark depths of her ego, that had she been briony, she’d not only have been nominated at thirteen years old, but have won the oscar, too. devoured and left no crumbs. “are you hooking up with anyone tonight?” alma asks, once the two of them are shielded inside the bathroom, cocooned in a womb away from the rest of the world, where secrets are exchanged like a twenty dollar note with which to snort lines from a basin. “might fuck monty,” alma admits with a sly smirk. “haven't decided. just feels like it could be a laugh.” rarely does alma do anything 'for a laugh', usually so calculated, so precise, but this particular conquest has been on the cards for a while, though monty feels like an equal rather than a plaything, and that scares her. “reckon they're worth my time?” the only opinion that really matters, of course, is her own ━ but she's spent so long relying only on herself that sometimes it's nice to gossip and feel like a regular girl.

"i'm afraid that would mean using their brains to organize this." an easy response, her arms crossed similarly as her gaze strokes the heads of every patron; always on the lookout for someone of interest - but everyone so utterly disappointing. how is she supposed to command a crowd, if they're all so blinded? "it's terrible, really - so much potential just gone to waste. in a couple years they'll probably bulldoze this entire building, and all of it's historical meaning, or like - whatever - and replace it with a super - mart. it's downright tragic, but that's what happens when visionaries aren't present in the formation of a town. you get destroyed history and corporate franchises. ugh - how dreadfully depressing. i'm going to do a line in the bathroom, do you care to join me?"

[kellanswritingblog]

Revelations

During a moment of respite as they devise their plan of attack in this strange new war, Zolf has some startling realizations regarding his feelings toward Wilde and how drastically they've changed.

1001 words, no warnings

Continue reading below, or head on over to AO3! 

Zolf awoke to the sound of the door creaking open, and he immediately reached for his glaive at the side of the bed.

But it wasn’t there.

And it wasn’t his bed.

Glancing around hastily, he noticed piles of paperwork around him, a blanket tossed over him, and that the bedroom he found himself in was Wilde’s.

It all came back to him in an instant: a late night of organizing their troops and intel across continents and trying to figure out how to combat an enemy they couldn’t see before it was too late, their efforts only concluding when exhaustion finally won out for the evening.

Or, more accurately, Zolf had passed out at Wilde’s side, atop a pile of research notes that had been carefully assembled and transported to their base in Japan.  He may have drooled on them a little bit.  He definitely snored.

He’d awoken at one point throughout the night to find a blanket carefully placed atop him; something Wilde must have done before he himself fell asleep beside Zolf and inside a more organized cocoon of files.  Wilde’s hand stretched out across the space between them, as if to reach for Zolf but falling short.

Still drowsy and only half-awake, Zolf had reached back for him, tucking himself into Oscar’s open arms and burying his face into his chest.  In the dim light of the room, Zolf could see a smile on Oscar’s face, the scar buried and forgotten in a plush pillow, and a contented murmur interrupted his quiet snoring.

And in the morning, the door creaking open, Zolf remembered all of this.  The space beside him was empty, and this time it was his arm stretched out, reaching for someone who wasn’t there.

Wilde stood in the doorway, a tray in his arms full of a breakfast that sent the most enticing aromas across the room.

“Good morning,” Wilde said, and Zolf sat up with a grumble.

“Morning.  Did you… make breakfast?”

“I did my best.  I am a man of many talents, after all.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Zolf teased as he snatched a piece of bacon off of the plate he was presented.

Without warning, Wilde interrupted Zolf’s breakfast by kissing him, quickly but firmly, and causing him to drop his bacon.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Was Zolf shaking?  And also completely frozen in place?  He wasn’t sure how those two things interacted, but he felt himself do both of them at the same time.

“What?  What was…?  What was that?”  He stammered.

“I’m… sorry?  If I overstepped my bounds?”

Zolf scanned Wilde’s face.  He waited with what almost looked like nervousness for Zolf’s response.

“I just…”  Zolf found words lacking and leaned up from his place in bed so that he could reach Oscar’s face, tugging him in for another kiss, fingers lacing through his perfect hair.

“Now that’s more like it,” Oscar said with a smile and pressed his forehead to Zolf’s.

“I just didn’t expect it,” Zolf admitted.  “And part of me was terrified of it.  You are a patronizing jerk most of the time.”

They both chuckled and then broke apart, Wilde grabbing his own plate of breakfast and crawling into bed beside Zolf.

Zolf reached for his bacon but dropped it again as he had the most startling realization of them all.

“I can’t believe I’m falling for someone who slept with Bertie.”

Wilde just shrugged.  “Can you blame me?  The man had many, many faults, but he was built like a perfectly sculpted statue.”

“That’s a… surprisingly accurate assessment,” Zolf remarked as he recalled that time in Other London when Bertie literally disguised himself as a statue to distract those guards.  And how they’d gotten Brutor out of the deal.

Things had changed a lot since then.

They finished off their breakfasts in relative silence, ignoring the scattered remnants of a war’s paperwork around them, and instead focusing on just being together, this rare moment of respite.

As he finished off his last piece of sausage, Wilde sighed and stood from bed.

“You have a meeting soon, right?”  Zolf asked.  He had his own important work to get to, but thankfully it had less to do with interpersonal skills.  Though, for those on the other end of Wilde’s meetings, they might have rather negotiated with Zolf.

He nodded and gathered up a fresh set of clothes from his closet.  Before he headed to the door, he stepped back to Zolf’s side and kissed him again, slower this time.  The world was crashing down around them, but they could spare one precious moment for themselves.

With that, he made his way out of the room, only stopping when Zolf called for him.

“Hey, Wilde?”

“Hm?”

“You want to know one of the first things I knew about you?  Something that has been proven right time and time again?”

“That I’m a patronizing jerk?”  Wilde smirked as he turned back to Zolf.

“Well, that too.  But-”

“Please don’t get sentimental on me.  It doesn’t suit you.”  Despite his insistence, his eyes half-begged for a sappy remark from Zolf.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to get it.

“You absolutely do have a really nice bum.”

Wilde laughed and said nothing more as he made his way out of the room, shaking his hips a little more excessively than necessary as he left, entirely for Zolf’s benefit.

Shortly after, Zolf pried himself from bed and got ready for the day.  He wondered if Wilde would mind if he slept there again that night, or if he would have to come up with some excuse, some more paperwork that just had to get done.  Wilde would see right through that, but Zolf doubted he would stop him.  The feeling of sleeping beside him, the feeling of being wrapped in his arms, the feeling of kissing him…

Things really had changed.  Most things for the worse.  But his relationship with Wilde?

Zolf firmly believed that had changed for the better.

[wizardnuke]

Tony Stark saved them all, in the end. It was fitting that this protector, who had created himself amidst pain and fire and desperation so long ago, was their saving grace now.

When he'd been found on that lonely spaceship with Nebula by his side, he'd been half dead and delirious with starvation and lack of oxygen. But he'd been alive. His eyes had been wild with grief and rage and a thousand terrible things that the Avengers had never known he was capable of expressing, never mind while unable to stand or choke out a few words. Even then, he was fighting. Something had happened when he'd disappeared, and now all that was left of him was terrifying intelligence and a heartless anger that shook everyone who had known him before to their core.

Because Tony? Tony was kind. He was good. He had the means and the mind to become deadlier than anyone had ever seen. He could've made Thanos seem like a spoiled toddler. Despite that, despite who he could have become, he became great. He became damn near unstoppable, created an arc reactor from a bucket of scraps and a new element and a thousand ways of improving the world through technology.

His entire purpose as a superhero was to atone for his sins, and by whatever deities there were, he would do so more spectacularly than anyone had ever done before or would ever do.

Steve and Bucky weren't stupid enough to believe they’d truly won the fight in Siberia. Tony could have murdered them both in seconds. If Tony had really, really wanted the Rogue Avengers out of the picture they never would have been seen again. But he didn't do that. He gave them what was basically a warning and they ran, because Tony Stark wasn't someone you fucked with by any means and they knew it.

But now?

He'd lost his surrogate son. He'd lost his team. He'd lost the battle that had meant the most to the universe and now there was no room in his heart for kindness, not when the being who had ripped away so much from everyone was still out there with his crimes unpaid for. Tony Stark didn't lose.

When Tony recovered from his injuries, he went to Steve Rogers. They weren't close to a match without their armor, and not close to the same height, either, but Tony had an air of command that Steve had never been able to recreate.

“Captain,” he'd said, with a cold, shark-like smile, “I am taking over your abandoned position as the leader of the Avengers.”

“He can't do that,” Sam said.

Steve didn't hesitate. He knew his limits now, and he knew Tony's. This was not a battle he needed to win, not after he'd lost the one that had mattered the most. He wouldn't have fought it either way. “We look forward to serving under you.”

Then Tony was gone. The Rogue Avengers that had known him before were silent as the newer members protested.

So, in the end, it was no surprise that Tony Stark was the one who defeated Thanos.

The final fight was hard won. It was a terrifying show of strength, strategy, and talent, with explosions rocking the ground and the air, and a thousand enemies per Avenger. Captain Marvel was a brutal lightshow, blinding light and searing heat. Widow and Hawkeye fought in tandem. Scarlet Witch was unrecognizable in a cocoon of red light, Ant-Man was impossibly fast, Rescue and War Machine rained hell upon every alien that came within a thousand yards of them. No holds were barred, and every Avengers’ actions were laced with desperation and fury.

The battle raged for days. They lost Widow, Rescue was knocked out of the air, and the Winter Soldier was incapacitated. Captain America took a hard hit to the head, but he blatantly refused to step down despite Iron Man's orders. Everyone was exhausted. Their objective was to separate Thanos from his army, but the army just kept coming, and Iron Man made a suicidal decision that saved them all.

He rocketed at the Titan with what would be reckless abandon in anyone aside from Tony. He calculated variables and possibilities in milliseconds and acted accordingly, ruthless in his rage. Thanos wasn't terrified enough.

The fight was so terrible that the army and Avengers stopped as one to watch their commanders. Iron Man was seamlessly graceful, a bolt of pure power against Thanos’ rough actions. He fought with the power, the emotion, the force of the entire devastated universe in his maneuvers.

Iron Man shot towards Thanos’ head, there was a deafening explosion, then-

Then.

Iron Man marched out of the ashes with a gleaming golden gauntlet on his hand and nothing but grim purpose in his stance.

He had finally saved more lives than he had taken.

[imagine-darksiders]

imagine azreal developing a relationship with a dead human who finds out what he did and his reaction to them feeling utterly betrayed

He tells you. 

Not because he wanted to, but because if anyone deserves to know the truth, it’s you. He’s never been a very good liar. 

Darkness had already fallen in the Dead Lands, leaving only pale, green hanging lanterns to illuminate the Eternal Throne’s courtyard and cast everything in an eerier light than it’s used to. Although night has long since fallen and most of the undead residents have retired to their quarters, finished with their duties for the day, there’s one who remains, sitting on rickety, wooden steps that lead up to the throne room, picking at the dead skin around their knuckles. 

You’re only a recently deceased. A couple of decades or so, and you’re still getting used to being undead. It wasn’t so bad after a while, especially once you met Azrael and started one of the biggest scandals in the history of Heaven. 

An angel and an undead - together? 

More than just a few eyebrows were raised. 

You were lucky that Azrael’s standing - and your reputation for being the Lord of Bone’s unofficial favourite - provided enough protection for you both. Nobody would touch you, not even angelic zealots. 

But tonight, your mind is far from your strange relationship with an archangel. Tonight, it’s preoccupied by the news that came about an hour before sunset from a dishevelled and frantic Ostegoth. Under normal circumstances, the old goat brought glad tidings. Tonight however, he came to deliver a blow that brought you to your knees. 

Humanity is….gone. 

Earth is gone. Lost to the demon hordes who invaded without warning and tore the planet asunder. 

Mankind didn’t stand a chance. 

Distraught, confused, filled with more questions than you knew what to do with, you slumped onto the stairs and there, you’ve stayed, staring dead-eyed into nothingness. Draven tried to comfort you, of course. But he’s been dead for too long. He’s forgotten the love he used to have for his own kind and so, he left you alone to grieve. All you could do was sit there, willing your decaying body to regrow it’s tear ducts so that you might be afforded the satisfaction of being able to cry. 

Around you, the old, floating ship creaks and groans softly, the only noise to break the heavy silence that’s settled like snow over the courtyard. Until….

“Angel scum! State your business!”

Slowly, your baleful eyes blink, honing in on their surroundings again as your quiet rumination is interrupted by a sudden shout from one of the guards.

An angel in the Eternal Throne? 

It isn’t just a rare sight, it’s damn near unheard of.

Before Corruption blocked the way, you would come and go freely from The Dead Plains to the White City to visit Azrael in his tower. You enjoyed the change of scenery, and the look on the guards’ faces when an undead turns up at the pearly gates never fails to delight. 

So when Azrael - of all angels - glided in through the entrance, you already knew something wasn’t right, even before you noticed the look on his face. He never comes here. 

The sight of him is enough to drag you momentarily from the dark pit you’ve been swallowed up by. 

“Azrael!” You’re on your feet in a flash, sprinting across the training circle towards the gate and almost throwing Samson out of the way. The undead guard reaches out to haul you back, but falters as you leap up at the robed figure and throw your arms around his neck, no longer self conscious about the old, musty smell that seems to linger about you persistently. 

“You heard about Earth?” you choke, burying your nasal bone into soft, white hair. 

That must be why he’s come here. Why else would he come all this way other than to offer you comfort? He’s always trying to look after you, even when you don’t want him to. 

Wings as pristine and white as ever, in spite of the darkness, sweep around to his front, cocooning you in a gentle embrace and his arms cling to your back, slender fingers finding the notches of your exposed spine and sliding between them. 

“Y/n…” Something is definitely wrong. His voice is strained and frail, as though he’s afraid of using it. “Please, I must speak with you swiftly. Time is of the essence.”

Brow bones knitting together, you pull away and drop back onto the ground to regard him properly. “What is it?” 

Azrael’s eyes dart over to Samson, whose fingers are curled threateningly around the hilt of his sword. “Ah..It is also a matter of privacy.”

You throw Samson an apologetic look and take up Azrael’s hand, leading him back across the courtyard in the direction of the undercroft. “Sorry Sam. Cover for me?” 

The old guard glares mistrustfully at the angel, teeth working together like a grindstone. But he owes you for not ratting him out when the Chancellor demanded to know who filled his quarters with broodlings. So, begrudgingly, he releases his weapon with a huff and grunts, “Fine.” 

“Thanks Sam.” You flash him a skeletal grin, which he waves away and goes back to leaning grumpily against the wooden beam he’d previously occupied, mumbling something about ‘kids these days.’ 

—-

Down in the undercroft, you spin around to face the angel, stepping closer to his chest and giving him a weary smile. “I’m glad you’re here,” you murmur, “I could really use a friend right now.”

Suddenly, Azrael tugs himself out of your grip and drifts back a few steps, glancing around, warily studying the shadows that remain untouched by lamp light. “Az?” You tilt your head to the side. “Is something wrong?” 

His head falls to his chest for a moment before he looks up and purses his lips into a thin line, staring intently at you. “Earth….” is all he utters. 

“Y-yeah…Earth. I know what happened….Ostegoth told me.” 

To your surprise, Azrael shakes his head. “No, you don’t….you can’t know what happened - what really happened.” 

At the sight of your befuddled expression, he exhales softly and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I have to tell you something. Before I’m….” Azrael’s eyes open, sad and drooping like his wings. “I know what happened to Earth. And it isn’t what you’ve been told.”

“What are you talking about?” You reach out to grasp his hand but when you do, he flinches away, shaking his head again. 

“I…nearly daren’t come here to tell you…I’m only putting you in more danger by doing so but if anyone deserves to know the truth, it’s you.” 

“Azrael,” you back away from him. The hushed tone, the darting eyes, the fact that he came here…. “Az, you’re scaring me.”

“It’s my fault,” he whispers, quieter than the breath of a ghost. 

In an instant, you jump to comfort, because that’s what you do. It’s what you always do when he’s in some kind of distress. All you seem to care about is soothing the turmoil of his soul. Creator above, he doesn’t deserve you. 

“No, no,” you murmur, sweeping forwards to lift one of his wings out of the dust, hooking it over your arm and stroking the ruffled feathers down with your other hand. “I don’t know what happened, but it’s not your fault.” 

He almost laughs aloud. How could you know? 

How could you possibly know..

In as soft a voice as he can, terrified that ears might be listening even down here, he tells you, “Abaddon…came to me. He had a plan, to break the seven seals. To begin the End War-” He looks at you like a man on the brink of madness. “-before its time.” 

You don’t like where this is going. Letting go of the angel’s wing, you let your arms drop to the sides but don’t say anything, too enraptured by his urgency to interrupt. He supposes he ought to be grateful. “We were only supposed to destroy the Dark Ones….Earth was never meant to suffer so….” 

Your jaw clenches tightly. “We? What do you mean ‘we?’ Did Abaddon start the war? Are you protecting him?” The angelic commander and Azrael had always been close friends.

“He wanted to win the war. He began us on this path but I am not protecting him, I -”

Suddenly, you interrupt, carding your fingers through non-existent hair, a hysterical laugh bubbling up your throat. “Azrael, if he broke the seals, then he’s…my god, he’s accountable for the genocide of my entire-!”

“I’M THE ONE WHO BROKE THE SEALS!” 

Azrael’s shout startles you, in that he….never shouts. Never once in the years you’ve known him has the soft-spoken angel raised his voice. To hear him do so now almost shocks you more than what he’d actually said. 

Almost. 

“But they were reforged!” he continues, his hands now gracefully stretching out towards you through the gloom, only this time, it’s your turn to recoil. “We reforged the seals. All were to believe that Hell’s legions invaded the Earth, but Heaven’s hand delivered them to justice. We thought we were serving the light.”

His words suddenly click in your mind, fitting together like a puzzle piece. Slowly, you back away from him towards a corner, staring up into his silvery eyes with hurt dawning behind yours. 

“You…what did you say?” Your voice is quieter than a whisper. 

“I…broke…the seals,” he breathes raggedly, as though this is the first time he’s said it aloud and he’s only just realising the significance of what he’s done. “Abaddon asked me to, and I knew - I knew, it wouldn’t end the way he wanted it to….But, I did it anyway. Hell marched on Earth and won because of us….because of me…We were blinded by our own hubris.” His large wings droop miserably on the ground, stirring up dust with every twitch and flutter, sullying the once snow-white feathers. Azrael looks up at you then, his mouth opening, ready to speak. But whatever words he wants to say, he can’t seem to find. So instead, he bows his head and furrows his eyebrows, gently murmuring, “Y/n….I am so sorry.” 

There’s a tired rage swelling inside you. The kind of anger that occurs when you’ve been too trodden-down by bad things to have the energy to be destructive or wrathful. All that’s left is a fed up, exhausted fury and a terrible pain in your chest, where a heart once stood beating. 

“You should be.” Voice trembling, you turn your head and glare at the angel with cold hatred burning like a pyre in your white eyes. Even though he knows he has no right to be, he’s still taken aback. You’ve never looked so….frightening. Stringy hair - once so vibrant and full - now hangs limp over your skull, lips long having since rotted away to reveal a permanent grin that used to enchant him, but now only serves to disturb. “You knew,” you hiss dangerously. “You knew Earth wouldn’t survive if things went wrong..” 

Crestfallen, a mere shadow of the magnificent angel he used to be, Azrael nods. “I….I did.” 

In a flash, you’ve crossed the room again, slamming into the angel and pinning him against a wall, your arm across his throat and a blade pressed to his gut. But he doesn’t fight back. His eyes bore into yours, pleading. For what, exactly? Mercy? Deliverance? It’s difficult to know for sure, he looks so….

….sad. 

“Then why?” you wheeze, pressing harder into his neck, “Why would you….do it? My people are dead! Because of you.” The blade creaks under your crushing grip and tears at the fabric of his teal robes. “You’re a monster…I should kill you.” 

Patient, always so infinitely patient, Azrael sighs, slouching in your grip. “Perhaps…that would be best.” 

Snapping your teeth close enough to taste his flesh, you repeat, voice quavering, “I should kill you!”

….So why haven’t you yet?

Because this is the same angel who’d let you sit in his favourite chair and read books while he worked until the early hours of morning? The same angel who gently held you each and every time grief threatened to overtake you for the first decade following your death. The same one who carried you into his own bed chamber when you were mortally wounded by an angelic beast, his wings fluttering in distress as he tried to reassure you that you’d be alright. 

You lean closer, feeling the tip of your weapon finally break through the first layer of his delicate skin. The angel’s eyelid twitches, though otherwise, he doesn’t make a move to stop you. Your teeth bared mere inches from his face, your elbow cutting him off from taking a breath, you’re so close to just ending him, right here, right now. All those people, children, animals, the defenceless and innocent. They didn’t deserve to die, not like that. Someone has to pay!

Bellowing out an agonised roar, you suddenly yank the sword out of his stomach and hurl it to your right, hearing the resounding ‘thwack’ as it sticks into a wooden beam. At the same time, you drop your other arm to grab at his collar and throw him forcefully towards the stairs. His wings brush you as he stumbles to stay upright and you have to resist the urge to tear out some of his feathers. Azrael turns to face you, genuine surprise flickering across his features. ‘Audacious prick.’

Seething, you jab a finger up at his face. “You were supposed to be the good one. The….the one good thing I had, and now I-” You cut yourself off with a sob, ironic, considering there are no tears to spill. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to feel your heart breaking, when it hasn’t even beat for thirty years?”

He dares to breathe your name but you shut him up with a firm hand held into the air, fingers splayed wide and eyes trained on the ground as you spit darkly, “Get out of my sight…..” 

Azrael hesitates, perhaps unsatisfied with the ending to your rendezvous. Well, what did he expect? Instant forgiveness? No, he’s too wise and too old to be so naive. More than likely, he has something he still wants to say. “Y/n, I need you to know that I-”

“I don’t want to hear it, you wretched man! I don’t want to see you, hear you, feel you. I’d cut out my heart if I thought it would help. To know that it used to love you?…I can’t bear it!”

“My friend-”

“I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND! Get out!”

“Please..” 

“GO!” 

Why is he still here? Doesn’t he realise you want nothing to do with him anymore?

After a long moment in which he simply stares at you, invisible tendrils of warm magic reaching out to brush tentatively at you only to be shoved away by your sheer force of will, the archangel turns, his foot finding the first step when he pauses. Without looking back at you, he calmly, measuredly murmurs, “One last time. I must tell you before I leave. It’ll kill me if I don’t…I love you.” 

Only a deafening, condemning silence greets his ears. A silence that tells him everything you have to say. His too-large heart swells and screeches, vying for the forgiveness it so desperately craves from the one it cares about most, but he says nothing further. 

With that, Azrael neatly folds his wings and walks, rather than flies up the steps and out into the courtyard, never to return. Maybe he could seek out the Keeper of Oblivion, beg to be cast into the inky void, if only to be spared the memory of the betrayal that darkened your pretty face. 

Only after several minutes have passed and the creaking of the ship can be heard over the frenzied screams in your mind do you allow yourself to collapse onto your knees, bones rattling noisily as they hit the dirt. Trembling fingers find your face and you hold them there, one hand clamped down over your mouth and the other gripping the side of your head. 

It’s morning when Draven finds you down in the dark, still in the same position and shaking like a dry, dead leaf. The undead blademaster hauls you into his arms and takes you back to your quarters, settling you on the dusty cot as he tries to coax a response out of you. But you don’t speak. You don’t say a word. 

For the life of you, you can’t fathom why you’d remain silent to protect a man you don’t love anymore.

[johobi]

When You Least Expect It | 08

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader x Taehyung 

Word count: 6.4k

Warnings: angsttttt, some vulgar language

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732419/navigate

A/N: Splitting the chapters won by literally one vote, lmao. Thank you to everyone who voted, and I hope those who voted for me to keep it as one chapter can enjoy it just as much. :((( 

Next: 09 || WYLEI Masterlist

You’re in love with your childhood friend, Taehyung. The problem is, you treasure your friendship with him far too much to ever risk losing it. Oh, and he’s quite the Casanova. At your wits’ end with feelings you can no longer hide as diligently as you once did, you ask him to set you up with someone, anyone, in a last-ditch attempt to avoid a heartbreaking conversation.

You moaned the words with an almost sexual fervency. “Oh, God, Tae, this is the absolute best.”

The picture you painted, however, couldn’t have been any less steamy. Rather, you were indiscernible as human, and instead resembled something akin to a synthetic fleece burrito. Taehyung, crunching chips with an open mouth and absent stare, reeled you closer by the arm slung around your shoulders.  “I knew you’d like it,” he mumbled, acknowledging you with a lax turn of his head. His eyes were a little slower to catch up, like this episode of Storage Wars could rival Greek tragedy for dramatic value. Belatedly, he granted your form – huddled tightly to his side – an appraising look. “You should wear it permanently.”

He was, of course, talking about the slanket he’d offhandedly gifted you upon your arrival at his apartment. On its presentation, your eyes had rolled into their sockets with an unnerving eroticism. Taehyung had stood there, bemused – likely a little scared – as you immediately flung away your coat and pulled the criminally soft wrap over your head, birthing yourself from the neck and sleeves, entering the world anew.

Maybe an exaggeration. You were, in any case, certainly snugger.

“I wish,” you croaked, the sum of your sodium-saturated snack consumption leaving your mouth as barren of moisture as a desert wasteland. “Someone would kidnap me and put me on the front of a flying bike.”

The reference wasn’t lost on Taehyung. “Just like the good ol’ days, huh?”

The memory was an intangible vapour lost to the abstract of the past, and yet, as he summoned it to you now, it was as if it had never been anywhere but at the back of your mind, awaiting his call. “I totally forgot we used to do that. You made a good ET.”

His downturned mouth pulled lower. “I don’t know why you always made me be ET.”

“Because you were the weird one, that’s why,” you grinned, reaching for another handful of health-averse treats. Taehyung wasn’t going to let that slight pass, apparently, because one moment you witnessed your hand outstretch, and the next, darkness devoured you. He eclipsed your face with the hood of your plushy covering. “Don’t use the slanket against me!” came your dampened protest, your unintelligibility cracking you into a fit of giggles that roasted you in the sweltering enclosure.

Brokering your freedom with a swipe at his face, you emerged from the cocoon a dazed, sweaty mess and slumped into the remedial coolness of his leather sofa. Taehyung, unperturbed by your scuffle, was immersed, again, more in reality TV than reality. Still, he continued your reminiscence. “I don’t know why I believed the bike would fly one day.”

Your chest heaved with a single, weary chuckle. “Because you were cute like that,” was the undisputable truth.  You observed the dappled plastering of his ceiling with a listless appreciation. “You believed it so much that, eventually, I started to believe it too.”

Taehyung’s head lolled lazily in your direction. Tremors of laughter rattled him when he caught sight of your sluggish, blanketed splaying. “Really? A cynic like you?”

You nodded minutely, numbed by the warmth of wine and exertion combined. “Yep, a cynic like me. That’s the power of Kim Taehyung.”

“I was convinced I had super powers, when I was a kid. Like I was some special snowflake,” he mused, clouding the sides of his wine glass with breath as he took a hearty gulp. It was impossible not to stare when he pulled away. Not when his tongue swabbed, so indecently, at what lingered to stain his lips. “I guess, when you feel like that freak, you hope, at least, it’s for something.”

The amusement arching your features mellowed. “You did have super powers,” you attested, hunching forward to refill your own glass. A few weeks ago, you would’ve balked at the idea of risking your uninhibited mouth listing every which way you wanted to fuck him. And although those thoughts maintained a significant presence still, they’d been diminished an encouraging amount by your textual entanglements with Jungkook. It was a peculiar notion, for sure, that you were preoccupied more with the promise of your next date with him and what it would bring, than the muse of the Gods that sat next to you.

Okay, well, not entirely.

Not entirely, when Taehyung was no longer engrossing himself in TV, but burying you under the weight of his full attention, beckoning you to calamity in the depths of his murky eyes. This picture of him, heavy-lidded and mildly inebriated, was how you’d – time and again, to your immense shame – envisioned Taehyung in many of your post-coital fantasies.

Okay, not at all.

A sole brow arched. “I did? And I didn’t know about them? Ooh—” Taehyung lurched closer, his impressive wingspan seizing half the couch as he clutched animatedly at its sides. “Am I, like, a time-traveller? That doesn’t know he can time travel until this very moment? Have you been meeting with later versions of me and that’s why I’m none-the-wiser? Oh my God—”

“No, Taehyung,” his off-tangent raving inspired a fond twitch of your lips. You weren’t entirely convinced that his spiel was farcical, though. Taehyung was easy to excite and gullible to a fault. “You don’t actually think—” faux concern rounded your eyes and mouth— “You know you’re not The Doctor, right?” you swept aside his bangs and smacked a heavy hand to his forehead, surveying the smooth expanse for fever. “You know your closet isn’t a TARDIS, yeah?”

A stream of air deflated him in defeat. He peeled away from your palm and into his cushioned nook. “Yeah, I know.”

“Plus, I sure as shit wouldn’t be your assistant. You’d be mine. But anyway—” 

It was the last thing you should’ve been doing, but you quaffed another mouthful of Rosé nevertheless. “Remember when I was in my last year of high school, and told you–drunk, of course– the evening before Valentine’s, that I’d never gotten a card? Because I thought none of the boys thought I was worth it? And you assured me that I would that year,” you poked an obstinate finger at him. “I’d never gotten one, ever, before that. Then, ‘lo and behold, I got one the next day! Those are the kind of super powers I’m talking about, Tae.”

His bastard, beautiful lips clung together tantalisingly at the corners as they opened. And then he deadpanned. “Really?”

Taehyung’s tone triggered a flurry of vacant blinking. “Really, what?”

The bowl of his wine glass narrowly escaped a beheading for all the force he clapped it onto the table with. “Oh, my God,” his torso shook with silent laughter. It was rather concerning how little sound he was emitting. “I can’t believe this,” he wheezed, throwing himself into the back of the couch with the vigour of someone unhinged from sobriety. “I actually can’t believe this,” he repeated ambiguously, ducking behind his slender fingers.

Your impatience and confusion manifested itself in the form of a testy huff. “Can’t believe what? Stop being a jackass, Tae.”

Stalwartly unforthcoming, you slapped his thigh out of irritation and to unfurl him from the hunched, snickering coil he had become. That was a mistake. Goddamn did even that most fleeting of contact set you all aquiver. He wore his denim wickedly tight.

Taehyung flinched inward on himself in that instinctual way men do when they think you’re going to focus your physical admonishment on their genitals. “I’m just—I can’t believe you never realised. After all this time, too.”

Your throat, raw from the abrasion of fried potato snacks, protested the growl building there. “Realised what, you fucker? Out with it.”

Unmasking a perplexed expression, Taehyung stared dumbly into middle distance. You could practically see him sifting through your innumerous memories together. His lips parted in a silent gasp of realisation. “So that’s why nothing changed afterwards. I thought you were so embarrassed that you just decided to pretend that it had never happened.”

That was his last chance.

You sprung up, a bat-winged silhouette of Red Riding Hood and towered over him, pressing the full weight of your bony knee into his thigh. He squirmed beneath the uncomfortable pressure of your punitive measures and waved his hands frantically. “Ow—okay, okay!”

You relented, but eyeballed him from above and behind crossed arms that demanded answers. “Well?”

Taehyung soothed his leg with brushes of his palm and a protruding lip, though he couldn’t maintain the surly expression for long. His mouth gave way to a showcase of pearly-whites. “I sent you the card.”

You flapped your arms once, like a flightless bird. You’d misheard that, right? “What?”

He poised a thumb to his chest, deliberately enunciating each word. “I,” withdrew it to jab a finger up at you, “sent you,” carved a rectangle out of the air with his index fingers, “the card. The Valentine’s card.”

Half-present, and half-adrift upon the winds of time sweeping you ten years prior, you recalled your discovery of the unassuming envelope, embellished by an inscrutable hand. You stood, torn between two time streams, watching your pestilent, unrequited love infect nostalgia.

With a flourish of his wrist, Taehyung had whipped the tablecloth clean from beneath you, and catalysed your subsequent topple. The impact scattered you into irretrievable pieces. “N-No, you didn’t,” you sputtered with a voice that wasn’t your own, with a mouth that moved apart from the rule of your brain. Distantly, you sensed Taehyung’s scrutiny, but God only knew what expressions he saw materialise. With a marked woodenness, you turned away from the man that debilitated you so and plopped – some distance away, like that would help – onto the sofa, like a marionette whose puppeteer no longer manipulated the strings of.

“Yes, I did,” Taehyung stated with a firmness bolstered by the depth of his baritone. “I told you I went through a—” he faltered somewhat, “—a phase.”

Four lines of text swam before your eyes with clarity. Four lines that had engrained themselves as precious reminders that there’d once been someone who valued you beyond the wet welcome between your legs. “Tell me what the card said, then.”

From your periphery, you saw Taehyung shrug one shoulder. “I don’t remember,” he muttered, though there was a strain to the words delivered.

“Then I don’t believe you. Stop ruining my precious memori—”

“Brittle shell, tender flesh

Near you, lungs are born afresh

Take this hand, possess this soul,

In these two arms is shelter, whole.”

Your jaw would lock if it remained as distended as it was. Taehyung had snatched your uttermost attention from the first line, but, quite at odds with you, the verse flowed from him with an aloofness you couldn’t comprehend.

Had he been so clueless?

Had he no idea how much the gesture had meant to you, during a time you’d felt at your most despicable?

How you had longed for the bard to whisk you away from those corrupt crowds; all those diabolical decisions?

Somehow, you found it in you to spit some venom. “God, that was cruel, Taehyung. What a fucking prank to pull.”

Resolutely glued to the TV, Taehyung only presented you with the most indecipherable of looks. No longer were his thoughts so readily available. “It wasn’t a prank. I told you, I was going through a thing at that time.”

A high-pitched bark. “Hah! A thing. You jerked off a few times, Taehyung,” the man in question’s face pinched a little at the rescindment of his shortened name. “I actually hoped this guy from the card was real, for a long time.”

“He was,” a gust of a sigh left him. “But that was a long time ago. You wouldn’t have spared me another look, anyway, I was only 15 at the time. I knew that, but I wanted you to feel a little better, at least.”

He was real?

He was real?

Taehyung?

All in a moment, your body, so faithfully constitute of flesh and bone up until this revelation, reduced into something altogether more gelatinous. It was incredibly difficult to smother the emerging quiver that threatened to expose you. And all attempts to summon Jungkook - kind, wondrous Jungkook - to the forefront of your mind were impeded by flashes of teenage sentiment, scribbled with a $2 biro.

All you could do was settle yourself somewhat with the truth of Taehyung’s words. At that point in time, you hadn’t ever considered Taehyung a viable hook-up. He’d been so cemented into some weird, sexless void of a platonic role that you wished upon wished he would return to now. Honestly, adolescent you had pinned all your hopes on the budding poet being the teacher you’d harboured a debilitating crush on.

Mr. Miller had been a man and a half, that’s for sure.

It occurred to you, then. “Your poetry was no joke. You wrote that at 15 years old?”

Taehyung sagged with released tension. He seemed to have been bracing himself for an incendiary reaction.  “Yeah, I spent ages on it.”

A wistful smile hitched up the corners of your mouth. “That’s really cute. Thank you,” you mumbled awkwardly, and you meant it. Looking past the tangle of your present-day feelings for him, you were able to see his intent unclouded. You tried not to dwell too much on the perceptiveness of his vision, though. That he saw you, with such lucidity, as the weak, vulnerable girl you tried so hard to mask. There was little room for alternative interpretation of his verse.

“Do you still have it?” he ventured out of the deep blue, and it began to irritate you how intensely he still scrutinised the TV.

“Yes,” you admitted, pulling your knees to your chest and draping your feet with a slanketed canopy. “I’m throwing it away as soon as I get home, now that I know who it’s from.”

“Wow,” Taehyung choked on his mirth. “Fucking rude.”

A change of subject was direly needed. “Why are we watching this? Put Netflix back on.”

“You know I like to know how much money they make!” he framed the objection with an appealing whine and an even more appealing pout. Luckily for you, even such indomitable charms were nothing in the face of your hatred for Storage Wars.

Your nostrils channelled a dubious snort. “It’s scripted, Tae, you know that,” you lurched for the remote lying vulnerable, but a ridiculously large, besocked foot landed on the table with a thump, rattling the contents atop. So blasé was the slight kick he delivered, nudging the prospect of Netflix out of reach.

So aggravating.

“It’s not,” Taehyung smirked, his twisting lips the only acknowledgement of the disrespect he’d so smugly dispensed.

Comically outraged, you lunged for the remote once more. “Get your stinky foot off the table! Gross.”

Somehow, despite his lack of fondness for all forms of physical activity besides bumping uglies, Taehyung was swifter than you to claim it. He swooped in with all the airborne dexterity of a bird of prey and held it far aloft in his perfectly manicured talons, taking to his feet to ensure that you wouldn’t get your way. The most infuriating aspect of his underhandedness, however, lay purely in the fact that he was still engrossed in that stupid fucking reality show. “It’s my table, I’ll do what I want,” he mumbled, indistinct, around a fistful of chips. One he’d deemed safe to dive in for when the bastard diverted your attention with some enthused finger-pointing. “Look! That guy’s gonna make so much, look at all those fucking retro comics.”

Successfully distracted and consequently enraged, you gave up ever being able to reach the suspended changer. You sank to the heels of your feet and glared at his profile. “Yeah, because they weren’t planted there, or anything.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that Top Gear is scripted, either,” he went on, fully flexing his capability to rile. The intermittent flicker of his devotedly worn indifference gave his ploy away. “Or Jersey Sh—”

Anyone walking in on the scene unfolding could have assumed that Taehyung was, in this very moment, being violently assailed by some cloak-toting cultist, and they’d only have been half wrong. You threw yourself onto his back, and like some gaudy, red phantasm, flapped your preternaturally webbed arms, stretching for your quarry from this more accessible vantage. “You said we could watch more Doctor Who!” you bellowed, the sudden introduction of your weight sending him off-kilter and veering to the side in his desperate attempts to avoid colliding with the coffee table. “We only got to the end of season four last time!”

Taehyung had been armed with some suitably smartass riposte, that much you were sure. However, you rendered him incapable of voicing it by the hand slapped over the bottom half of his face. One you used to gain leverage into another stretch.

Fucking hell, he had freakishly long arms.

The remote hovered, still, maddeningly out of retrieval range. And though you were loathe to admit it, your greatest ally was fast becoming your greatest impediment. Because despite appearances, the slanket didn’t bequeath to you the gift of flight. Rather, it limited your reach to a noticeable degree. You shrugged the defector over your head and let it drop down your back.

Who knew cheap, faux material and varnished hardwood weren’t partners in traction?

A panicked gasp tore from Taehyung when his foot snagged the overhang of your fleecy parachute. The earth’s pull further compelled his submission when you chose that most inopportune of moments to make an ambitious lunge at his wrist. A sudden weightlessness embraced you as he plummeted, face-first, to the floor. “Fuck!” you screamed, crippled into passivity by mental images of the broken nose and ribs he would surely sustain.

Fortunately, for someone as beauteous as him, his face wasn’t the first part of him to make impact. He bore the brunt of the force with his elbows and a winded grunt, which he drew immediately beneath to soothe, bending below you concave. Well, as concave as he could become with you still saddled atop your fallen steed.

Muted panic set in with the ebb of adrenalin. Your belated assessment was that burrowing your knees into the small of his back probably wasn’t a comfort. And so you took initiative - for once in your life - employing his ass as a makeshift seat and planting one either side of his torso. Inclining toward him, you shooed away the muss of hair masking his scrunched features. Seeing him so anguished sent your anxiety rocketing. “Oh, Jesus, I’m so sorry, Tae,” you whimpered pathetically. “Are you okay? Sh-Should I call someone?”

“Ungh—no, I’m—fine,” was his crack at stoicism, heaved between revealing gasps. “Just, let me—” he groaned, rotating under you to a more comfortable position. Supine, now, and with the lines of a grimace carving their permanence into the crest of his nose, he breathed a little easier for the shift. “That’s better. Just let me get my breath.”

But you couldn’t get your own. Because it occurred to you, very much, with the tantalising twist of his body beneath your legs – and not to him, apparently, not just yet – that your crotches, now, were closer than they had ever been, separated only by the tease of double denim. Prompted by his perilous repositioning, you strained yourself to engage in some unsustainable, half-hovering, half-seated feat of quad strength that you were destined to fail. Your thighs and brain toiled alike trying to decide whether it would be better or worse to dismount. If you did, he might take note of your discomfort. If you didn’t, you were legitimately afraid he’d be lost to the flood from your petrified pussy. 

Unathletic and waning in stamina, your legs began to tremble with the duty they had been charged with.

They gave out, of course.

Your full weight landed on his groin, and with a stunned, reactive jerk, Taehyung folded in on that most precious of points against potential damage. Hands and legs flew to brace the unexpected load, his fingers rooting themselves to your hips with a vehemence that contused. His thighs were the sturdy bookend to your back that held you captive to the bruising, breath-stealing pressure. Your hands, however, had nowhere to go. You clasped them to your chest, wishing you could just disappear. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

Taehyung’s eyes were wider than saucers; dinner plates, even. No doubt they’d flown open in the dismay of having you pressed so adamantly to such a sensitive part.

A second passed, and then two.

But he didn’t release you.

You would have shifted uncomfortably, had the situation not been so inappropriate for such subconscious movement. “Uh, sorry, I’ll let you get up,” you offered again.

But he didn’t release you.

Instead, with a predatory narrowing of his eyes, he sunk his claws further into you. So much so, that your denim-clad curves strained past the gaps of his fingers.

Breath deserted you. Only a croak remained. “Tae?”

This moment, five years ago.

Here it was again.

Only, you didn’t topple into him.

Gravity failed, and he fell into you.

The last thing you saw was the alarming velocity with which his face neared yours, and then all was dark. Because as soon as your lips received that first touch of his generous mouth, your eyes closed with an innate understanding of what you were about to receive. Like it had been pre-determined; like your body had led its life waiting for this exact happening, groomed to take receipt of something so prized.

Taehyung kissed you with such unshackled ferocity that your back protested under the strain of his handling. Nothing could temper its complaints but the ten fingers that breached your shirt's flimsy barrier without resistance. His touch scalded as he roamed, grasping at your flesh like a carnivore starved. It was then, at the base of your spine, that his hands settled into an intimate kneading, and it was also then that confusion gave way to sense.

Because though it felt like time had stretched long — far beyond the span of human life – in the mere seconds that he’d seized you in a firepit of arms and prowling hands, it was still insufficient for your comprehending. Yes, cognition had been well and truly ousted, ejected by a potion of disbelief and fluster. A potion expertly concocted by the apothecary that sucked avidly at your bottom lip, tonguing for reciprocation.

The fragment of you that remained – against overwhelming odds – tethered to this earthly plane, was traitorously, indecently slow on the uptake.

And if you didn’t disengage now, it would soon be joining the rest of your rational mind. Another witting victim, lost to Taehyung’s thrall.

You unfastened your mouth to bark an exclamation you’d not yet formulated, but Taehyung commandeered the move for his own purposes. With a moan whose bass sent shudders through you like you were the mouthpiece of his most treasured instrument, he took ownership of the recesses of your mouth, dominating your tongue into subservience with every satin slide.

Jungkook was far more yielding to your influence than Taehyung. This, here, was a man that commanded obedience. And he did it all with wordless, hungry lips.

Oh, fuck.

Jungkook.

The swathe of stupefaction dispersed when the boy with bunny teeth materialised behind your eyelids. And though your hands were already on course to deter Taehyung from assimilating you altogether, he was the one to break your oral connection. “I-I’m—” his throaty splutterings lured open your eyes. His, however, were darting wildly to and fro, as though decrypting the most inscrutable of cyphers. You prayed he would have some success, because you were far from capable.

Taehyung lay like a slab of stone beneath you, barely breathing. “Noona,” he tried again, when a response was not forthcoming. The moniker no longer rang with an innocent affection; it had been dirtied, tainted by the tongue thrust into your mouth unbidden. “N-Noona—”

And then it hit you.

Oh, God. 

Oh, God.

What had he done? 

Every torturous tear, every painstaking step you’d taken to overcoming this—this all-consuming pining— had been for nothing. The two of you stood astride a line that was nothing, now, but a smudged indication of how things would never be the same again. Because this couldn’t have been anything more substantial to Taehyung than a drunken grope. Your years of watching him parade model after model of woman without as much as a lingering, loaded look in your direction, confirmed that. But to you, it was far more.

Too much more.

And so it was odd, looking upon the world, now. Nothing seemed quite the same anymore. Like colours had traded places, or been imbued with properties anew. Properties that were elusive to identification; unnervingly intangible. Everything seemed slightly out of place, and though you were certain nothing could have shifted, of its own volition, during your brief embroilment, the unsettling unfamiliarity of objects you’d seen time and again left you unsure.  

It was wholly unpleasant.

First kisses should paint the world technicolour. That’s what young women are always sold.

But for you, it was far the opposite.

All had now become dullened, muted. Tarred by the brush of an artist fond of the dreariest of shades. Colour bled from his canvas, as it did from your life.

With Taehyung’s curse of a kiss, you’d shifted to a dimension that, on its surface, was as misleadingly mundane as you’d ever known. But you weren’t so welcome here, nor wanted.

This wasn’t your home anymore.

And when Taehyung lifted his eyes to your face, your home wasn’t there anymore, either.

“I’m sorry, I—I don’t know what that was, I—” you’d not seen him so inept at forming words since childhood.

You could do nothing but stare at him without really seeing. Taehyung’s cock, snuggled perfectly to the seam containing your thumping core, both encouraged and discouraged you into standing. Its warm, swelling insistence was a compulsion, a choice. To stay, and be granted your heart’s desire, however fleeting. Or to go, and never look back at the anaemic scene, nor the man that stood in its ashen ruins.  

Something chose for you to stand, though your legs barely supported the decision. Your silence appeared to worsen his incoherency.

“____, I’m sorry, please. Look at me,” he urged, the velvety timbre to his voice fraying into desperation. “It was an accident, I didn’t plan to—I don’t know what happened.”

But you couldn’t.

You couldn’t, because it was a truth that one more look at him in his dishevelled, ready state would stir you into indecent action.

And you couldn’t, because he wasn’t your friend anymore. It wasn’t Tae.

This was Taehyung.

A man–an ideal–you’d long been infatuated with past what was healthy or sane. A man you had perched atop a pedestal in your idolatry, elevating him to some unmerited, God-like status. A man, that, despite the disparate aching of your nether regions, you were disappointed in for being, so absolutely, a man.

And a woman—a casualty—came to you then, skimming the outskirts of your mind like a banished spectre. "Poor Tara,” you whispered, two words you’d never envisioned leaving your mouth as a handheld pair. 

Taehyung hitched a pitch higher out of panic. “It didn’t mean anything, I swear to God. I swear to God, it meant nothing. Please, ____, look at me.”

It meant nothing.

It meant nothing?

An assertion that should have overjoyed you. And yet, it did nothing less than skewer your waning heart, demanding it suffer an excruciating, prolonged end.

It wasn’t much of a revelation, no. But it was agony all the same, because a mere sampling of his lips, a meagre whiff of his musk – so utterly Taehyung – would never be enough. And the only thing that had strengthened your fortitude in the face of such temptation had been your ignorance to his delectability.

And now you knew.

Ignorance was no longer bliss. No, bliss was partaking of his mouth-watering aroma, his luscious tang.

So, as much as you wanted it to mean nothing, you wanted it, more, to mean everything.

Tears slid so unobtrusively down your cheek that they only begged notice at the seam of your lips.  Raising a hand to your face in numbed confusion, the discovery of their presence was underwhelming. You were crying? But you were so serene inside. Accepting, even.

This was the end.

You pivoted lethargically toward him. “Alright,” you said simply, watching his face twist its way around a carousel of feeling.  Shock, that gave way to horror, that gave way to concern.

“No, it’s not,” Taehyung’s assertion wavered when you halted his approach with a calmly raised hand.

“It is. I’m going now,” you watched, out of body, this phantom of you, blank and flowing tears. “Good night, Taehyung.”

“Wait!” he plead, rounding on you with a blur of honeyed hair. Rather than exert the little energy you had left by raising your gaze to meet him, you watched, asunder, the way his throat bobbed around each vocalisation. “I don’t want you to leave until I know you’re okay. This—this was just—I don’t know—just completely out of the blue. God, ____, can you look at me? Please!”

At his urging, you did. But your eyes felt akin to lead bearings when they rolled with such difficulty to acknowledge him. “I understand. It’s fine.”

Whatever he saw there distressed him. “I-I’m going to ask Tara to move in with me,” he blurted, like this was supposed to pacify you. The gut-churning words, though, had no place in this conversation.

Erupting without notice, a potent rage wrested control from your resignation. “So? Why are you telling me that, Tae? What do you want me to do?!”

Taehyung had never been burned by such fire. His eyes shimmered with tears unspilled; diamonds you were spoiling for. “I-I don’t know,” he scrambled, searching your face for answers. But he would find none. Just an eerie placidity, disturbed only by the droplets that rolled, without end, down its surface. “I want us to be okay. I just want you to know that things won’t be different.”

“It feels pretty different to me, now that you’ve had your dick between my legs and your tongue down my throat,” you spat, and you nearly convinced yourself of the distaste with which you coated the exclamation. His manhandling of you had, of course, been nothing but delicious. “And I feel so fucking guilty, even when I tried so hard not to—”

“Not to what?” Taehyung interjected with a zeal that only stoked the flames of your wrath. And yet, you would have been incapable of concluding the utterance anyway.

Even now, you couldn’t admit to the one thing that had a place in this exchange. Surely, a better opportunity would never again present itself. Even now, in the aftermath of the irrefutably intimate moment that had transpired between you. And, yes, between you. Because although Taehyung was guilty of initiation, you had abetted the unsavoury act with your inaction.

And as much—as much—as it was so incredibly simple to convince yourself that you had merely been startled into unthinking, disarmed into paralysis, it could never be the whole truth. The anger that bubbled within was a testament not only—not even half—to what Taehyung had done. It was anger at yourself, at your willing complicity in his act of infidelity. You had been one second away—perhaps less—from allowing him to have you whole.

“What, exactly, are you trying to do, Tae?” you sighed, wearier on this day than all your previous years combined. “We had a bit to drink. You just wanna fuck and dump me like the rest of your girls, right? I must mean nothing more to you than that. Not if you’re just going to randomly seduce me when the mood takes you.”

Taehyung surged forward again, hands outstretched to, without a doubt, grapple you into a suffocating reassurance. And again, you stepped back. God, you’d never seem him so pale. “That’s not it at all, I swear to fucking God!”

Your response perfectly portrayed how little faith you had in receiving a credible answer. You granted him the most sluggish of shrugs. “What, then?”

“You mean more to me than any of them. Than anyone. I would never do that to you. I just—”

Again. “What?”

“I’m just tipsy, and, well—you were sitting on me, and, I don’t know—God, ____! What do you want me to say?” his reasoning was as disorderly as you’d been expecting.

You barged past his withering blockade, snatching your coat from the chair over which it was slung. Except, the material wouldn’t be moved more than a few inches from where it rested. Wheeling around, you bared gritted teeth in warning. “Let me go, Taehyung.”

His eyes swam afloat an ocean of regret, close to capsizing. And the only lifeline binding him to the surface lay in the silk lining of your coat his fingers were so forcibly entrenched in. “What do you want me to say?” the reiteration faltered on his tongue. It came softer; sincerer, this time. Beseeching, even. He looked precariously close to unravelling. 

He genuinely didn’t understand.

Taehyung still didn’t know.

“Just the truth,” was the only bone you were charitable enough to throw him.

Why, even now, did you pray to hear those most sacred of words fall from his lips? When the scope of your encounter went no more beyond a momentary lapse of judgement? And not even a sober one. The whole, unfortunate thing had been spurred into being by an ill-advised tipple. 

Why were you so adamant on scaffolding your way to the top of a hope that fatally gave way, every time?

Why, even now—

The query came hushed, almost shy. “Are you happy with Jungkook?”

Your hands left your sides, possessed by a desire to express what words couldn’t. They hovered, palm-up and gesturing at nothing, powered by incredulousness alone. “What has that got to do with anything? You’re the one who kissed me—”

“Just answer me,” Taehyung tipped his head back, like the position would better stem his watery show of emotion.

“Yes,” was your honest answer. “I’m very happy.”

Sure, Taehyung still possessed the uncanny ability to manipulate your physiological and emotional responses like he burnt effigies of you on the regular. But—and this only enraged you further, because if he’d only given you more time—Jungkook was already forging himself a tentative place in the chambers of your cramped heart. Cramped, because Taehyung furnished it fit to burst. Jungkook’s residence was fragile; a fledgling bird constructing his first nest. Taehyung needed only crow and he would scatter him from a territory he guarded so ferociously.

So unwittingly.

Looking at him now, he appeared all of a king usurped. With his crown knocked askew, you succumbed to the doubts about your previous assumptions. Maybe your bond hadn’t been a bond at all, but another example of an unextraordinary friendship waiting to sour. The hastily whispered secrets, the solicited solace, the unflinching, even blind, loyalty; maybe none of that had been special. Perhaps you had romanticised your childhood connection past the bounds of the corporeal.

Taehyung was a man, flesh and blood. Not a telepath. Not an intuit. He was just as unperceptive and fallible as his fellow fuckboys.

And so were you.

The mortal before you closed his eyes to the world, an inscrutable twist to his brow. And then, with an ambiguous nod, he cast you a gaze fresh with resolution. “I’m really glad,” Taehyung’s lips remained stubbornly downturned despite the smile that angled their edges. “I mean it. I’m so glad you’re happy, that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. And I’m thankful that I played a part in that, somehow.”

A jerk of the head. “You should consider monetising your matchmaking services,” you quipped, though any humour the comment may have contained shrivelled as soon as it hit an atmosphere so desiccated of jovial banter. Neither of you laughed, at any rate.

Taehyung’s grasp had long loosened from your captive coat. Swinging it around your shoulders, you nodded again for no discernible reason but to announce your wordless departure. And as he led you to the door, you allowed yourself one last, wistful look at the silhouette of the boy you so grievously loved. Allowed yourself to trace each strand of his sumptuously soft tresses, miraculously untousled for having escaped the clutches of your overzealous roughhousing. The view of his back was far simpler to lay bare your vulnerability to, safe from the singe of his discerning eyes.

And desolation wracked you, then. Because this outline of him was so indelible, so evocative of the many juvenile jaunts the two of you had embarked on in brighter days. Days that saw you shouting, to that very back, unheeded discouragement as he charged off, sure as shit, into one impending injury or another. Days that were uncomplicated by adult misjudgement. Unsullied by physiological urges that hadn’t yet emerged.

He stood, a melancholic figure, by the open door. “I’ll text you soon.”

The promise held no weight.

You flashed him a smile far too brief to be convincing. “Okay. Good night, Taehyung.”

There came no offer of a parting embrace, and no consequent enquiry as to why. As the door closed behind you, it was as if you had fully stepped over the threshold into this new, grim reality. A reality that seemed as dreary, as much a torment as the days when the candle you held for him burned in solitary.

At a glance, your uneven, stumbling gait could well have been attributed to the influence of alcohol. It wasn’t too much a reach. But it had nothing to do with that, and all to do with your withdrawal from a substance, a person far more potent. As you staggered to the bus stop, face freshly overflowing with tacit devastation, every step away from him no longer felt empowering.

It heralded the onset of a protracted, creeping affliction.

-

Next: 09 || WYLEI Masterlist

[poetzproblem]

Hang A Shining Star Upon the Highest Bough

A/N: A fababy Christmas ficlet. Short and unbetaed and battling my writer’s block. Happy Holidays.

 Through the years we all will be together if the fates allow Hang a shining star upon the highest bough and have yourself a merry little Christmas now. ~Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

It's a different sort of Very Merry Berry Fabray Christmukkah Celebration Extravaganza this year—in a good way. The decorations have been scaled back by necessity, though the Christmas tree stands tall in the corner of their new living room with its twinkling lights and shining star while the menorah is still displayed on their mantle despite the candles having been extinguished five nights ago when Hanukkah had ended. The bedrooms are packed with a plethora of colorful packages that Rachel is certain will only grow when Judy eventually arrives, her dads drive down for the weekend, and Shelby and Beth stop by for their visit. The Hanukkah gifts certainly had seemed to double this year.

The reason for that is currently resting quietly in Rachel's arms, staring up at her mama through sleepy gray eyes. Rachel smiles tenderly as she gazes down at her daughter, wondering what color her eyes will end up being once they finally begin to change. She hopes they stay light—like Quinn's. Her own eyes trace over every smooth curve of Calliope's perfect little face for the millionth time, and her heart feels near to bursting with love. She can barely believe that this miraculous little life actually came from her and Quinn.

"You know, on this day last year, your mommy and I were just finding out that you were real," she whispers reverently, eyes misting over at the memory of the phone call that had confirmed Quinn's pregnancy. It had all still felt like something of a dream at the time, and Rachel had spent the entire rest of the day attached to her wife's side while a hurricane of emotions raged within her. It hadn't even come close to preparing her for the way she would feel the moment she'd first hold her daughter in her arms. "You're the very best Hanukkah or Christmas gift that I've ever been given."

Rachel knows that nothing else could possibly ever come close.

Calliope's tiny bow mouth curves into a delighted smile at the sound of her mother's voice, and Rachel grins in response. "I know you don't fully understand what that means yet, but you will," she promises, gently rocking Calliope in the cradle of her arms as she slowly paces the room.

"I'm going to teach you all of our traditions, like lighting the menorah and what it means…we've already started on that one, if you remember," she points out, stopping in front of the mantle as she thinks fondly of their Hanukkah celebration this year. She knows Calliope hadn't understood what they were celebrating or why, but she'd been here with them, and that's all that really matters. "Don't worry. We'll go over it all again next year," she assures her daughter. "And when you're a little older, we'll play dreidel, and I'll teach you to make latkes." Rachel pauses then, frowning slightly as she drops her voice lower. "Well, maybe Mommy will teach you that part," she admits sheepishly. "She makes the best latkes…and just wait until you try her sufganiyot. They're not exactly good for us, but we can splurge for the holidays," Rachel permits with a smile. "Her Christmas cookies are pretty hard to resist too. We're very lucky that we get to enjoy both in this family."

Rachel gently dances them closer to the Christmas tree and watches with delight as Calliope's eyes widen with awareness at the glittering lights. "You'll find out more about Christmas in a few days."

Rachel can't wait to see Calliope's reaction to all of her presents. She laughs quietly to herself, knowing that her daughter will probably be completely oblivious to everything but the loving attention of her family this year. It's Calliope's mothers who are most excited about the Christmas presents, especially Quinn. Despite the general exhaustion of caring for a newborn baby, Quinn had gone a little overboard with the holiday shopping and dragged Rachel right along with her. It would have been impossible for them to be anything but excited for their very first Christmukkah with their beautiful baby girl.

Thank goodness for online shopping and grandparents who enthusiastically agree to babysit.

"And we'll make new traditions too," Rachel murmurs lovingly. "You, me, and Mommy." She can already imagine the many holidays to come that they'll experience in brand new ways through the eyes of their daughter.

When a furry little body rubs against her leg, Rachel rolls her eyes and glances down with a laugh. "And Oliver too, of course." He looks up at her warily, eyeing the bundle in her arms before swishing his tail and disappearing under the tree to disturb the manger.

"He's starting to come around," Rachel whispers conspiratorially. He's been hiding out under the bed in the spare room for the most part since they'd brought the baby home, but he hadn't been able to resist the call of the Christmas tree.

"It's such a magical time of year," she muses, returning her gaze to her daughter, "especially with you here, my little shining star."

She begins to sway again, softly humming while she sends up silent prayers of gratitude for all the blessings in her life—the child in her arms being chief amongst them.

Calliope's eyes begin to droop just a little, though she stubbornly fights against the pull of sleep. Quinn would say she gets that from Rachel, and Rachel is usually too tired to argue with her. Their daughter is proving to have a very stubborn internal alarm clock that wakes them all up at ungodly hours.

Any chance of lulling Calliope into a little afternoon nap disappears the moment Rachel hears the door of Quinn's office open. Her daughter's gray eyes are instantly alert again, and she starts to fuss a little in Rachel's arms, squealing excitedly in anticipation of seeing her other mother.

She doesn't have to wait long.

It's only a moment before Quinn pads into the living room with a tired smile, wearing comfy track pants and a zip-up hoodie with her hair messily escaping from the small ponytail at the nape of her neck. She's beautiful, and Rachel thinks again how blessed she is to have won the heart of this amazing woman who agreed to marry her and become the mother of her child. When their eyes meet—when Quinn's eyes soften with adoration and her lips part with a sigh of happiness at the sight of Rachel with their daughter—Rachel is certain that Quinn feels the same way.

Calliope squeals again, and Rachel glances back down at her with a smile. "Someone is happy Mommy is done with boring work stuff."

Quinn chuckles, admitting that, "Mommy is happy about that too," as she closes the small distance to her family. She's been stuck in her office for the last three hours on a conference call with the screenwriters who've been working on the film adaptation of her Wishing Stone book series—undoubtedly yelling at them again about some of the changes they've been trying to make.

It's clear that all thoughts of work disappear the moment Quinn's gaze drops down to their daughter. Her entire face glows with happiness. "Hello, Sunshine," she coos, giggling when Calliope grunts happily and sends a big smile up at her mommy. "Have you been having fun with Mama?" she asks, gliding gentle fingers over a chubby cheek.

"Oh, she has," Rachel answers with confidence. "She had fun screaming for me to pick her up instead of taking a nap, and then she happily complained about being stuck with the bottle instead of Mommy," Quinn laughs again, rolling her eyes, "and now we are making exciting plans to have ourselves a merry little Christmas."

"Oh, are you?" Quinn challenges playfully as she slips an arm around Rachel's waist and cuddles into her side, bringing her other hand up along Rachel's forearm to help cradle their daughter. "And what exactly do these exciting plans entail?"

Rachel leans into her wife's body, sinking blissfully into a cocoon of all-encompassing love. "Being together," she murmurs simply. "Loving one another."

Quinn hums in contentment. "That's a good plan."

"We think so," Rachel confirms with a nod. "Don't we, Calliope?"

The only answer is a yawn as Calliope's eyes finally drift closed, seemingly satisfied now that she has both of her mothers exactly where she wants them.

"Looks like someone's maybe had a little too much fun today," Quinn whispers.

Rachel huffs quietly. "Of course she decides to settle down and nap now."

"I could do with a nap too," Quinn admits softly, hot breath tickling against Rachel's ear. Rachel shivers at the sensation.

"You know the minute we put her down, she'll start fussing again," she laments, mournful because a nice adult nap with her wife sounds like heaven right now—both with and without the actual napping.

"Maybe her Mama should sing her a lullaby," Quinn suggests. "Maybe whatever you were humming when I came in here."

Rachel smiles indulgently. "That's what our daughter wants?" she questions knowingly.

"Absolutely," Quinn confirms, holding Rachel closer.

They both know Calliope doesn't care what Rachel sings. She'd be content to hear Rachel sing the text of War and Peace to her as long as she sings it sotto. This is what Quinn wants, and they both know Rachel won't deny her.

And really, singing is an integral part of the holiday traditions that Rachel intends to share with her daughter, so it's no sacrifice to let the words come softly in a slow melody—straight from her heart.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light. From now on your troubles will be out of sight..."

And there in the circle of her wife's arms with their baby daughter drifting into dreamland, Rachel's heart has never been so light.

It really is the very best Christmukkah ever.

[archivesdiveronaevents]

Date: March 27th

Time: 12:00 AM

Location: Cirque Arcana

Have you ever been in love?

This is like that, and it is not.

It starts with a heart in your throat. That’s where you feel it at first, something lodged in a vital place that you can’t quite clear. You turn your head to the side, cough, take a glass of something sparkling, yet it remains stubbornly lodged in place like it has signed papers thrice over and taken up residence. In the beginning you may imagine that this peculiar feeling is nothing more than a sugared almond caught in your pharynx, but as time goes by and the feeling does not dissipate, you begin to realize this is something else entirely.

You think you’ve caught the vulnerable, pretty little aorta of the circus in your teeth and taken it in your throat.

It’s not hard to believe, with the way this world unfurls before you at the touch of your forward-facing shadow like morning glories: the people, these maddened and magenta-clad jesters, peel open like they want you to lean in and drink honey-sweet from the dips of their collarbone. They are cruel; oh, they are cruel in ways you do not understand - but like all meager-hearted humans, you cannot deny the pull of their attentions. The girls are tall and short and lithe and always, always beautiful, pulling you in close to stain silver lipstick all over your collar. One pinches a piece of confetti between her painted fingers and passes it to your tongue. It takes like strawberries and cream. This is a righteous bacchanalian, a sweet ecstasy that was left stuck to the corner of Pandora’s darling little box when all the wicked things flew out.

And it feels all yours.

So what do you do?

You swallow the heart. Your throat relaxes and you take it all at once, feeling full-up and arrogant and hungry for your triumph.

Oh, darling, oh, dear. What have you done now?

Revelry springs forth the way sea spray did the day the severed pieces of Uranus hit the sea to give birth to Aphrodite: rolling forth in all directions. The night has progressed to the hour where no more tender daylight exists, the twilight having pried off the last of its elegant fingers from the clouds and sent it down beyond the horizon. There seems to be something thick about the air now; something that, if one opened up their mouth and sucked in a breath, you would find chewable. Though there are men with thick moustaches and entertainment wearing nothing but clever lacquer smoking cigarettes, nothing smells of ashes. Everywhere the scent changes, just like the themes from tent to tent, air lifting from carbonated hyacinth that pops in the nostrils in the garden to the lead-and-Chanel N5 permeation of the Hearts Club.

There are children running knee-high through the tents, though they seem dismal compared to the adults - even the ones that have made it through the front gates seem forgettable, having latched to their parents sides in fear or awe.

(What is it that is said? That a children’s heart is pure and therefore knows far more than the rest of us? Well. Perhaps that isn’t a myth after all).

As time weaves on it seems to weed out the youths, as with each passing hour the younglings that had once been visiting make-believe sirens and statuesque angels are seemingly removed, replaced by their slightly-older teenage counterparts. Maybe it’s the late hour that takes them home with wide-eyed parents looking over their shoulder as they descend the hill, the adults racing back to their pretty little apartments in order to tuck their little ones in, lock the door, and scramble back up.

Or maybe it’s the inability to jar one’s head any way that isn’t straight: the midnight and witching hours pass on and over heads, al with no consequence and every bit of pomp and circumstance. And with each one tucking into Orion’s belt, the visitors of the Cirque Arcana find themselves untraceably altered. There is a sudden lightness of the mind and body, a hot-holy elation that seems to prick each individual by the spine and left them up above the floor to ghost over the ground, as if it is only by a gracious convention to modern science that feet still touch the carpet. Though no two livers are alike, and indeed no two mouths consume the same palette here, a strange and wonderful intoxication has ubiquitously spread over the populace of the circus. All colours seemed to match the inside of a swallowed heart -- dark, thick with something you could swallow and taste in the air, bleeding with bruise reds and purples in the uplighting. All other colours seemed to be leaking out of the world into one point, like God had reached down and pulled out a giant drain plug in the center of the tent, into which everything - words, people, common sense - sank.

Those inside this cocoon the tents felt surrounded and safe, blanketed by the anonymity the half-shadow and strange environment around them provided -- but even the best of Verona, those with pearls for teeth and diamonds for hearts, are slanted. They stand leaned to the side, a shoulder of a fur coat fallen off, the part of their hair raised and flipped over in a messy concession to the state they are currently existing in: a being with their feet on the ground but an angle to their mind and body. It’s in mouths as much as it is in spine: the way syllables stand slightly straight when engaged in conversation, but rush into one another at the tail. The thoughts inside skulls curl into themselves, turning into perfect little metallic balls that roll and gather in the corner of a brain as minds wander and tilt.

Of course, when everyone is down the rabbit hole, nobody notices the descent. Nobody notices the correlation between the sticky-sweet confetti pouring through the air and the odd things seen in the corner of vibrating vision, imagining things that aren’t there at all -- nobody traces the thread tied to their quickly-beating heart and charged loins back to the perfumed smoke rolling through the main stage and all the side tents. Instead, given no forewarning and no choice but to accept their current state, everyone falls.

And here is the truth of it all. When lost in the maze, you can become but one of three people:

Ariadne.

Theseus.

Or the Minotaur.

In the Tent of Veils comes a final Salome, a pulse of a woman that beats through the entire tent. The six dancers before her part and spread out into the room, hands roaming over the broad barrel-and-gun chests of occupants and pulling them into the shadows as the Queen rises. The sleeves of her dress rise and fall in a Grecian manner as she twirls, something at once arcane and licentious, a neo-Isadora Duncan undressing before the masses. After several minutes there were no more veils, no more pretenses. Only a naked body that, once seen, could only be described as an altar built to worship at - something to be crucified in sweat and ecstasy. The people around her burst, swinging into each other’s laps and across tables, flinging bodies into bodies as if love is a war. Through it all the smoke rises, corrupting, choking out any virtue that had been left existing in the surrounding bodies before this moment.

And Salome looks on, smiling.

Puzzles can have no start or end -- it cannot be in their nature to be easily solvable -- and that is why this room has two entrances. Only one door has been used all night, the suspiciously-inconspicuous arch with an unmarked, lacquered black sheen, guarded by an effervescent sprite of a jester. They speak in a high-cackle of a voice, something more mockery than has ever been proper speech, and have been leaned on the shoulders of politicians and gangsters all night, gouging them into the Puzzle Room by means of vocal prodding. Now is no different, as he spots Roman Montague and ushers the unofficial prince and his entourage into the living enigma - All kings must know how to solve mysteries, your highness. Bring only your most trusted knights with you. And with the pull of a curtain (as all things are revealed in the circus), this door is hidden, and another exposed. The menacing jester of the night is gone, and replaced by a nymph of a girl with a sweet smile. She extends her hands towards the next group like postcards for the taking. They find her charming, and her challenge exciting. They enter the maze.

At the place of losses ring the voices of torn-and-tried men at The Hearts Club. Bets and heartrates increase until they hit the ceiling, no longer a palpable pulse but one long vibration. The games grow shrewder, the narrowed eyes of dealers peeking ravenously from behind tipped bowler hats - a mass sum had been won only hours earlier, and since this victory they seem to be crueller-handed, either by way of fate or something else entirely. Groups have congregated like holy disciples around the demi-gods that persist in their siege of Mount Olympus, cupping dice in crude fists and cards in battered fingers. It takes only the slightest disturbance of peace for it to be smashed over the knee completely, church glass left shattered on marble floor. CHEATER. LIAR.

The wolves descend.

Ariadne, Theseus, Minotaur.

And as our heroes and players chose their roles for the night (not mindfully, you must understand dear reader; when one is revealing the very core of themselves, they have very little choice over who that is), our gold string of this maze watches on from behind the curtains. She is the thread that links through every corner and chasm, the sanity amongst the madness (or is the madness amongst the sanity?).

She wears dark velvet like rose petals around her, and on her tiny, lithe frame she seems to be swallowed by the luxe costume. There is something so unassuming and lovely about that little face, and as she stands alone and shining away from the spotlight, there seems to be something triumphant about the repose of her stance, simple as it is.

It is her act that culminates this night, her slim build that cuts through the wheezing-harsh laughter the last round of jesters incite on the main stage as the clock strikes far past midnight. The crowd hushes in expectation, respectful despite their delirium of the woman they know as the Ringmaster. Though the depth of the audience is great, all could swear that from their place on the plush bleachers, they can spot her smile with a resounding intimacy - could trace the petal shape of her lips on the back of their eyelids, as they likely will when they return home. There’s something about the woman that is large, blooming, irresistible, despite the lack of space she takes up. She tremors like a mirage in their eyeline, halcyon and dewy.

This time, she’s introduced as the illusionist. Severine, the booming voice calls her.

“For my last trick,” She speaks at the start of her very first, like everything that follows is one grand act. And it’s a lie - the whole night has been one act. “I’m going to show you what magic looks like. Now, close your eyes. Place your heart in your hands and your hopes on your tongue and breath. Count to three.”

One -

Two -

Three.”

The eye of the storm is the safest place to be.

That heart you swallowed cracks open inside your stomach like shrapnel. Chaos explodes with it.

12:00 AM: Trapeze. Two sets of twins engage in death-defying and gorgeous aerial acts above the mainstage. 

12:45 AM: Jesters. Clowning jesters to entertain the crowd as the stages are cleaned and changed.

1:00 AM: Aerial escape. A stunning, twenty-something girl takes to the air bound and harnessed amongst hanging silks. With a towering grandfather clock ticking off exactly thirty minutes, the performer at once entertains as an aerial artist while completing her escape. The event finishes with a burst of paper flowers so thick, she is lost for a moment  as she seemingly tumbles to her death - until she reappears a moment later, once more in the air and blowing kisses from a hanging swing.

INTERMISSION.

2:00 AM: Illusionist. The ringmaster takes the stage for the final act of the night.

SIDE TENTS REMAIN THE SAME.

What the characters have not been aware of is the effects of what they have been consuming all night: the flavoured confetti are hallucinogenic, and the machines effusing smoke and incense are aphrodisiacs, which has altered their state of mind and their actions.

In the Puzzle Tent, ROMAN, leading VALENTINA, and SANTINO through, hears the chaos unfolding outside and urges the rest of them to hurry as the combined hallucinogenic drinks, food, and confetti start to take their toll. The rooms shift and morph, monsters materialize and disappear all in an instant. Finally, they burst through what they think is the final door, only to find themselves in the middle of The Room of Infinite Mirrors - ROMAN reaches for the Gallos, only to touch solid glass. Hundreds of reflections blink around them and, on the opposite end of the room, REGINA, TIBERIUS, AND BUNNY burst in, all just as jarred and discordant.

TIBERIUS sees ROMAN and, under the influence of drugs, imagines the Montague Boss has taken on demonic qualities and has drawn a gun, and tackles him through a mirror in panic and rage, glass shattering around both of them. The two men struggle, injuring each other, until ROMAN manages to momentarily incapacitate him.

VALENTINA catches REGINA just as the Capulet captain goes to help TIBERIUS up, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her into a mirror as retribution for their earlier confrontation. REGINA fights her way free with a surge of adrenaline.

BUNNY, seeing SANTINO go to his boss’s aid and covering him as ROMAN stumbles out to safety, grabs a piece of glass shard and lunges for him. SANTINO turns just in time to catch the glass with his bare hands, and the two struggle, and he begins to weaken from the pain and blood loss.

ORION, weaving through the fray outside of the tents, spots an injured ROMAN leaning against a post and bleeding profusely with many shards of glass sticking out of his skin, and goes to help take him away from the chaos - the Montague Boss urges him leave him alone to avoid attracting suspicion.

Anornate and grand mirror catches JULIANA’s attention throughout the chaos - The All Seeing Mirror. She comes closer and sees foggy visions of hooded figures dangling above a dancing crowd in large, golden cages. Then, a vision of Cosimo and herself falling violently ill. Frightened, she grabs the closest passerby, HEA, to verify she isn’t simply seeing things due to the hallucinogenic drugs. HEA, visibly and genuinely disturbed, attempts to coax the mirror into showing more, but while JULIANA’s back is turned, suddenly vanishes.

MIKAEL fights with LUCRECIA, having been shown a false image of her conspiring to kill him by the oracle. LUCRECIA attempts to give themselves some separation as he madly rambles, and steers them past off-limit areas. As their argument grows more heated, LUCRECIA stops suddenly and stares into the distance - the hallucinogenic aspect of the confetti has given her a false image of the deceased Maeve. She begins to weep uncontrollably without explanation, which MIKAEL believes is a means to distract him. LUCRECIA rushes towards the image of Maeve with MIKAEL following. She grows hysterical when the hallucination disappears and demands they begin to look for Maeve.

HECTOR has eaten the hallucinogenic confetti and is overwhelmed by the visions, real and imaginary, of the circus. He stumbles into the elephant ring, where DELILAH is, and is nearly trampled by an elephant, narrowly rolling out of the way. He falls and sprains his ankle in the process and attempts to crawl out - DELILAH runs to his side and tries to help him out, but a call from outside the ring gives her pause. GRACE has been watching the entire ordeal and demands that DELILAH leave him to fend for himself.

On the other side of the grounds, CATHERINE, high on the hallucinogenic confetti, attempts to calm herself by taking a ride on the carousel. She hallucinates that the animals turn into macabre monsters, screams and stumbles trying to run away. By some twist of fate it is GRACE that she runs into at full speed, who takes pleasure at her sister’s strange horror. While CATHERINE clings to her weeping for help, GRACE feigns kindness and guides her away from the carousel and through off-limit tents, only to shove her into the corral that houses the actual show horses, locking the gate behind her. GRACE leaves as CATHERINE shrieks, her terror inciting the otherwise harmless animals to startle and run.

In The Gardens, the thick, humid air fills with something far more sinister - aphrodisiac gas. ALEXANDER, inhales the gas and is filled with unnatural, abrupt lust - he stumbles through the smoke and nearly knocks ODESSA, also dazed and having inhaled the gas, over. They pause for a beat, and draw close.

In the middle of the Illusionist’s acts, three volunteers are called from the audience to sit and be “transformed.” The illusionist swears no harm will come to these individuals, and has them sat on three chairs centre stage, hands tied behind their backs with rope and a bag placed over their heads. While the magician performs another feat on the other side of the stage, a ring of jesters arrives and begins making a good-natured menace of themselves upon the unsuspecting volunteers: water is dumped over their heads, their legs used as a springboard for acrobatics, and various other humorous parts as living props. With a show of what appears to be an aurora borealis swirling about them, when the illusionist returns to her volunteers, she pulls the bags off to reveal the siblings MEDEA, CINEAD, and HEA. The spotlight shines down upon them and the audience roars in appreciation. They are bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Despite the uproar this trick has caused, no one will notice the discomfort the witches seem to be under - they recall only being pulled behind curtains, but not how they arrived on stage. The illusionist grins, slices through their restraints, and offers them a smile as they are ushered off stage by her jesters.

RAMONA, inebriated and originally intending to ride one of the circus horses, instead finds CATHERINE being battered by startled horses. Unable to see who it is she is helping, she leaps the gate and diverts the attention of the stallion before helping the girl limp to safety. The pair is found and apprehended for trespassing.

In the Hearts Club, chaos erupts out of nowhere. ORPHEUS accuses the staff at the of cheating when he loses out on a substantial bet, and the staff accuse him of cheating in return. He lunges for one of them in a maddened state, but is tackled by several others who drag him off behind the curtain. VIVIANNE enters the tent just in time to see ORPHEUS being dragged away, draws her blade and threatens the staff. One of them covers her from head to toe with a burlap sack, and when they pull it off, she’s vanished.

The pyrotechnics booth that NIKOLAI operates has caught ablaze by malfunctioning wire and become swallowed by smoldering heat and fire. LILLIAN spots a weakened and stunned NIKOLAI’s within the booth and, with the help of BELLAMY, manages to pry the door open. Due to his own minor injuries sustained trying to navigate through the frenzied crowds, he is unable to carry the man himself, and they both work to escort him out and resuscitate him.

BUNNY, thrown off by the events of the Puzzle Room, starts acting manically. She begins shoving handfuls of confetti in her mouth just as THEODORA runs over to try and stop her. BUNNY slaps the Capulet in response before tremoring and falling to the ground with her eyes rolled back. THEODORA, having recognized the effects of hallucinogenic drugs only moments before, had been attempting to prevent the same overdose happening at her feet. They take the young girl in their lap and try to soothe her as they call out for medical attention.

HUGO has been doing his best to guide horrified and frantic circus goers find their way out, all while trying to find a fellow Montague and gain his own bearings. He catches sight of ORION and ROMAN conversing and, mistaking the situation as ORION being the one to have injured ROMAN, intervenes and firmly insists that he leave. From HUGO’s side, ROMAN sees the priest’s hand hover over his gun and, fearing escalation, is forced to fill HUGO in on ORION’s status as an informant.

In the Tent of Veils, there is a lone figure stumbling through the incense and dancers. PAVEL, in his drug-induced delirium, sees glimpses visions of his family long passed in between the writhing bodies. He lunges for them and goes through the red velvet curtains, reappearing in the Sweetheart Table tent.

ALVA seeks shelter in The Depths and, in their hurry, forgets to grab ear plugs. The mermaids lure them with their sweet, coaxing song and, as soon as they are close, drag them into the tank. They are pulled out and resuscitated by SEVERINE, the mysterious ringleader.

By the Sweetheart Table, BORIS finds that he’s missing large bills from his wallet as well as his sleeve cuffs. He sees PAVEL nearby, dazed, and accuses him of pickpocketing - you never truly grow out of pettiness. PAVEL taunts him in turn, and the confrontation escalates into a full-on fight. Jesters form a dancing ring around the two, seemingly intent on never breaking the circle until someone falls.

OBERON suddenly finds himself falling through the curtains of the Sweetheart Table and shoves his way through the ring of jesters. Seeing BORIS and PAVEL in the middle of fighting, he defends his former associate and pushes BORIS back and away from PAVEL, to which BORIS retaliates.

FARON and PRIAM, visiting the Tent of Veils at the culmination of the night, is beguiled by the Salome that enters as the climax of the show. As the dancers disperse amongst the crowd and pick out men that grab at their wrists, they are simultaneously plucked from their seats and brought into a hidden room sectioned off by curtains. Placed in plush chairs sitting parallel one another, they are asked if they want a private dance - both, while feeling the effects of the aphrodisiacs, acquiesce eagerly and receive them. As part of the dance, they have their hands tied gingerly with the women’s scarves. The longer the dance progresses the lighter headed and more intoxicated they feel; upon finishing, they pass out. Both regain consciousness some time later in an entirely different room and find their belongings - wallet, watch, and phones - stolen. As a pair they rally on the security and insist the dancers stole from them, only to be told they walked out of the tent tipping lavishly twenty minutes ago. FARON demands to see video footage while PRIAM attempts to reenter the dance tent, only to be strong-armed away by the bouncer. This results in a fight that has both men kicked out of the grounds and sent home.

LAWRENCE, attempting to find either ROMAN or ODESSA, shoves his way through to The Gardens and interrupts ODESSA and ALEXANDER, who separate moments too late. He drags ODESSA away, who protests indignantly at her brother’s overprotectiveness, yanks herself away, and storms out of the tent and into the fresh air where the aphrodisiac’s effects immediately weaken. LAWRENCE warns ALEXANDER to keep his hands to himself as ALEXANDER also takes his leave.

In the Butterfly Tent, onlookers stream throughout the ring in a panic as they try to find their way to the exits. CALINA is one of them, and as she weaves in and out she’s snatched by one of the aerialists who flings her to another. She demands to be let down onto the ground, but the aerialists ignore her, and she spots one of them flying through the air with a large sack in their arms. They remove the cloth to reveal a jarred VIVIANNE - both women are stranded atop a perch high above. CALINA demands VIVANNE’S cooperation in figuring out a way to safely get down, but the Capulet Underboss is hostile, still sore over the death of her own adviser and peer.

OOC: This marks the end of our scene, dear readers. Everyone involved in the Puzzle Room violence, as well as PRIAM, FARON, ORPHEUS and RAMONA are escorted off the grounds for trespassing and/or breaches of safety. CATHERINE, NIKOLAI and BUNNY have been taken to the hospital, with BUNNY in especially bad condition. All others have managed to escape detection by Cirque Arcana’s staff for their terrible behaviour - for now.

As always, you are encouraged to play out these interactions on the dash or in a chatzy. If you hold these interactions in a chatzy, please post it on the dash so we may all be a part of the excitement. Play out your character’s odd events, injuries and aftermath. All interactions may occur between the dates of MARCH 25TH to APRIL 13th. As always, feel free to ask us questions.

[sarangx]

The War’s Been Won

original

yoongi has one of his depress days and jimin comes to bring him back to the present.

aka

self-indulgent fluff that nobody asked for brought to you by your local ace

he didn't like these days to put it in short terms. he felt that he couldn't control anything that was going on. sure, being an idol meant that they could barely do anything for themselves, but at least they could think during their decisions and answer questions with their own personality. thats how bts did it anyway. he didn't know if the other idol groups were like that or not. quite frankly, he didn't care. he just wanted to feel something, anything. anything except this cold nothingness that had wrapped itself around his mind.

perhaps he could feel something. feel himself slipping away from reality and truth. right back into the times of when he hadn't an ounce of self-appreciation.

he wasn't quite sure which one he preferred.

days of quiet crying that had evolved into loud sobs and screams filled his head. days of so much doubt and fear, he had cut everyone off. he no longer believed in what anyone said. he couldn't hear the words of truth that his closest spoke. everything they said was guaranteed to be a lie, he told himself. he was never quite sure what they were lying about, what they were trying to say. he threw every social interaction away and blocked off any other possibilities of any more.

"why can't you get your ass out of bed?" he remembered his mother shouting at him through the door that had been locked for two weeks straight. he remembered the loud hitting against the door that sounded too much like thunder. he remembered the profanities his mother yelled at him, begging him to get out of his room and just do something.

he would not move.

weeks had grown into months where he would not speak with anyone. his voice became unused. his eyes ran out of tears. his cheeks had sunken in, his ribs horribly visible despite his wardrobe of too-big hoodies and sweaters.

he recalled the pattern of his ceiling very well. he memorized every indent and crack, every stain that made it through their roof. the color of a quickly fading grey was what set his mind at ease before the thoughts started again.

now here he was, a well-known korean idol. he had long since left those memories behind. at least, he'd like to think so. most days he was much too busy to even consider those times. but occasionally, they still managed to sneak into his brain and slow the pace of everything he did.

his motivation would drop tremendously. he'd have to force himself to follow through with the choreography, making countless mistakes while doing so. his mind was always fogged on those days, and he spoke less than he usually would. tears would never fall, no, but he would surely break down by the time he had hidden himself away in his studio, completely abandoning the dorm that held his beloved bandmates.

none of them usually came. they didn't want to face min suga. they didn't know how he'd react and if he'd even tell them what happened. he was not one of verbally expressing feelings or emotions.

usually.

of course, though, as he hid himself underneath a quilt jin had given every member, he couldn't hear the tapping on his studio door.

if anything, it strengthened the haunting memories. the recollection of his mother's vigorous knocking seemed to match that of the gentle rapping against his door according to his muddled brain.

he caved in on himself even more, his heartbeat quickening. his eyes squeezed shut as he pulled his knees up to his chest.

the quiet creaking of the door opening went unnoticed, too lost in his own mind. he did not hear the soft footsteps that nervously stepped towards the lump underneath the blanket that was him.

"yoongi hyung?" the gentle voice of jimin asked, his voice soft and patient. "are you awake?"

yoongi's brain came to a screeching halt as he slowly began to register that there was another human being there. jimin of all people, too. the anxiety of his boyfriend seeing him like this only increased his trembling. it was to the point where the whole blanket was shaking because of the body underneath it.

he told himself to stop it, to be a decent role model for jimin. not some pathetic crybaby that would lose all respect.

but his thinking went on too long, and the vibration of the quilt told jimin that something was wrong.

"yoongi? hyung?' he timidly stepped closer, staring down at the covered body, "what's wrong? it's okay." of course, he didn't know if it would be or not, but his goal was to comfort yoongi.

the concern and worry of the busan boy's voice caught yoongi off guard. it didn't matter how many times jimin would say or do something kind, he simply wasn't used to it. he wasn't sure if he ever would. but once more, questions and what if's swiftly filled up his brain and chased away any hope of getting out of his episode.

with another lack of response, jimin slowly laid a hand on where he guessed yoongi's back was. after doing so, the body stilled in surprise. but with newfound confidence, he rubbed his back in soothing circles. gradually, yoongi's trembled subsided.

without realizing it, he leaned into jimin's warmth. he had yet to get out of the comfort of his blanket, but the vocalist was a step ahead of him. which was to be expected considering how discombobulated everything was to the daegu man.

with slow and gentle movements, as if dealing with a cat, jimin managed to haul the other's body into his lap. yoongi wasn't complaining. after all, it was warm and it smelled nice... the thought of it being jimin he was laying against had yet to register.

with yoongi wrapped securely in a cocoon, jimin began to slip off the fabric of the quilt to see what was wrong with his hyung.

jimin's eyes saddened when he saw his face.

dark circles had formed underneath his eyes, tear tracks exposed on his pale cheeks. his hair was a mess of black strands, showing how it had been tousled with repeatedly. his nose was red and and lips were chapped with dried blood from where yoongi had chewed them too much. but the most terrible thing was the almost inaudible whimpers escaping his throat as his eyes were squeezed together much too tight.

jimin cradled yoongi's cheek, watching as he subconsciously leaned into it. he wiped away the tears with his thumb, kissing the rapper's forehead.

"yoongi, baby, what's wrong?" he murmured, taking on the protective boyfriend role now that he knew his yoongi was upset. when he saw the latter suck in a breath, he brought the other's head into his neck wordlessly. "you're okay now."

the words spoke with so much sincerity that yoongi found himself believing them. he felt the cold of his thoughts slowly begin to dwindle as he breathed in the scent of jimin, his warmth relaxing his mind and body.

"jimin," was all yoongi managed to hoarsely breathe out, clinging onto him and hiding his face into his neck even more.

"what is it, baby? what's the matter?" jimin asked in concern, even more so at the broken tone the other spoke in. this was probably the most vulnerable the great min suga had been to anyone.

"i-i'm sorry," yoongi's voice broke at the last syllable, sobs threatening to fall out of his mouth. "i-i was a mess t-today," he stuttered out, voice practically a tremor as he held jimin tighter. "m-my dep-depression--" he couldn't continue due to the sudden sob that ripped out of his chest.

jimin held his yoongi tighter, rocking them back and forth.

"shh, it's okay," he whispered soothingly into his ear, "don't apologize for something you can't control, darling. is there anything i can do?"

"just...hold me," yoongi said softly, breathing shakily. "please."

jimin nodded, not questioning the sudden desperation for skinship and comfort. he wasn't complaining, but he also wished it wasn't because of these circumstances.

"you're beautiful, you know that?" he murmured into yoongi's ear as he continued to rock them both back and forth in a careful rhythm. "i love how your eyes sparkle when you get excited, and how you fidget a lot when you get impatient or nervous. jin hyung always tells you to stop but we know he doesn't really expect you to." jimin laughs a little at that.

he continues to praise yoongi and tell of stories fondly, his steady rocking never diminishing. it isn't until yoongi is completely relaxed in his embrace does he gently slide a piece of stray hair behind his ear.

"you've won the war, baby," he murmurs proudly, and a smile stretches across yoongi's face as sleep gradually takes him.

yes, he did.

[crownsoffrost-rpg-blog]

ROBB STARK | Richard Madden | Twenty-three (23)

  ► Lord of Winterfell   ► Lord Paramount & Warden of the North

♚ PERSONALITY

     ✔ charismatic, candid, decisive     ✖ impulsive, vengeful, proud

♚ HISTORY

Robb is the eldest son of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn Tully. According to Catelyn, he was conceived on the night of the couple’s marriage. Robb was born at the end of Robert’s Rebellion at Riverrun. He grew up alongside his half-brother Jon Snow, who Ned elected to raise at Winterfell. The two became nearly inseparable, always training at arms and imagining themselves as mighty knights. Robb also became close with Theon Greyjoy, whom Ned took as hostage succeeding the Greyjoy Rebellion. The life of his family was shaken up by the arrival of King Robert Baratheon at Winterfell, which ended with Ned leaving to King’s Landing alongside Robb’s sisters, Sansa and Arya, to serve as Hand of the King. A fifteen-year-old Robb stayed at Winterfell and served as Lord in his father’s absence, though he was notably clumsy in his rule. After Ned was killed at the command of newly-crowned King Joffrey Baratheon, Robb’s grief turned to rage and he called the North and Riverlands to his side to wage war against the Lannisters. In that time, Robb quickly left behind the clumsy rule from before, becoming a reliable and strong leader. It was because of his leadership prowess that earned him the title of King in the North. Robb became known as the Young Wolf, a nickname steered from his association with his direwolf, Grey Wind. Led by Robb, the Stark, Tully, and afferent forces won substantial battlefield confrontations against the Lannisters. A turning point happened when the Lannister forces laid siege on Riverrun. In order to provide reinforcements to lift the siege, Robb’s army needed to cross the Green Fork by using the bridge connecting the Twins. Unknown to Robb, Catelyn struck a deal with Walder Frey: passage on the bridge in exchange for Robb marrying one of his daughters. Robb was furious, though he was forced to temporarily comply. Crossing the Green Fork, the Stark forces released Riverrun and took Jaime Lannister as hostage.

In the meantime, Winterfell fell victim to Theon Greyjoy’s betrayal. Having been sent by Robb to negotiate with Balon Greyjoy, Theon returned with a strong desire to please his father and prove his own worth. He murdered several notable people, allegedly including Robb’s little brothers, Bran and Rickon. Driven by grief, Robb found solace in the arms of a woman named Jeyne Westerling and the two of them consummated the feelings they’d been brewing for each other. Refusing to besmirch Jeyne’s honor, Robb decided to go against the pact struck by his mother with Walder Frey and married Jeyne to protect her honor. After attending the funeral of his grandfather, Hoster Tully, Robb settled on returning North to liberate the land from Iron Born occupation. Aware that he needed, once more, to cross the Green Fork, Robb proposed to Walder Frey a marriage between Edmure Tully and one of Frey’s daughters instead. He attended what would later be known as the Red Wedding. There, as a result of a scheme puppeteered by Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, the Westerlings, and Walder Frey, Catelyn, and the majority of feast attendees were brutally murdered. Robb was gravely wounded in the leg and left shoulder, only managing to survive after getting pushed in a blind spot amid the chaos by one of his bannermen. The same bannerman made use of the chaos broken out from Grey Wind barging in and starting to kill people in order to hide Robb in a pile of corpses. He woke up at sunrise, sneaked inside a rushing caravan, with Grey Wind by his side, and fought for survival until the arrival at the nearest village.  After strengthening his forces, Robb summoned his army several more times, but with his forces decimated both in numbers and morale, his streak of wins was replaced by losses. With the men still loyal to him, Robb decided to pursue Stannis Baratheon, who was herding his own army towards the Wall. Once arrived there, he worked up a strategy together with the Stag King and Jon, now Lord Commander. Slowly but surely, Robb worked with Stannis to liberate the North from two fronts. After winning Deepwood Motte and Moat Caitlin from the ironborn, Robb faced off Roose Bolton at Winterfell, aided by Stannis’ army, the Mountain Clans, and Wildlings. A victory was earned and Robb executed Roose Bolton for his betrayal, disappointed that Ramsay Bolton had slipped away. Walder Frey and the eldest eighteen of his sons were also executed, and the rest of the house delegitimized. The youngest four sons were placed with various families for fostering. The final execution for conspiring the Red Wedding was Gawen and Sybell Westerling. Jeyne hung herself from the rafters of their bedroom soon after her parents’ execution, leaving behind no children. With Daenerys’ arrival and conquest, Robb was grateful that the North was safe again, at last.

♚ PRESENT

Robb is still licking his wounds after the traumatic Red Wedding, the abrupt streak of defeats against the Lannisters and Tyrells, and the suicide of his wife. He spent the past few years cocooned in Winterfell, unmotivated and afraid, trying to rebuild what was lost to the iron born attacks. Politically, Robb is concerned over his debt to Stannis Baratheon and anxiously thinks of the day when he’ll be called to Stannis’ army to fight for his cause. On the other hand, he observes the growing frustrations of northerners regarding living conditions and supplies, but finds himself in a bind. Daenerys struggles to manage the vast North and Robb knows he’s not in a position to make any requests with an alliance with a possible usurper hanging from his neck. He’s not ready for another war and he’d gladly live in the comfort of his own home for the rest of his life if he could help it. But he can’t and he knows it. Just how he knows that he’s far from being beyond repair. Robb Stark can become the Young Wolf again, regain his courage and vitality, and lift the North from its misery. He just needs the right kind of push.

♚ CONNECTIONS

  SANSA STARK - Robb has been constantly worrying over his sister’s well-being at the Eyrie, but stayed back at her own requests. Now that she’s announced her return home, Robb feels a spark of glee in him that he hasn’t felt since he found Rickon alive and hugged Jon again.

  STANNIS BARATHEON - Stannis essentially guaranteed the liberation of the North and Robb knows he is deeply indebted to the man. He wouldn’t look at this alliance with such dubious eyes if it weren’t for the fact that he’s reluctant to lay down the lives of his bannermen again. For a man’s greedy cause nonetheless.

  HARRION KARSTARK - Robb’s relationships with the Karstarks have been tense, to say so the least. After their soldiers had abandoned him, they haven’t answered his summons since. For the benefit of the North, he tried to overcome his pride and offered Harrion the possibility to speak on behalf of the northmen on Daenerys’ council, hoping this would mend their relationship.

  BRAN STARK - After finding out that Bran was still alive, Robb has been worrying constantly over his brother’s safety, wondering when and if he would return home. He hasn’t lost hope and strongly believes that Bran has somehow survived the cruelty of the lands beyond the Wall and that he will see him again.

MENTIONED IN: Stavig, Stannis Baratheon, Arya Stark, Harrion Karstark, Edmure Tully.